GS Paper: GS2-18.Bilateral, regional and global groupings and agreements involving India and/or affecting India’s interests.

Context

The trilateral security agreement between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States (AUKUS) continues to be in the news.

Implications for ASEAN

• There is also the matter of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) disunity over the emergence of AUKUS.
•  While AUKUS is clearly an attempt by the U.S. to bolster regional security, including securing Australia’s seaborne trade, any sudden accretion in Australia’s naval capabilities is bound to cause unease in the region.
• Even though Australia has denied that AUKUS is a defence alliance, this hardly prevents China from exploiting ASEAN’s concerns at having to face a Hobson’s choice amidst worsening U.S.-China regional rivalry.
•  AUKUS is based on a shared commitment of its three members to deepening diplomatic, security and defence cooperation in the Indo-Pacific to meet the challenges of the 21st century.
• Even though this has not been stated explicitly, the rise of China, particularly its rapid militarisation and aggressive behaviour, is undoubtedly the trigger.

Relations of AUKUS members with China

• The AUKUS joint statement clearly acknowledges that trilateral defence ties are decades old, and that AUKUS aims to further joint capabilities and interoperability.
• For three nations, their relations with China have recently been marked by contretemps.
• Australia, especially, had for years subordinated its strategic assessment of China to transactional commercial interests.
• Much to China’s chagrin, its policy of deliberately targeting Australian exports has not yielded the desired results.
• Instead of kow-towing, the plucky Australian character has led Canberra to favour a fundamental overhaul of its China policy.
• The transfer of sensitive submarine technology by the U.S. to the U.K. is a sui generis arrangement based on their long-standing Mutual Defence Agreement of 1958.
• Elements in the broader agenda provide opportunities to the U.S., the U.K. and Australia to engage the regional countries.

AUKUS engagement with regional countries

• All three nations will also play a major role in U.S.-led programmes such as Build Back Better World, Blue Dot Network and Clean Network, to meet the challenge of China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
• The Quad and AUKUS are distinct, yet complementary. Neither diminishes the other.
• Whereas the Quad initiatives straddle the Indian and the Pacific Oceans, a Pacific-centric orientation for AUKUS has advantages.
• Such a strategy could potentially strengthen Japan’s security as well as that of Taiwan in the face of China’s mounting bellicosity.
• Shifting AUKUS’s fulcrum to the Pacific Ocean could reassure ASEAN nations.
• It could also inure AUKUS to any insidious insinuation that accretion in the number of nuclear submarines plying the Indo-Pacific might upset the balance of power in the Indian Ocean.

Conclusion

There are limited options in the economic arena with China already having emerged as a global economic powerhouse. AUKUS, though, provides an opportunity to the U.S. to place proxy submarine forces to limit China’s forays, especially in the Pacific Ocean.

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Context

The fate of the grand strategic ambitions of the Indo-US relationship may depend substantially on how well they collaborate in two areas to which their joint attention is only belatedly turning — climate and trade.

Importance of climate change and trade to India-US partnership

• Strategic partnerships capable of re-shaping the international global order cannot be based simply on a negative agenda.
• Shared concerns about China provide the U.S.-India partnership a much-needed impetus to overcome the awkward efforts for deeper collaboration that have characterised the past few decades.
• What risks being lost is a reckoning with how interrelated climate and trade are to securing U.S.-India leadership globally, and how their strategic efforts can flounder without sincere commitment to a robust bilateral agenda on both fronts.

India-US collaboration on climate change and challenges

• India and the U.S. are collaborating under the Climate and Clean Energy Agenda Partnership.
• In parallel, there are hopeful signs that they are now prioritising the bilateral trade relationship by rechartering the Trade Policy Forum. 
• At COP26 in Glasgow India announced a net zero goal for 2070, it has called for western countries to commit to negative emissions targets.
• Challenges: India’s rhetoric of climate justice is likely to be received poorly by U.S. negotiators, particularly if it aligns with China’s messaging and obstructs efforts to reach concrete results.

Collaboration on trade

• The failure of the U.S. and India to articulate a shared vision for a comprehensive trade relationship raises doubts about how serious they are when each spends more time and effort negotiating with other trading partners.
• Protectionist tendencies infect the politics of both countries these days, and, with a contentious U.S. mid-term election a year away, the political window for achieving problem-solving outcomes and setting a vision on trade for the future is closing fast.

Climate-trade inter-relationship

• Climate and trade are interrelated in many ways.
• If governments, such as India and the U.S., coordinate policies to incentivise sharing of climate-related technologies and align approaches for reducing emissions associated with trade, the climate-trade inter-relationship can be a net positive one.
• India and the U.S. could find opportunities to align their climate and trade approaches better, starting with a resolution of their disputes in the World Trade Organization (WTO) on solar panels.
• The two countries could also chart a path that allows trade to flow for transitional energy sources, such as fuel ethanol.
• Shared strategic interests will be undermined if India and the U.S. cannot jointly map coordinated policies on climate and trade.
• The most immediate threat could be the possibility of new climate and trade tensions were India to insist that technology is transferred in ways that undermine incentives for innovation in both countries or if the U.S. decides that imports from India be subject to increased tariffs in the form of carbon border adjustment mechanisms or “CBAMs”.

Conclusion

Concerted action on both the climate and trade fronts is mutually beneficial and will lend additional strength to the foundation of a true partnership for the coming century.

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Context

With its abundant energy sources and appetite for trade diversification, Russia could be an ultimate long-term partner of India as it tries to diversify its trade relations.

Energy partnership

• Indian Prime Minister in a virtual address at 6th Eastern Economic Forum (EEF) in Russia’s Vladivostok said that “India-Russia energy partnership can help bring stability to the global energy market.”
• Indian and Russian Energy Ministers announced that the countries’ companies have been pushing for greater cooperation in the oil and gas sector beyond the U.S.$32 billion already invested in joint projects.
• India’s Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas Hardeep Singh Puri referred to Russia as the largest investor in India’s energy sector.
• One of the examples of cooperation between the two countries in energy transformation is the joint venture between India’s Reliance Industries Ltd. and Russia’s Sibur, the country’s largest petrochemicals producer.
• Apart from accounting for most of the Indian butyl rubber market, Reliance Sibur Elastomers exports its products to Asia, Europe, the United States, Brazil and other countries.
• A few years ago, Rosneft invested U.S.$12.9 billion in India’s second-largest private oil refiner, Essar Oil, renamed Nayara Energy, marking it one of the most significant foreign investments in years.
• Partnership in renewable: In efforts to transition to green energy, India has recently achieved a significant milestone of completing the countrywide installation of 100 gigawatts of total installed renewable energy capacity, excluding large hydro.
• A recent Deloitte report has forecasted that India could gain U.S.$11 trillion in economic value over the next 50 years by limiting rising global temperatures and realising its potential to ‘export decarbonization’.
• Unknowns of climate change and threats of a new pandemic suggest that the country should accelerate its energy transition. Russia, one of the key global players across the energy market, could emerge as an indispensable partner for such a transition.
• Partnership in nuclear energy: Russian companies have been involved in the construction of six nuclear reactors in the Kudankulam nuclear power project at Tamil Nadu.
• India and Russia secure the potential of designing a nuclear reactor specifically for developing countries, which is a promising area of cooperation.
• India’s nuclear power generation capacity of 6,780 MW may increase to 22,480 MW by 2031, contributing to the country’s efforts to turn to green energy.

Way forward

• In September, almost all of Russia’s major energy companies were interested in projects in India, Russia’s Energy Minister said at the Vladivostok forum in September, adding that he sees prospects for energy cooperation in all areas.
• However, the current bilateral exchange rate needs to accelerate for India to grasp its potential from energy transformation.

Conclusion

To meet its growing energy demand and succeed in green transformation, India needs approximately U.S.$500 billion of investments in wind and solar infrastructure, grid expansion, and storage to reach the 450 GW capacity target by 2030. Therefore, more efforts are needed to expand cooperation with such partners as Russia.

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Context

The evolving situation in Afghanistan has thrown up renewed challenges for India’s regional and bilateral ties with Central Asia and the Caucasus, prompting India to recalibrate its rules of engagement with the region.

Background of India’s relations with Central Asian countries

• After the breakup of the Soviet Union and the formation of the independent republics in Central Asia, India reset its ties with the strategically critical region.
• India provided financial aid to the region and established diplomatic relations.
• New Delhi signed the Strategic Partnership Agreements (SPA) with Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to stimulate defence cooperation and deepen trade relations.
• In 2012, New Delhi’s ‘Connect Central Asia’ policy aimed at furthering India’s political, economic, historical and cultural connections with the region.
• However, India’s efforts were stonewalled by Pakistan’s lack of willingness to allow India passage through its territory.

Renewed engagement with Central Asia

• The growing geostrategic and security concerns regarding the BRI’s China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and its violation of India’s sovereignty forced New Delhi to fix its lethargic strategy.
• Eventually, Central Asia became the link that placed Eurasia in New Delhi’s zone of interest.
• India signed MoUs with Iran in 2015 to develop the Chabahar port in the Sistan-Baluchistan province that was in the doldrums from 2003.
• External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar was in the region earlier this month.
• In Kyrgyzstan, Mr. Jaishankar extended a credit line of $200 million for the support of development projects and signed an memorandum of understanding (MoU) on High-Impact Community Development Projects (HICDP).
• Kazakhstan: His next stop was the Kazakhstan capital, Nur Sultan, where he attended the 6th Foreign Ministers’ Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA).
• Armenia: Mr. Jaishankar has become the first Indian External Affairs Minister to visit Armenia.
•  During the visit, Mr. Jaishankar also supported efforts for a peaceful solution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia under the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s (OSCE) Minsk group.

Limits of SCO

• The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) was created in response to the threats of terrorism that sprang from Afghanistan.
• The Taliban re-establishing its supremacy over Afghanistan has also exposed the weaknesses of coalitions such as SCO.
• The SCO has been used by most member countries for their own regional geostrategic and security interests, increasing the trust-deficit and divergence within the forum.

Way forward

• Most of the Central Asian leaders view India’s Chabahar port as an opportunity to diversify their export markets and control China’s ambitions.
• They have admitted New Delhi into the Ashgabat Agreement, allowing India access to connectivity networks to facilitate trade and commercial interactions with both Central Asia and Eurasia, and also access the natural resources of the region.
• Rising anti-Chinese sentiments within the region and security threats from the Taliban allow New Delhi and Central Asia to reimagine their engagement.
• Central Asian countries have been keen to have India as a partner as they have sought to diversify their strategic ties.

Conclusion

India cannot afford to lose any time in recalibrating its regional engagements.

Context

Whether it can or should make a difference to Pakistan’s internal politics, India must pay greater attention to the internal dynamics of our most difficult neighbour and more purposefully engage a diverse set of actors in that polity.

India’s interventions in internal affairs of neighbours

• Except for Pakistan, in most other countries of the subcontinent, India is drawn quickly into their internal political arguments.
• Delhi has always exercised some influence on the outcomes of those contestations.
• It is enough to note that India’s interventions are a recurring pattern in the subcontinent’s international relations.
• Even when Delhi is reluctant to get into the weeds of these conflicts, the competing parties in the neighbourhood demand India’s intervention on their behalf.
• All of the contestants, of course, resolutely oppose India’s meddling when it goes against them.
• But Delhi has rarely been a decisive player in Pakistan’s internal politics.
• Delhi’s hands-off attitude is surprising, given India’s huge stakes in the nature of Pakistan’s policies and their massive impact on regional security.

Current crises in Pakistan

• Internal crises: Among the many challenges confronting Pakistan is the fresh breakdown in civil-military relations.
• Pakistan’s economy is in a tailspin as it struggles to negotiate a stabilisation package with the International Monetary Fund.
• The militant religious movement Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) has mounted a fresh march against the capital demanding the release of its arrested leader.
• External crises: The internal crises are sharpened by worsening external conditions.
• In Afghanistan, Pakistan has succeeded in restoring the Taliban to power.
• The celebrations have not lasted too long; the long-awaited victory is turning sour.
• The Arab Gulf states that have been fast friends of Pakistan are now tilting towards India.
• Once a favourite partner of the West, Pakistan today faces tensions in its ties with the US and Europe.
• More broadly, nuclear weapons and a powerful army seem unable to stop Pakistan’s relative decline in relation to not just India but also Bangladesh.
• Pakistan’s economy is now 10 times smaller than that of India and is well behind Bangladesh.

Suggestions

• Whether it can or should make a difference to Pakistan’s internal politics, India must pay greater attention to the internal dynamics of our most difficult neighbour and more purposefully engage a diverse set of actors in that polity.
• For Delhi, it is always about narrow political arguments with Rawalpindi and Islamabad; it is as if the people of Pakistan do not exist.
• For India, the crises in Pakistan should be an occasion to reflect on the long-term regional consequences of Pakistan’s internal turbulence.
• It might be argued that that unlike elsewhere in the neighbourhood, Delhi’s leverage in Pakistan’s politics is limited. But it is by no means negligible.

Consider the question “For Delhi, it is always about narrow political arguments with Rawalpindi and Islamabad; it is as if the people of Pakistan do not exist. The depth of the current crises in Pakistan, however, should nudge India into overcoming this entrenched indifference. Comment.”

Conclusion

India looms so large in Pakistan’s mind space. For Delhi, it may be worth trying to turn that into influence over Pakistan’s policies if only at the tactical level and at the margins.