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

The first-ever Quad summit is an important milestone in the geopolitics of the region. The article highlights its significance.

Significance of the first Quad summit

• The maiden Quadrilateral Security Dialogue summit of the leaders of Australia, India, Japan and the U.S. on March 12 was a defining moment in Asian geopolitics.
• That it was a meeting at the highest political level, occasioned a productive dialogue, and concluded with a substantive joint statement is indicative of its immediate significance.
• If it leads to tangible action and visible cooperation, it will impact the whole region.

Brief background of the Quad

• The Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 triggered cooperation among the navies and governments of the Quad powers.
• They sought to forge diplomatic cooperation on regional issues in 2006-08.
• But gave up mainly because China objected to it and the hostility to China was not yet a potent enough glue.
• This began to change in 2017 when Beijing’s behaviour turned hostile, climaxing in multiple challenges in 2020.
• This time, U.S. President Joe Biden moved swiftly to host a virtual summit, drawing immediate response from the other three leaders.

5 highlights of the summit

• A more sophisticated approach is being invented, with enhanced emphasis by the U.S. on carrying its allies and strategic partners together.
•  The summit’s outcome, therefore, merits close attention for at least five reasons.

1) Compromise over vision of Indo-Pacific

• Past debates over diverse, even differing, visions of the Indo-Pacific are over.
• The joint statement struck a neat compromise:
• To please the U.S. and Japan, it refers to a “free and open” Indo-Pacific, but in the very next sentence it offers an elaboration – “free, open, inclusive, healthy, anchored by democratic values, and unconstrained by coercion” – that amply satisfy India and Australia.

2) Alignment of approach towards China

• The summit leaders have secured an adequate alignment of their approaches towards China.
• Senior officials gave sufficient hints on this score, reinforced by phrases such as “security challenges” and “the rules-based maritime order in the East and South China Seas” in the joint statement.
• Instead of unidimensional antagonism, the Quad members have preferred a smart blend of competition, cooperation and confrontation.

3) Quad’s commitment development and well being of the region

• The Quad has placed a premium on winning the battle for the hearts and minds of people in the Indo-Pacific region.
• This explains the special initiative to ensure equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines for every person in need in the region from the western Pacific to eastern Africa.

4) Working groups

• The establishment of three working groups on vaccine partnership; climate change; and critical and emerging technologies and their new standards, innovation and supply chains is a welcome step.
• All this should get the four national establishments into serious policy coordination and action mode, creating new capacities.
• The careful choice of themes reflects a deep understanding of the long-term challenge posed by China and has global implications.

5) Quad working together in future

• The March 12 summit will not be a one-off.
• The leaders have agreed to meet in-person later this year, possibly at an international event within the region.
• Foreign ministers will gather at least once a year; other relevant officials, more often.
• Thus, will grow the habits of the Quad working together for a common vision and with agreed modalities for cooperation.

How ASEAN and China will react

• The summit has been watched closely by the ASEAN capitals. A few of them may express cautious welcome.
• Beijing seems rattled but resigned to the Quad’s new momentum.
• The Chinese see it in negative terms, targeting New Delhi in particular.

Consider the question “With the first-ever summit, the Quad is moving towards a strong coalition. In light of this, examine the challenges India faces as it deepes its engagement in the grouping.” 

Conclusion

The summit and ‘The Spirit of the Quad’ – the inspired title of the joint statement – represented a giant leap forward. Now is the time to back political commitment with a strong mix of resolve, energy, stamina and the fresh ideas of stakeholders and experts outside of government to fulfil the promise of the Quad.

India is a member of both the Quad and the BRICS. Is not it the contradiction? The article answers this question and maps the transformation of India’s relation with the U.S. over the years.

Is India’s participation in BRICS and Quad contradictory?

• Global Times, the Chinese newspaper last week speculating on the implications of the historic Quad summit for the BRICS.
• In calling the Quad a “negative asset” for the BRICS the Global Times was highlighting what it sees as a contradiction in India’s participation in both the forums.
• The paper argues that India has worsened “India-China and India-Russia relations” and halted progress “in the development of BRICS and SCO”.
• Global Times warns that if India continues to get closer to Washington, India “will eventually lose its strategic autonomy”.

Understanding India’s strategic autonomy

• “Strategic autonomy” is the framework that guided Delhi’s international relations since the Cold War.
• In the early 1990s, strategic autonomy was about creating space for India against the overweening American power.
• Why the space was needed? It was mainly because of the U.S. stance on two important aspects: Kashmir issue and nuclear program.
• President Bill Clinton had questioned the legitimacy of Jammu and Kashmir’s accession to India and declared the US’s intent to resolve Delhi’s Kashmir dispute with Pakistan.
• Washington insisted that rolling back India’s nuclear and missile programmes was a major objective of US foreign policy.
• All that changed over the last three decades.

8 elements of  transformation of India’s relations with the U.S and China

• A rising China has emerged as the biggest challenge to India and the US is increasingly an important part of the answer.
• A few elements stand out.
• First, China has become more assertive on the contested boundary, therefore, the support from the US and its Asian allies has been valuable.
• Second, on the Kashmir question, China raises the issue at the UNSC while the US is helping India to block China’s moves.
• Third, on cross-border terrorism, the US puts pressure on Pakistan and China protects Rawalpindi.
• Fourth, the US has facilitated India’s integration with the global nuclear order while Beijing blocks Delhi’s membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group.
• Fifth, the US backs India’s permanent membership of the UNSC, China does not.
• Sixth, India now sees the trade with China hollowing out India’s manufacturing capability.
• Its objective on diversifying its economy away from China is shared by the US and the Quad partners.
• Seventh, India opposes China’s Belt and Road Initiative as a project that undermines India’s territorial sovereignty and regional primacy.
• India is working with Quad partners to offer alternatives to the BRI.
• Finally, India sees China’s rising military profile in the subcontinent and the Indian Ocean as a problem and is working with Washington to redress the unfolding imbalance in India’s neighbourhood.

India’s approach to BRICS and SCO

• The BRICS was part of India’s strategy in the unipolar moment that dawned at the end of the Cold War.
• India’s current enthusiasm for the Quad is about limiting the dangers of a unipolar Asia dominated by China.
• But India will continue to attach some value — diplomatic if not strategic — to a forum like the BRICS.
• After all, the BRICS forum provides a useful channel of communication between Delhi and Beijing at a very difficult moment in the evolution of their bilateral relations.
• The BRICS is also about India’s enduring partnerships with Russia, Brazil, and South Africa.
• India also values its ties with the Central Asian states in the SCO.
• The BRICS could certainly become a productive forum someday — when Delhi and Beijing mitigate their multiple contentions.

Consider the question “A rising China has emerged as the biggest challenge to India and the US is increasingly an important part of the answer. Examine the elements that support this underlying transformation of India’s relationship with the two countries.”

Conclusion

No amount of words in a BRICS declaration can hide the sharpening contradictions between India and China today. The absence of joint statements did not mask the growing strategic congruence among the Quad nations in recent years.

The India-US ties have advanced by leaps and bounds. Yet, there is a persistent underestimation of India’s capacity to rework its great power relations. The article deals with this issue.

Expanding partnership

• India-US relations have been on a steady upward trajectory over the last three decades.
• This partnership withstood significant political transitions in both countries and managed to overcome many difficult barriers.
• The US is now India’s most comprehensive partner.
• The Russia relationship is long on defence but short on commerce.
• India’s commercial ties with China are large, but tilted heavily in Beijing’s favour.
• Collective Europe is big on commerce but small on security cooperation.
• The US has a sizeable presence in both economic and security dimensions and the political common ground with India has steadily expanded.

So, why persistent doubt in India about the US partnership

• One part of it is the ingrained ideological bias in the dominant foreign policy elite.
• Delhi’s stilted debate on the US is, unfortunately, reinforced by the sad absence of investment in institutional capabilities to study American politics, economics and international relations.

Issues with our assessment of relations with India

• There is an enduring reluctance of India’s foreign policy community to either acknowledge or accept the unfolding transformation of India’s ties with the US.
• There is also continuing underestimation of India’s capacity to rework its great power relations to meet India’s changing interests and circumstances.
• It was widely held that the Indo-Pacific and the Quad will become footnotes in Biden’s foreign policy.
• This in turn was based on the bet that Biden is likely to embrace China rather than confront it in the manner that Trump did.
• All these assumptions turned out to be inaccurate.
• Concern for democracy and human rights has always been part of US foreign policy ideology.
• But no state, not even a revolutionary one, can run its foreign policy on a single-point agenda. 

Underestimating India’s agency to shape the partnership

• Even as it continuously misjudged the US, the Indian foreign policy elite has not appreciated India’s agency to shape the relationship with America.
• The conviction that Delhi is perennially under US pressure to accept policies harmful for itself further distorts the discourse in the media and among the chattering classes.
• The evidence from the 1990s — one of India’s most vulnerable moments after Independence — should have corrected this misperception.
• The traditional discourse finds it hard to come to terms with the twin factors shaping India’s new approach.
• One is the significant increase in India’s material capabilities.
• India’s aggregate GDP increased ten-fold between 1990 ($270 billion) and 2020 (about $2,700 billion).
• Equally important is the new political will in Delhi.

Consider the question “There is a continuing underestimation of Delhi’s capacity to rework its great power relations with the US to meet India’s changing interests and circumstances. Critically examine.” 

Conclusion

The new India no longer wrings its hands in dealing with the US; it relishes the large room for strategic bargaining with America. Even more important, Delhi is no longer a reluctant partner to Washington.

With India about to lose preferential access to the EU, there is a need to deepen the trade and investment ties with the region. The article deals with this issue.

Export potential to the EU

• India has an untapped export potential of $39.9 billion in the EU and Western Europe.
• India benefits from tariff preferences under the EU’s Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) for several of these products.
• In fact, India is among the major beneficiaries of the EU’s GSP, accounting for nearly 37% of India’s merchandise exports.

India losing EU-GSP benefits: Product graduadion

• Product graduation applies when average imports of a product from a beneficiary country exceed 17.5% of EU-GSP imports of the same product from all beneficiary countries over three years.
• There are several products where India has export potential in the EU, but these have “graduated” or are at the brink of “graduation” under EU GSP.
• India’s exports of products such as textiles, inorganic and organic chemicals, gems and jewellery, iron, steel and their articles, base metals and automotives are already out of the ambit of EU-GSP benefits.
•  In apparel, India’s exports to the EU were valued at $7 billion in 2019, of which nearly 94% was under EU-GSP, indicative of the impact that the graduation may have on apparel exports.
• Bangladesh’s apparel exports would continue to receive tariff benefits in the EU under Everything but Arms Initiative.
• Another competitor, Vietnam, concluded a free trade agreement (FTA) with the EU in 2019.

Need to deepen trade and investment ties

• In light of the declining preferential access and the plausible erosion of competitiveness in the EU market, there is clearly a need to deepen trade and investment ties with the region.
• Broad-based Trade and Investment Agreement, which commenced in 2007, is yet to materialise due to lack of concurrence in areas like automotives and dairy and marine products.
• Therefore, a thorough assessment of the benefits from FTA for domestic producers is warranted, with due consideration to the impact on sensitive sectors, and possibility of inclusion of safeguards such as sunset clause on concessions for some items.
• Further, there should also be provisions for aspects such as investment and non-tariff measures (NTMs).
• India also needs to negotiate on investment-related aspects with the EU to foster stronger value chains, especially in technology-intensive sectors in which the EU has a comparative advantage.
• As far as NTMs are concerned, India faces as many as 414 NTMs in the EU, in a wide array of sectors. FTAs have some institutional arrangements for NTMs.

Consider the question “Forging stronger ties with the EU could pave way for the greater cooperation and stronger trade ties. Elucidate.” 

Conclusion

Post-Brexit EU finds itself in the midst of a growing need for recalibrating ties with its partner countries. Forging stronger ties with the region through a mutually beneficial agreement could help strengthen Indian manufacturing and revitalise the flailing exports.