The article highlights the need for a critical assessment of the stand-off with China last year and offers key lessons in managing the strategic competition with China.

Year after stand-off

• After over a year, the stand-off between Indian and Chinese troops in eastern Ladakh shows no signs of resolution.
• More broadly, the India-China bilateral relationship has ruptured.
• Reversing a long-held policy, India will no longer overlook the problematic border dispute for the sake of a potentially lucrative wider relationship.
• Even if disengagement continues, the relationship will remain vulnerable to destabilising disruptions.
• Therefore, the Ladakh crisis offers India three key lessons in managing the intensifying strategic competition with China.

Three key lessons

1) Military strategy based on denial are more useful

•  Military strategies based on denial are more useful than strategies based on punishment.
•  The Indian military’s standing doctrine calls for deterring adversaries with the threat of massive punitive retaliation for any aggression, capturing enemy territory as bargaining leverage in post-war talks.
• But this did not deter China from launching unprecedented incursions in May 2020.
• In contrast, the Indian military’s high-water mark in the crisis was an act of denial — its occupation of the heights on the Kailash Range on its side of the LAC in late August.
• This action served to deny that key terrain to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA), and gave the Indian Army a stronger defensive position.
• A doctrinal focus on denial will give the Indian military greater capacity to thwart future land grabs across the LAC.
• Over time, improved denial capabilities may allow India to reduce the resource drain of the increased militarisation of the LAC.

2) Political cost matters more

• China is more likely to be deterred or coerced with the threat of political costs, rather than material costs.
• The material burden of the crisis would not disrupt its existing priorities.
• In contrast, India successfully raised the risks of the crisis for China through its threat of a political rupture, not military punishment.
• A permanently hostile India or an accidental escalation to conflict were risks that China, having achieved its tactical goals in the crisis, assessed were an unnecessary additional burden.
• The corollary lesson is that individual powers, even large powers such as India, will probably struggle to shift Beijing’s calculus alone.
• Against the rising behemoth, only coordinated or collective action is likely to be effective.

3) India should accept more risk on LAC

• India should consider accepting more risk on the LAC in exchange for long-term leverage and influence in the Indian Ocean Region.
• From the perspective of long-term strategic competition, the future of the Indian Ocean Region is more consequential and more uncertain than the Himalayan frontier.
• At the land border, the difficult terrain and more even balance of military force means that each side could only eke out minor, strategically modest gains at best.
• In contrast, India has traditionally been the dominant power in the Indian Ocean Region and stands to cede significant political influence and security if it fails to answer the rapid expansion of Chinese military power.

Conclusion

As these three lessons show, the future of the strategic competition is not yet written. If India’s leaders honestly and critically evaluate the crisis, it may yet help to actually brace India’s long-term position against China.

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Foreign policy consequences

• The devastation caused by the second Covid wave prompted India to accept foreign aid after a gap of 17 years.
• This is bound to have far-reaching strategic implications for India.
• As a direct consequence of the pandemic, India’s claim to regional primacy and leadership will take a major hit.
• India ‘leading power’ aspirations will be dented, and accentuate its domestic political contestations.
• These in turn will impact the content and conduct of India’s foreign policy in the years to come.

What would be the strategic implications?

1) Impact on India’s regional primacy

• COVID 2.0 has quickened the demise of India’s regional primacy.
• India’s geopolitical decline is likely to begin in the neighbourhood itself.
• India’s traditional primacy in the region was built on a mix of material aid, political influence and historical ties.
• Its political influence is steadily declining, its ability to materially help the neighbourhood will shrink in the wake of COVID-19.
• Its historical ties alone may not do wonders to hold on to a region hungry for development assistance and political autonomy.

2) Impact on India’s great power aspiration

•  India aspires to be a leading power, rather than just a balancing power.
• While the Indo-Pacific is geopolitically keen and ready to engage with India, the pandemic could adversely impact India’s ability and desire to contribute to the Indo-Pacific and the Quad.
• COVID-19, for instance, will prevent any ambitious military spending or modernisation plans.
• Covid-19 will also limit the country’s attention on global diplomacy and regional geopolitics, be it Afghanistan or Sri Lanka or the Indo-Pacific.
• With reduced military spending and lesser diplomatic attention to regional geopolitics, New Delhi’s ability to project power and contribute to the growth of the Quad will be uncertain.

3) Domestic political contestation  and its impact on strategic ambition

• Domestic political contestations in the wake of the COVID-19 devastation in the country could also limit India’s strategic ambitions.
• General economic distress, a fall in foreign direct investment and industrial production, and a rise in unemployment have already lowered the mood in the country.
• A depressed economy, politically volatile domestic space combined with a lack of elite consensus on strategic matters would hardly inspire confidence in the international system about India.

4) Impact on India-China equation

• From competing with China’s vaccine diplomacy a few months ago, New Delhi today is forced to seek help from the international community.
• China has, compared to most other countries, emerged stronger in the wake of the pandemic.
• The world, notwithstanding its anti-China rhetoric, will continue to do business with Beijing — it already has been, and it will only increase.
• Claims that India could compete with China as a global investment and manufacturing destination would be dented.
• India’s ability to stand up to China stands vastly diminished today: in material power, in terms of balance of power considerations, and political will.

5) Depressed foreign policy

• Given the much reduced political capital within the government to pursue ambitious foreign policy goals, the diplomatic bandwidth for expansive foreign policy goals would be limited.
• This, however, might take the aggressive edge off of India’s foreign policy.
• Less aggression could potentially translate into more accommodation, reconciliation and cooperation especially in the neighbourhood, with Pakistan on the one hand and within the broader South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) framework on the other.
•  COVID-19 has forced us to reimagine, to some extent at least, the friend enemy equations in global geopolitics.
• While the United States seemed hesitant, at least initially, Russia was quick to come to India’s aid. 

6) Implications for strategic autonomy

• The pandemic would, at the very least indirectly, impact India’s policy of maintaining strategic autonomy.
• As pointed out above, the strategic consequences of the pandemic are bound to shape and structure India’s foreign policy choices as well as constrain India’s foreign policy agency.
• It could, for instance, become more susceptible to external criticism for, after all, India cannot say ‘yes’ to just aid and ‘no’ to criticism.

Consider the question “Examine the strategic implications of Covid for India.” 

Way forward

• COVID-19 will also do is open up new regional opportunities for cooperation especially under the ambit of SAARC.
• India might do well to get the region’s collective focus on ‘regional health multilateralism’ to promote mutual assistance and joint action on health emergencies such as this.
• Classical geopolitics should be brought on a par with health diplomacy, environmental concerns and regional connectivity in South Asia.

Conclusion

While the outpouring of global aid to India shows that the world realises India is too important to fail, the international community might also reach the conclusion that post-COVID-19 India is too fragile to lead and be a ‘leading power’.

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The article highlights the factors that make building sustainable partnership with Britain hard for India and suggests the ways to find fresh basis for bilateral relationship.

Need to tap potential for bilateral strategic cooperation

• The long-scheduled summit between Prime Ministers of India and UK will take place with a digital conversation scheduled for Tuesday.
• India and the UK must tap into the enormous potential for bilateral strategic cooperation in the health sector and contributions to the global war on the virus.
• Foreign ministers of India, Japan and Australia would also join this meeting to set the stage for the “Group of Seven Plus Three” physical summit next month hosted by the British Prime Minister.

Challenges in forming a sustainable partnership with Britain

• Few Western powers are as deeply connected to India as Britain.
• While India’s relations with countries as different as the US and France have dramatically improved in recent years, ties with Britain have lagged.
• One reason for this failure has been the colonial prism that has distorted mutual perceptions.
• The bitter legacies of the Partition and Britain’s perceived tilt to Pakistan have long complicated the engagement between Delhi and London.
• Also, the large South Asian diaspora in the UK transmits the internal and intra-regional conflicts in the subcontinent into Britain’s domestic politics.

Finding fresh basis for bilateral relationship

• The two leaders are expected to announce a 10-year roadmap to transform the bilateral relationship that will cover a range of areas.
• Both countries are on the rebound from their respective regional blocs.
• Britain has walked out of the European Union and India has refused to join the China-centred Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership.
• Although both will continue to trade with their regional partners, they are eager to build new global economic partnerships.
• While remaining a security actor in Europe, Britain is tilting to the Indo-Pacific, where India is a natural ally.
• India needs as wide a coalition as possible to restore a semblance of regional balance.
• Britain could also contribute to the strengthening of India’s domestic defence industrial base.
• The two sides could also expand India’s regional reach through sharing of logistical facilities.
• Both countries are said to be exploring an agreement on “migration and mobility” to facilitate the legal movement of Indians into Britain.
• Both sides are committed to finding common ground on climate change.

Consder the question “What are the factors that introduce friction in the sustainability of India’s bilateral relations with the Britain? Identify the areas in which both the countries can find fresh basis for the bilateral relations?”

Conclusion

If leaders of both the countries succeed in laying down mutually beneficial terms of endearment, future governments might be less tempted to undermine the partnership.

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The article discusses the areas in which India-Japan are cooperating and also highlight the areas in which both countries can expand cooperation.

Issues discussed in US-Japan summit

• The discussion focused on their joint security partnership given the need to address China’s recent belligerence in territorial disputes in the South and East China Seas as well as in the Taiwan Strait.
• Both sides affirmed the centrality of their treaty alliance, for long a source of stability in East Asia, and pledged to stand up to China in key regional flashpoints such as the disputed Senkaku Islands and Taiwan.
• Both sides acknowledged the importance of extended deterrence vis-à-vis China through cooperation on cybersecurity and space technology.
• Discussions also touched upon Chinese ambitions to dominate the development of new age technologies such as 5G and quantum computing.
• Given China’s recent pledge to invest a mammoth $1.4 trillion in emerging technologies, Washington and Tokyo scrambled to close the gap by announcing a Competitiveness and Resilience Partnership, or CoRe.
• Both sides have also signalled their intent to pressure on China on violations of intellectual property rights, forced technology transfer, excess capacity issues, and the use of trade-distorting industrial subsidies.
•  Both powers repeatedly emphasised their vision of a Free and Open Indo-Pacific.

Issues that need to be discussed in Japan PM’s visit to India

1) Continuation of balancing security policy

• First, one can expect a continuation of the balancing security policy against China that began in 2014.
• Crucially, India’s clashes with China in Galwan have turned public opinion in favour of a more confrontational China policy.
• In just a decade, New Delhi and Tokyo have expanded high-level ministerial and bureaucratic contacts, conducted joint military exercises and concluded military pacts such as the Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement (ACSA) logistics agreement.
• Both countries need to affirm support for a Free and Open Indo-Pacific and continued willingness to work with the Quad.
• Both countries need to take stock of the state of play in the security relationship while also pushing the envelope on the still nascent cooperation on defence technology and exports.

2) Expanding cooperation in various sectors

• The two powers will look to expand cooperation in sectors such as cybersecurity and emerging technologies.
• Digital research and innovation partnership in technologies from AI and 5G to the Internet of Things and space research has increased between the two countries in the recent past.
• There is a need to deepen cooperation between research institutes and expand funding in light of China’s aforementioned technology investment programme.
• Issues of India’s insistence on data localisation and reluctance to accede to global cybersecurity agreements such as the Budapest Convention may be discussed in the summit.

3) Economic ties

• Economic ties and infrastructure development are likely to be top drawer items on the agendas of New Delhi and Tokyo.
• Though Japan has poured in around $34 billion in investments into the Indian economy, Japan is only India’s 12th largest trading partner.
• Trade volumes between the two stand at just a fifth of the value of India-China bilateral trade.
• India-Japan summit will likely reaffirm Japan’s support for key manufacturing initiatives such as ‘Make in India’ and the Japan Industrial Townships.
• Further, India will be keen to secure continued infrastructure investments in the strategically vital connectivity projects currently under way in the Northeast and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

4) Joint strategy toward key third countries

• In years past, India and Japan have collaborated to build infrastructure in Iran and Africa.
• Both countries have provided vital aid to Myanmar and Sri Lanka and hammer out a common Association of Southeast Asian Nations outreach policy in an attempt to counter China’s growing influence in these corners of the globe.
• However, unlike previous summits, the time has come for India and Japan to take a hard look at reports suggesting that joint infrastructure projects in Africa and Iran have stalled with substantial cost overruns.
•  Tokyo will also likely try to get New Delhi to reverse its decision not to join the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership.

Consider the question “Changes on the geopolitical horizon offers India-Japan relations multiple avenues to deepen their ties. In light of this, discuss the areas of cooperation and shared concerns for India and Japan.” 

Conclusion

Writing in 2006, Shinzo Abe, expressed his hope in his book that “it would not be a surprise if in another 10 years, Japan-India relations overtake Japan-U.S. and Japan-China relations”. Thus far, India has every reason to believe that Japan’s new Prime Minister is willing to make that dream a reality.

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