Non-alignment or being a swing state makes sense if the gains to be derived from either side are equal.
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi surprisingly attended the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) virtual summit recently, after previously skipping two summits signalling India’s move away from it having adopted the policy of multi-alignment. Non-alignment evokes nostalgia for many in India. As the Sino-US relations have reached tipping point, the debate over India’s alignment has only just begun.
Sino-US tensions have been building since the 2008 financial crisis, and has only sped up since 2013 when President Xi Jinping came to power and announced his vision to make China a superpower. ‘Decoupling’ between the US and China was not triggered by COVID-19. It started with US President Donald Trump labeling China a strategic competitor and imposing tariffs on Chinese goods and ordering American companies to leave China.
Views against China are bipartisan in the US. Even a change of guard after the elections later this year is not going to change US policy towards China. It will be difficult for Trump’s successor to overturn his decisions, from tariffs to any possible sanctions. If the US-China rivalry leads to a situation where India has to make a choice of alignment or non-alignment, it has to be dictated by its interest and the nature of its relations with Washington DC and Beijing.
It will be in India’s economic and strategic interests to align with the US and the Western world which will remain together despite the fissures under Trump. India needs investments, technology, a manufacturing ecosystem to employ millions of its young population and improve its living standards. It requires advanced weapons and technologies for its military. India is ambitious and wants to be a great power and the US and the Western world recognise this and are willing to partner India.
China’s handling of the coronavirus (COVID-19), and its complimenting boorish diplomacy has unmasked its intentions, leading to a global backlash. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said that the US is in talks with India to restructure global supply chains. The US is encouraging its companies to look at India as an alternative to China. This presents a big opportunity for India whose continental size, large market, young and skilled labour, and shared values with the West makes it an attractive destination. In fact, an alliance of democracies could crystallise with economic cooperation at its core.
In many ways, India is already “aligned” with the US. Many adjectives are used to describe the “global strategic partnership” between the two countries — natural allies, indispensable allies, defining partnership of the 21st century and so on. Much has been written about the development of their relations over the last 15 years since the historic nuclear deal of 2008. Defence ties between the two have been cemented with increasing weapons sales and important defence agreements. There are regular bilateral and multilateral military exercises and dialogues on economic and strategic cooperation. The, US along with France, are India’s principle backers in the UN Security Council and also support its membership in it. The Quad of India, US, Japan and Australia is also slowly institutionalising the multilateral partnership that is committed to an open, secure, inclusive and prosperous Indo-Pacific region in response to China’s expansionist policies.
On the other hand, India is a long term rival for China, which does not want India’s rise. Beijing wants to keep India boxed into South Asia, and tries to keep it off balance using Pakistan which it arms and supports. It has made inroads into the region using the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). It continues to block India’s membership in the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) and continues to needle New Delhi in the UNSC over Kashmir. It occupies parts of Indian territory and also claims the entire state of Arunachal Pradesh. China poses the biggest military threat for India, and the two month long Doklam standoff in 2017 followed by the two failed informal summits after that are a reminder.
There will be opportunity and strategic costs for India’s economic development in alienating the US-led western world. India will not become a pawn in the great power rivalry as proponents of non-alignment fear. On the contrary, India will be a significant player in shaping the new world order.
India’s strategic autonomy will not be compromised and the alliances of the 21st century will not be the same as those of the 20th. The US prefers its partners to pay for and manage their own security, but collaborate in all possible ways — weapons sale, sharing civil and military technologies, diplomatic support, intelligence sharing, joint military exercises and logistics support. This suits India, which is averse to fighting someone else’s wars but wants to assume greater responsibilities.
Newly independent India was a poor and scarred country. Its policymakers thought it would be better to keep away from the great power rivalry. It co-founded and championed the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) to create a space for itself on the global stage. But it was driven by emotions to create solidarity with the newly independent nations rather than self interest which prevented India from using the great power rivalry to its advantage. With a policy of self sufficiency, it virtually closed the doors to the world.
But despite that, it leaned towards the Soviet Union as it needed security and development assistance. India had a choice to align either way, and could have gone with the US. That option does not exist between the US and China. It will be pragmatic to take advantage of the great power rivalry by suitably aligning with the power that New Delhi can derive maximum benefit from.
India of 2020 is very different from seventy years ago. At $3 trillion, it is the world’s fifth largest economy and will become the third largest during this decade. It has a reasonably powerful military, and confidence about its place in the world. India enters partnerships as an equal and global agreements on critical issues such as climate change need India to play a large role. The results have been visible, for example in the founding of the International Solar Alliance. India is a also increasingly a first responder for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief in the region, and considers itself to be a security provider.
At the Ramnath Goenka lecture last year, India’s Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar said that it is only through a series of disruptions that India was able to bring about decisive shifts in its favour. “The pursuit of an apparently consistent course despite changing circumstances often led us to lose the plot. This was the case with engaging China in the 1950s as part of a larger post-colonial front, even as political differences sharpened over a boundary dispute and a Tibet complication,” he said.
Much of India’s diplomacy in the last few years has been to counter China and its influence. India faces China as a competitor in Africa, West Asia, Central Asia and the Indo-Pacific. Indo-US ties are complementary, and a formal alliance will help realise the full potential of these relations. India’s alliance with the US is not going to break down trade relations with China. Even during the Cold War, New Delhi had good trade ties with the US despite leaning towards the Soviet Union.
Non-alignment or being a swing state makes sense if the gains to be derived from either side are equal. China will not be to India, what the Soviet Union was. In the post COVID-19 world, India will have to make a disruptive choice — of alignment.
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Yusuf T. Unjhawala is an editor Defence Forum India and commentator on defence and strategic affairs
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