An Asian Understanding of Asia

18 Jul

India has long been touted as an emerging counterbalance to China, considering its similarly sizable population, strategic location, and liberal democratic governance is increasingly appealing to the United States as a partner. Indeed, the increasing usage of the term Indo-Pacific over the Asia-Pacific in official diplomatic and security language highlights the growing importance of India in countering China’s influence in Asian security and economic systems. However, India should not be simply consigned to a secondary actor that bandwagons with the US, amidst the latter’s tensions with China, as is the case with the conventional discourse of India’s geopolitical rise. Rather, it is an independent actor that is pursuing its own interests and should be considered as such. This approach should be more widely adopted in the study of international affairs in the Indo-Pacific region as it can explain differences that can only be explained in specific contexts of identity and development.

An illustration depicting Indo-Pacific nations’ orientation in the context of US-China competition, 2018 - The New York Times

A False Dichotomy

India is naturally positioned and aims to pursue its role as a regional hegemon in South Asia, but due to widespread regional suspicion, mostly stemming from its problems with Pakistan, other states are reluctant to embrace India’s rise and hegemony. This has resulted in an Asian geopolitical pattern where immediate neighbours balance towards China against India’s rise such as Pakistan and Sri Lanka, and vice versa, in the form of Vietnam and Japan. Some scholars have speculated on a Chinese plan to surround India with a ‘string of pearls’ strategy to encircle India by land and sea. Similarly, the US has also been theorising on a first island chain strategy, with US democratic allies Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan forming an Eastern encirclement, with India in the West.

This is, however, a simplistic understanding of India’s foreign policy and Asian alliance systems. India has its own interests and will to act upon them, some of which are of grave concern or are in grave contradiction to the ‘US side’ it has been regularly consigned to. It is true that India is interested in containing China, most notably with its participation in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue with the US, Japan, and Australia, an informal alliance of states which tacitly aim to curb China’s belligerence in the Indo-Pacific. However, India is interested in building ties with Iran, a longtime US adversary, in addition to India’s historically cordial ties to Russia. There is a possibility that the US may not grant a waiver to India under CAATSA, which punishes buyers of Russian arms amongst others, which means that India may be sanctioned due to its prolific purchase of Russian arms, although New Delhi remains undeterred by this threat. India is also irritated by the US’s strategic partnership with Pakistan, its longtime rival, who helped the mujahideen against Soviet forces and more recently, nominally fought the Taliban, although both roles are now drawing down due to the US’s loss of interest in Afghanistan. Nevertheless, these examples illustrate the flaws of such a simplistic understanding of Indian foreign policy. Secondary actors can have a degree of agency, but India encapsulates the attitude of most Asian countries towards the US-China, Russia debate, that it is an independent actor and it will pursue its own interests, even if it directly contradicts those of their supposed sponsors.

India’s rise and its precarious situation do present serious opportunities for Russia and the United States, the other juggernauts of Asian geopolitics. Russia and China remain close allies in security and economic cooperation, as both suffer from a significant degree of Western animosity; but there are cracks emerging that make India a more preferable long-term partner. Increasing Chinese arms independence, competition over Central Asia and concerns over economic over-reliance on China have made Russia eager to embrace India as a counterbalance. These concerns are such that Russia sees itself as in danger of becoming the ‘junior partner of Beijing’, insisting on Indian accession to the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, a move noted by some observers as attempts to balance China in the Eurasian bloc. The United States, a considerable influence in Asia also welcomes the rise of India to counter China, despite the latter’s hesitance to reciprocate consistently. This suggests a trend of Asia becoming a complex multipolar order, with at least four powers contending to maintain the balance of power as opposed to bipolar Asian blocs.

Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Sochi, 21 May, 2018 - Government of the Russian Federation

Asian Diplomacy: Sovereignty, Prosperity and Identity

Nor can it be understood in the paradigm of democratic states versus authoritarian ones. India remains a liberal democracy, at least at the time of writing. Prime Minister Modi has led the Hindu nationalist BJP to national prominence and has been accused of introducing policies that discriminate against Muslims. His government has suffered heavy criticism for its heavy hand in Kashmir, along with observations of democratic backsliding. Nevertheless, Indian foreign policy does not discriminate against others and appears to have taken a similar road to China’s. Despite the heady domestic deterioration of Hindu-Muslim relations, which can be paralleled to China’s own conduct in Xinjiang, both conduct policy with Muslim majority countries with little issue, with the exception of Pakistan. States such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Bangladesh readily trade and hold friendly ties with New Delhi and Beijing, with perhaps a token protest, especially towards the former due to the influence of Pakistan. This underlines the importance of sovereignty and economic development in Asian foreign policy priorities. Human rights and liberal norms take a step back when diplomacy is concerned in Asia, despite India’s s own professed traditions of it. India has friendly ties with the West and Russia, the latter of which remains particularly resilient as it and its predecessor the Soviet Union has historically been the ally of India against China, Pakistan, and the US. This has been woven into public perceptions, which is exacerbated by the desire for strategic autonomy in the great power sense, and by post-colonial identities.

Many states that have a stake in the continent are driven by fundamentally different logics, whether it be development, security, or identity. Exacerbating the complexity of this is the reluctance of most Asian states to deal with sensitive geopolitical issues explicitly on a multilateral scale, although this is not always the case, it is rare, resulting in relationships that reflect inconsistent priorities throughout regions. Moreover, Asia is unique, in that it is adversely weathering local great-power competition, to increase their economic development and trade in the wake of China’s relative success, and is also largely shaped by conflicts influenced by identity politics all to such an extent and at the same time. Most states are eager to embrace both powers as non-mutually exclusive partners in the region, illustrated by the receptiveness of most states to Beijing-led projects, namely the Belt and Road initiative, the RCEP and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the latter of which has the participation of Japan and India.

This is reflected in ASEAN’s non-interference principles and emphasis on national sovereignty. The collective memory of colonisation raised the importance of strategic autonomy, and the preference towards containment of antagonism within bilateral relations which explains the bloc’s soft stance on China’s belligerence in the South China Sea, despite Vietnam and the Philippines’ strong inclinations toward the issue. Multilateralism can be employed to solve non-controversial transnational issues that everyone can agree on in principle, such as countering smog from Indonesia, but is largely ineffective in thorny security issues, nor are states willing to sign mutual defence pacts in the region, believing it to be unnecessarily antagonistic or that it compromises national identities and sovereignty. ASEAN states also do not perceive any threats that warrant a multilateral response, that states alone are able and should manage them alone, despite the rhetoric of the US. Cases such as Japan and South Korea, which are both US allies, but have serious problems regarding Japan’s refusal to genuinely acknowledge its conduct in the Second World War, colonial gripe and territorial disputes illustrate the complex mixture of identities and attitudes towards foreign affairs defy traditional realist understandings of balancing, making recent proposals of an ‘Asian NATO’ to counter China unrealistic.

In some cases, strong domestic grievances leak into formative foreign policy, as in the case with Japan and South Korea. In some cases, they don’t, as with China and India’s relations with Muslim countries. This is why it is necessary to analyse this region in a constructivist sense. The popular categorisation of states by simple dichotomies simply does not reflect realities on the ground.