Strategic landscape in Asia

Posted on January 12, 2010 by Chellaney

THE ASIAN CENTURY

Asia’s Changing Power Dynamics

Brahma Chellaney

Project Syndicate

NEW DELHI – At a time when Asia is in transition, with the specter of a power imbalance looming large, it has become imperative to invest in institutionalized cooperation to reinforce the region’s strategic stability. After all, not only is Asia becoming the pivot of global geopolitical change, but Asian challenges are also playing into international strategic challenges.

Asia’s changing power dynamics are reflected in China’s increasingly assertive foreign policy, the new Japanese government’s demand for an “equal” relationship with the United States, and the sharpening Sino-Indian rivalry, which has led to renewed Himalayan border tensions.

All of this is highlighting America’s own challenges, which are being exacerbated by its eroding global economic preeminence and involvement in two overseas wars. Such challenges dictate greater US-China cooperation to ensure continued large capital inflows from China, as well as Chinese political support on difficult issues ranging from North Korea and Burma to Pakistan and Iran.

But, just when America’s Sino-centric Asia policy became noticeable, Japan put the US on notice that it cannot indefinitely remain a faithful servant of American policies. Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s government is seeking to realign foreign policy and rework a 2006 deal for the basing of US military personnel on Okinawa. It also announced an end to its eight-year-old Indian Ocean refueling mission in support of the US-led war in Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, China’s resurrection of its long-dormant claim to the northeastern Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, and its needling of India over Kashmir (one-fifth of which is under Chinese control), is testing the new US-India global strategic partnership.

The US has chartered a course of tacit neutrality on the Arunachal Pradesh issue — to the delight of China, which aims to leave an international question mark hanging over the legitimacy of India’s control of the Himalayan territory, which is almost three times as large as Taiwan. Indeed, the Obama administration has signaled its intent to abandon elements in its ties with India that could rile China, including a joint military exercise in Arunachal and any further joint naval maneuvers involving Japan or other parties, like Australia.

Yet, the recent Australia-India security agreement, signed during Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s visit to New Delhi, symbolizes the role of common political values in helping to forge an expanding strategic constellation of Asian-Pacific countries. The Indo-Australian agreement received little attention, but such is its significance that it mirrors key elements of Australia’s security accord with Japan – and that between India and Japan. All three of these accords, plus the 2005 US-India defense framework agreement, recognize a common commitment to democracy, freedom, human rights, and the rule of law, and obligate their signatories to work together to build security in Asia.

An Asian geopolitical divide centered on political values would, of course, carry significant implications. And, while Asia – with the world’s fastest-growing markets, fastest-rising military expenditures, and most-volatile hot spots – holds the key to the future global order, its major powers remain at loggerheads.

Central to Asia’s future is the strategic triangle made up of China, India, and Japan. Not since Japan rose to world-power status during the Meiji emperor’s reign in the second half of the nineteenth century has another non-Western power emerged with such potential to alter the world order as China today. Indeed, as the US intelligence community’s 2009 assessment predicted, China stands to affect global geopolitics more profoundly than any other country.

China’s ascent, however, is dividing Asia, and its future trajectory will depend on how its neighbors and other players, like the US, manage its rapidly accumulating power. At present, China’s rising power helps validate American forward military deployments in East Asia. The China factor also is coming handy in America’s efforts to win new allies in Asia.

But, as the US-China relationship deepens in the coming years, the strains in some of America’s existing partnerships could become pronounced. For example, building a stronger cooperative relationship with China is now taking precedence in US policy over the sale of advanced weaponry to Asian allies, lest the transfer of offensive arms provoke Chinese retaliation in another area.

While the European community was built among democracies, the political systems in Asia are so varied – and some so opaque – that building inter-state trust is not easy. In Europe, the bloody wars of the past century have made armed conflict unthinkable today. But in Asia, the wars since 1950 failed to resolve disputes. And, while Europe has built institutions to underpin peace, Asia has yet to begin such a process in earnest.

Never before have China, Japan, and India all been strong at the same time. Today, they need to find ways to reconcile their interests in Asia so that they can coexist peacefully and prosper.

But there can be no denying that these three leading Asian powers and the US have different playbooks: America wants a uni-polar world but a multi-polar Asia; China seeks a multi-polar world but a uni-polar Asia; and Japan and India desire a multi-polar Asia and a multi-polar world.

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2010.
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India’s strategic partners

Posted on January 12, 2010 by Chellaney

A system of Asian partnerships

India must pursue multiple relationships that can build on each other, as the region’s balance of power changes

Brahma Chellaney

Mint newspaper, January 13, 2010

Asia today is the pivot of global geopolitical change, but its myriad challenges are playing into international strategic challenges. With the world’s fastest growing economies, fastest rising military expenditures, most volatile hot spots and the fiercest resource competition, a resurgent Asia actually holds the key to the future global order.

The reordering of power under way in Asia is apparent from several developments: China’s increasing assertiveness, underscored by a new muscular confidence and penchant for regional brinkmanship; the new Japanese government’s demand for a more equal alliance with the US and its interest in creating an East Asian community extending up to India and Australia; the sharpening China-India rivalry that has led to renewed Himalayan frontier tensions, but which New Delhi has sought to publicly muffle by cutting off all information on the border situation since last September; and the constraints in the US’ Asia policy arising from a growing interdependence with Beijing, with the Barack Obama administration’s catchphrase “strategic reassurance” signalling a US intent to be more accommodative of China’s ambitions.

Illustration: Jayachandran / Mint

Such developments are a reminder of the need for like-minded countries to help underpin the power equilibrium in Asia by forming a web of bilateral or triangular strategic partnerships that feed into each other. After all, China’s own trajectory will depend on how its neighbours and other players such as the US manage its growing power. Such management—independently and in partnership—will determine if China stays on the positive side of the ledger, without its power sliding into authoritarian arrogance.

A multi-aligned India pursuing omnidirectional cooperation for mutual benefit with key countries is best positioned to advance its interests in a fluid Asia. Advancing strategic partnerships indeed was a key issue in the summit meetings of the past two months: with Australia on 12 November; the US on 24 November; Russia on 7 December; and with Japan on 29 December.

The Indo-Australian summit resulted in a decision to elevate the relationship to a formal strategic partnership, with a new security agreement being unveiled. A close India-Australia strategic relationship is a critical link in the larger Asia-Pacific picture, given the common security interests that bind the two democracies in several spheres.

To help underline the significance of their new accord, India and Australia have agreed to “policy coordination” on Asian affairs and long-term international issues, and to work together in initiatives such as the East Asia Summit and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) Regional Forum. They are instituting regular defence policy talks, including consultations between their national security advisers, and setting up a joint working group on counterterrorism. They also have agreed to cooperate on maritime and aviation security and participate in military exercises and other service-to-service exchanges.

In New Delhi, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd contended disingenuously, though, that his refusal to sell India uranium is “not targeted at any individual country”—though India is the only country affected by his policy. Worse still, he proffered a specious justification—India’s non-membership in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). That treaty has no explicit or implicit injunction against civil nuclear cooperation with a non-signatory. Rather, it enjoins its parties to positively facilitate “the fullest possible exchange of equipment, materials and scientific and technological information for the peaceful uses of nuclear energy”, so long as safeguards are in place.

Any restriction is not in NPT but in the revised 1992 rules of the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group that, paradoxically, were changed with Australian support in 2008 to exempt India. So, Canberra is likely to come round eventually to selling India uranium.

The Indo-US summit, highlighted by the first state dinner of Obama’s presidency, received intense media attention—but yielded little, partly because the US-India strategic partnership already is on a firm footing. That partnership, founded on the June 2005 defence framework accord and the July 2005 civil nuclear deal, has resulted in growing cooperation in various spheres. However, differences in some areas persist, and New Delhi is dissatisfied with US counterterrorism assistance and its tacit neutrality on the Arunachal Pradesh border issue with China.

With little room for any dramatic breakthrough, the Indo-US summit received attention either for the wrong reason (the manner three persons managed to “crash” into the White House dinner), or for being light on substance but heavy on symbolism. The state dinner, clearly, was intended to pander to India’s collective ego, which had sensed a Sino-centric tilt to US policy ever since Obama became President. But the summit’s lack of tangible result left an unwelcome impression that, while China gets respect from the US and Pakistan gets billions of dollars in annual US assistance, India gets just a sumptuous dinner.

That impression needs to be dispelled through greater cooperation on common areas of interest. The apparent crisis facing the US-Japan alliance, with some in Washington seeking to play hardball with Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s government, has made further progress in the US-India partnership vital for Asian strategic stability and to hedge against the danger that a more-powerful China might turn aggressive.

The third recent summit centred on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Russia, which he had once called a “tried and tested friend” of India. Russia, with its vantage location in Eurasia and matching strategic concerns, is a natural ally of India. A robust relationship with Moscow will help New Delhi to leverage its ties with both Beijing and Washington.

In their summit declaration, Russia and India pledged to “raise their strategic partnership to the next level”. But this won’t be easy, given the three problems that plague that partnership. The first is that Indo-Russian trade, like the Indo-Japanese trade, is low, even as Sino-Russian, Sino-Indian and Sino-Japanese trade continues to gallop.

This, of course, shows that booming trade in today’s market-driven world does not necessarily connote political cosiness, and that close strategic bonds can go hand-in-hand with low trade levels. Still, the new target to boost Indo-Russian trade from $7.5 billion to $20 billion by 2015 is unlikely to be met, partly because of Russia’s own economic woes.

The second problem is the lopsided nature of the partnership, with military hardware sales and co-production constituting the dominant element. A robust partnership demands multifaceted collaboration and interdependence that can help underpin a mutual stake. The broadening of the Indo-Russian partnership also is being necessitated by India’s increasing purchases of US and Israeli arms. In 2008 alone, according to the Indian ambassador to the US, India placed orders worth a staggering $3.5 billion to buy American arms.

The third problem the partnership faces is that, for Russia, India principally is a client, even if a privileged one. A true strategic partnership has to break free from the patron-client framework—a challenge also confronting the US-India partnership. After all, the US values India more as a market for its goods and services than as a collaborator on pressing strategic issues.

As China’s immediate neighbours, India and Russia do share common concerns about that country’s rapidly accumulating power. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin famously described the Soviet collapse as the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the 20th century. But by eliminating a menacing empire and opening the way for Beijing to rapidly increase strategic space globally, that event left China as the biggest beneficiary. Furthermore, Russia’s decline in the 1990s became China’s gain. Today, the Sino-Russian dissonance may not be as eye-catching as the India-China rivalry. But the Sino-Russian honeymoon has given way to suspicion and competition.

The fourth summit at the year end was like a toast to the New Year, with India and Japan unveiling an “action plan” with specific measures to implement their 2008 security agreement. Hatoyama’s visit, intended to fulfil a 2006 bilateral commitment to hold an annual summit meeting, indicated that Japan will maintain its priority on closer engagement with India, despite the sea change in Japanese politics. Hatoyama’s election was even more historic than Obama’s because his Democratic Party of Japan ousted the Liberal Democratic Party that had held power almost without interruption for more than five decades.

India’s security relationship with Japan is one of the fastest growing, with the two countries holding an annual strategic dialogue between their foreign ministers, an annual defence ministerial meeting and other service-to-service dialogues. Now under their otherwise modest “action plan”, they have agreed to an annual senior-level 2+2 dialogue involving foreign and defence ministry officials together on both sides.

Economic ties also are taking off, with India overtaking China as the magnet for the largest Japanese foreign direct investment since 2008. The highlight of the Indian Prime Minister’s Tokyo visit this year could be the signing of a free trade agreement, if the remaining differences are sorted out in the ongoing negotiations.

The Indo-Japanese security agreement actually was modelled on the 2007 Australia-Japan defence accord. Now, the new India-Australia security accord mirrors the structure and large parts of the content of the Indo-Japanese and Australian-Japanese agreements. All three are in the form of a joint declaration on security cooperation and obligate their signatories to work together on security in Asia, while recognizing a common commitment to democracy, freedom, human rights and the rule of law.

These bilateral accords open the possibility of strategic triangles working in concert with each other—India-Japan-US, India-Australia-US, India-Japan-Australia and Australia-Japan-US. An India-Russia-Japan strategic triangle also can greatly contribute to Asian stability, but so long as Japanese-Russian ties remain hostage to history there is little hope of such a configuration. Last year’s Russia-Japan nuclear deal, though, offered a glimmer of hope.

The changing Asian balance of power underscores the imperative for India to forge closer strategic partnerships with varied countries to pursue a variety of interests in different settings and equations. A strategic partnership, however, cannot mean an exclusive relationship. The US, for example, is not allowing its new partnership with India or its long-standing alliance with Japan to come in the way of its growing strategic cooperation with China. Pragmatism in foreign policy demands multiple partnerships with interlocking interests, thereby guaranteeing mutual benefit and one’s own strategic autonomy.

Strategic partnerships are an aid, not a substitute to a nation discharging its primary duty to secure its frontiers and economic interests. Inadequate capabilities to deter an armed attack or an undue security dependency on a third party can easily negate the value of multiple strategic partnerships. Thus, to pre-empt aggression, a nation must have its own requisite strength and clout.

Brahma Chellaney is professor of strategic studies at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi. Comments are welcome at theirview@livemint.com

India must break out of Nehruvian straitjacket

Posted on January 12, 2010 by Chellaney

From nonalignment to a pragmatic foreign policy

COMMENTARY

Brahma Chellaney

Mail Today, January 12, 2010

The world has changed fundamentally in the past quarter-century since the advent of the Information Age and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Yet there are some in India who still want the country to hew to the half-century-old traditions of the Nehruvian foreign policy. Fortunately, India has progressed from doctrinaire nonalignment to geopolitical pragmatism, with its foreign, economic and others policies reflecting growing realism.

The very essence of a forward-thinking, effective foreign policy is dynamism. A static foreign policy attached to an old school of thought — even if that school was associated with a great personality — can hardly advance a country’s interests.

Actually, the struggle between realism and idealism has been a constant phenomenon in independent India, starting from the contrasting approaches of the first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and his deputy prime minister, Sardar Patel. That struggle still manifests itself in policymaking.

While important countries have pursued strategies of “balance of power”, “balance of threat” or “balance of interest”, Indian foreign policy has not been organized around a distinct strategic doctrine, except for a period under Indira Gandhi. It is not uncommon for Indian policymakers to feed to the nation dreams sold to them by others. Nor are flip-flops uncommon in Indian foreign policy. Despite imbibing greater realism, India has yet to strategically pursue its wider interests with the requisite unflinching resolve.

In the absence of goal-oriented statecraft, the propensity to act in haste and repent at leisure still runs deep in Indian foreign policy. It has ignored the sound advice of Talleyrand: “By no means show too much zeal”.

The blunt fact is that India is still in transition from the practices of Nehruvian diplomacy to a post-Nehruvian approach to world affairs. India, for example, has given up the Nehruvian didactic approach, or at least tried to. But it hasn’t as yet fully embraced realpolitik. Nor is it an assertive pursuer of self-interest, in the way China is.

Indeed, India — home to more than one-sixth of the human race — continues to punch far below its weight. Internationally, it is a rule-taker, not a rule-maker. Yet, in the past decade, India’s growing geopolitical importance, high GDP growth rate and abundant market opportunities have helped increase its international profile. As a “swing” geopolitical factor, India has the potential to play a constructive role by promoting collaborative international approaches.

Its foreign policy seems headed in the right direction. Through dynamic diplomacy, India — the world’s most-assimilative civilization — can truly play the role of a bridge between the East and the West, including a link between the competing demands of the developed and developing worlds.

In the coming years, India will increasingly be aligned with the West economically. But, strategically, it can avail of multiple options, even as it moves from the Nehruvian mindset and attitudes to a contemporary, globalized practicality.

In keeping with its long-standing preference for policy independence, India is correctly pursuing the option to forge different partnerships with varied players to pursue a variety of interests in diverse settings. That course means that from being non-aligned, it is likely to become multialigned, while tilting more towards Washington, even as it preserves the core element of nonalignment — strategic autonomy. Put simply, India is likely to continue to chart its own destiny and make its own major decisions.

A multialigned India pursuing omnidirectional cooperation for mutual benefit with key players will be best positioned to advance its interests in the changed world.

Brahma Chellaney is professor of strategic studies at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi.

Japan and India are natural allies

Posted on January 12, 2010 by Chellaney

The Japan-India partnership to power a multipolar Asia

Japan Times

By BRAHMA CHELLANEY

Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s India visit is part of Japan’s growing economic and strategic engagement with that country. Given that the balance of power in Asia will be determined by events as much in the Indian Ocean rim as in East Asia, Tokyo is keen to work with New Delhi to promote peace and stability and help safeguard vital sea lanes.

Japan and India indeed are natural allies because they have no conflict of strategic interest and share common goals to build institutionalized cooperation and stability in Asia. There is neither a negative historical legacy nor any outstanding political issue between them. If anything, each country enjoys a high positive rating with the public in the other state.

Hatoyama’s yearend visit, designed to fulfill a 2006 bilateral commitment to hold an annual summit meeting, shows he is keen to maintain the priority on closer engagement with India that started under his four predecessors — Junichiro Koizumi, Shinzo Abe, Yasuo Fukuda and Taro Aso of the Liberal Democratic Party. Hatoyama came to office vowing to reorient Japanese foreign policy and seek an "equal" relationship with the United States. But he and his Democratic Party of Japan had said little on India.

Today, Hatoyama’s government has put Washington on notice that Japan cannot indefinitely remain a faithful servant of U.S. policies. With Tokyo seeking to rework a 2006 basing deal with the U.S., besides announcing an end to the eight-year-old Indian Ocean refueling mission in support of the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, Japan no longer can be regarded as a constant in America’s Asia policy.

This has been further highlighted by Hatoyama’s re-examination of a secret agreement between the LDP and the U.S. over a subject that is highly sensitive in the only country to fall victim to nuclear attack — the storage or transshipment of U.S. nuclear weapons in Japan.

Against this background, New Delhi must be pleased that Hatoyama’s visit signals continuity in Tokyo’s India policy. It also shows that at a time when Asia is in transition, with the specter of power disequilibrium looming large, Tokyo wishes to invest in closer economic and strategic bonds with India.

As Asia’s first modern economic success story, Japan has always inspired other Asian states. Now, with the emergence of new economic tigers and the ascent of China and India, Asia collectively is bouncing back from nearly two centuries of historical decline.

The most far-reaching but least-noticed development in Asia in the new century has been Japan’s political resurgence — a trend set in motion by Koizumi and expected to be accelerated by Hatoyama’s efforts to realign the relationship with the U.S. With Japanese pride and assertiveness rising, the nationalist impulse has become conspicuous at a time when China is headed to overtake Japan as the world’s second largest economy by the end of 2010.

Long used to practicing passive, checkbook diplomacy, Tokyo now seems intent on influencing Asia’s power balance. A series of subtle moves has signaled Japan’s aim to break out of its postwar pacifist cocoon. One sign is the growing emphasis on defense modernization.

China’s rise may have prompted Japan to strengthen its military alliance with the U.S. But in the long run, Japan is likely to move to a more independent security posture.

Although the two demographic titans, China and India, loom large in popular perceptions on where Asia is headed economically, the much-smaller Japan is likely to remain a global economic powerhouse for the foreseeable future. Given the size of Japan’s economy — its GDP was just under $5 trillion in 2008 — annual Japanese growth of just 2 percent translates into about $100 billion a year in additional output, or nearly the entire annual GDP of small economies like Singapore and the Philippines.

Still, given China’s rapid economic strides, Japan has been readying itself for the day when it is eclipsed economically by its neighbor. Leading-edge technologies and a commitment to craftsmanship, however, are expected to power Japan’s future prosperity, just as they did its past growth.

India and Japan, although dissimilar economically, have a lot in common politically. They are Asia’s largest democracies, but with messy politics and endemic scandals. Hatoyama, in office for just three months, already has come under pressure following the indictment of two former secretaries over a funding scandal.

In both Japan and India, the prime minister is not the most powerful politician in his own party. Fractured politics in both countries crimps their ability to think and act long term. Yet, just as India has progressed from doctrinaire nonalignment to geopolitical pragmatism, Japan is moving toward greater realism in its economic and foreign policies.

Their growing congruence of strategic interests led to the 2008 Japan-India security agreement, a significant milestone in building Asian power stability. A constellation of Asian states linked by strategic cooperation and sharing common interests is becoming critical to ensuring equilibrium at a time when major shifts in economic and political power are accentuating Asia’s security challenges.

The Indo-Japanese security agreement, signed when Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visited Tokyo in October 2008, was modeled on the March 2007 Australia-Japan defense accord. Now the Indo-Japanese security agreement has spawned a similar Indo-Australian accord, signed when Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd traveled to New Delhi last month.

The path has been opened to adding strategic content to the Indo-Japanese relationship, underscored by the growing number of bilateral visits by top defense and military officials. As part of their "strategic and global partnership," which was unveiled in 2006, India and Japan are working on joint initiatives on maritime security, counterterrorism, counter-proliferation, disaster management and energy security. But they need to go much further.

India and Japan, for example, must co-develop defense systems. India and Japan have missile-defense cooperation with Israel and the U.S., respectively. There is no reason why they should not work together on missile defense and on other technologies for mutual defense. There is no ban on weapon exports in the Japanese Constitution, only a long-standing Cabinet decision. That ban has been loosened, with Tokyo in recent years inserting elasticity to export weapons for peacekeeping operations, counterterrorism and anti-piracy. The original Cabinet decision, in any event, relates to weapons, not technologies.

As two legitimate aspirants to new permanent seats in the U.N. Security Council, India and Japan should work together to persuade existing veto holders to allow the Council’s long-pending reform. They must try to convince China in particular that Asian peace and stability would be better served if all the three major powers in Asia are in the Council as permanent members.

Never before have China, Japan and India all been strong at the same time. Today, they need to find ways to reconcile their interests in Asia so that they can coexist peacefully and prosper.

Brahma Chellaney is professor of strategic studies at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi.

The Japan Times: Wednesday, Dec. 30, 2009

Why India Lost Out in Copenhagen

Posted on December 31, 2009 by Chellaney

India unwisely provided China cover

India, far from gaining anything by aligning itself with China at Copenhagen, only undercut its interest by getting bracketed with the world’s largest polluter and being made to accept mitigation obligations, writes Brahma Chellaney

Make no mistake: China, the world’s largest net polluter whose carbon emissions are growing at the fastest rate, was the principal target at Copenhagen, which has given its imprimatur to revising the climate-change regime. But China cleverly deflected pressure by hiding behind India and other developing countries.

China, however, has little in common with India. With its carbon-intensive, manufacturing-based economy, China’s per-capita carbon emissions are four times higher than India’s. India, with its white-collar, services-driven economy, has the lowest per-capita emissions among all important developing countries. Although both countries seem to have similar competitive advantages, China’s rise has been on the back of an increasing export surge that has made it the world’s back factory for cheap goods, while India’s imports-dependent economy is carbon light, reflected in the fact that its per-capita emissions are just 26 per cent of the world average.

Yet, in the run-up to the Copenhagen summit, India signed a five-year understanding with China to present a united front in international climate-change negotiations, with the Indian minister of state for environment, in a hallucinatory loop of delusion, going to the extent of saying that there “is no difference between the Indian and Chinese negotiating positions.” What is the commonality between the two countries when China openly rejects India’s approach that per-capita emission levels and historic contributions to the build-up of greenhouse gases should form the objective criteria for carbon mitigation? China, as the world’s back factory, wants a different formula that marks down carbon intensity linked to exports.

Had the situation been the opposite — with India’s per-capita emissions four times higher than China’s, and with India in the line of international fire — would Beijing helped provide New Delhi diplomatic cover? India gained little by aligning itself with China at Copenhagen. Indeed, it ended up undercutting its interest by getting bracketed with the world’s largest net polluter and being made to accept mitigation action under international monitoring under undefined international monitoring. In the process, it has helped formulate, even if unintentionally, the broad terms for revising what admirably suits Indian interests — the existing climate-change regime.

The price for providing political cover to China at Copenhagen is that carbon-thin India got roped in to commit itself to mitigation when hundreds of millions of Indians have no access to most-basic rights: Electricity and safe water. Instead of a deal being struck between the world’s two largest polluters, the U.S. and China, the U.S. was forced to cut a deal with the BASIC bloc comprising Brazil, India, South Africa and China, because China expediently hid behind that banner. In fact, India has little in common even with South Africa and Brazil either in carbon or industrial-development level. While India’s per-capita emission was 1.2 tons in 2007, it was 9.4 in South Africa, 2.1 in Brazil and 4.8 in China, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration data.

India not only aligned itself with the wrong group, but also it presented itself inadvertently as a major global polluter by making common cause with China, whose developmental path threatens to unleash a carbon tsunami on the world. As China and India gain economic heft, it has become fashionable to internationally pair them. But these two demographic titans are a study in contrast on carbon intensity, with China now responsible for 24 per cent of global carbon emissions with 19.8 percent of the world population, but India’s current contribution not matching even half its population size. India indeed has more in common with the poor countries that cried foul over the U.S.-BASIC deal.

India would have done better at Copenhagen had it not associated itself so closely with China. It should have gone into the negotiations by consciously seeking to de-hyphenate itself from China, including by pointing out that China has more in common with the U.S. than with India. After all, the U.S. (currently responsible for 22 per cent of global emissions) and China, as the top polluters, have emerged as the key “problem states” in combating climate change.

But instead of de-hyphenating itself, India went into the negotiations as if it were joined at the hip with China, first by agreeing to put up a united stance and then by following in Beijing’s footsteps to unveil a plan to slash its carbon intensity by 2020. Not only was the target of 20 to 25 per cent reductions disproportionate to the level of Indian emissions, but it also made India ripe in Copenhagen for acceptance of mitigation action. In any case, it was poor negotiating strategy to announce such a major voluntary concession beforehand.

Past experience should have taught India that whenever it has joined hands with China on environmental issues, it has been let down by the Chinese proclivity to jettison principles and play power politics to serve its narrow interests. Take the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer. In the negotiations, it teamed up India, only to reverse its stance and leave India in the lurch. It agreed to abide by the protocol if it were compensated for the compliance costs. That forced India eventually to take that very position, lest it stood out as a loner. Under the Kyoto Protocol, China — through international manoeuvring — has captured the bulk of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) funding.

How much it suits China to be seen in the same class as India on carbon issues than with its real polluting peer, the U.S., was made clear by the post-Copenhagen telephone call the Chinese foreign minister made to his Indian counterpart to emphasize continuing Sino-Indian collaboration. But when it comes to global or Asian geopolitics, China insists India is in a junior league.

New Delhi can be sure that when criteria for mitigation action is defined in future negotiations, China will work to unduly burden India by insisting that weight be given to elements other than per-capita emission levels and historic contributions. Having unwittingly aided the Chinese game-plan in Copenhagen, India is set to come out a loser. Isn’t that precisely what India did on UN Security Council permanent membership? When the U.S. and Soviet Union offered India a permanent seat in 1955, Jawaharlal Nehru demurred, according to his own collected works, saying the seat rightfully belonged to China. Now, China is the main obstacle to India’s UNSC aspirations.

Brahma Chellaney, professor of strategic studies at the Centre for Policy Research, is the author of “On the Frontline of Climate Change: International Security Implications”.

(c) The Economic Times, January 7, 2009.

Hatoyama comes calling

Posted on December 29, 2009 by Chellaney

Powering a dynamic, multipolar Asia

Brahma Chellaney

The Hindu newspaper, December 30, 2009

Given that the balance of power in Asia will be determined by events as much in the Indian Ocean rim as in East Asia, India and Japan have to work together to promote peace and stability.

The visit of the new Japanese Prime Minister, Yukio Hatoyama, is part of Japan’s growing economic and strategic engagement with India. Japan and India indeed are natural allies because they have no conflict of strategic interest and actually share common goals to build stability, power equilibrium and institutionalised multilateral cooperation in Asia. There is neither any negative historical legacy nor a single outstanding political issue between them. If anything, each country enjoys a high positive rating with the public in the other state.

Mr. Hatoyama’s year-end visit, fulfilling a 2006 bilateral commitment to hold an annual summit meeting, shows he is keen to maintain the priority on closer engagement with India that was set in motion by his predecessors, Junichiro Koizumi, Shinzo Abe and Taro Aso of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), now in the opposition. Mr. Hatoyama came to office vowing to reorient Japanese foreign policy and seek an “equal” relationship with the United States. But he and his Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) had said little on India.

Today, just when America’s Sino-centric Asia policy has became unmistakable, Mr. Hatoyama’s government has put Washington on notice that Japan cannot indefinitely remain a faithful servant of U.S. policies. With Tokyo seeking to rework a 2006 basing deal with the U.S., besides announcing an end to the eight-year-old Indian Ocean refuelling mission in support of the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, Japan no longer can be regarded as a constant in America’s Asia policy. This has been further highlighted by Mr. Hatoyama’s re-examination of a secret agreement between the LDP and the U.S. over a subject that is highly sensitive in the only country to fall victim to nuclear attack — the storage or trans-shipment of U.S. nuclear weapons in Japan.

Against this background, New Delhi must be pleased that Mr. Hatoyama’s visit signals continuity in Tokyo’s India policy. It also shows that at a time when Asia is in transition, with the spectre of power disequilibrium looming large, Tokyo wishes to invest in closer economic and strategic bonds with India.

As Asia’s first modern economic success story, Japan has always inspired other Asian states. Now, with the emergence of new economic tigers and the ascent of China and India, Asia is collectively bouncing back from nearly two centuries of historical decline.

The most far-reaching but least-noticed development in Asia in the new century has been Japan’s political resurgence — a trend set in motion by Mr. Koizumi and expected to be accelerated by Mr. Hatoyama’s efforts to realign the relationship with the U.S. With Japanese pride and assertiveness rising, the nationalist impulse has become conspicuous at a time when China is headed to overtake Japan as the world’s second largest economy by the end of next year.

Long used to practising passive, cheque-book diplomacy, Tokyo now seems intent on influencing Asia’s power balance. A series of subtle moves has signalled Japan’s aim to break out of its post-war pacifist cocoon. One sign is the emphasis on defence modernisation. Japan’s navy, except in the nuclear sphere, is already the most sophisticated and powerful in Asia. China’s rise has prompted Japan to strengthen its military alliance with the U.S. But in the long run, Japan is likely to move to a more independent security posture.

Although the two demographic titans, China and India, loom large in popular perceptions on where Asia is headed economically, the much-smaller Japan is likely to remain a global economic powerhouse for the foreseeable future. Given the size of Japan’s economy — its GDP was just under $5 trillion in 2008 — annual Japanese growth of just 2 per cent translates into about $100 billion a year in additional output, or nearly the entire annual GDP of small economies like Singapore and the Philippines. Still, given China’s rapid economic strides, Japan has been readying itself for the day when it is eclipsed economically by its neighbour.

Leading-edge technologies and a commitment to craftsmanship are expected to power Japan’s future prosperity, just as they did its past growth. Its competitive edge, however, is threatened by the economic and social implications of a declining birth-rate and ageing population. With a fertility rate of just 1.37 babies per woman in 2008 — America’s is 2.12 — Japanese deaths have started surpassing births in recent years. Permitting immigration on a large scale is no easy task for the Japanese homogenised society. But just as Japan has come to live with the discomforting fact that today’s top sumo wrestlers are not Japanese, it will have to open its research institutions and factories to foreigners in order to raise productivity.

India and Japan, although dissimilar economically, have a lot in common politically. They are Asia’s largest democracies, but with messy politics and endemic scandals. Mr. Hatoyama, in office for just three months, has already come under pressure following the indictment of two former secretaries over a funding scandal. In both Japan and India, the Prime Minister is not the most powerful politician in his own party. Fractured politics in both countries crimps their ability to think and act long term. Yet, just as India has progressed from doctrinaire nonalignment to geopolitical pragmatism, Japan — the “Land of the Rising Sun” — is moving toward greater realism in its economic and foreign policies.

The Indo-Japanese security agreement, signed when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visited Tokyo in October 2008, was modelled on the March 2007 Australia-Japan defence accord. Now the Indo-Japanese security agreement has spawned a similar Indo-Australian accord, signed when Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd came to New Delhi last month. As a result, the structure and even large parts of the content of the three security agreements — between Japan and Australia, India and Japan, and India and Australia — are alike.

Actually, all three are in the form of a joint declaration on security cooperation. And all of them, while recognising a common commitment to democracy, freedom, human rights and the rule of law, obligate their signatories to work together to build not just bilateral defence cooperation, but also security in Asia. They are designed as agreements to enhance mutual security between equals. By contrast, the U.S.-India defence agreement, with its emphasis on arms sales, force interoperability and intelligence sharing — elements not found in the Australia-Japan, India-Japan and India-Australia accords — is aimed more at undergirding U.S. interests.

The key point is that the path has been opened to adding strategic content to the Indo-Japanese relationship, as underscored by the growing number of bilateral visits by top defence and military officials. As part of their “strategic and global partnership,” India and Japan are working on joint initiatives on maritime security, counterterrorism, counter-proliferation, disaster prevention and management, and energy security. But they need to go much further.

India and Japan, for example, must co-develop defence systems. India and Japan have missile-defence cooperation with Israel and the U.S., respectively. There is no reason why they should not work together on missile defence and on other technologies for mutual defence. There is no ban on weapon exports in Japan’s U.S.-imposed Constitution, only a long-standing Cabinet decision. That ban has been loosened, with Tokyo in recent years inserting elasticity to export weapons for peacekeeping operations, counterterrorism and anti-piracy. The original Cabinet decision, in any event, relates to weapons, not technologies.

As two legitimate aspirants to new permanent seats at the U.N. Security Council, India and Japan should work together to persuade existing veto holders to allow the Council’s long-pending reform. They must try to convince China in particular that Asian peace and stability would be better served if all three major powers in Asia are in the Council as permanent members. Never before have China, Japan and India all been strong at the same time. Today, they need to find ways to reconcile their interests in Asia so that they can coexist peacefully and prosper.

(Brahma Chellaney is professor of strategic studies at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi and the author of Asian Juggernaut: The Rise of China, India and Japan,with a new U.S. edition scheduled for release in March.)

Chemical Weapons: India’s Forgotten Armaments

Posted on December 24, 2009 by Chellaney

Haste Makes Waste

India’s chemical-weapons record holds key lessons

Brahma Chellaney The Times of India December 24, 2009

The Hague: At the annual meeting of state-parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), US officials disclosed that their country’s stockpile destruction will not finish before 2021, missing the treaty’s final extended deadline of 2012 by a long shot. In fact, two new US chemical-demilitarization plants will not be ready until nine years from now — an unusually long timeframe for construction. With the US making plain its intention to allow domestic considerations to trump international obligations, Russia has little incentive to meet the final deadline.

More than 12 years after the CWC entered into force, this regime faces several challenges that extend beyond the still-existing stockpiles of chemical weapons (CWs) in the US, Russia, Libya and Iraq. Of the seven declared possessor states, only India, South Korea and Albania have fully eliminated their stockpiles.

Some states strongly suspected of holding CWs, including China and Pakistan, did not declare any arsenal. China was the assumed source of Albania’s stockpile of chemical-warfare agents. It also aided Pakistani and Iranian CW programmes. By declaring former production facilities, China, however, tacitly admitted it built and destroyed CWs before joining the treaty, although the US has accused it of still holding “an inventory of traditional CW agents” and maintaining an “advanced R&D programme”.

One CWC challenge is the lack of universality, with seven key players still not parties to the treaty, including North Korea, Israel, Egypt, Syria and Myanmar. A second challenge is that more than half of the present 188 parties have yet to implement their obligations by enacting enabling legislation and setting up a National Authority. Yet another challenge is that although CWs are the least-important weapons of mass destruction (WMD), they are the most likely to be used by terrorists. Containing that challenge demands effective and full CWC implementation.

CWC has long been seen as a model pact that applies, unlike the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), similar standards to all. But today it faces gnawing uncertainties. For example, how will the anticipated failure of its most-powerful parties, America and Russia, to meet the final 2012 deadline affect the regime’s integrity and authority? The US, for its part, is now emphasizing non-proliferation and intrusive, more-frequent inspections of national chemical industries. But the word “non-proliferation” doesn’t exist in the CWC text.

Against this background, India’s surprise declaration of its CWs, followed by their rushed destruction, stands out. When it signed the CWC in 1993, India stated it had no CWs or production facilities. But three years later, it stunned everyone, including its own military, by declaring it possessed a CW stockpile — one of only three countries (the others being the US and Russia) to make such a disclosure by the CWC’s June 1996 cut-off date for original signatories. India had secretly built CWs, mostly mustard-gas shells, without integrating the small arsenal with its defence strategy and overall military operations.

Rather than first eliminate its puny, militarily insignificant CW stocks before becoming party to the CWC, India’s penchant to take the moral high ground, whatever the price, found expression in its ratifying the treaty ahead of its regional adversaries, and then rushing to meet the pact’s 10-year deadline for stockpile destruction. It incinerated most of its CWs by the 2007 deadline, even as the other possessor states had set protracted timeframes for stockpile destruction. While the US and Russia sought and got five-year deadline extensions in 2007, India asked for only two years’ more time, fully completing its dismantlement in March 2009. Meeting deadlines took precedence over guaranteeing environmentally safe and sound destruction, with secrecy the leitmotif even in dismantlement. The government’s fiat to the DRDO was to meet the deadlines, come what may.

But India hasn’t earned international respect from such faithful, speedy compliance. Indeed, like in the nuclear realm, India has been left to blow its own trumpet about its “impeccable” credentials. Far from gaining any reward, India has little clout in The Hague-based Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), where no Indian has yet held a top-management position. Worse still, Indian taxpayers have had to pick up the tab for international verification of stockpile destruction, with the obliteration bill surpassing the CW production expenses several fold. Pakistan and China, by contrast, have come out better.

The lack of any public discussion in India over its CW experience is unfortunate, given the lessons it holds for its other WMD capabilities and for Indian policy on the whole. Just as it built CWs of little military utility, India continues to lag far behind its credible minimal nuclear deterrent needs, as underscored by the recent failed nighttime test of Agni-2 and the weaponization of only the diminutive 25-kiloton fission prototype warhead. Open debate is indispensable if India is to learn from its record.

The writer is professor, Centre for Policy Research.

Copenhagen: A key step toward new climate-change regime

Posted on December 22, 2009 by Chellaney

Door opens to climate-change NPT

Brahma Chellaney

The Economic Times, December 22, 2009

The global climate negotiations in Copenhagen did
not produce an ambitious, legally binding action plan for reducing
greenhouse gas emissions. But Copenhagen did yield
something significant: It won political commitments from China, India,
Brazil and South Africa to
be part of the solution and thus to an overhaul of the present climate-change
regime, which puts the carbon-mitigation onus entirely on the developed
countries.

Future international negotiations would proceed on the basis of
these political commitments, enshrined in the so-called Copenhagen Accord. The
1997 Kyoto Protocol and the 1992 UN Framework Convention — the two legs of the
current regime — would become less relevant.

President Barack Obama’s 13 hours of negotiations in Copenhagen yielded a two-fold success for the U.S.: First,
the country which emits more than a fifth of the world’s greenhouse gases with
just 4.5 per cent of the global population escaped without making any binding commitment.
Second, Obama brought on board not only China,
Brazil and South Africa but also the much-poorer India, whose
per-capita emissions are far lower than any important developing country. India is to submit
to a universal system of transparently reporting on national mitigation actions.

Put simply, Copenhagen
generated not a new international protocol but the political framework to
revamp the existing climate-change regime. Changing the terms of negotiations
is essential to changing a regime. The Copenhagen Accord embodies the new
terms.

For the developed countries, this symbolizes success. There isn’t
even a passing reference in the Copenhagen Accord to historic contributions to the build-up of
greenhouse gases or to an objective criteria factoring in per-capita emission
levels.

For India, this has
meant a diplomatic climbdown from its negotiating stance. It has agreed to bear
an economic burden for combating climate change when hundreds of millions of Indians are
still mired in abject poverty.

The rich states, by securing
an interim accord tying their carbon cuts to burden-sharing with the
underprivileged, have opened the doors to the creation of an NPT on climate
change. Indeed, Obama, in his next major international move, is hosting a
summit meeting in April to strengthen the nuclear NPT.

The significant aspect, in
comparative terms, is that the most-powerful players want to reinforce the
nuclear non-proliferation regime but revamp the climate-change regime by
re-jiggering their legal obligations. So the key words are: Preserve, uphold
and strengthen the NPT regime, but update, rework and improve the
climate-change regime.

In other words, the NPT
regime is being treated as sacrosanct that cannot be tinkered with or amended, even
as the Copenhagen Accord presents the climate-change regime as an evolutionary
process open to overhaul. Given that the NPT regime predates the climate-change
regime by a generation and a half, one would have thought that it is the former
that needs updating, if any.

Having paid a heavy price to
the NPT regime, India
now has agreed to pay a price in a new climate-change regime. By contrast, China — a winner in the NPT regime because it first
concentrated, unlike India, on acquiring military muscle
— has less to lose in a new
climate-change regime. After all, as the world’s largest net polluter, China has more in common with the U.S. than India.

Copenhagen has shown that climate change is not just about science
but about geopolitics too. And in geopolitics, those with economic and military
muscle fare better.

Brahma Chellaney, professor of strategic studies at
the Centre for Policy Research, is the author of “On the Frontline of Climate
Change: International Security Implications.”

Dragon steps beyond the Great Wall

Posted on December 20, 2009 by Chellaney

What China needs now
is political modernization

Brahma Chellaney

Economic Times, December 20, 2009

SIX DECADES after it was founded, the People’s Republic
of China
has emerged as a major global player. In fact, China’s
rise in one generation as a world power under authoritarian rule has come to
epitomise the qualitative reordering of power in Asia
and the world. As the 2009 assessment of US intelligence agencies predicted, China is
“poised to have more impact on the world over the next 20 years than any other
country.”

The ascent of China, while a symbol of the ongoing global
power shifts, has been accentuated by major geopolitical developments — from
the unravelling of the Soviet Union that eliminated a mighty empire to China’s north
and west, to the manner the American colossus has stumbled after the
triumphalism of the 1990s. China’s
economy has expanded more than 13-fold over the last 30 years. Consequently,
its state-owned corporate behemoths are frenetically buying foreign firms,
technologies and resources. Add to the picture its rapidly swelling
foreign-exchange coffers, which now total over $2.1 trillion. Beijing thus is well-positioned
geopolitically to further expand its influence.

China
also became militarily powerful even before it sought to become economically
strong.

China’s economic rise, however, owes a lot to
the West’s decision not to sustain trade sanctions after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, but
instead to integrate Beijing
with global institutions through the liberalizing influence of foreign
investment and trade. That the choice made was wise can be seen from the baneful
impact of the opposite decision that was taken on Myanmar from the late 1980s — to
pursue a penal approach centred on sanctions.

Also, without
the expansion in US-Chinese trade and financial relations, China’s growth
would have been much harder. Its phenomenal economic success has been
illustrated by its emergence with the world’s biggest trade surplus, largest
foreign-currency reserves and highest steel production. Today, having vaulted
past Germany to become the
world’s biggest exporter, China
is set to displace Japan
as the world’s No 2 economy.

In today’s
context, the single biggest factor aiding Chinese foreign policy and currency
manipulation is US
dependence on large capital inflows from China. The US-China relationship
has a deeper base than US-India relations. From being allies of convenience in
the second half of the Cold War, they have gradually emerged as partners tied
by interdependence. Just as the beleaguered US
economy cannot do without continuing capital inflows from China, the
American market is the lifeline of the Chinese export juggernaut. America indeed depends on Chinese surpluses to
finance its supersized budget deficits, while Beijing
depends on its huge exports to America
both to sustain its high economic growth and subsidize its military
modernization.

It was thus no
surprise that US President
George W. Bush left the White House with a solid China-friendly legacy, best
illustrated by the manner in which he ignored the Chinese crackdown in Tibet and
showed up at the Beijing Olympics. It isn’t a surprise either that his
successor, Barack Obama, has gone further by demoting human rights and by
emphasizing economic, environmental and security relations with China. Today,
there is talk even of a US-China diarchy — a G-2 — ruling the world.

Obama indeed
seems fixated on the very country whose rapidly accumulating power and
muscle-flexing threaten Asian stability. The new catchphrase coined by US
Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg in relation to China, “strategic reassurance,” signals an
American intent to be more accommodative of China’s ambitions. China’s primacy
in the Obama foreign policy has become unmistakable even though the president,
soon after assuming office, invited then Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso as
his first foreign guest at the White House.

US policy has either encouraged some of Beijing’s international actions (such as China’s first-ever deployment of a naval task in
the Indian Ocean rim under the anti-piracy banner) or turned a blind eye to
some others (including the growing Chinese economic and strategic presence in Africa). China’s
covetous hunt for oil and other resources in Africa,
however, has helped portray it as the new colonial power in that continent,
leading to a backlash in some areas. Emulating Japan
and the US in the earlier
decades, China
is underpinning its commodity outreach through financial muscle by offering
soft loans to primary-commodity producers. Through such aid diplomacy, China has won access to key resources — from
gold in Bolivia, to coal in Indonesia, to nickel in the Philippines and Myanmar,
to oil in Ecuador and Indonesia, to copper in Chile, and to gas in Myanmar. China is already the world’s
largest consumer of iron ore, aluminium, steel, copper and cement.

For more than
three decades, China
has driven its remarkable economic growth by becoming the world’s back factory,
exporting low-value products across the globe. In the process, it has built up
a mammoth trade surplus. However, China is now reaching the point
where this approach can no longer continue to deliver high returns. Besides
moving to higher-value productivity, China needs to reduce its reliance
on exports by stoking domestic consumption.

Sustaining China’s
economic miracle demands a dynamic, continually evolving, forward-looking
approach. More broadly, political modernization, not economic modernization, is
the central challenge staring at China. If it is to build and
sustain a great power capacity by 2030, it has to avoid a political hard
landing.

Given China’s
territorial size, population (a fifth of the human race) and economic dynamism,
few can question or grudge its right to be a world power. China can also be a positive influence in Asia. But it can just as easily become the biggest
geopolitical problem. China’s
rise thus presents both an opportunity and a threat.

Brahma Chellaney is Professor of Strategic Studies,
Centre for Policy Research.

New Australia-India security accord

Posted on December 9, 2009 by Chellaney

Asia’s new strategic partners

By BRAHMA CHELLANEY

The Japan Times, December 10, 2009

The recently concluded India-Australia security agreement has come at a time when tectonic power shifts are challenging Asian strategic stability. Asia has come a long way since the emergence of two Koreas, two Chinas, two Vietnams and a partitioned India. It has risen dramatically as the world’s main creditor and economic locomotive. The ongoing global power shifts indeed are primarily linked to Asia’s phenomenal economic rise.

Even so, Asia faces major challenges, as underscored by festering territorial and maritime disputes, sharpening resource competition, fast-rising military expenditures, increasingly fervent nationalism and the spread of transnational terrorism and other negative cross-border trends.

In that light, an expanding constellation of Asian countries linked by strategic cooperation and sharing common interests can help foster power stability and build institutionalized cooperation. A close India-Australia strategic relationship indeed is a critical link in this picture, given the common security interests in several spheres that bind the two democracies.

Unfortunately, the Indo-Australian relationship hasn’t gone too well ever since Kevin Rudd two years ago became the free world’s first Mandarin-speaking head of government. Among his first actions, he pulled the plug on the nascent India-Japan-Australia-U.S. "Quadrilateral Initiative" and reversed his predecessor’s decision to export uranium ore to India. For reasons unrelated, the growth in Indo-Australian educational and defense ties also came under pressure, even as India remained Australia’s fastest-growing merchandise export market.

Rudd’s India visit last month has helped to put the bilateral relationship on an even keel and, more importantly, to elevate it to a strategic partnership. The new security agreement will help add concrete strategic content to the relationship.

Underlining the significance of their new accord, India and Australia have agreed to "policy coordination" on Asian affairs and long-term international issues, and to work together in Asian initiatives like the East Asia Summit and ASEAN Regional Forum. Toward that end, they will institute regular defense-policy talks, including consultations between their national security advisers, and set up a joint working group on counterterrorism. They also have agreed to cooperate on maritime and aviation security and participate in military exercises and other service-to-service exchanges.

Like the October 2008 Indo-Japanese security accord and the June 2005 Indo-U.S. defense agreement, the India-Australia declaration is a "framework" understanding that is to be followed by an action plan with specific steps. In fact, all these three bilateral accords call for advancing security cooperation in wide areas that extend from sea-lane security and defense collaboration to disaster management and counterterrorism.

The Indo-Japanese security agreement, signed when Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visited Tokyo last, was modeled on the March 2007 Australia-Japan defense accord. Now, the India-Australia accord follows that lead. Its structure and even a large part of its content mirror that of the Japan-Australia and Japan-India declarations.

Actually, all three — the Japan-Australia, Japan-India and Australia-India agreements — are in the form of a joint declaration on security cooperation. And all three, while recognizing a common commitment to democracy, freedom, human rights and the rule of law, obligate their signatories to work together to build not just bilateral defense cooperation, but also security in Asia. They are designed as agreements to enhance mutual security between equals. By contrast, the U.S.-India defense agreement, with its emphasis on arms sales, force interoperability and intelligence sharing — elements not found in Australia-Japan, India-Japan and India-Australia accords — is aimed more at undergirding U.S. interests.

Paradoxically, Rudd, having nixed the Quadrilateral Initiative, has come full circle implicitly by plugging the only missing link in that quad — an Australia-India security agreement. With the Indo-Australian accord, quadrilateral strategic cooperation among the four major democracies in the Asia-Pacific region — Australia, India, Japan and the U.S. — is set to take off without the aid of an institutional mechanism like the Quadrilateral Initiative.

Such cooperation, of course, is intended to be in a bilateral framework. But the bilateral cooperation inexorably will help lay the foundation for greater cooperation and coordination at trilateral and quadrilateral levels among these four powers.

Australia, Japan and the United States already are engaged in institutionalized trilateral strategic dialogue, while India, Japan and the U.S. have held naval maneuvers since 2007, the last time being in April-May this year off the Okinawa coast. In addition, the quad members jointly staged major naval-war games in the Bay of Bengal in September 2007, roping in Singapore, too. Indeed, the coordination established among the Indian, Japanese, Australian and U.S. militaries in rescue operations following the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami has helped promote closer cooperation among them on disaster relief.

Make no mistake: The U.S. has actively encouraged Indian defense cooperation with Australia and Japan, which are tied to the U.S. by security treaty — the ANZUS treaty in the case of Australia and a 1951 treaty with Japan that was revised in 1960.

Closer Indian defense ties with key Asia-Pacific members of America’s hub-and-spoke global alliance system, in fact, are a natural corollary to the U.S.-India strategic tieup, which seeks to institute a "soft" alliance without treaty obligations, but with complex arrangements extending from the defense-framework accord and nuclear deal in mid-2005 to the recent End-Use Monitoring Agreement. As part of this tieup, India placed arms-purchase orders with the U.S. worth $3.5 billion just last year.

But while the U.S. has treaty commitments to defend Australia and Japan, its reciprocal security obligations to an emerging de facto ally like India are unclear. It also is doubtful whether security accords of the Japan-Australia, Australia-India and Japan-India type translate into tangible gains for the parties’ national defense against visible threats, even though they do aid their diplomacy and are likely to contribute to Asian power stability.

Australia’s own recent defense white paper, by unveiling the country’s biggest military buildup since World War II, serves as a reminder that there is no substitute to building adequate national deterrent capabilities, even for a country under the U.S. security umbrella. Japan, for its part, is likely to move to a more independent security posture in the years ahead, even though a muscular Chinese approach has prompted Tokyo in this decade to strengthen its military alliance with the U.S.

More broadly, Rudd’s government — through its record of being hyper-responsive to Chinese concerns, including on the Quadrilateral Initiative — has taken the lead for the U.S. in certain spheres. Just as Canberra has sought to balance its ties with Tokyo and Beijing, as well as with New Delhi and Beijing, the Obama administration now is following in those footsteps. Indeed, the new catchphrase coined by the Obama administration on China, "strategic reassurance," signals an American intent to be more accommodative of Chinese ambitions.

Or take another example: China’s resurrection of its long-dormant claim to India’s northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh. Just as Australia has publicly chartered a course of neutrality on the Arunachal issue — to the delight of Beijing, which aims to leave an international question mark hanging over the legitimacy of India’s control over that large Himalayan territory — U.S. policy is doing likewise, albeit quietly. Indeed, the Obama administration has signaled its intent to abandon elements in its ties with New Delhi that could rile China, including a joint military drill in Arunachal and any further Indo-U.S. naval maneuvers involving Japan or more parties like Australia.

In New Delhi, Rudd underscored both the promise and limitations of the new Australia-India strategic partnership. While lauding the new security agreement, he contended disingenuously that his continued refusal to sell India uranium was "not targeted at any individual country," although India is the only country affected by his policy. Worse still, he proffered a specious justification — India’s nonmembership in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). That treaty has no explicit or implicit injunction against civil nuclear cooperation with a nonsignatory. Rather, it enjoins its parties to positively facilitate "the fullest possible exchange of equipment, materials and scientific and technological information for the peaceful uses of nuclear energy," so long as safeguards are in place.

Any restriction is not in the NPT but in the revised 1992 rules of the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group that, paradoxically, were changed with Australian support last year to exempt India.

Eventually, Canberra will come round to selling India uranium. After all, how can Canberra continue to justify selling uranium to authoritarian China but banning such exports to democratic India, even though the latter has accepted what the former will not brook — stringent, internationally verifiable safeguards against diversion of imported uranium to weapons use? Canberra will not be able to plow a lonely furrow on India indefinitely.

Brahma Chellaney is professor of strategic studies at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi and the author of "Asian Juggernaut: The Rise of China, India and Japan."

The Japan Times: Thursday, Dec. 10, 2009