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Quad supports US goal to preserve rules-based order

Following the first meeting in November 2017 of the resurrected Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad, the US has been consistent in discussing the security objectives it seeks to promote through the consultations. However, US interactions with other Quad partners—including fellow democracies Australia, India and Japan—have likely convinced Washington to repackage public presentation of the dialogue proceedings and manage its expectations of what the Quad can realistically achieve.

For now, the US is probably content with simply using the Quad as a way to signal unified resolve against China’s growing assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific without directly antagonising Beijing. That may change in the future if US–China relations deteriorate further or Beijing’s behaviour towards regional neighbours becomes even more aggressive.

In today’s context of the Trump administration’s policy to keep the Indo-Pacific ‘free and open’ from coercion, Washington’s participation in the Quad makes much sense. According to both the US national security strategy and national defence strategy, China is an adversarial power seeking to ‘displace’ the US from the Indo-Pacific to ‘reorder the region in its favor’. In response, Washington has been reinvigorating its alliances and strengthening ties with its partners, not only bilaterally, but multilaterally as well, and the Quad is one such multilateral mechanism.

Washington’s key objective when contending with Beijing in the Indo-Pacific is to preserve the liberal international order that has been in place since the end of World War II. It’s no coincidence, then, that the Trump administration gravitated towards Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s ‘democratic Asian security diamond’ concept, encapsulated in an essay in 2012, as the blueprint for Quad 2.0’s activities. Abe’s security diamond concept is a values-based foreign policy approach structured around shared democratic norms, which have been highlighted in every Trump administration statement or comment on the Quad talks. (For the record, Quad 1.0 had a similar backstory under the George W. Bush administration.)

For example, after the first Quad 2.0 meeting in November 2017, the US released a statement noting that the Quad ‘rests on a foundation of shared democratic values and principles’ and that all sides pledged ‘to continue discussions to further strengthen the rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific region’. The next two Quad meetings, in June 2018 and November 2018, reiterated the same desire to preserve the rules-based order.

When asked informally about the Quad, Trump administration officials have similarly highlighted the need to bolster the rules-based order through consultations with like-minded democratic partners. While then Secretary of Defense James Mattis was attending the Shangri-La Dialogue in June 2018, he observed how ‘all four [Quad members] are democracies. That’s the first thing that jumps out at you.’ At India’s Raisina Dialogue in January 2019, the commander of US Indo-Pacific Command, Admiral Philip Davidson, characterised the Quad as a ‘burgeoning relationship rooted in some 25 years now’. He further offered that the rules-based order is important because ‘it is advocacy for free nations in terms of security, values, political systems, and the freedom to choose their own partners’.

Washington’s strategy of working through the Quad to express resolve probably has its limits, as other members have shown discomfort in going too far—particularly to avoid giving the impression that the Quad is a military alliance designed to contain China. As I’ve discussed elsewhere, India likely has serious reservations. Since meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping for an informal summit at Wuhan in April 2018, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has seemingly softened his position on China to make good on their ‘reset’ in bilateral ties. During his Shangri-La Dialogue keynote speech in June 2018, Modi argued that ‘India does not see the Indo-Pacific region as a strategy or as a club of limited members’—an implicit criticism of the Quad. He also said that New Delhi prioritises regional ‘inclusiveness’ and highlighted the ‘centrality’ of ASEAN to any ordering and decision-making in the Indo-Pacific.

As a result, after the second Quad 2.0 meeting in June 2018, the US began including India-friendly language on the centrality of ASEAN in its Quad press statements. The shift might negatively affect Washington’s values-based approach. But, as I’ve argued previously, it’s likely to bolster the Quad’s legitimacy by bringing an ASEAN maritime counterclaimant, such as Vietnam, into the conversation to coordinate pushback against Beijing’s violation of international law and norms of behaviour in the South China Sea. New Delhi has also sought to keep the visibility of the Quad low by arguing against increasing the seniority of leadership participation to cabinet or ministry level from assistant secretary or director-general level.

India is almost certainly not the only Quad partner with concerns, judging from the fact that all four countries have yet to issue a joint communiqué. In addition, in the military domain, Quad 2.0 is yet to conduct joint military exercises or joint freedom-of-navigation operations to challenge China’s growing assertiveness in the region, which the US would likely welcome and has probably been encouraging. The first Quad iteration conducted a joint exercise in 2007 and included Singapore, so such a move wouldn’t be unprecedented. But instead of symbolic shows of force, this Quad has opted to keep a very low profile (no Quad partner has even referred to the Quad as the Quad—merely as quadrilateral ‘consultations’). In fact, US policymakers tend to describe the Quad as an example of one multilateral mechanism, among many others, that the US has at its disposal. In other words, the Quad is nothing special—unless the others collectively come to the conclusion that it is.

The US probably believes the Quad has served the basic purpose of signalling unity of resolve among democracies and like-minded partners to counter China’s growing assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific region. However, if US–China competition continues to heat up, particularly in the South China Sea, Washington will likely increasingly look to the Quad—and specifically the military dimension of the cooperation—to defend the liberal international order.

Australia’s Indo-Pacific pitch: what’s in it for the Quad?

In January, at the Raisina Dialogue in New Delhi, Foreign Minister Marise Payne enunciated her government’s pitch to develop closer relations with India. Her speech was an attempt to reassure India and the broader region of Australia’s commitment to maintaining a rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific. This has important implications for the future of the regional security architecture, especially for groups such as the revived Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad).

Although the Quad’s future, as Jeff Smith argues, will ultimately depend on China’s actions and the threat perceptions of Australia and India, at the moment both are keen to focus on strengthening the bilateral relationship and extending minilateral and multilateral cooperation through other channels. This works well for both nations as they try to manage relations with China in the lead-up to their general elections.

Geopolitically speaking, there were four broad takeaways from the minister’s speech:

  • The Indian Ocean is central in Australia’s strategic imagination.
  • Canberra has a ‘long-term’ commitment to deepening engagement with India.
  • Australia envisions a role for India in the Pacific.
  • The Quad isn’t the Indo-Pacific.

The Indian Ocean region has featured heavily in recent Australian strategic discourse, especially since the release of the 2013 defence white paper and more prominently since the 2017 foreign policy white paper. Payne highlighted Canberra’s vital interests in the region, which include protecting Australia’s vast exclusive economic and search and rescue zones, offshore territories and critical sea lanes of communication. Australia’s plan to invest $1 billion in defence facilities, including frigates, offshore patrol vessels and submarines in Western Australia, reflects that commitment.

More importantly, Payne’s emphasis on the adjective ‘long-term’ merits attention. This is an important juncture in a relationship punctuated by false starts for over two decades. For Australia, India has emerged as an economic and political counterweight to China, at a time when its relations with Beijing are under considerable stress.

The Morrison government’s endorsement last year of the India Economic Strategy 2035—a road map for closer Australia–India relations—indicates that Canberra has finally woken up to the opportunities presented by India’s impressive economic growth in the past three decades. Payne’s announcement of the $25 million South Asian Regional Connectivity Initiative, a four-year program to improve infrastructure in sectors such as transport and energy, illustrates Canberra’s investment in South Asia for the long haul.

Canberra also now seeks New Delhi’s support and involvement in its own backyard—the South Pacific. While highlighting her government’s $2 billion Pacific pivot, Payne remarked that Australia looked forward to ‘engaging more closely with India to support our partners in the Pacific region in the years ahead’. Only two decades ago, Australia actively opposed India’s inclusion in APEC, as Graeme Dobell revealed in The Strategist recently. Canberra’s new outreach to India is thus a paradigm shift in Australian attitudes towards India.

What does this mean for the Quad, which is often considered one of the main pillars of the US’s Indo-Pacific strategy?

Interestingly, Payne’s mention of the Quad was very brief, and she grouped it with the other multilateral and minilateral forums that Australia and India are part of, such as the Indian Ocean Rim Association, the East Asia Summit and the ASEAN Regional Forum. Moreover, she echoed Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s emphasis on ASEAN centrality in a discernible attempt to reassure the Southeast Asian nations that they’ll continue to play a major role in the Indo-Pacific and that their interests will be respected.

There are clear parallels between how Australia and India see the Indo-Pacific and the Quad: both view it as just one platform for cooperation and are unwilling to attach any great importance to it. Last year, for example, it was reported that the US and Japan were keen to elevate engagement in the Quad to the foreign secretary/foreign minister level. While New Delhi refused outright, Australia’s position remained unclear. Before the third meeting of the Quad in November 2018, Indian officials were said to be insisting that their US counterparts not ‘conflate’ the Quad with the Indo-Pacific. Whether Payne’s speech was a recognition of Indian sensitivities or Australia’s own policy on the Quad, it indicated that Canberra’s views align more closely with New Delhi’s—at least for now.

Given the Quad’s obvious anti-China undertones, it’s clear that both New Delhi and Canberra are keen to downplay its importance as they balance their difficult relationships with China in the lead-up to their national elections. True, foreign policy is rarely an issue in ballots in democracies but, where China’s concerned, India and Australia are walking a tightrope. For India, outward peace with China means potentially avoiding another Doklam-like confrontation. For Australia, the Morrison government is on a mission to reset relations with Beijing after two years of friction. Australia’s policy on the Quad will continue to hinge on the government’s strategic priorities, and policy continuity on this front isn’t a given. India, on the other hand, could change its tempo on the Quad, but that would depend on China getting more aggressive along its border and in the Indian Ocean.

It’s difficult to say what lies in store in the long term. The Quad has been variously described as providing a matrix for, and sometimes a distraction from, deepening bilateral and trilateral cooperation among the US, Japan, Australia and India. At other times, the Australia–India connection has been seen as the weakest Quad link. Some analysts question India’s continued reluctance to allow Australia to participate in the Malabar naval exercises; others caution against using Malabar as a litmus test for the Quad.

While the bilateral relationship has definitely undergone a major transformation, including unprecedented diplomatic and military exchanges in the past year, a lot now depends on how China behaves. For now at least, it’s time for the Quad to lie low.

The vital isolation of indigenous groups

The remote, coral-fringed North Sentinel Island made headlines late last year, after an American Christian missionary’s covert expedition to convert its residents—the world’s last known pre-Neolithic tribal group—ended in his death. The episode has cast a spotlight on the threats faced by the world’s remote indigenous groups, which are already on the brink of disappearance.

The Sentinelese people targeted by the slain evangelist John Allen Chau are probably the most isolated of the world’s remaining remote tribes, and they are keen to stay that way. They shoot arrows to warn off anyone who approaches their island, and attack those, like Chau, who ignore their warnings.

It was not always this way. When Europeans first made contact with the Sentinelese, the British naval commander Maurice Vidal Portman described them in 1899 as ‘painfully timid’. But the profound shift is not hard to explain. Tribes like the Sentinelese have learned to associate outsiders with the ghastly violence and deadly diseases brought by European colonisation.

British colonial excesses whittled down the aboriginal population of the Andaman Islands, which includes North Sentinel Island, from more than two dozen tribes 150 years ago to just four today. The tribes that escaped genocide at the hands of the colonisers did so largely by fleeing to the deepest and most inaccessible parts of jungles.

That was the story in North Sentinel, which Portman and his forces raided, abducting the few children and elderly who failed to flee into the dense rainforest in time. As a 2009 book by Satadru Sen notes, Portman used members of Andaman tribes as subjects in his supposed anthropometry research, forcibly measuring and photographing their bodies. The research, according to Sen, reflected a perverted ‘fascination’ with ‘male genitalia’.

After the decimation of indigenous peoples under colonial rule, the countries where isolated tribes remain—including Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, India and Peru—have pursued a ‘no contact’ policy towards these groups. The policy is anchored in laws that protect indigenous peoples’ rights to ancestral lands and to live in seclusion, and reinforced by an international convention obligating governments to protect these communities’ lands, identities, penal customs and ways of life.

It is illegal—and punishable by a prison sentence—for outsiders to enter India’s tribal reserves. Yet Chau dodged Indian laws and coastal security, according to his own diary accounts, to make repeated forays onto North Sentinel over three days—an arduous effort that was facilitated by a Kansas City–based missionary agency, which trained him for his journey. The Sentinelese killed him only after he ignored repeated warnings to stop trespassing.

But the threat to the Sentinelese people—and, indeed, all isolated tribes—is far from neutralised, as some have taken Chau’s death as an opportunity to argue that we should reverse the policies protecting isolated tribes. And while many have good intentions—to provide access to modern technology, education and health care—others do not. For example, Brazil’s new far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, has threatened to repeal constitutional safeguards for aboriginal lands in order to expand developers’ access to the Amazon, the world’s largest rainforest.

Whatever the motivation, connecting with remote tribes would amount to a death sentence for them. The first waves of European colonisation caused a calamitous depopulation of indigenous societies through violence and the introduction of infectious diseases like smallpox and measles, to which the natives had no immunity.

In Brazil, three-quarters of the indigenous societies that opened up to the outside world have become extinct, with the rest suffering catastrophic population declines. Over the last five centuries, Brazil’s total indigenous population has plummeted from up to 5 million to fewer than 900,000. The introduction of constitutional protections for indigenous territories in the late 1980s was aimed at arresting the decline.

Of the four tribes that survive in the Andaman chain, the two that were forcibly assimilated by the British have become dependent on government aid and are close to vanishing. Indigenous communities’ combined share of the world population now stands at just 4.5%.

To be sure, leaving secluded tribes alone is no guarantee that they will survive. These highly inbred groups are already seeing their numbers dwindle and face the spectre of dying out completely. But they will probably die a lot faster if we suddenly contact them, bringing with us modern pathogens against which they have no antibodies.

These tribes might be isolated, but their demise will have serious consequences. With their reverence for—and understanding of—nature, such groups serve as the world’s environmental sentinels, safeguarding 80% of global diversity and playing a critical role in climate change mitigation and adaptation. When the devastating 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami struck, more than 250,000 people died across 14 countries, but the two isolated Andaman tribes, which rely on traditional warning systems, suffered no known casualties.

But, as Bolsonaro’s promises underscore, indigenous societies have been pitted directly against loggers, miners, crop planters, ranchers, oil drillers, hunters and other interlopers. In the last 12 years alone, according to satellite data, Brazil’s Amazon Basin has lost forest cover equivalent in size to the entire Democratic Republic of Congo, the world’s 11th-largest country.

Indigenous people are an essential element of cultural diversity and ecological harmony, not to mention a biological treasure for scientists seeking to reconstruct evolutionary and migratory histories. The least the world can do is to let them live in peace in the ancestral lands that they have honoured and preserved for centuries.

India and the Quad: weak link or keystone?

They say the strength of a chain is measured by its weakest link. The same may be true for the Quad, the group of four Indo-Pacific democracies—Australia, India, Japan and the US—that gathered in November for their third security dialogue in 12 months.

Since the Quad was revived in November 2017 after a 10-year hiatus, international observers have been left with myriad questions about the group’s intentions and objectives, with many portraying it as some form of anti-China coalition. They seem clear on one thing, however: if the group has a weak link, it is undoubtedly India.

Delhi indeed appears to be the outlier among the four, seemingly the least enthusiastic about the Quad’s potential and the most anxious about provoking a backlash in Beijing.

India was widely considered the weak link when the Quad was first established in May 2007. At the time, Delhi was still in the early stages of a reorientation away from its non-aligned past towards more robust strategic partnerships with the US and Japan. After facing down internal resistance to participating in the first quadrilateral security dialogue, partly for fear of alienating China, the Indian government was left jaded when Australia withdrew from the group in early 2008, ironically in deference to China’s sensitivities.

In the years that followed, India dismissed appeals from Japan and the US to revive the Quad before finally relenting in mid-2017. The decision came after a particularly contentious few years in China–India relations, replete with major differences over China’s Belt and Road Initiative, its efforts to deny India membership in the Nuclear Suppliers Group, its protection of Pakistan-based terrorists from sanctions, and an unprecedented border standoff on the Doklam plateau in the northern summer of 2017.

With the Quad now restored, why is India still considered the weak link, and where does it diverge with the others?

First, India’s reticence is evident in its desire to keep the Quad relegated to mid-level representatives. Whereas Canberra, Tokyo and Washington have signalled their interest in promoting the dialogue to the level of minister/cabinet secretary, Delhi has been clear that it prefers to keep it at the level of joint/assistant secretary.

Second, India has resisted efforts to elevate the Malabar naval exercise to a quadrilateral affair. A bilateral India–US naval exercise begun in the 1990s, Malabar became synonymous with the Quad in 2007. Months after the inaugural dialogue, Malabar was expanded to include naval assets from all four countries (as well as Singapore). The exercise was again downgraded to a bilateral initiative after the Quad collapsed in 2008. However, Japan rejoined the exercise in 2009, eventually being inducted as a permanent member in 2015. By contrast, Australia’s private and public lobbying efforts to rejoin Malabar have been rebuffed by Delhi each year since 2015.

Third, among the four, India has sought to frame the Quad in the most inclusive, least confrontational terms. It has also underscored the importance of separating the Quad from the ‘free and open Indo-Pacific’ concept that has come to embody the group of rules, laws and norms that have governed the region for decades but are increasingly under duress. Some see the Quad as the ‘muscle’ that could one day be called upon to defend that order, but India continues to underscore the importance of separating the two.

India’s approach to the Quad is influenced by several factors.

India believes it has more reason to fear China’s wrath. Delhi has traditionally been cautious about alienating Beijing and wary of joining multilateral initiatives that could be perceived as anti-Chinese or resembling a balancing or containment coalition. In part, this anxiety springs from a misperception about how Beijing operates—that it’s more deferential to the interests of those who appease it.

However, India is also driven by more pragmatic considerations. It’s the only member of the Quad with a large land-border dispute with China and the only country that has faced a Chinese invasion over the past century. Compounding the problem, India is also the only member of the Quad without formal security guarantees from other members.

India is taking a wait-and-see approach with Australia. Some Indian analysts argue privately that its cautious approach to the Quad has less to do with worry about offending China than with fear that Australia is potentially compromised by Chinese influence.

Delhi has far more confidence in the American and Japanese dispositions. It prefers to pursue the most meaningful strategic initiatives at the bilateral level and the robust trilateral Japan–India–US strategic dialogue. Indian experts privately admit that Australia showed more ‘backbone’ towards China under the Turnbull government (2015–2018) but say they’ll need to see a Labor government display the same resolve before they can be confident of Australia’s commitment.

India picks its battles. India may be the most reluctant member of the Quad, but it’s actually been the most steadfast in confronting Beijing in other arenas. Consider: India was the first member of the Quad to halt diplomatic endorsements of Beijing’s ‘One China’ policy back in 2010, insisting that China first recognise India’s sovereignty claims in Kashmir and along the China–India border if it wanted reciprocal treatment.

As important, India was the first member of the Quad to raise major concerns about China’s expansive Belt and Road Initiative, opposing the ambitious project at the outset. Last year, Australia, the US and several European countries began voicing many of the same concerns and shifting to a position of hostility towards the BRI. Finally, India showed resolve in staring down the People’s Liberation Army during the Doklam border dispute.

India wants options. Delhi may see one benefit to slow-walking the Quad and Malabar: it offers additional tools for signalling to Beijing in the future. At the moment, India’s relations with China are stable. Beijing has even launched a charm offensive recently in Delhi as it grapples with how to respond to unexpected broadsides from the Trump administration. India may see upgrading either the Quad or Malabar as a useful strategy for responding to any future Chinese provocations.

While the rest of the Quad must acknowledge India’s unique position and sensitivities, kindling Delhi’s enthusiasm for the initiative is likely to depend less on reassurances from the democracies and more on China’s behaviour. If the perceived threat from China grows, the gravitational pull of the Quad will grow stronger. If it doesn’t, India’s enthusiasm for upgrading the Quad will remain subdued.

Ultimately, however, the differences between India and the other three democracies pale in comparison with their shared interests and objectives—namely, upholding and defending their interests and the rules-based order under new challenges from a rising China. Even if India slows the pace of progress in the short term, the long-term benefits of its inclusion appear to far outweigh the costs.

In any event, there may be a silver lining to India’s slow-dance with the Quad. ‘The beauty of the Quad’, notes Australian scholar Rory Medcalf, ‘is that it makes the world safe for trilateralism.’ With international attention focused so squarely on the Quad and its modest progress, India has been quietly breaking new ground on an almost monthly basis with Australia, Japan and the US at the bilateral and trilateral levels.

The Quad as a caucus for cooperation

Whenever a ‘minilateral’ is launched, its exclusive membership is questioned. The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue among Australia, India, Japan and the United States has suffered from that fate. When it was about to gain momentum in 2007, the Quad caught the attention of those who weren’t in it. It was harshly criticised as constituting a coalition against China; some media dubbed it an ‘Asian NATO’. From then on, hesitation to pursue a quadrilateral meeting hamstrung the four members and the initiative was put on hold. It lay dormant for the next 10 years.

During that time, the momentum for dialogue and cooperation among countries in the region was sustained. Trilateral dialogues, such as the Japan–Australia–US and Japan–US–India, and bilaterals at both track 1 and 2 levels, with flexible geometry, have continued. Intergovernmental dialogues can be difficult to organise due to official positions and sensitivities. But informal dialogues involving government officials in a personal capacity, academics and media can be a useful testing ground for new ideas. The common concern about maritime security that prompted the Quad’s initial exploratory meeting didn’t subside, and even increased, over the next decade.

In 2012, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, recalling his 2007 speech to the Indian parliament on ‘the confluence of the two seas’, proposed that India and Japan play a greater role with Australia and the US in promoting peace, stability and freedom of navigation in the Pacific. He suggested that the four form a ‘security diamond’ to safeguard the maritime commons stretching from the Indian Ocean to the Western Pacific.

Abe expanded the idea of a security diamond with his concept of a ‘free and open Indo-Pacific’, which he launched at the Tokyo International Conference on African Development in 2016. Japan has pursued this vision to improve connectivity in the region. Others have since adopted the Indo-Pacific nomenclature: the US used it in its 2017 national security strategy, as did Australia in its 2017 foreign policy white paper. There seems to be a great convergence in the region on tackling issues within the footprint of the Indo-Pacific.

Beyond the region, France and the UK have also come to embrace the Indo-Pacific concept. Momentum has emerged from beyond the four Quad countries in promoting cooperation in the wider Indo-Pacific region.

This growing interest in the mega-regionalism of the Indo-Pacific seems to have woken up the slumbering Quad. In August 2017, Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono proposed a meeting with the foreign ministers of Australia, the US and India in the margins of the upcoming East Asia Summit. Senior officials of the four foreign ministries met for quadrilateral consultations on ensuring greater security and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific region in November 2017 in Manila. Four defense ministry senior officials met in India to exchange views on the regional situation in January 2018. And in June and November 2018, four foreign ministry officials at the director-general level met again in Singapore.

Can a revived Quad be upgraded to the level of foreign and defence ministers—or even to the summit level—and be sustainable and consequential in years ahead? The Japanese government regards the Quad as an important framework, but, according to officials I spoke with after the November meeting in Singapore, it wants the process to develop at a pace that’s comfortable for all the members rather than push forward in haste.

If the Quad process is to go further, two challenges will need to be addressed.

First and foremost, the four members are not in sync on the conception of the global order they wish to pursue. India, as reflected in the ‘Nonalignment 2.0’ policy paper, is keen to pursue multipolarity, with India as one major pole. The other three, despite subtle differences, have recently pursued security cooperation through the existing US–Australia and US–Japan alliance relationships. Moreover, each of the four countries will always be at a slightly different point in the up-and-down cycle of its relations with China. That can cause different levels of risk aversion when it comes to activities that might attract Chinese criticism. The four need to arrive at a clear, shared perspective on the region’s long-term challenges and trends, rather than being buffeted by temporary bilateral imperatives.

Second, given the Asia–Pacific’s tradition of managing multilayered multilateralism, the Quad, if it is to be sustainable, must be an inclusive mechanism and be able to reconcile with the wisdom of ASEAN-centred regionalism. Also, it must show that it can deliver tangible results at a time when multilateral cooperation is harder to sustain.

To meet these challenges, the geometry of the Quad needs to be flexible; neither the format nor the composition should be fixed. An adaptable framework would promote recognition of the Quad as an anchor or an idea incubator for issues-led functional cooperation for peace and stability of the Indo-Pacific. This practical and flexible approach would allow both the Quad and the Indo-Pacific vision to exhibit their diffused reciprocity for those interested.

However, the caveat is that the more countries involved in a minilateral, the harder it is to get the group to do anything. Bilateral cooperation is hard enough, trilateral is even harder, and quadrilateral is very hard indeed. In order to surmount these challenges, functional cooperation is the way forward.

India–Russia relations as a metaphor for changing geopolitical equations

Yesterday marked the 100th anniversary of the end of the World War I. The century since has been dominated by four big geopolitical storylines.

First, the US displaced Great Britain as the global hegemon and underwrote world peace and prosperity, largely but not always as a benign hegemon. Second, the Soviet Union was established as the bastion of international communism, achieved superpower status and then imploded with accompanying geographic, demographic and economic shrinkage. Although Russia retains a massive nuclear arsenal that can destroy the world and has recovered some political and economic stability over the past decade, it is unlikely to emerge as a multidimensional major power anytime soon.

Third, the US’s relative decline from its dominant position at the end of the Cold War continues apace. It retains an unchallengeable capacity to wreak military destruction, yet has suffered serial reverses in several conflict theatres in the capacity to impose an American order after military victory. Similarly, while the US remains the biggest, best balanced and most productive and innovative economy, its global economic dominance has declined on most measures, including share of global output, automotive manufacturing and international trade.

Fourth, China has acquired impressive power in both relative and absolute terms. How China develops economically, evolves politically and behaves domestically, regionally and globally, are among the most pressing questions for the world. The answers will help to shape the destiny of nations and the fate of billions of people. Moreover, while the most critical global geopolitical relationship is the one between China and the US, the most critical Asian geopolitical relationship is the one between China and India.

These trends hold acute lessons for Australia. They also offer insights into one of the less noticed bilateral relationships in recent years: that between Moscow and New Delhi, which shaped the previous geopolitical order in Asia. The relationship peaked in 1971 with a bilateral treaty that came close to constituting a defence pact. In the context of the looming India–Pakistan war that was midwife to the birth of Bangladesh, it provided political cover for India at the United Nations while buying it military insurance against the Nixon–Kissinger move on the geopolitical chessboard to detach China from the Soviet embrace.

The end of the Cold War upended India’s world order completely. An acute balance of payments crisis in 1991, and the total discrediting of the command model of the Soviet economy that India had borrowed heavily from, added to the panic caused by the collapse of the Soviet superpower. India scrambled to readjust to the changed unipolar world and recalibrate relations with the US while still heavily dependent on Soviet military supplies. Since then, India has fared rather better than Russia in world affairs.

So where exactly do India–Russia relations stand now? The relationship is, in fact, quite a good metaphor for the polycentric world of offsetting ties of cooperation and competition as the sun sets in turn on US unipolar dominance. Russia has been engaged in its own Asian pivot, which it views as an attractive and feasible alternative to the current US-centric system of global financial, economic and political relations.

President Vladimir Putin paid a two-day visit to India on 5–6 October. Among the documents signed with India were agreements to develop six new nuclear power projects and a contract for Russia’s S-400 Triumf air-defence system worth US$5 billion. The latter deal was especially significant because India ignored repeated warnings (including ahead of PM Narendra Modi’s informal meeting with Putin in Sochi in May) about triggering the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA, 2017), which mandates US sanctions on entities engaged in ‘significant’ defence transactions with Russia.

Resource-rich Russia and resource-hungry India are well matched economically. But there’s even greater historical inertia to India’s defence procurement from Russia. India and the US have been trying to promote increased Indian purchases of US defence systems, both to reduce dependence on Moscow by diversifying and to deepen India–US ties.

Every year in the 2012 to 2017 period, with one exception in 2015, and cumulatively for this six-year period, India has been the world’s largest arms purchaser, buying 42% more than Saudi Arabia, the second-biggest arms purchaser. For the same period, the US has been the biggest arms seller; over the six years, it sold 48% more than Russia, the next big arms seller. The source of the bulk of India’s purchases over the six-year period was Russia (67%), followed by the US (12.4%), Israel (9.9%) and France (3.8%). But if we compare 2012 with 2017, Russia falls from 86.5% to 60.1%, while the US increases from 3.1% to 7.5% and Israel from 3.7% to 21.3%.

It’s hard to see how disrupting this trendline would be in the US’s economic or security interest. That’s especially so in light of America’s stated intention to court India ‘as a major defence partner’ that has ‘an indispensable role in maintaining stability in the Indian Ocean region’. In July, US defence secretary James Mattis urged the Senate to empower the secretary of state to waive CAATSA sanctions: ‘Doing so allows nations to build a closer security relationship with the US as they continue to transition from reliance on Russian military equipment.’

Imposing sanctions on India as punishment for buying the S-400 missile system would damage bilateral relations and impede Indian purchases of US equipment, which would defeat a primary purpose of the CAATSA legislation. Much as India, in particular the Modi government, is invested in consolidating a strategic partnership with the US, it has little interest in an exclusive alliance-type relationship with Washington. Moreover, Mark Leonard, director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, has openly discussed ‘The new tyranny of the dollar’ under the Trump administration’s weaponisation of its dollar-denominated dominance of global finance. India was among eight countries issued with a temporary sanctions waiver by the US on 5 November for purchases of Iranian oil. Hopefully, similar good sense will prevail regarding India’s defence supplies from Russia.

India–US 2+2 dialogue: changing the narrative on counterterrorism?

India and the US held their inaugural 2+2 dialogue in New Delhi on 6 September. The meeting set the scene for their bilateral ties to reach new heights. The commonalities of their security interests are visible through several initiatives outlined in their joint statement and should enable them to firm up their defence and security ties. What stood out distinctly but has escaped common scrutiny is the statement’s narrative on terrorism. While the language is anodyne on civilian nuclear cooperation, export controls, the Nuclear Suppliers Group and North Korea, it’s tough on the joint India–US fight against terrorism.

The statement calls out the perpetrators of Mumbai, Pathankot, Uri and other cross-border terrorist attacks on India. The specific mention of terror groups on Pakistan’s soil, including D-Company’s operations, is noteworthy. In a rare semantic convergence, the US seems on board with India in using the latter’s language in the statement. Two important linguistic shifts from the past for the US were the use of ‘territory under Pakistan’s control’ instead of Pakistan’s ‘territory’ to describe Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, and the term ‘terrorist proxies’ (for Pakistan) to describe terrorist groups in the region.

It’s important to understand the distinctiveness of the joint bilateral stand on terrorism. First, in a straightforward manner, the joint statement denounces the use of any terrorist proxies in the region and calls on Pakistan to ensure that its territory isn’t used to launch terrorist attacks. Although the criticism has a precedent in 2017, the language in the latest statement is markedly categorical and harsh. Second, it calls on Pakistan to bring perpetrators of several terrorist attacks on India to justice. There’s a notable mention of the Uri terror strike of 2016. This is new; Uri wasn’t addressed in the joint statement by President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2017. The staunch language is a rare show by the US of its understanding of India’s security vulnerabilities and its victimisation through cross-border terrorism emanating from Pakistan. India has long fought a lonely struggle against terrorism in South Asia. The US’s warning to Pakistan to curb terror networks is a step towards fully appreciating India’s longstanding grievances.

The Trump administration has taken several steps to push Islamabad to halt support for militant groups. In January 2018, the administration announced an across-the-board freeze of nearly all security aid to Pakistan, potentially affecting as much as $1.3 billion in annual aid. Recently, the US government announced its final decision to cancel $300 million in aid to Pakistan for not doing enough to root out militants. In an effort to coerce Pakistan to halt its support for militant groups, the Financial Action Task Force placed Pakistan on its ‘grey list’. These developments indicate that the US is willing to follow through on its zero-tolerance policy towards terrorism, even if that means using coercive diplomatic and economic tools to get Pakistan to stop financing and enabling terrorist groups.

The September joint statement portrays a comprehensive regional picture of terror-related threats in South Asia, viewing Afghanistan and India as equally vulnerable to resident threats and those emerging from Pakistan. Emphasising its regional approach to counterterrorism, the US State Department’s Country reports on terrorism 2017 categorically notes that Pakistan has failed to act on militants targeting India and Afghanistan. The inclusion of al-Qaeda since 2014 and ISIS since 2016 on the India–US counterterrorism agenda signals a sustained willingness for regionally exhaustive and far-reaching approaches to fighting terrorism. As Washington’s expectations for an expanded regional role by India grow, joint counterterrorism efforts by the two countries in Afghanistan could emerge as a strong possibility—especially as other countries have stepped up in that direction.

India and the US have cooperated to prevent terrorist activities through bilateral and global platforms. Both are members of the 30-member Global Counter Terror Forum launched in 2011. In January 2018, Kenneth Juster, the US ambassador to India, underscored the launch of a first US–India Counter Terrorism Designations Dialogue to disrupt and dismantle terrorist camps both regionally and globally. By invoking UN resolution 2396 (on returning foreign terrorist fighters), both countries have gone beyond counterterrorism efforts constrained within South Asia. They’ve agreed to deepen cooperation in international forums such as the UN and the Financial Action Task Force to fight terrorism, and Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj has stated that counterterrorism cooperation has acquired a ‘new qualitative edge and purpose’. Reportedly, India and the US are also discussing the prospects of introducing another resolution at the UN to outlaw Jaish-e-Muhammad’s chief, Masood Azhar.

India–US cooperation on counterterrorism issues is not new. Since the mid-2000s, both countries have systematically taken several steps to strengthen their collaboration through intelligence sharing, information exchanges and operational cooperation. India has also benefited from the US’s provision of access to advanced counterterrorism technology and equipment.

The language in the 2+2 dialogue joint statement is qualitatively stronger than that in all the previous official documents between India and the US, and so provides an opportunity for Indian security planners to deepen bilateral cooperation. India should take advantage of this growing American recognition of the challenges that New Delhi faces in combating terrorism emanating from Pakistan and ensure that the perpetrators are brought to justice.

India still wary of the Quad amid its own China ‘reset’

India has recently been called out for being the weakest link in the revitalised Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, a framework for cooperation involving three other democracies in the Indo-Pacific—Australia, Japan and the US. One of the reasons that’s been offered for India’s perceived reticence on the Quad is its ‘reset’ of relations with China after the tense military standoff between the two nations last year at the India–Bhutan–China border junction in Doklam.

Given this, it’s worth asking whether the Wuhan summit between Xi Jinping and Narendra Modi, which formalised the ‘reset’ in April, was really a game-changer for India in the Indo-Pacific. The answer is ‘no’. The conciliatory change in New Delhi’s attitude to Beijing that started in February is nothing but tactical manoeuvring. India wants to maintain its strategic autonomy by hedging its bets on multiple partners.

It’s important to remember that the Modi government is counting down to the 2019 general elections and foreign policy is traditionally a non-issue at the ballots. New Delhi’s offer of an olive branch to Beijing in the form of the reset is essentially an attempt to buy temporary peace to avoid another Doklam-like confrontation. That theory is further supported by India’s denial of US claims that China has continued its activity on the Doklam plateau. The Modi government has also failed to put the proceedings of Wuhan on record, as is common practice.

China and India must overcome some other hurdles for any reset to be worth its name. The two nuclear-armed states share a long-running boundary dispute. Boundary transgressions by PLA troops are a routine feature, with regular skirmishes along the disputed ‘Line of Actual Control’. China’s all-weather friendship with Pakistan is another source of friction with India. New Delhi remains concerned about Beijing’s increasing encroachment on its strategic space, especially in the subcontinent and the Indian Ocean region, and is hiking foreign aid in response. China continues to make it difficult for India to join the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group and gain a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.

India has also deepened bilateral and trilateral defence and economic cooperation with the Quad nations in the past few months. The announcement of Australia’s exclusion from the Malabar naval exercises on the eve of the Wuhan summit appeared to be meant to please Beijing. But New Delhi has been consistent in its position on Australia’s participation in Malabar, denying it participation or observer status for many years, in keeping with its traditional emphasis on preserving its strategic autonomy. Maintaining the status quo on Malabar, given the attempt at a reset with China, seems logical from India’s point of view, even though some may have found it disappointing.

On the other hand, India’s bilateral naval drills with Australia, AUSINDEX, and its participation in Pitch Black 2018, the multi-nation air-defence exercise held in Darwin, are indications of New Delhi’s openness to deepening military ties with Canberra. India has continued its robust engagement in ‘2+2’ defence and foreign ministerial dialogues and trilateral security meetings with Japan and the US. India is reportedly close to signing a military communications agreement with the US, after years of negotiations, which would increase interoperability between the armed forces of the two countries. And New Delhi and Tokyo have agreed to conduct their first joint army exercises on counterterrorism later this year and are on the verge of signing a major logistics exchange and support agreement.

India has entered into bilateral and trilateral infrastructure development partnerships with the US and Japan in the form of the Asia–Africa Growth Corridor and the trilateral working group on infrastructure. It has also been steadfast in its opposition to China’s Belt and Road Initiative since last year, citing Beijing’s violation of territorial sovereignty norms and creation of unsustainable debt traps. Even though there were rumours of New Delhi softening its stance on the BRI earlier this year, in the context of the China reset, the Indian government has since reaffirmed its objection to the initiative. However, India’s decision not to get involved in the US–Japan–Australia infrastructure trilateral may be attributed to its failure to unlink the concept of the Quad from its anti-China connotation.

The first meeting of the rejuvenated Quad took place in Manila in November 2017, shortly after India emerged from the Doklam crisis. Since then, New Delhi has embarked on its China ‘reset’ to avoid another confrontation and returned to the holy grail of India’s foreign policy, maintaining strategic autonomy. India has also sought to engage with Russia, France and ASEAN, both to further its interests in the region and avoid confrontation in the run-up to an election.

It’s not clear yet whether India will end up embracing or rejecting the Quad. New Delhi seems unwilling so far to sign up to an arrangement with a larger agenda than a consultative forum. India’s emphasis on multi-alignment, outlined in Modi’s speech at the Shangri-la Dialogue, means that it will shun any initiative that has a pronounced anti-China rhetoric and tenor. At the same time, New Delhi will never cosy up to China because of the unresolved structural issues.

But that doesn’t mean that India has rejected the concept of the Indo-Pacific. India’s behaviour is consistent with its inclusive vision of the Indo-Pacific, in which it exercises strategic autonomy by emphasising a ‘non-bloc’ vision of security cooperation. The Quad’s future and India’s participation in it will depend on building an agenda that is compatible with New Delhi’s multipolar and non-bloc approach to the Indo-Pacific.

Imran Khan and the future of India–Pakistan relations

Imran Khan, cricketer turned politician, will take the oath of office as prime minister of Pakistan on 18 August. Strategic analysts in South Asia and elsewhere have been busy speculating about what this means for the future of India–Pakistan relations, around which much of the international politics of the region revolves. Journalists, scholars and former diplomats, especially in India, have carefully dissected Imran’s statements about the future of India–Pakistan relations and his views on Kashmir and terrorism to discern if a change in Pakistan’s policy towards India is in the offing.

Much of this is a wasted exercise because it’s based on the false assumption that the prime minister determines Pakistan’s security and foreign policy, including its policy on India. Historical evidence demonstrates that these domains are the exclusive preserve of the military high command.

When the army chief, General Pervez Musharraf, launched the incursions into Indian Kashmir that led to the Kargil war in 1999, the prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, was, by his own admission, kept completely in the dark. In fact, Sharif contended that he knew nothing of the operation and only learned of it from India’s prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee.

It’s interesting to note that Pakistan’s army brass approved the infiltration into Indian territory less than five weeks before the historic Lahore Declaration of 21 February 1999, signed by Sharif and Vajpayee during the latter’s goodwill visit to Pakistan. In some ways, that accord marked the highest point in the process of an emerging détente between the two countries in the wake of the nuclear tests both had conducted in 1998.

In hindsight, it’s obvious that the military leadership, aware of Vajpayee’s impending visit, wanted to derail the process. The civilian leadership was informed only in May 1999 when the Indians had detected the incursion and had begun to take retaliatory measures. In a related development, Sharif was removed from office in a coup staged by Musharraf in October 1999.

Hostility towards India is ingrained in the Pakistani military top brass and a part of the army’s institutional memory. No civilian leader with the best of intentions can change this outlook. At best, he or she may try to work around it without ruffling too many feathers in the General Headquarters. A main reason for the military’s hostility towards Sharif was that, in his latest term in office, he once again attempted to deviate from the military’s prescriptions on security issues.

What the military resented most was Sharif’s relatively soft line on India, his bonhomie with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and his repeated calls for the Pakistani extremists involved in the terrorist attack on Mumbai in November 2008 to be brought to justice by the Pakistani courts. In particular, his comment in May 2018—‘Militant organisations are active [in Pakistan]. Call them non-state actors, should we allow them to cross the border and kill 150 people in Mumbai?’—greatly irked the military.

We should have no illusions that Imran Khan will be in a position to change course on India–Pakistan relations unless the generals approve. He was the military’s chosen candidate for the job of prime minister, as events leading up to the elections made evident. Sharif and several other leaders of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) were either disqualified or incarcerated to prevent them from participating in the elections. Others were coerced to join Khan’s party.

Opposition stalwarts lost seats in their strongholds, casting doubt on the fairness of the elections. Above all, the slow pace with which election results were declared indicated that the Election Commission had to wait for the ‘deep state’ to approve the results before announcing them.

Khan, former playboy turned born-again Muslim, is the military’s man par excellence. However, to ensure his compliance with the GHQ’s wishes, the military brass made sure that his party won’t receive a clear majority of seats in the new parliament. He is, therefore, dependent upon independents and smaller parties, which are very amenable to the military’s pressure, to form a governing coalition. The GHQ can always pull the plug on him by ordering these elements to withdraw support if he veers from the course set for him on relations with India.

All this doesn’t leave much hope that the central axis of South Asian international politics will undergo a fundamental, or even marginal, transformation under Pakistan’s new leader. The high degree of jingoism about and hostility towards Pakistan prevalent in Indian ruling circles and the media under the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party government feeds the Pakistani establishment’s antagonism towards its larger neighbour.

Khan, dependent as he is on the military’s support to stay in office, is in no position to make a dent in this cycle of hostility and resentment.

Between the US and Iran: the Indian dilemma

While US President Donald Trump has been busy bending over backwards to placate the authoritarian rulers of Russia and North Korea, his visceral animosity against the Iranian regime remains undiminished. His threat to impose sanctions on third countries that do business with Iran, whether they’re in Europe or Asia, jeopardises America’s relations with important countries around the world.

As a part of this policy, US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley recently warned New Delhi that unless it drastically reduced its energy imports from Iran by 4 November it would be subject to American sanctions. Earlier, India had made it clear that it’s willing to abide by sanctions imposed by the UN, but won’t implement any imposed by a single country. The US then abruptly cancelled the high-level 2+2 meeting of the two countries’ defence and foreign ministers that was scheduled to be held in Washington in early July.

India can’t afford to risk antagonising the United States beyond a certain point. The US is the leading destination for Indian exports (15.6% of Indian exports in 2017 went to the US). And New Delhi’s security relationship with Washington has grown significantly during the past decade, mainly as a function of China’s rise, which both the US and India find threatening to different degrees.

In addition to civil nuclear cooperation with India, the US has offered to sell it unarmed MQ-9B Guardian naval surveillance drones, aircraft carrier technologies, and F/A-18 and F-16 fighter aircraft to bolster its defence capabilities and level the playing field with China. So, increasing its security dependence on the US has forced India into a quandary in its relations with Iran.

India’s relations with Iran have been nurtured with care by New Delhi for several decades. Even during the Shah’s reign when Iran and Pakistan—both then members of the Central Treaty Organization—were close allies, India made every attempt not to tread on Iranian toes. When the Shah expressed apprehension after India’s liberation of Bangladesh in 1971 that it might try to dismember the rump Pakistan, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi sent a high-level personal emissary to Tehran to set his fears at rest. After the Iranian revolution, New Delhi quickly overcame its reservations about the Islamic orientation of the new regime and developed mutually beneficial relations with Tehran.

India’s need for oil and gas imports from Iran, its third largest supplier of oil, provides only a partial explanation for New Delhi’s desire to preserve good relations. Iran’s geostrategic location as a major land power contiguous to Pakistan and Afghanistan makes the country very important for India. It’s in India’s interests to cultivate Iran so that, in times of crisis with Pakistan, Islamabad can’t draw on support from Tehran that could provide it with defence in depth. And, as the gateway to Afghanistan and Central Asia, Iran is commercially and strategically important to India.

India is cut off from direct access to these countries because of its uneasy relationship with Pakistan. New Delhi is interested in encouraging a friendly government in Afghanistan to prevent Pakistan from using it as a rear base in times of conflict with India. It doesn’t want a repetition of the 1990s when the Pakistan-supported Taliban were in power in Kabul. Both India and Iran, for different reasons, provided aid to the Northern Alliance in its fight against the Taliban and continue to have a major interest in not allowing the Taliban to return to power in Afghanistan.

Chahbahar port in southeastern Iran provides India with an ideal point of entry and will eventually be an excellent transit point for Indian goods bound for other parts of Iran and for Afghanistan and the countries of Central Asia. New Delhi has committed major resources to building the port and will operate it once a final deal is concluded with Iran.

The American threat to sanction India if it continues to develop relations with Iran therefore comes at a most inopportune time for New Delhi. It has drastically narrowed the diplomatic space for New Delhi. Whether India caves in or decides to defy US pressure is anybody’s guess. No matter what the decision, it will be a very painful one for New Delhi.

However, forcing India into making such a choice could also boomerang on the United States. If India decides to defy the US on Iran, it could detract immeasurably from America’s credibility as the lone superpower—and set an example for other countries to follow.