Facts on the ground compel the US to recognize that India plays a significant role in any security strategy involving the Indo-Pacific.
Washington, DC
India and the United States often have different strategic goals governed by asymmetries in their economies, their military strengths, and their geographic locations. These asymmetries ensure significant differences in their foreign policies and guarantee that India will not form a military alliance with the US or any other power.
It is also not likely to join any security action that does not impact directly on Indian interests. These differences emerge in large part from the international scope of the US, while India is focused on South Asia and the larger Indo-Pacific region, especially the Indian Ocean part of it. Yet, there are areas of growing security cooperation shaped by common interests. The growing assertiveness of China over the past decade in regions bordering the Indian and Pacific Oceans has created a common Indian and US interest in free and open sea lanes that cross through these oceans. Two important signs of the kind of cooperation grounded in these shared interests is the recently signed partnership on Critical and Emerging Technology (iCET), and the mid-June 2023 visit of Prime Minister Modi to Washington DC, which includes an invitation for him to address the Congress. The growing ties with India are one of those issues that has bilateral political support within the US.
Facts on the ground compel the US to recognize that India plays a significant role in any security strategy involving the Indo-Pacific. Geographically, India is a peninsular country that juts down some 1,500 miles into the middle of the Indian Ocean and thus plays a necessary role in any strategy involving that region. It has with somewhat over 1.4 billion people, recently become the world’s most populous country—and a comparatively young one at that; economically, it is the fastest growing (at 6-7% on annual basis) of the world’s large economies with substantial allocations for infrastructure and is a major recipient of foreign investment; and it has a large competent military with a nuclear capability.
The security dimension of cooperation among the Indo-Pacific states builds on common economic advantages of stability brought about by recognized rules, especially regarding trade. Maritime trade is critical for the growing economies of the region, home to over half the world’s population. For example, some 90% of India’s international trade is by sea—and similar statistics apply to Japan, Indonesia, the Philippines, South Korea, Vietnam, and Taiwan. A US-led grouping (Shared Awareness and Deconfliction or SHADE) was set up in 2009 to coordinate a response initially to threats of piracy, but has expanded its focus to include terrorism, drug smuggling (Afghanistan has been the world’s largest source of heroin) and illegal fishing and human trafficking. Over the past two years, some billion dollars of drugs was captured by the Combined Task Force, a naval monitoring grouping set up by thirty-four participating countries to keep key shipping lanes of the Indian Ocean free of threats to legitimate trade. This is a challenge as surrounding the oceans are areas of political tension and with those clandestine shipments of arms to the competing forces. The two oceans also are linked by key sea lanes of communication that need to be kept open, especially to enable the flow of oil from the Middle East to markets in the Indo-Pacific region. The most populous states in the region (India, China, Japan and South Korea) are all significant importers of energy.
The 2019 “Indo-Pacific Strategy Report”, issued during the presidency of Donald Trump, starts out with the assertion that the region is the “priority theater” for US global security concerns. That earlier US “priority” statement of course is now shared by the implications of the Russian 24 February 2022 incursion into Ukraine. One of the important implications of this are the lessons China takes on its Taiwan policy from Russia’s performance. That 2019 US document goes on at some length to identify China as a threat to a “stable rule-based order” in the Indo-Pacific region and calls for cooperative efforts with regional states and with formal multilateral groups—such as ASEAN—and informal ones such as the then recently revived Quadrilateral group (referred to as the Quad) composed of the US, Australia Japan and India, to meet that challenge. The Trump administration’s interest in the region is matched by the administration of President Joe Biden, which has also adopted its commitment to constraining the Chinese challenges. An indication of this commitment is the Australia-UK-US security pact (AUKUS) signed in 2021, unique among multilateral organizations in that it alone among them is focused exclusively on modernizing and enhancing the interoperability of the military capabilities of the participating countries. Among the first issues addressed by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken when he assumed office was to make the Quad more useful on important economic and security issues.
On the Sino-US competition for influence, there is a problem that the US has yet to offer regional states concrete incentives for closer economic cooperation. For starters, the US has yet to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, an updated version of the Trans-Pacific Partnership that Trump refused to join. The US has also yet to provide firm commitments to grant access to US markets.
It has not developed an aid program that is as comprehensive as that offered by China’s Belt and Road Initiative—and only the US is able to put together such a broad-based development scheme. China’s pandemic-related lockdown has restrained its assistance programs over the past few years, but it is likely to resume them now that lockdowns have largely been lifted. While the US (and to a lesser extent France and the UK) has a robust military presence in the Indo-Pacific region, there is nothing like the NATO cooperative military relationship among states in Europe. Several Asian states, like India, are reluctant to undermine their strategic maneuverability by participating in a close military relationship with any outside power, and the US has been prepared for some time to accept that situation, recognizing that strengthening them economically and militarily puts them in a better position to counter threats, initially from the Soviet Union and now from China. The Chinese have moreover nudged many of them closer to the US by its aggressive behaviour.
There is a long list of examples, including the 2017 Chinese incursion into Bhutan, followed by its 2020 incursion into the Ladakh area of Indian Kashmir; Chinese claim to the South China Sea overlaps with the maritime Economic Zones of Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines; Chinese involvement in Australian politics has soured that bilateral relationship; Chinese claims to the Japanese held Senkaku (Daiyu) islands has created tensions between the two states; and of course the Chinese air and sea presences around Taiwan is a threat to US and Japanese interests. These various actions have had their consequences. Among them is an enhanced commitment to cooperative economic and security programs by the Quad member states. The Philippines have signed off on an agreement permitting the US to resume the use of military bases; then there is the specifically military AUKUS involving Australia, the US, and the UK; and there is in addition increased Taiwanese purchases of military equipment from the US and other sources.
Key to the success of these measures is the US assuming a leadership role—and that seems likely as the concern about addressing Chinese assertiveness has strong bipartisan support. The new House of Representatives as one of its first acts (by a bipartisan vote of 365 to 65) created a Select House Subcommittee to address threats from China. At the same time, the US, at least since the early 1960s, has recognized that India is almost certainly not prepared to join a security agreement directed against China (or Russia). At the same time, a stronger and more prosperous India is one of the most effective constraints on Chinese hegemony.