India, US must bridge the gulf on Indo-Pacific

With President Xi Jinping telling the 20th Chinese Communist Party Congress that China will continue to practice a more assertive foreign policy, it is good that the latest US National Security Strategy (NSS, October 12) hails India as a major defence partner.

Washington, like New Delhi, wants to maintain the rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific, where China is the common threat to India’s territorial integrity, and the US’ only competitor. The NSS perceives China having the “the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to do it.” The strategy paper warns that Beijing has ambitions to enhance its clout in the Indo-Pacific and to become the world’s leading power.

The shared aim of the US and India to preserve security in the Indo-Pacific does not hide the frequent tension between them at bilateral and international levels, especially when it comes to Russia and Pakistan. On the global plane, the NSS sees the US involved in a struggle between the world’s autocracies and democracies. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine threatens the free and open international system by recklessly flouting international law and the UN Charter.

India’s neutrality on the Russian assault on Ukraine is merely one piece of an emerging, intertwined, bilateral and international political jigsaw puzzle, partly because both China and India-friendly Russia oppose the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, of which India is a member. Additionally, both Beijing and Moscow have condemned the rules-based order, to which Quad subscribes, as a tool used by the US to help it to dominate the world.

Two more pieces of puzzle have been created — India’s decision to buy Russian oil and the US’ annoyance at India’s choice. The US has offered to replace Russian oil, which costs India $15-20 a barrel, while the US crude costs (at the time of writing this article) more than $86 a barrel. Currently, Russian oil accounts for 21 per cent of the country’s total oil purchase, against 2.2 per cent before the Ukraine war. Oil imports from the US have fallen from more than 9.2 per cent last year to 5.4 per cent now.

Both India and the US perceive China as the primary threat to their security. To strengthen the interoperability of their armed forces with the intent of containing China, the US and India held Yudh Abhyas — joint military drills (October 14-31) — in a high-altitude area less than 100 km from the Sino-Indian frontier. Beijing opposed the exercise as meddling by a third party in its border dispute with India. All Quad countries plan to carry out more military exercises before the end of the year.

Although the NSS does not mention Pakistan, the Biden administration, in Washington’s first major security assistance to Islamabad in four years, will allot $450 million to help Pakistan modernise its fleet of F-16 military aircraft to combat terrorism. This military largesse will be bestowed on Pakistan despite the fact that since the Cold War, Islamabad has used US arms against India rather than fight America’s enemies in the Middle East or extremists in South Asia.

Meanwhile, the US Ambassador to Pakistan, Donald Blome, outraged New Delhi when he visited the Pakistani-held part of Kashmir on October 5 and called it by its Pakistani name —“Azad Jammu and Kashmir” — instead of “Pakistan-administered Kashmir”, as the UN calls it.

Indeed, Pakistan represents a longstanding ‘down’ in the India-US relationship. For instance, India had assumed that the US would stay the course against the Afghan Taliban. So, in August 2021, Biden’s decision to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan and the consequential recapture of the country by the Pakistani-trained Taliban after two decades shocked India and increased its fears of extremism spreading across South Asia.

A month later, the subsequent formation of AUKUS, comprising old allies Australia, the UK and the US, to defend Pacific Asia also came as an unpleasant surprise to India. New Delhi views AUKUS as an alliance irrelevant to a non-aligned India, as distinct from Quad, a loose arrangement comprising India, the US, Japan and Australia. The US decision to help Australia develop a nuclear submarine dismayed India, not least because Washington had rejected New Delhi’s request for one.

AUKUS prioritises the US’contest with China over the control of international ocean lanes — and which strategic partner would help defend them. Evidently, Washington wants to rely on a nuclear-propelled Australian underwater fleet to secure the Indo-Pacific.

India is the only Quad country to have a land dispute with China; the US favours a bilateral solution to their conflict. Currently, the US’ attention is focused on defending Taiwan against an aggressive China.

More generally, the question arises whether the Indo-Pacific will remain the US’ top priority as Biden increases commitments to Europe. There are more than 1,00,000 US troops in Europe today, compared to around 70,000 around the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February.

At another level, the NSS refers to India as the world’s largest democracy. But domestic human rights issues have also become a bone of contention between the US and India. For instance, last April, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken alleged a rise in human rights abuses in India. New Delhi riposted that India was concerned about the state of human rights in the US. But tit-for-tat diplomacy, while common, is not the hallmark of a good relationship.

India’s simultaneous efforts to cultivate good relations with the US and Russia highlight conceptual differences between New Delhi and Washington on the Indo-Pacific and on how best to contain China in Asia, and to counter Russia’s transgression of international law in Ukraine. India and the US remain friendly partners, but separated by some distance. Narrowing that gap and strengthening their ties will enhance the Indo-Pacific security and serve the interests of both countries.