Ambassador Bhadrakumar about Indian diplomacy but with many references to China:
Lessons from Modi’s Asia-Pacific odyssey
The Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Australia accounted for one full half of his three-nation tour spread over a ten-day period abroad. Was it worthwhile? The spin doctors have put out the story that Modi got the black money issue into the G20 agenda — as if the nineteen other world statesmen ate out of the hands of our prime minister.
But in real terms, though, the only tangible result out of Modi’s 5-day visit to Australia has been the massive $16.5 billion project that the Adani group proposes to undertake in that country.
But then, it is also not something to write home about when a very dynamic business group leaves the Indian shores to make such a big investment splash abroad — and that too, focused on building infrastructure in a developed country such as Australia.
It implies a tragic failure on the part of our government to convince the Adani Group that it is in the enlightened national interests if only such a big investment could be made in the coal sector in India itself. It seems the Adani Group doesn’t take seriously the government’s claim that India will be able to stop importing thermal coal within the next three years. When the brightest among our industrialists lacks confidence in the business climate, it becomes bad publicity for Modi’s “Make in India” agenda. On the other hand, funnily, State Bank of India is apparently funding the Adani investment in Australia.
Indeed, Australia has every reason to feel excited about the bizarre way its ties with India are developing. Australia is a very focused country, which pays enormous attention to economic diplomacy, and a $16.5 billion foreign investment is no small matter even for such a rich country with a per capital income close to $70000. (India’s per capital income, by the way, is $1500.)
Without doubt, Australia is making good money out of India. The trade ($15 billion) is heavily in Australia’s favor, with Indian exports almost non-existent at $3 billion. Then there are the “invisible” earnings in the education sector — and the IPL, of course.
Clearly, it is about time we begin to ask what is it that Australia can do for India’s development agenda? Hopefully, Modi framed that question in no uncertain terms — and got some convincing answer from his counterpart Tony Abbott.
The media reports suggest a disappointing outcome — the two countries agreed on an “early closure” on the civil nuclear agreement, a reconstitution of the CEO forum and to “speed up negotiations” on the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement. (here).
Considering that India and Australia had set a target of $50 billion for bilateral trade by next year and are still struggling at around $15 billion, there is a credibility gap between promises and performance.
Cricket, hockey, yoga, Swami Vivekananda, Gandhiji, Festival of India — that’s all very well but they only create an ambience for a relationship between two countries as dissimilar as India and Australia. What about the content of the relationship?
From the Indian viewpoint, sadly, it is turning out to be a lot of hot air that keeps our think tankers busy weaving castles in the air over the ‘Indo-Pacific’. Put differently, a novel without a plot?
Talking of think tankers, the PM did well by ignoring them and staying away wisely from the tripartite meeting of the leaders of the US, Japan and Australia held on the sidelines of the G20 summit to discuss the security and defence cooperation within the ambit of the US’ ‘pivot’ to Asia.
Nor did Modi do any further sales pitch on the South China Sea disputes after the faux pas in Naypiytaw, Myanmar, where he was needlessly verbose.
The good thing is that no matter the advice rendered by Modi’s foreign-policy advisers (whoever they are), he is undoubtedly on a learning curve himself. Beijing has also given Modi a free rope to say as much as he likes on the South China Sea so that he figures out whether it makes sense.
At the end of the day, the chair’s statement at the East Asia Summit failed to make any reference to South China Sea. The summit’s statement itself made only an anodyne reference. So indeed, the G20 communique.
Modi would have taken careful note that India’s best friend (currently) in the South China Sea, Vietnam, chose to play a “constructive role” at the EAS, which is to say Hanoi decided not to take its disputes and differences with China to the multilateral meet but instead seek bilateral solutions.
Interestingly, Vietnam was not alone in such a chastened mood. The Philippines too has piped down. Most certainly Modi would have got a sense of how the highly innovative Chinese diplomatic strategy is working to bring the territorial disputes onto the bilateral track. This of course should give food for thought to Delhi — alongside the fact that the Chinese leaders held no formal ‘bilateral’ with Modi in Myanmar or in Australia.
The Australia tour would have been an excellent tutorial for Modi on the complexities of the Asia-Pacific power dynamic. The fact that his own visit to Australia was overshadowed by the Chinese President Xi Jinping’s would have given a sense of proportions.
The point is, Australia-China trade amounts to $150 billion, and it is heavily in Australia’s favor. And China is the destination for one-third of all Australian exports of goods and services worldwide. China is also surging as an investor in Australia.
Indeed, Australia is thrilled that the FTA with China has been concluded, finally. The Australians are a plain-speaking lot and their leading newspaper The Australian ran a screaming headline, Xi Jinping came bearing gifts, Barack Obama just gave us griefs, which testifies to the value they attach to money and their ties with China as the driver of growth for their economy.
The paper’s well-known foreign affairs editor Greg Sheridan wrote: “Xi Jinping’s accomplished, well-considered speech to parliament yesterday contained no… implicit criticism of Australia… Xi was charming, respectful and helpful to all Australians… He completed the free-trade agreement, which is a big win for both countries. But more generally his speech was one of reassurance and reasonable ambition… More than that, the substance of his message was one of reassurance more generally to the Asia-Pacific region… Given how robustly the Abbott government has backed Japan’s strategic re-emergence… many analysts… had expected some overt display of Chinese displeasure. But the Chinese seem to value their relationship with the Abbott government, certainly to the extent that they would not embarrass their host by emphasizing disagreements.”
The contrast couldn’t be sharper between the great Indian goof-up in the handling of Xi’s visit in September and the sophistication of the Australian diplomacy. Why is this happening? The root cause is that India has been misreading the tea leaves, thanks to the notions implanted by the American pundits in our discourses.
Delhi cannot afford to overlook that the power dynamic in the Asia-Pacific is on the cusp of phenomenal changes. The APEC underscored that China wants a bigger role in Asia-Pacific and it cannot be stopped from claiming it. This past week underscored that the leitmotif of regional politics is on economics and China intends to keep it that way.
The US is left with no choice but to tailor its ‘pivot’ strategy accordingly. The shift in the locus of American thinking in the direction of trade deals is only going to become more pronounced in the coming period.
China-Australia FTA is the latest signal that the ground beneath India’s Look East policy is phenomenally shifting. Australia was being fancied as pivotal to India’s strategies toward China. In sum, there is a lot of catching up to do unless India’s “Act East” altogether becomes a sideshow that is confined to a moth-eaten corner of the Asia-Pacific.
Truly, a spectre of irrelevance haunts India. Unless India can identify with the massive currents of economic integration sweeping the Asia-Pacific and the region’s prioritization of development as the most important template of geopolitics today, it will get left behind. Which makes a commentary in Global Times, the Chinese communist party tabloid, titled It’s crunch time for India indeed very timely.
But there is also a deeper philosophical question involved here. Indonesia’s exciting new president Joko Widodo framed it very nicely while taking stock of the packed week and the summits of APEC, ASEAN, EAS, G20 — when he said as he headed home from Brisbane on Monday, “For me ‘free and active’ is making friends with countries that can provide us with benefits. What’s the point of making friends if we are always on the losing end? What’s the benefit of making friends if it is a aimed merely at image-building and if it risks our national interests?”
Jokowi was gently marking distance from his flamboyant predecessor Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono obsessed with grandstanding in diplomacy. Modi too will do well to craft, as Jokowi put it, a “free and active” Asia-Pacific policy that brings quantifiable “benefits” for India.
Countries nowadays go to extraordinary lengths to press their case and no issue is too small for them from the perspective of national interests — as Modi would have discovered when German Chancellor Angela Merkel quizzed him closely on the exclusion of German language from the Indian school curriculum.
Posted in Diplomacy, Politics.
By M K Bhadrakumar – November 18, 2014
