https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zkyeGuSWmf5Ifjtzqd7pKUPAoJ_dQHO4/view
By. Dr. Richard L. Benkin
This issue of FPRC journal involves five online questions about India and strategic issues in 2024. There are several interviewees. My interview is on pages 24-34:
.Before we get into the specific questions, I would like to establish a few general principles that drive the change that generates this discussion and is a major basis for my specific answers. The first is internal to India; the second is not.
In the aftermath of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, my country dispatched then Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice to India and Pakistan urging the parties to “reduce tensions” over the horrific attack and Pakistan’s involvement. Despite the fact that I tended to support President George W. Bush and still believe that Secretary Rice (once a student of the late Ved Nanda) is one of our brightest foreign policy minds; I was angry at their reaction and let some people know about it. How would we feel, I asked, if in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks, New Delhi (or for that matter London or Jerusalem) sent officials urging us to reduce tensions; and of course, no one said they would have considered it a friendly gesture. The most common reaction I got was “What would you like us to do?” And my consistent answer was, “We need to stop treating India like a pet.” Because ever since India’s birth as a modern nation-state, that is how the rest of the developed world (both east and west) looked at it. Nor is it a simple legacy of colonialism. Like India, the United States (US) and Israel drove off British overseers, but did not get that same treatment. Germany was humbled and ripped apart less than 80 years ago, but today is recognized as the strongest economy in Europe and a force to be reckoned with. You might respond that Germany, the United States for the most part, and Israel in 1948 but not so much today, are white, western nations; and I agree that racial presumptions generate the sort of paternalism that India has faced. But that goes only so far.
I said that I had hoped India would have warned Secretary Rice to clear out of the area or risk getting hit by a missile, though in more colorful language; however, Indian governments before this one never even hinted at any like reaction. Rather, India remained passive and took no action, despite international consensus that it would be justified destroying terrorist camps with surgical strikes in Pakistani controlled territory across the line of control. Even in succeeding years, India caved when Pakistan insisted on several occasions that it would talk with India only if its role in 26/11 was not raised. Even when 26/11 was supposed to be the main topic of conversation, the then UPA government agreed to Pakistan’s demands. Moreover, I recall that during those years, it seemed to me that India’s referent was Western Europe and its brand of soft socialism, rather than its own millennia-old civilization and values. But that has changed, which is what makes this largely an internal factor. And it changed in 2014 with the ascension of Narendra Modi as India’s Prime Minister. Whether one favors Modi and his policies or not, no one can deny that under his stewardship, India has outgrown its old role. I doubt that today, any world leaders would even think of approaching India as anything but a powerful nation and people who demand and merit respect.
The external factor is the ever-shifting sands of the geopolitical landscape. India was born at the start of the Cold War and led a consortium of nations in forming the Non-Aligned Movement. While few in the West saw it as truly non-aligned (its principals were all openly communist or socialist), it provided a space where countries could—with significant limitations—try and craft a way forward without taking sides in the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union (USSR). Today, the USSR is long gone. While the United States remains the world’s dominant power, other power centers have emerged to compete with it economically (e.g. the European Union) and militarily (e.g. China). Today, China is encroaching on Indian territory, claiming parts of it as its own, and trying to stave off India’s rise as a legitimate competitor for the title of Asia’s dominant power. For India as a global power, non-alignment is no longer an option. In fact, India has become a leader in an international coalition for democracy and individual rights against an international coalition for authoritarianism and state managed societies. This grand conflict is arguably the defining conflict shaping today’s international relations for every major country. As such, even while India can and does pursue its own interests, regardless of whether or not they align with those of others in that democratic coalition; it has pulled closer to the United States in its competition with China.
“Strategic autonomy” is defined as a nation’s ability to further its national interests and craft its foreign policy strategy and decisions without being overly dependent on any foreign power or, we might add, foreign coalition.
It was a concept favored (but not practiced) by previous Indian governments and not used by Modi until his 2018 speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue and his second term as Prime Minister. Nevertheless, under Modi, India seems to have achieved a significant measure of strategic autonomy, and that informs responses to all of the questions in this Foreign Policy Research Center dialogue. The war in Ukraine is a perfect example. There is little doubt that the United States would like India to condemn the Russian invasion; and there is little doubt that Russia would like India to support its invasion. Neither has happened, while India pursues a nuanced course between its two friends. Occasionally (and infrequently) some US leader or group will be critical of India—just as I hear anti-US criticism in India. That happens in free societies. But—and here is the key—the US government has allowed it to become an issue in US relations with India, nor has it tried to pressure India into a different course. Neither has Russia pressured India in the opposite direction. Why? Because India will pursue its interests no less so than the United States or Russia, and we recognize that. Strategic autonomy!
My answers to all these questions also rooted in the conclusion that democracies will in the end be victorious over their authoritarian adversaries, and it is a conclusion that I arrive at, even apart from my democratic preference and belief that freedom eventually wins over subjugation because people choose it. That conclusion is based firmly in the inescapable nature of demographic realities, in which direction populations are moving, in existing economic strength, and in the knowledge that market economies are always more successful for people than state managed ones. Along these dimensions, it is clear that China and Russia are declining while the United States and India are continuing to rise. My responses to the questions here are based on this conclusion.
In other words, even beyond specific matters, things internal and external are not what they were in 1947 when India was born, 1961 when it formed the non-aligned movement, 1991 when the Soviet Union fell, or 2013 prior to Modi becoming Prime Minister. Any notions that people carry over from those times have to be cast aside in favor of today’s realities.
1. India’s External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar says: “Our status in the world has increased. No major issue is decided without consultation with India. We have changed and the world's perception of us has changed.” Do you agree?
I absolutely agree, and the foregoing discussion provides the basis for my agreement. One of the most important elements of Narendra Modi’s administration has been to get the rest of the world to recognize India as the major power it is. It checks all the boxes for a superpower: economic powere and continued growth; regional dominance; a strong military plus nuclear weapons. It also is the largest nation in the world by population and a key obstacle to Chinese dominance in Asia and beyond.
I have called Prime Minister Narendra Modi “a transformational figure,” and have written favorably about him here already. Yes, I admire Prime Minister Modi, generally agree with his policies, and like his geopolitical alignment with the United States and Israel. But that is not why he is a transformational figure. Even the impact he has had on radically changing political calculations inside India is not the reason, because political alignments are never permanent in democratic societies. It is only reasonable to expect that one day, the Indian people will drive new political dynamics, whatever they might be. As a foreigner who knows India well, I am confident that the seismic shift in India’s international profile and role, which Narendra Modi has helped author, is transformational. Minister Jaishankar’s comment that “no major issue is decided without consultation with India” certainly will be valid at least through the end of this century, barring unforeseen catastrophes or events. And even if things re-align in a different way after that, India’s role and the perception of it will never be what it was before this transformational change. As we Americans say, you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube.”
2. “As a rising India and a consolidating US meet to create a new normal in bilateral ties, the past will no longer tarnish the future.” (Gautam Chikermane –ORF). Do you agree?
I emphatically agree. There are people in both countries, Americans and Indians both, who cling to past perceptions. Yet, despite any sort of virtue signaling that democratic political leaders feel obliged to engage in to mollify even small constituent groups; they tend to be focused on the practical realities of how to support their nations and secure the best life circumstances possible for their citizens. And those decisions are made based on current realities and geopolitical dynamics. Americans embraced Germany and Japan as key allies not more than a decade after they were implacable enemies. Look, too, at the warm relations between Washington and Hanoi, which led the fight against the United States in Vietnam.
Today, it would be difficult to find Americans whose perceptions of India derive from the latter’s historical relationship with Russia and its closeness with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Americans in general have very warm feelings toward India. At the conclusion of the September 28, 2014, speech by new Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New York’s Madison Square Garden, a highly influential and knowledgeable US lawmaker in attendance reached out to me because I knew Modi. He was excited about the new Prime Minister and the prospect of resetting US-India relations; other lawmakers happily anticipated warming relations with India. In another sign of how the American public really feel about India and Modi in October 2023, the junior Senator from the State of Wisconsin introduced a resolution that condemned India for what it alleged was India’s “persecution of…religious minorities and human rights defenders.” The resolution, which if passed only expresses a Senate opinion and does not have the force of law, has failed to gain a single co-sponsor among the other 99 Senators. Moreover, a secondary goal of the resolution’s supporters is to force public hearings on the matter in the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, to which the resolution was referred. Yet, the Senators on the committee have no appetite for this. The bill will languish there until the Senate adjourns for good later this year, when the resolution will die. This would not have happened if the Senators did not see a groundswell of popular support for the nation and people of India and a general rejection of the allegations that the failed resolution repeats.
Another factor that is significant in binding the two countries is the fact that with each passing year, more and more Americans are of Indian descent or origin. Around the time that the modern state of India was born, the Indian-American population was perhaps as low as 1,500. Like other groups, Indians faced restrictive immigration laws and from some corners hostility. But things have changed dramatically since then, for Indian and non-Indian-Americans. When the United States government conducted its decennial census in 1990, there already were 815,477 people of Indian descent in the United States. By 2000, that number more than doubled to 1,678,675 or 0.6 percent of the entire population. By the next census in 2010, it had risen by about 70 percent to 2,843,391, or just under a tenth of the country. The most recent census (2020) shows Indian-Americans to be the most populous “Asian Alone population group,” for the first time surpassing Chinese Americans, numbering 4,460,000, or about 1.3 percent of the total population. While these numbers do not separate India Americans by religion, we can talk about the growing number of US Hindus, since most people associate Hinduism with India in one way or another. In 2017, the Pew Research Forum on Religion and Public Life estimated that there were about 1.7 million Hindus in the United States, making them the world’s seventh largest Hindu population. Since then, immigration from India, resettlement of persecuted Hindus from Bhutan, Afghanistan, and other South Asian countries in particular has fueled a steady increase in the US Hindu population. As a result, Pew projects that by mid-century, the United States will have the world’s fifth largest Hindu population, more than Sri Lanka and less than only India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. And as with other immigrant populations to the United States for both Indians generally and Hindus, each succeeding generation is more and more assimilated; that is, becoming Americans without forgetting their heritage or faith. (My own experience with the Indian-American and Jewish communities in schools and otherwise confirms this.) Today, a growing number of our friends and neighbors come from India and are becoming ever more important in the United States society and economy. Attitudes have changed, and most Americans see their Indian-American allies as important partners in building an even stronger United States.
More than just their numbers, Indian-Americans are the most successful national ethnic group in the United States. According to the US Census, Indian-Americans had the highest median annual household income of any national group, $151,141; well more than twice the national figure of $69,717. Indian Americans are also the CEOs of far more major US corporations than their population would suggest. Depending on the criteria used by different ranking systems, the number is somewhere between 30 and 50, and includes such tech giants as Microsoft and IBM, and Twitter prior to its purchase by Elan Musk. The influence of Indian-Americans extends beyond the tech industry, which most Americans associate with Indian-Americans due to their ground breaking dominance in the field. They also are the heads of the grocery and food giant Albertsons, the ubiquitous Starbuck’s, and previously, the financial company, Mastercard; just to name a few. In effect, this means that some of the most impactful decisions for Americans are made by their fellow citizens who either immigrated to the US from India or whose parents did.
The rise of many Indian-Americans in American government and politics also indicates how different today is from that past to which Gautam Chikermane’s quote refers. Before 2013, there was not a single Indian-American in the 435 member US House of Representatives (a body much like India’s Lok Sabha or the UK’s House of Commons). As of the last election, there were five, which roughly equals the proportion of Indian-Americans in the total population. This year, however, has seen a veritable explosion of Indian-American candidates, with the five incumbent House members all running for re-election and expected to win handily. Eleven other Indian-American from both major parties also are running for Congress. Though about half of them have little or no chance of prevailing, the 2024 election could see a US House with Indian-Americans Members that far outnumber their proportion of the population. This election season also saw two Indian-Americans compete for their party’s Presidential nomination for the first time (Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy). Vice President Kamala Harris also will be on the ballot running for re-election to the second highest elective office in the land. As someone who works extensively in the political arena, I also can say authoritatively that Indian-Americans are rapidly filling state, local, and administrative offices throughout the United States; and they represent the next generation who will occupy higher offices in the future. In order words, there is far more Indian cultural (or civilizational) input into American government, and the American public is getting used to seeing Indian-Americans just as they see other Americans compete for political office.
With the end of the Cold War now more than 30 years in the past, fewer and fewer Americans associate India with the close relations it maintained with the Soviet Union. I would guess fewer Indians associate the US with the close relations it used to have with Pakistan, or things like the 1984 Union Carbide disaster in Bhopal that exposed over half a million people to the highly toxic gas, methyl isocyanate and is still considered to be the world’s worst industrial accident. To be sure, both countries are democracies, which means their citizens are not forced to march in lock step with the majorities, and there are elements in both countries that dislike the other; for instance, those Americans who mistakenly believe that India’s religious minorities are persecuted, and those Indians who mistakenly believe that the United States seeks to dominate the rest of the world, or (as at least one highly placed Indian alleged to me) that the US government is controlled by a church determined to make Christianity India’s majority religion.. But they remain minority positions in both countries. India and the United States are different countries than they were before 2013, populated with decision-makers who have no political or strategic referent from the decades before that.
3. Do you believe that Putin's acceleration closer to China makes India-Russia going down from being a very high-value strategic partnership to a transactional one?
The question is a good one because it identifies the factor behind the most serious shift driving why Indian-Russian interaction had to change. It also puts its finger on a long term geopolitical dynamic that is shaping the decisions made in most capitals today, New Delhi being no exception. As noted above, Russia is one of the leading exponents of authoritarianism, while India is a leader among democracies in today’s defining geopolitical struggle. This gulf places India and Russia on opposite sides of strategic decisions more often than not. As the question suggests, Russia has moved closer to China in a coalition that prioritizes state control over the people’s rule. At the same time, fewer nations want to be associated with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, launched on February 4, 2022. Hence, a vibrant India pursuing its own interests in specific situations, such as the purchase of Russian energy despite US objections. On the other hand, India will make a much wider array of decisions that align it with the United States often against Russian interests (e.g., India’s prominent participation in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue or Quad; and closer military alignment with the United States, especially as regards long term strategy for Asia). The former is “transactional,” based on immediate and discrete interests; the latter is “strategic,” based on an overall understanding of ultimate aims.
Don’t expect Indian-Russian relations to go into the deep freeze any time soon, however. It is a testimony to the good feelings many Indians still have toward Russia after decades of close friendship. While they have not turned sour, however, they have frayed. Russia (or the USSR) used to be India’s major arms supplier, but not anymore. Between 2010 and 2019, military imports from Russia never accounted for less than half of all military imports, reaching a high of 86 percent in 2012. In 2020, for the first time, Russia was not the largest source of arms imports. France was, and Russia’s share dropped to 35 percent. Although India takes a lot of heat for its ongoing imports of Russian oil and gas, new major military trading partners and a growing domestic defense industry have taken a large bite out of a major source of Russian income. The geopolitical dynamics that created the once very close relationship between India and Russia have changed dramatically. The number of Indians who recall their nation’s relationship with Russia fondly represent a declining proportion of the population, and the importance of good strategic decisions today further attenuates positive India-Russia relations. If any modicum of the previous closeness survives, it will require a total rethinking and restructuring.
Under the old dynamic, the USSR was definitely the “big brother,” with India being the junior partner in the alliance. Today, those roles would be reversed. Russia is a declining power that is fighting its own demographic reality. India is a rising power whose demographics support its continued rise. On August 29, 2019, Putin declared, “Every 25-27 years, a significantly lower number of Russians enter adulthood” and thereby childbearing years; and this phenomenon reflects Russia’s looming demographic disaster. At the start of the 20th century, Russia was the fourth most populous nation or national entity in the world, behind China, British India, and the United States. Throughout the twentieth century, however, it experienced one demographic disaster after another. The first part of the century saw mass out-migration, World War I, the Russian Revolution, and subsequent Civil War. Their combined impact caused the first major dip in the Russian demographic curve (or population pyramid). Nothing, however, could have prepared Russia for World War II. By most estimates, the Soviet Union suffered around 27,000,000 deaths, or 13.7 percent of its total population. For perspective, Germany lost 5.7 million or 8.23 percent, Japan under 4 million (less than four percent), the US and the UK less than 400,000 (0.32 percent and 0.94 percent respectively). With Russians comprising the bulk of those losses, they took a downward slope into a death spiral that has only gotten worse. These events, moreover, had a devastating effect on the population of childbearing males, resulting in significant portions of Russia’s already challenged demographic curve showing larges excesses of marriage age females with no Russian mates. That contributed to significant out-migration of Russian women, especially since the fall of the Soviet Union and another disastrous war in Ukraine. They now will bear children who will be Americans or some other nationality, but not Russian. By 2000, Russia had fallen to sixth place by population and its fall accelerated, dropping it to ninth after less than quarter century.
With the demographic challenges cyclical and exacerbated by bad decisions, the fall will continue, and Russia is projected to lose over 27 percent of its 2024 population by the end of this century dropping to the nineteenth or twentieth most populous country. This fall represents more than something retrenchment or restructuring can fix. Declining populations mean that countries lack sufficient numbers to power their economies or fill the ranks of their militaries. We already are seeing clear signs of the latter in the form of increased Ukraine War conscription from non-Russian populations. Should they balk or successfully resist this, the Russian military will be in deep trouble, even deeper than it is already.
Russia’s dismal battlefield performance in Ukraine has exposed its presumed military edge as a chimera. In addition to huge net losses in almost every category of military hardware, despite a wartime economy that is producing at ten times the rate it was before Ukraine; it has suffered an estimated 300,000 casualties with no end in sight. We’re also starting to see rumblings of an independence movement in Siberia, which represents about 78 percent of Russia’s total area, including its access to the Pacific Ocean, the world’s largest hydrocarbon basis, enormous gas fields, and massive amounts of gold and diamonds. Historically, democratic countries with multi-national populations, like India and the United States, bind peoples together in positive ways and do not face secessionist agitation; whereas authoritarian regimes like Russia do. I recall being in Northern Bengal, India, several years ago during a good deal of unrest in the Northeast. One of the protest voices was the Gorkha National Liberation Front. Though it argued for Gorkha independence, it called for a greater voice within India and West Bengal, not an independent state. Though we should not see a serious secession move by Siberia any time soon, current disaffection could hamper Russia’s conscription activities and is nonetheless another stressor on Russian independent action. And that makes continued dependence on the Chinese and the latter’s leading role in the coalition of authoritarianism ever stronger. This only increases the gulf between India and Russia and makes India’s decisions more and more at odds with those made in Moscow (and Beijing); especially as India and China vie to be the dominant power in Asia.
4. How do you look at the competitive nature between the two Asian giants, India and China?
This is arguably the most fascinating bilateral relationship on the globe, if not the most impactful (that being the United States and China). There are many people who believe this struggle will be the battle of the 21st century, but I disagree with them. While the competition itself is by no means over, and we can expect to see more battles, as well as stops and starts for at least a couple decades; its outcome seems already decided in India’s favor.
China’s demographics might be even more challenged than Russia’s. When India surpassed China as the world’s most populous country earlier this year, it was the first time in centuries that China did not hold that title. And China’s slide is getting worse. For the first time in memory, China’s actual population fell in 2023, and by mid-century, there will be about a third of a billion more Indians than Chinese. By 2100, less than 76 years from now, China’s population will be just over half what it is today. Consider for a moment what it would mean for your own country or any other if almost every other one of your compatriots disappeared. Towns would be depopulated and vanish; businesses would go bust for lack of customers; manufacturers would have to close their doors because there simply are not enough workers, even for partially robotic work forces. Worse still, your nation would face massive shortages in its military, of both average soldiers and sailors and well trained pilots and others needed for today’s high-tech military hardware. But China’s demographic spiral is not the result only of the 15- 20 million deaths during World War II and the Japanese occupation, the subsequent civil war, and the tens of millions who were sacrificed on the altar of communist social engineering; nor is it only a function of the one-child policy of Mao Zedong and his successors. It is all of them but more.
Chinese President Xi Jinping has instituted financial and other incentives for young people to have larger families, but very few people have taken him up on them. Both the United Nations Population Fund and the World Bank put China’s fertility rate at just 1.2 and India’s at the replacement rate of 2.1. The United States is below that replacement rate at 1.7, but the US continuously supplements its births with immigration, which is the reason why the United States is the only western democracy expected to increase in population throughout the 21st century. In contrast, how many people can we find who want to move to China, its lack of freedom through communist repression, and its lack of opportunity via its state managed economy? In fact, hard figures from those same organizations support that conclusion. In 2022 alone, China had a net migration number of minus 311,380; while the United States had a net migration of almost a million people (999,540), and that does not include the millions more who entered the United States illegally and do not appear in those figures. A great many young Chinese simply do not see much of a future in China, whether to bring children into that world or even to remain there themselves.
The phenomenon compounds existing problems. For many years, I have been saying that the Chinese economy is a “house of cards,” at the very least because it is dependent on many millions of buying decisions made by consumers who, for the most part, either dislike or are suspicious of the Chinese government. Since 2021, the United States has had a Select Committee in the House of Representatives with the sole purpose of identifying Chinese Communist Party threats to the American public; and it is having an impact. In 2022, China lost its position as the top country for US imports, and has since fallen to fourth. As one of those American consumers, I can tell you that I avoid purchasing Chinese products, as do most other Americans I know. This shift also is apparent in the greater number of affordable options from Europe and countries including Mexico, Canada, and increasingly India; which in the last quarter of 2022 ramped up its production of inexpensive electronics, an American market dominated by China for years. Another stressor on the Chinese economy’s ability to serve its people is the aging of Chinese society, especially compared to India. China’s median age of close to 40 is more than ten years higher than India’s, and the median age for Chinese women is older than the traditional top age for childbearing. This means that even if the economy was solid, the ever increasing bill for the elderly and their pensions, far exceeds the ability of the gainfully employed to support them; and China’s tortured population pyramid shows no end to this crisis in sight.
There are many more elements of China’s economy that have been failing as a result of these demographic pressures and bad decisions made by the state managed economy commissars. China’s Belt & Road Initiative (BRI), launched with great fanfare in 2013, is failing. BRI’s legacy consists in large part of massive infrastructure projects laying abandoned, after forcing population dislocation and environmental disaster in countries from Europe to Southeast Asia; from Montenegro’s “road to nowhere” to Malaysia’s near empty “ghost city.” Countries that might have been able to repay the loans (also referred to as “debt trap diplomacy” because they are structured to force borrowing nations into concessions that would strengthen China’s grandiose geopolitical strategy) have been withdrawing from the program in droves, leaving only those nations too far in debt to leave or unable to secure alternate funding. At one point, China gave would be defaulting nations debt relief by seizing control of strategic assets, such as Sri Lanka’s Hambantota Port; but it seems to lack the economic strength to continue doing so and fuel its domestic economy simultaneously. With billions of dollars in uncollectable debts, a 2023 article in Foreign Policy called BRI “a shadow of its former self.”
The demographic and economic challenges have hurt the Chinese military as well. Demographics and little desire to serve the Chinese Communist Party controlled military has resulted in major recruitment shortfalls for well-educated and technically proficient pilots needed to fly advanced aircraft, and for other positions that require technical skills. Many potential recruits have quit the country for others where their educations promise opportunities and dividends for them and their families. On top of that, there have been recent revelations of massive and systemic corruption in the Chinese military, including missiles filled with water where fuel is supposed to be. Xi has responded with major purges of Peoples Liberation Army generals and other officials including Defense Minister Li Shangfu. Many are coming to doubt China will have the power to invade Taiwan, as it has promised to do; and even China supporters admit that its window for doing so is closing. While all this has been happening, the Indian military has continued to grow and gain more advanced weapons systems from its own domestic arms industry and from advanced imports coming from the United States and Israel. China’s falling (or disappearing edge over India has taken several forms. In March 2024, Prime Minister Modi announced that he would be visiting the far northeast state of Arunachal Pradesh. This was significant since China claims the area for itself as part of southern Tibet. China objected strenuously to action it called provocative, but Modi simply ignored that, rather contemptuously; and when China “deplore[d]” the visit after Modi went there, Indian Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson, Randhir Jaiswal, dismissed the Chinese objection and said that Arunachal Pradesh “was, is, and always be an integral and inalienable part of India.” But Modi did even more to stick his thumb in China’s eye. While there, he inaugurated the Sela Tunnel, which is the world’s largest bi-lane tunnel. The tunnel will further cement Arunachal Pradesh’s connectivity with the rest of India, something that previous Indian governments recognized as a red line for China. Modi also dedicated a new airport, further increasing the state’s ties with the rest of India and perhaps more importantly, dedicated the Kameng Hydro Electric Power Project. Arunachal Pradesh is a large territory with a small population, with massive amounts of hydroelectric power. This resource is one of the major reasons why China covets that part of India. But again, Modi ignored China’s likely anger, no doubt recognizing that it would not be able to turn that anger into actual actions. Finally, there are other boundary disputes between India and China in Ladokh and Sikkim, and China does not have the clout to stampede India out of its own territory; and this gives India more power to help neighboring Nepal and Bhutan resist Chinese encroachments on their tiny territories.
China in all likelihood retains enough power to stop Indian actions that truly endanger their perceived sovereignty and power, but time is not on its side.
5. Has India’s Neighbourhood Policy undergone change during 2014-2024?
In an NDTV interview, Indian Minister of External Affairs, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, talked about India’s Neighbourhood Policy this way: “As the biggest country of the neighborhood, as the largest economy, we are happy to work with you so that together the entire neighborhood can be more secure and more prosperous.” Now what that means in practice has changed dramatically since Narendra Modi in an unprecedented move invited the leaders of all his neighbors to attend his first swearing in ceremony as India’s Prime Minister. The overwhelming reason for that change is the growing intensity in the India-China competition, including the many inroads China has made among India’s neighbors. Perhaps underscoring India’s global aspirations, in that same interview, Jaishankar also talked about what India sees just beyond its “immediate neighborhood.” He talked about expanding that immediate circle in all directions; specifically mentioning Israel to the West, Central Asia to the North; and Act East with no limitations noted. None of that does anything to ease Chinese and Russian ill ease.
Whether India has maintained good or bad relations with each of its neighbors, Chinese involvement can be found in all of them. As a result, Pakistan is almost a Chinese vassal; Sri Lanka is not far behind but struggling against that; Maldives is bouncing back and forth between pro-China and anti-China leaders; Nepal and Bhutan are being bullied by China into unfair border dispute resolutions; and Bangladesh is moving, albeit more cautiously than others, toward China, but seems to be managing the competitors’ claims better than most. In Afghanistan, US and NATO troops are gone, and an Islamist Taliban government is providing a safe haven for ISIS and other terror groups hostile toward India. One would expect these new realities to cause India to reassess how it prioritizes its geopolitical strategy and actions; that is, Indian policy for these nations, like others, must now be strategic in keeping with India’s new global status.
India’s Neighbourhood Policy has not changed to the extent that Indian foreign policy makers still recognize that they must insure a measure of stability and perhaps even solidarity in its neighborhood in order to pursue its global interests. And that makes good sense. It certainly is something that Europeans pursued and achieved post World War II and again with their nations to the east after the fall of the Iron Curtain. Early in its history, the United States emphasized this policy with the Monroe Doctrine, and with the exceptions of Cuba and Venezuela at the moment, the US has achieved it. The policy also helps explain (but not justify) Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, and his obsession with building something akin to the old Soviet constellation and its buffer states. Like Russia, China is challenged in its relations with neighbors. It has been successful in winning back Hong Kong and Macao and tying Russia closer to it. It has not seen the same success with ASEAN nations, which remain tactical adversaries, or in subjugating Taiwan. These are challenges that every global power must include in their calculations. How might this play out in India’s neighborhood?
The biggest change for India has been its strategy regarding Pakistan. While Islamabad cannot be ignored, it is not the major calculation it was for previous Indian governments. In 2022, former Indian Ambassador to the United States Nirupama Rao told the United States Institute of Peace, “South Asia is a different place today with China’s assertive military and financial clout generating challenges for India’s neighborhood policy. Our relationship with Pakistan will continue to remain fraught and weighted down by cross-border ‘gray zone’ confrontation and militancy targeted against us. Of even more consequence is the hostile and adversarial state of India’s relations with China.” Even as more and more BRI projects fail, more nations withdraw from the program, and China’s ability to both fund it and explain away predatory lending seizures; it continues to pour millions into Pakistan and the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC); $62 billion as of August 2023. Beset with Pakistan’s seemingly eternal political turmoil, corruption, and national/ethnic conflicts; CPEC has (most generously) not live up to expectations and is in danger or (according to many) failed already. China has a lot invested in CPEC and Pakistan, and it has strategic interests there, as well. With US-Pakistan relations in a deteriorated state, China has been solidifying Pakistan’s dependence on it. Additionally, CPEC gives China access to and control over Pakistan’s (more specifically Balochistan’s) warm water Gwadar Port, which secures Mideast oil imports and would speed up troop deployment to several areas. China will strive to protect its interests in Pakistan which makes one of its border disputes with India more of a priority. China claims it as Aksai Chin, part of Tibet. India claims it as part of Ladokh. Complicating matters, Pakistan has ceded some nearby territory to China, and together, China’s connecting road with Pakistan and its ability to protect CPEC run through those lands. Include the history of Pakistani supported terror groups and the Kashmir conflict seemingly without end, and it appears highly remote, if not impossible, for these two nuclear powers to cooperate as good neighbors.
On the other hand, India is Sri Lanka’s best hope. Sri Lanka did not fully emerge from its devastating civil war until 2009, and even before then started taking large loans from China’s Exim Bank under BRI. When it could not repay them, China offered debt relief, but at a high price: control of Sri Lanka’s strategic Hambantota Port; and even at that, the relief was modest and only temporary. Since then, Sri Lanka’s economy has cratered further, and the country has been trying to cobble together non-predatory loans from other sources. In 2023, it secured a $3 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund and subsequently a $1 billion line of credit from India. Although Sri Lanka still faces tremendous challenges, India can continue to help it get out from under its debt to the Chinese. Additionally, part of India’s Neighbourhood Policy is its role as a first responder in times of crisis. In this way, it can help Sri Lanka rebuild its infrastructure, based on potential for income production as most loans are, without taking on more Chinese debt that seems structured to avoid income producing projects. India also made an important strategic decision by not embracing the Tamil Tigers after the Sri Lankan civil war, despite its own 69 million strong Tamil population, most in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu; in that way, not burning bridges with the island nation’s government. India can play the same neighborly role with Maldives. It has not been shy in supporting former President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, who was voted out in favor of current President Mohamed Muizzu who has been pro-Chinese. Yet, Modi called Muizzi to congratulate him on his victory and has maintained good relations with him. Maldives, like Sri Lanka, is looking at default on Chinese debt. India can help there, too, and also can encourage Indian tourism to Maldives (which is one of the most beautiful places on earth), to help build its economy. Not incidentally, control over Maldives by China could scuttle Indian freedom to navigate through a critical waterway.
Afghanistan presents a different set of issues. It would have been easy for India to join with other democratic nations and cut ties with the new Taliban government. It did not, and that turned out to be a smart decision. I don’t think this decision was strategic so much as in keeping with long held Indian values of recognizing each country’s right to determine its own internal policies. Because I work with a lot of Afghans, I’m familiar with the complexities of relations in the area. India provides a bridge between the Taliban and the community of nations. If it has any chance of moderating and joining those countries, India might be Afghanistan’s best chance of navigating that course. As a first step, I understand that Afghanistan is anxious to rejoin cricket games in the region. It’s a start. Afghanistan also offers something significant for India. Even before the US withdrawal, large mineral deposits had been discovered in Afghanistan, many with strategic implications. China has been quite active in this sector, but India can play a role in which it not only gains the advantages of mineral wealth and favorable trade for itself and the side of democracy. It also can help reduce China’s influence in the area, while enhancing its own “good neighbor” status.
Nepal and Bhutan both present yet another set of challenges. Both countries are being pressured by China to endorse one-sided agreements that would force these two tiny countries to cede territory to China. It is also significant that the third border dispute between China and India (Sikkim and the top of the Siliguri Corridor or Chicken’s Neck) lies right between these two Himalayan nations. Bhutan is 136th in size among nations (Nepal is a little better at 95th), and China is 4th. So it should come as no surprise that these disputes are not about “colonialism” as China claims, but geopolitical strategy. The China-Bhutan border dispute goes back decades, but in 2020, China ipso facto added another 740 square kilometers to its claim. The reason is that the additional territory includes the Doklam Plateau, which overlooks the Siliguri Corridor, and Chinese control of it gives them a base for intelligence gathering on Indian troops in the region. This strip of land is also the strategic lifeline that connects parts of India’s northeast with the rest of the country, and so control of Doklam enables China to thwart India sending troops to defend its far flung regions. Additionally, the surrounding peaks control the water flow into Tibet, and its control gives India a strategic advantage. For its part, Bhutan (which after all is the sovereign nation whose land is at risk of seizure) has, through its Prime Minister Lotay Tshering, said that Bhutan, China, and India all have an equal say in settling the dispute. That’s important because it matches Indian statements about any settlement. India should use that to further its good neighbor ties with Bhutan. Its presence can insure that Bhutan will not be bullied by a much stronger power because it has another—India—on its side. India could strengthen its position by adopting positions that support Bhutanese sovereignty over the area, perhaps even using the Sikkim Siliguri Corridor to enhance Bhutan’s security; in exchange, perhaps for a long term lease, such as the United States previously had with Panama for the Panama Canal. There is a lot of room for mutual benefits. Last year, India even sent troops to the region to stop China after it did the same. The Indian gambit worked and China backed down. Since then, however, China has been building roads and other infrastructure on what it claims as its territory, and India has not yet responded. Can it show its strength as Bhutan’s big brother? Nepal presents a different problem. In 2021, China constructed buildings in Nepal’s Humla District, claiming the territory as its own. The problem is that Nepal can’t seem to keep a coherent government for any significant time. The Diplomat had a 2016 article on “Nepal’s Unending Political Instability,” and nothing has changed that since. Worse still, as soon as they take control, Nepal’s power grabbers start out by abandoning whatever the previous government had in place. This has left Nepal with varying, often conflicting, and disorganized foreign policies. The latest Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal survived an attempted ouster less than a year after taking power, and a little more than a year after that, he dumped all his coalition partners and formed a new government with others. So the path for India is not clear; but because Nepal also claims a piece of Indian territory, perhaps the Indian government can help Nepal secure justice in exchange for relinquishing some or all of its claims to Indian territory. Depending on which party is in power, however, the Nepalese government might actually favor closer relations with China and distance itself from India. In that case, India’s most prudent course might be to put its actions on hold until the inevitable change in Nepal brings a more favorable government to power.
Bangladesh is in a different situation than any of India’s other neighbors.
It has experienced something of an economic miracle over the past decade, which is not stopping. While many Bangladeshis privately criticize Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina for creating a “one party democracy,” she has been in office for over 15 years and is expected to cruise to another victory later this year. She has brought political stability in leadership to a country once riddled with coups and military takeovers. This has allowed her to focus on Bangladeshi development and interests, while maneuvering deftly between conflicting giants like China and the United States. It also has enabled her to develop a strong relationship with Narendra Modi, who took office five years after she did and also will win another term easily this year. One of the phrases I keep hearing in India is “Bangladesh is not Pakistan.” People stress that Bangladesh is a nation with which India can cooperate and build things, while Pakistan is not. Most Indians also express genuine warm feelings for Bangladeshis. There is a distinct absence of people emphasizing former conflicts that used to be highlighted: water rights, illegal migration, mutual accusations of persecuting the other’s major religious group, harboring terrorists who attack the other, and so forth. India has crafted a mutually beneficial policy with Bangladesh that highlights both countries as good neighbors and nations on the rise. Whatever India is doing to pursue its Neighborhood Policy with Bangladesh, keep doing it!
Full disclosure: I for a long time have been a friend of India, a frequent visitor, and voracious in my pursuit of information and insight on Bharat. For many years, I labored tirelessly to stop the ethnic cleansing of Hindus in Bangladesh, and I did so with no support (sometimes opposition) from the Congress Party led UPA government in New Delhi. Narendra Modi was very gracious to me, taking time with me when he was Gujarat’s Chief Minister, and offering his strength and support. As Prime Minister, he has had to pursue a more nuanced foreign policy but has nonetheless taken several steps that have supported several of my actions. So, do I have personal beliefs and positions? Of course. Have they in some way informed my answers? I don’t know, but I strive always to maintain objectivity and give my readers the best analysis I can regardless.