Trilateral meeting vital for India on multiple fronts
The trilateral Trump-abemodi meeting on the occasion of the G-20 summit has importance for India on multiple counts.
The US is today India’s biggest economic partner with bilateral trade in goods and services reaching $127 billion and its investments in India exceeding those of others.
India-japan ties have become stronger economically and strategically under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, with Japan building industrial and rail corridors in India and connectivity links in the northeast that will eventually boost India’s ‘Act East’ policy.
For India’s economic development, the US and Japan are vital partners, and, therefore, more understandings in this trilateral format can help India achieve its goal of becoming a $5 trillion economy by 2025.
For this, the international environment has to remain favourable. US President Donald Trump’s approach to international trade issues, including about the WTO’S centrality in preserving a rules-based international order, has been unsettling, and the G-20 will discuss this matter.
In the context of the Uschina trade war, the outcome of the Trump-xi Jinping meeting will be watched with interest, though Us-china differences now go beyond the trade deficit and are shaping up into a power struggle.
The ongoing shift in the balance of power in Asia, of concern to US, Japan and India, has to be addressed on both the economic and security fronts. Japan and India, too, are under US pressure on the trade front.
This trilateral meeting would hold greater promise if the degree of understanding that exists on the security issues could be reached on the trade issues too in a strategic perspective - especially in India’s case as a developing economy - so that trade differences do not work at cross-purposes with increased security cooperation.
Energy issues are of critical importance to India and Japan as major oil and gas importers. The US is today the largest producer of oil and natural gas. India has begun to import oil and gas from the US, valued at $4 billion this year, and is ready to import more in order to address Trump’s fixation on America’s trade deficit.
Energy issues were discussed at length by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi with US vice-president Mike Pence at the recent ASEAN summit in Singapore. US oil sanctions on Iran are problematic for India and Japan, though both have received a reprieve for six months.
An extended understanding with the US on this issue would be very desirable.
In addition, the Iran-saudi Arabia confrontation in West Asia, backed by the US, has potentially serious consequences for the energy security of India and Japan (worse for us because of manpower and remittances), and Trump will need to be more educated on this.
While the geopolitical dimension of the Indo-pacific concept will depend on how China conducts itself, India’s efforts should be to enhance focus on its economic dimension.
During Modi’s visit to Japan in October, the two countries committed themselves to collaborative projects in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Bangladesh and Africa.
The US, too, under its BUILD Act seeks to activate its participation in building infrastructure in developing countries.
There is scope for the three countries to focus on countries on the Indian Ocean littoral, including Maldives, that are strategically important for ensuring the maritime security and stability of the region as well as supporting transparent, responsible and sustainable debt financing practices in infrastructure development, as committed by the three countries in joint statements.
India and US have rapidly expanded their defence cooperation enormously, with India procuring almost
$17 billion of American defence equipment.
The India-us Malabar exercise has been made trilateral with Japan’s inclusion.
With Japan also, India’s defence engagement is expanding bilaterally with discussions on a logistic agreement, more cooperation between their respective defence industries, exercises between each of the three services and so on.
India and the US have instituted a 2+2 dialogue between their respective foreign and defence ministers and a similar mechanism with Japan has been mooted.
This bilateral and trilateral level cooperation is a powerful building block for the future of the Indo-pacific concept, and the trilateral meeting will no doubt look at the perspectives ahead.
In his address at the Shangri-la Dialogue in June 2018, Modi clearly framed India’s thinking on the Indo-pacific concept as inclusive and not strategic.
Abe has reached out to China, especially on the matter of potential participation in its Belt and Road Initiative. And Trump as well as Pence have expressed their readiness to work with a rules-abiding China.
Consequently, it will be important for Modi to meet Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping at Buenos Aires, and indeed, have a trilateral with them as part of the established Russiaindia-china dialogue in order to consolidate our position as an independent actor on the global stage and the success of India’s all-round diplomacy under Modi.