Talking Turkey
US secretary of state Rex Tillerson’s landmark address in Washington on relations with India and China is notable on at least two counts — its effusiveness towards New Delhi and an invitation to take on China with Washington in the IndoPacific region.
The timing of Mr Tillerson’s speech is important. It is in advance of his first visit to the subcontinent this week and was delivered hours after Chinese President Xi Jinping’s marathon performance at his party congress declaring triumphantly that the moment for China to take centrestage in the world had arrived.
New Delhi was obviously pleased with the underlying theme of the homily and called it an optimistic view. But the implicit challenge posed to India in guiding its future policies cannot be escaped. New Delhi has decidedly moved closer to the US in the defence and strategic relationship partly as a safeguard against Beijing’s assertiveness but the implication that Washington can fire its guns at Beijing on India’s shoulders is another matter.
India’s hesitation in signing on as America’s foot soldier, unlike Pakistan, is not only the result of a traditional nonaligned policy in a vastly changed geopolitical environment, but also stems from a desire to keep options open in a predatory world. It could not have escaped American officials that even while welcoming Mr Tillerson’s overtures, India and Russia were conducting trilateral military exercises. Besides, finance minister Arun Jaitley has announced that relations with Iran. Washington’s bete noire, would not undergo a change.
Mr Tillerson’s coming New Delhi visit will give Indian leaders and officials an opportunity to flesh out the contours of how Washington looks at India. The convergences are obvious, such as bringing in Japan into the equation of warding off an assertive China. But Prime Minister Narendra Modi must balance his nation’s own problems with Beijing and the need to maintain good relations with Russia, painted as an enemy in American eyes.
The question New Delhi can’t avoid is that it’s reaching a fork in ties with the US. The closeness of the relationship can’t be doubted, but the longevity of an unpredictable Trump era is an open question although Mr Modi’s own equation with the US President is good.
For India, it’s not a question of looking a gift horse in the mouth, but one of reordering its wider relations with an eye on its neighbourhood, specially with two hostile neighbours, and the coming together after a fashion of Russia and China. The importance of New Delhi’s understanding with the US isn’t in doubt but its contours must be worked on to avoid any future misunderstanding.
To an extent, all nations are limited by their circumstances. In India’s case, the subcontinent’s bloody Partition set the tone for relations with Pakistan. In China’s case, the stinging defeat in the 1962 war and a disputed border