Crowded agenda awaits Modi and Abe in Gandhinagar

Japan was the only country besides Bhutan to publicly back India during the 71-day India-China armed standoff at Doklam. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visits India next week for the annual India-Japan Prime Ministerial Summit at a time when Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s stock has risen in the great power centres worldwide over his resolute handling of the standoff with China and his deft management of the complex relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping. That the Doklam imbroglio could have led to a border war, which would have triggered the clauses for legal expropriation of all Chinese assets in India as per the Enemy Property Act 1968, appears to have been a key factor in cooling hotheads in the armed forces of China.

Japan itself faces a threat, which has the capacity of becoming existential. This is with Kim Jong-Un and his regime in Pyongyang. As Prime Minister Shinzo Abe grapples with the unending complications of the breathtakingly tense North Korean crisis—where Kim Jong-Un appears to reserve special venom for Japan, for histori- cal reasons, and with missiles flying over the Japanese islands like ping pong balls— the people in the world’s third largest economy are jittery. Therefore, the strongly worded statements from India have been doubly reassuring. The Japanese side is convinced that India, a rising power, will stand for respect for international law and will not tolerate rogue actions, and the special relationship between the two Prime Ministers Modi and Abe ensures that. The recent Malabar naval exercises of the Navies of India, the United States and Japan have augmented that