With ports, ships and promises, Modi consolidates security ties across Southeast Asia
US defence secretary James Mattis described India as the “fulcrum” of security in the IndoPacific region as he travelled this week to an annual security conference in Singapore, attended for the first time by an Indian leader.
But if Mattis was hoping that Prime Minister Narendra Modi would use the platform to join the US, Japan and Australia — a grouping known as the Quad — in a more muscular challenge to China’s regional expansion, he was disappointed. Instead, India’s strongest leader in decades navigated carefully between the two regional military powers.
Modi studiously avoided any mention of the Quad in his speech, and he hammered the kind of protectionism currently practised by the US, both of which were sure to satisfy Chinese delegates.
“Asia and the world will have a better future when India and China work together in trust and confidence, sensitive to each other’s interests,” Modi told defence ministers and military officials assembled for the Shangri-La Dialogue, an event organised by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.
He did echo US appeals for “freedom of navigation, unimpeded commerce and peaceful settlement of disputes in accordance with international law.” And he attacked governments that put other nations under “impossible burdens of debt.” Both were likely references to China for its behaviour in the disputed South China Sea and its Belt and Road Initiative infrastructure projects — which can come courtesy of large loans — in other countries.
‘Reality has hit home’
Yet Modi has done something of a turnaround on China in recent weeks, a far cry from his ground-breaking shift to deepen engagement with the US when he came to power in 2014, which was accompanied by a show at home of standing up to China’s rise with a more robust “act east” policy.
Tensions came to a head last summer when Indian and Chinese troops engaged in a standoff over a long-running border dispute. To embrace a more proactive India, the US rebranded its Asia-Pacific policy as ‘Indo-Pacific,’ a change that fuels Chinese concerns about containment.
“The organisers of the Shangri-La Dialogue have been waiting for Mr Modi for a while. India is seen as the lynchpin for a longer-term coalition to confront China,” said Manoj Joshi, a distinguished
India has signed an agreement to develop a port in the city of Sabang that would overlook the western entrance to the Strait of Malacca, one of the world's busiest waterways.
India has signed a deal on logistical support for naval ships, submarines and military aircraft during their visits.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi called on Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad last week, effectively cementing ties with three of the most influential Southeast Asian nations.
Late last month, three Indian warships staged exercises with the Vietnamese navy for the first time in the South China Sea, which is claimed almost wholly by China. Vietnamese submariners are trained in India, while the two sides fellow at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi. Still, tensions between China and India later subsided, and Modi has seemingly warmed to President Xi Jinping.
At the end of April, when the world’s attention was focused on a historic summit between the leaders of South Korea and North Korea, Xi invited Modi for two days of informal talks in central China. Next week, Modi will travel to China again, for a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.
For some, the change is real, driven by a growing recognition that India simply lacks the economic and military capacity to compete with China, combined with growing uncertainty over the reliability of the US
“Reality has hit home” when it comes to measuring up to China’s power, said Kanti Prasad Bajpai, director of the Centre on Asia and have significantly increased intelligence sharing and are exploring advanced weapons sales.
India has signed an agreement for access to the port of Duqm during a visit by Modi earlier this year. Under the agreement, the Indian navy will be able to use the port for logistics and support, allowing it to sustain long-term operations in the western Indian Ocean.
In January, India finalised a logistics exchange arrangement with France under which it can use French military facilities in the Indian Ocean.
In a nod to India’s growing regional stature, the US military’s Pacific Command in Hawaii formally changed its name to the US Indo-Pacific Command in a ceremony last week. Globalisation at Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. China’s military budget is more than three times as large as India’s, and its economy almost five times as big.
The raw spending numbers may even underestimate the disparity in hard power between the world’s two most populous nations. Whereas China has ploughed resources into developing and buying high-tech weapons, India spends as much as two-thirds of its defence budget on routine expenses such as personnel. In recent years, the percentage of the budget spent on capital investment has fallen.
When it comes to competing economically for the loyalties of countries in the region, the gap is even wider.
For others, though, the change is only one of optics, geared to the coming election. The security establishment remains alarmed by Chinese military expansion, in particular by signs it is looking for footholds in the Indian Ocean, said Rahul Roy-Chaudhury, who heads the South Asia programme at IISS.
At the same time, India doesn’t want to let the US draw it into a confrontation with China over the South China Sea, where China’s territorial claims cross over with nations such as Vietnam and the Philippines.
“Modi,” said Roy-Chaudhury, “is relentlessly pragmatic.”
Narendra Modi |