A friend of mine shared an article on US-India relations over the weekend, authored by Jeff Smith of the Heritage Foundation. It is an insightful summary of India’s departure from its decade-long non-alignment policy to a newly blossoming proximity with America that he labels as strategic autonomy. A convergence of national interests and shared concerns about China have been bringing the US and India closer together, or so he says.
Smith claims that the death of non-alignment was overdue. According to him, it is a concept born of, and tailored to, a different era. During the Cold War neither superpower presented themselves as a natural threat or natural partner. India is now in the midst of a generational paradigm shift that is creating more space for a substantive strategic partnership with America and on its path to become a geopolitical peer to China and America, maybe by mid-century.
The final trigger for this break of tradition would have been the aggressive foray of S Jaishankar who was appointed as external affairs minister right after Narendra Modi’s re-election as premier. He has since relentlessly been working on re-orientating India’s foreign policy towards the West. Howdy Modi in Houston and Donald Trump’s legendary visit in Ahmedabad were his brain-children and the formal foundation for the country to be admitted into the US-led circle.
There may still be varying perceptions as to how this rapprochement is to pan out in the future. America would be happy to swallow India whole and integrate it into its line-up of Indo-Pacific protagonists to contain China, but even the hawks in Washington understand that things work differently in Delhi. The establishment there is surrendering its non-alignment stance believing that a partnership with America will enhance India’s strategic autonomy.
But in any case, and for all intents and purposes, India is aligned. Having continuously spurned Beijing’s advances to lure the country into the Chinese orbit and become an incremental part of Belt and Road, China has doubled down on its strategic partnership with Pakistan and courted other nations surrounding the Subcontinent. And as Moscow has been driven into Beijing’s arms, not necessarily by its own volition but the US sanction regime, Delhi has also started to deviate from its alliance with Russia.
As Smith says, US-Indian collaboration is on the rise, from joint naval exercises to their diplomats coordinating approaches toward jurisdictions such as Sri Lanka, Maldives, and Myanmar, as these countries are crucial to controlling the Indian Ocean and maritime trade routes. The target of all this is meant to be China. Gone seem to be the days of Modi’s first term when the prime minister’s and Xi Jinping’s regular mini-summits were promising evidence for a more harmonious way forward.
It brings us to the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), the Eurasian political, economic, and security alliance inaugurated in Shanghai in 2001. Originally founded by China, Russia, and the Central Asian nations, in the wake of China-Russian normalisation of relations after decades of rift, it added India and Pakistan in 2017. Russia just hosted one of the regular summit meetings on Tuesday, in a virtual format, and the next one is to be hosted by no other than India on November 30.
In light of the above, however, the obvious question is why India amid its new orientation would be part of SCO. Delhi is de facto avowed itself to the QUAD, the geopolitical objectives of which are in many respects opposing SCO’s if not outright contradictory. What would Modi have to discuss with an Imran Khan or even with Xi Jinping? His government is evidently not interested in looking to develop mutually beneficial relationships with either of the two leaders and their countries.
SCO’s mantra of common development across Eurasia, possibly even under the economic leadership of China, couldn’t be further from what Delhi desires. It turns out that India might be a cuckoo in the SCO nest. Concerns among the other members that Delhi could and probably would slow down the alliance’s dynamism are absolutely justified. Could SCO and its members urge India to leave the alliance under the new pretext? Probably, but it won’t be easy.
Washington’s China hawks must be rejoicing. They are killing two birds with one stone. Not only are they successfully veering India into the Quad to more effectively contain China by building a bulwark against it in the Indian Ocean, but its SCO membership also opens up avenues to disrupt Beijing’s plans of a Chinese economic orbit across Eurasia.
