India's NSG Membership and China's Containment Strategy

This was published by Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi, on June 24, 2016.

India’s NSG membership and China’s containment strategy

The Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) meeting in Seoul on Thursday (June 23) ended without any decision on India’s application for membership as a consequence of China’s refusal to accept India into the group. India’s chance of being admitted into the NSG were always slim because of China’s opposition. But that was not a reason for not trying. There were excellent reasons for making a high-profile push for NSG membership. Most of the criticisms about both the usefulness of NSG membership itself and about the need for such a high-stakes effort are misplaced. Though India did not get the membership, this will be policy failure only if India fails to respond to what is clearly yet another indicator of China’s determined effort at containment of India.

 

India does not need NSG membership in order to engage in nuclear commerce, of course. But the NSG makes the rules for such commerce and it is always possible that they can frame rules in future that will hurt India’s interests. There are already questions about some of the rule changes that NSG introduced in 2011 with regard to enrichment and reprocessing technologies, after India got a special waiver from NSG. India can protect itself best only if it is inside the tent. Additionally, India’s road to a partnership in global governance is ill-served if there are governance groups that explicitly leave India out.

 

Those arguing that India should not have engaged in such a high profile push are also mistaken. India’s choice was to either not apply at all or to make a determined push for membership. There was no middle path here. For at least three reasons, it was impossible for India to simply file an application and not make a serious effort to get in. First, the Indian application required convincing many friendly states who had legitimate concerns about NPT and the nonproliferation regime, concerns that were not motivated by any balance of power considerations (unlike China’s opposition). These countries are wrong to equate support for nonproliferation with just signature on a treaty rather support for the principles of nonproliferation as demonstrated in actual behaviour. But this still required an argument to be made and making this argument to a number of international partners meant that this could no longer be a low-profile effort.

Handling Great Power Relations

The Asian security situation is slowly deteriorating, the consequence of both China's rise as well Washington's seeming fickleness that is sending its allies such as Japan looking for new allies in the region.  But its not just Japan that is feeling the effect of insecurity: Vietnam (where Indian President just completed a state visit) and Australia (whose Prime Minister Tony Abbot also was in Delhi recently) are also worried, as are others which have territorial disputes with China, such as the Philippines.  But China is taking efforts to prevent these Asian powers from coming together, primarily focusing on India and Australia.  That is smart and prudent strategy.  President Xi visit to India this week has to be seen in this light.

But from India's perspective, it has to be clear-eyed about how the game is played.  There is no reason to unnecessarily antagonize China by trying to create an Asian alliance against it, but neither should New Delhi let Beijing dictate how it plays the game.  In the long-term, India's strategic interests are not compatible with China.  Once this simple strategic truth is accepted, all else should fall into place. The reason why India's strategic interest are not compatible with China is because India, like other Asian and global powers, has no interest in seeing any one Asian power dominate the continent.  This becomes even more important if China's relative power continues to grow.  India, of course, has other serious disputes too with China, ranging for territorial issues to China's support for Pakistan. None of this means India should not talk to China or engage in trade or frequently exaggerate border incidents.  It does mean that India needs to both engage and balance.

President Xi's visit to India provided a good opportunity to write on some of these issues.  My essay was published in Economic Times, and reproduced below.


India needs to deftly deal with multiple strategic partners, and with China

Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to India and Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to the US will cap a very busy three months for India's foreign policy. It has also been a heady period, with India being wooed by multiple strategic partners.

So, India faces a unique problem of plenty in strategic partners. This is a nice problem to have, but it's still a problem. While it is understandable that New Delhi might want to simply celebrate its newfound importance in the international arena, what it needs even more is clear and calculated longterm thinking to navigate this pitfall of opportunities.

World War-1 and Asian Stability

In late June, SWP (Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik) and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation jointly organized their annual conference on Asian security, the Berlin Conference on Asian Security.  The theme this time was if the conditions that led to the First World War a hundred years ago are being replicated in Asia today.  The discussions were under the Chatham House rule, but Amitav Acharya, who was also present, wrote an essay in Economic Times on the same issue.  I wrote an essay in Economic Times too which appeared a couple of days after Amitav's piece.  We obviously disagree.  My essay is reproduced below.

There has, of course been a debate a long debate, ever since the early 1990s, whether Asian multipolarity was going to lead to conflict.  Aaron Friedberg fired the first shot arguing that Asia does not even have some of the advantages that Europe had to ameliorate potential conflicts and that it was therefore 'ripe for rivalry'.  Other including David Kang and Amitav Acharya disagreed, suggesting different reasons why Asia was unlikely to replicate European patterns.  While much of the evidence appeared to support the anti-Realist case so far, I would think that the developments over the past few years definitely support the Realist case for pessimism about the prospects for stability in the region.

Is Asia Heading Towards World War-like Conditions?

On June 28, 1914, the crown prince of the Austro-Hungarian empire Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo, starting a chain of events that directly led to the First World War a month later. The war had dramatic consequences, killing almost ten million, destroying several great powers, remaking the  global map, heralding the general decline of Europe and leading eventually to the rise of the US and the Soviet Union.

The implications of the Afghan elections

With the successful conclusion of the polling phase of the Afghan elections, attention now shifts to who might win and what the winner might do regarding some key policy issues. Very (very!) early trends suggest that Abdullah Abdullah is the front runner, but it will be a while before the dust settles on this one.  

My take on the implications of the Afghan elections was published in Economic Times today and is reproduced below: 

Afghan Polls Hold Hope; Real Test To Come When Taliban Step Up Their Attacks

The just-concluded Afghan elections surprised most observers. The first surprise was that it was held at all because many had a sneaking suspicion that President Hamid Karzai would find some excuse to postpone or cancel the polls to hang on to power. He has already served two terms and, under the Afghan constitution, cannot have a third term.