India's Great Power Politics

Managing China's Rise

Jo Inge Bekkevold, S. Kalyanaraman

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000300468
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book examines India's foreign and defence policy changes in response to China's growing economic and military power and increased footprint across the Indo-Pacific. It further explores India's role in the rivalry between China and the United States.

The book looks at the strategic importance of the Indian Ocean Region in the Indo-Pacific geopolitical landscape and how India is managing China's rise by combining economic cooperation with a wide set of balancing strategies. The authors in this book critically analyse the various tools of Indian foreign policy, including defence posture, security alignments, and soft power diplomacy, among others, and discuss the future trajectory of India's foreign policy and the factors which will determine the balance of power in the region and the potential risks involved.

The book provides detailed insights into the multifaceted and complex relationship between India and China and will be of great interest to researchers and students of international relations, Asian studies, political science, and economics. It will also be useful for policymakers, journalists, and think tanks interested in the India–China relationship.

PART I
India and China’s rise

1
INDIA’S GREAT POWER POLITICS

A framework for analysis

Jo Inge Bekkevold and S. Kalyanaraman

Managing the rise of China is India’s foremost foreign policy challenge. In this volume, we seek to understand whether India’s policy on China is characterised by balance-of-power politics or by engagement through economic, institutional, and diplomatic cooperation and to what extent it combines these approaches. We examine if New Delhi is balancing or accommodating China, or if it is hedging between these two policy options, and in which of these directions India’s policy is moving. Moreover, we elaborate on the main risks and challenges India is facing with regard to these various policy approaches. Finally, India’s evolving policy on China sheds light on important aspects of balance-of-power theory and hedging. Before we engage with these questions, we need to take into account five major developments over the last five to ten years that change the role and position of India in Asian security.

First, India is emerging as a great power facilitated by impressive economic growth over the last decade.¹ India’s economy has outrun that of its neighbours and, since Independence, is more than ever the clearly dominant power in the wider subcontinent (see Figure 1.1). Even though Pakistan alone still forces India to prepare for the combined threats of nuclear weapons (Pakistan went nuclear in 1998), conventional warfare (The Kargil War in 1999), insurgency (Jammu and Kashmir), and terrorism (the 2008 Mumbai attacks), the power gap between India and Pakistan is widening to India’s advantage. India’s GDP was four times larger than that of Pakistan in the year 2000, but this gap had increased to ten times the size of Pakistan’s GDP in 2015 and is estimated to increase further in the next few years. India’s 2018 military expenditure was six times the size of Pakistan’s.²

FIGURE 1.1 India and economic growth in South Asia (GDP, in USD millions)

Source: IMF (2019). The figures are GDP, in USD millions, current prices. Estimates for Pakistan for 2020 are 2019 figures. Estimates for 2024 are not available.

Former US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski had already observed in 2012 that China’s remarkable momentum justifies ranking it just below the United States in the international hierarchy. At the time, he further argued that, although a sequential ranking of other major powers beyond the top two would be imprecise at best, any list “has to include Russia, Japan, and India, as well as the EU’s informal leaders: Great Britain, Germany, and France.”³ India is not a P-5 country with veto power in the UN Security Council or a member of the exclusive economic club of G7, but its gross domestic product (GDP) surpassed that of France and the United Kingdom in 2019 to become the world’s fifth largest economy after the United States, China, Japan, and Germany.⁴ In terms of purchasing power parity (PPP) figures, India is already the third largest economy, after China and the United States.⁵ In 2018, India had the third largest defence budget in the world, it is adding sea power to its traditional role as a continental power,⁶ and, with the commissioning of the nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine INS Arihant in August 2016, India is closing in on possessing a fully operational nuclear triad, together with the United States, Russia, and China. India’s growing economic and military prowess is increasing its position and ambition as a regional power in South Asia and the wider Indo-Pacific strategic theatre.

Second, since assuming office in 2014, the Modi government has shown that India is now willing to build more comprehensive relations with neighbouring countries, as well as with the great powers.⁷ It should be acknowledged that ever since the end of the Cold War, it has been a pan-partisan effort in India to establish greater diplomatic elbow room, engaging with neighbouring countries through initiatives like the Look East (now Act East policy), Look West, or Connect Central Asia, and with other major powers at a bilateral level as well as through multilateral engagements like the Brazil–Russia–India–China–South Africa (BRICS). Nonetheless, it seems that Modi has imparted new momentum to these efforts. His government has furthermore overcome the hesitations of history with the United States by inviting then-President Obama as chief guest to Republic Day celebrations and signing onto a joint vision of the Indo-Pacific and to the maintenance of the US-led rules-based order. The Modi government is also building closer links with Japan and showing less reserve or apology in forging the Quadrilateral Initiative with the United States, Japan, and Australia.

Third, the increasing importance of the Indian Ocean Region as part of the larger Indo-Pacific theatre adds to India’s strategic significance and drives its maritime ambitions. With increased trade between Asia and Europe and China, Japan, and South Korea sourcing a large part of their crude oil from the Middle East, the Indian Ocean Region is one of the most important sea lanes in the world. Moreover, with China now turning to the sea and gradually projecting military capabilities into the Indian Ocean Region and the Indo-Pacific emerging as one strategic theatre, India’s maritime and naval policies carry greater weight.⁸ India’s response to this development is shaped by its traditional perception of the Indian Ocean as its backyard and lack of enthusiasm for the presence of the navies of external powers, be it the superpowers during the Cold War or the increased presence of the Chinese Navy today.

This brings us to a fourth significant change shaping India’s role in Asian security: the growing power gap vis-à-vis China. Although the Chinese threat is not new for India, China’s rapid ascent during the last two decades represents a different type of challenge. In fact, in the same period as India has gained economic and military muscles itself, enabling it to adopt a more ambitious foreign policy, China’s continued economic rise after the global financial crisis has taken the “Middle Kingdom” to another level. For instance, while China’s GDP and military expenditure in 2005 were “only” two and three times, respectively, larger than India’s, by 2015, China’s GDP was five times larger than India’s and China’s military expenditure four times larger than India’s. In addition, China’s foreign policy has taken a more assertive turn in recent years,⁹ and Xi Jinping’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative is increasing China’s economic and strategic footprint in India’s neighbourhood, both on land and at sea.¹⁰ Clearly, the growing power gap and China’s growing economic presence and political influence in India’s continental and maritime periphery complicate India’s leverage in its own neighbourhood and the wider Indo-Pacific region and mean that China today represents a different challenge to India from only 10 or 15 years ago. In fact, the 2017 Doklam standoff and the 2020 crisis in Eastern Ladakh, with several casualties on both sides, are the most serious border clashes between India and China in several decades, indicating that tensions are running high at the core of this relationship.

Fifth, China’s rise not only represents a challenge for India but is altering the balance of power in Asia and in the international system (see Figure 1.2). While China’s GDP in 2005 was only half that of Japan, by 2015, it had grown to be larger than the combined GDPs of India, Japan, and Russia, and China’s military expenditure is now also larger than the combined defence budgets of India, Japan, and Russia.

FIGURE 1.2 Global power shift

Source: IMF (2019b). GDP in USD millions, current prices, April 2019.

This dramatic power shift set in motion by China’s growth shapes how the United States looks upon Asia. Ever since 1776, the grand strategy of the United States has been to seek a balance of power in its transoceanic flanking regions, and only when a great power threatened to achieve hegemony in Europe and/or East Asia did the United States perceives a grave threat, as from Japan and Germany during World War II.¹¹ For now, China is perceived as the only country able to challenge the United States.¹² Moreover, if China’s neighbours, and in particular the major powers India, Japan, and Russia, are no longer able to balance China by themselves, this increases the incentive for the United States to maintain its forward posture in Asia and engage with the major powers on China’s frontiers. Against this background, seen from Washington, the role of India in Asian security becomes more prominent and important as a result of China’s rise.

It is argued that we are now returning to a new bipolar world structure, with the United States and China as the two leading poles in the international system.¹³ In a bipolar system, according to Kenneth Waltz, internal balancing is more important than external balancing (forming alliances), because other major powers do not have the capabilities to change the balance of power in any significant way.¹⁴ Nevertheless, some form of strategic alignment with another second-ranked great power could still be useful in a bipolar system, with the United States playing the “China card” against the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s as the obvious historical precedent. Notwithstanding that neither India nor Japan is able to change the power equilibrium in Asia vis-à-vis China in any significant way, both countries would still play an important role in enabling the United States to maintain its forward presence in the region. Furthermore, in similar terms as playing the China card against the Soviet Union during the Cold War forced Moscow to balance two flanks simultaneously, it would currently be of interest to the United States to draw India closer into its orbit, forcing China to balance two flanks. Moreover, as the strategic theatre is about to expand from the Western Pacific to the larger Indo-Pacific region, India’s role becomes more prominent. Various administrations in Washington have since the mid-2000s worked to improve relations between the United States and India. Positioning itself vis-à-vis China and the United States without reducing its strategic autonomy will be a delicate balancing act for New Delhi over the coming years.

In this volume, we engage with how these five developments – India’s emergence as the do...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Part I India and China’s rise
• Part II China’s rise and India’s neighbourhood policy
• Part III India and the great powers
• Part IV Concluding observations
• Index