Regional Differences Undermine Abe and Modi's Efforts

During the second week of Dec 2015, Japan and India held one of their more productive yearly summit meetings in current memory in New Delhi. Breaking the pattern of high atmospherics and shallow content that has characterized Japan-India interactions over the past half-decade, prime ministers Shinzo Abe as well as Narendra Modi signed agreements on municipal nuclear cooperation, defence equipment and technology transfer, safety of classified military information exchanges and high-speed rail cooperation.

The summit meeting is at best a fulfilment of the crucial strategic bargain sought by New Delhi in inviting Abe to grace India’s Republic Day parade as its chief guest within January 2014. The Manmohan Singh government experienced hoped that the Japanese prime minister would convince his pacifist-leaning coalition partner Komeito, to successfully deliver a finalised municipal nuclear cooperation agreement. However, the bargain did not materialise.

Fast forward to the actual December 2015 summit and to an incentive for Abe’s unqualified climb-down from Tokyo’s long-standing position on civil nuclear cooperation. Japan was elevated to a regular participant in the India-US Malabar series naval drills and the addition of some mild criticism of China’s assertiveness in the South China Sea to the India-Japan Joint Statement.

Having given in earlier to New Delhi’s demand to allow it to reprocess spent nuclear fuel from Japanese-made reactors, Abe also admitted in principle to remove the actual nullification clause, which would have obliged Japan to scrap the actual agreement in the event of a atomic test by India. This left Abe to repeat these types of long-standing Japanese positions verbally in New Delhi, given his failure to secure the language within the legal text, which is still to be formalised.

Whether this will fly with Komeito or the broader Japanese political establishment remains a question. The Japanese political establishment was under the impression that Abe’s primary concession was concluding a civil nuclear agreement with India, which is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Agreement. The conspicuous sparseness of the initialled Peaceful Uses of Energy Memorandum suggests that a good deal of nemawashi remains to be conducted by Abe in Tokyo.

The consummation of this strategic bargain reflects a cardinal truth about India’s engagement using its US-allied strategic partners as it scripts its rise in Asia. India’utes partners expect to deliver upon high-technology cooperation and transfer, that improves India’s indigenous municipal and military manufacturing abilities. In exchange, New Delhi offers rhetorical adornments that lend the impression associated with congruence with Japan and the West’utes grand canvas designs vis-à-vis China in the Indo-Pacific. In addition, it offers incrementally upgraded defence interoperability (which nevertheless falls short of ‘jointness’) that is principally geared towards maintaining strategic balance in the Indian Ocean region.

This cardinal truth of India’utes strategic engagement with the globe to its east exposes the emerging fault-line in the Indo-Pacific: the emergence of not one but two Indo-Pacific strategic methods, with the Indonesian island of Sumatra as its point of separation.

Indian and Japanese core security interests as well as responsibilities are highly differentiated and unbalanced within both of these systems, reflected in the hollow institutionalisation that infects Japan-India defence ties. Brand new Delhi is an outlier consideration east associated with Sumatra for Beijing in its geo-strategic control over Tokyo. In addition, Tokyo isn’t a consideration west of Sumatra within Beijing’s management of New Delhi or even, for the matter, a factor in India’s defence planning vis-à-vis China.

The upshot is that Japan maintains a strategic interest in New Delhi’utes participation in US as well as Japanese foreign policies that aim to create a network to surround and deter China (as unashamedly flagged by Abe), while restricting Japan’s defence commitments low. Japan’s recent collective self-defence legislation is written in this problematic vein, envisaging no practical military cooperation with India, except during UN-flagged operations or in case of a general war.

India retains a desire for defence equipment and technology transfers from Japan, whilst staying detached from Washington and Tokyo’s rationalisations about the probability of China’s rise being peaceful if the democratic powers of Asia are united under a single political tent.

The sea lines of communication that navigate the Indian Ocean region present a narrow geographic and functional arena of the overlap golf strategic interest. Common proper interests in these sea-lanes include the veiled threat of interdiction of hostile delivery. Yet, no sustained and economically significant campaign to interdict the maritime trade of the major power has been installed since the 18th century — except in a general war. A threat that is only as good as its non-activation is good theater and poor policy.

Prime ministers Abe as well as Modi have vowed to hold normal consultations on the security of sea lines of conversation that unite the Indo-Pacific. Yet if they wish to bridge the actual emerging regional fault-line, they would need to be exchanging notes on their particular China strategies.

In a role turnaround of the 1960s and 1970s, it is New Delhi that has moved on from playing host to a sputtering economy, persistently sour ties with neighbours, and over-dependence on a superpower in relative decline to script a hardheaded, Japan-like embrace of The far east.

Japan, meantime, appears to be regressing to India’utes earlier ways.  Until the 2 countries get on the same web page, their bilateral efforts to bridge the Indo-Pacific will stay aspirational.

Abe and Modi attempt to bridge the Indo-Pacific is republished along with permission from East Asia Forum