Above article is an excellent analysis of Indian Foreign policy issue above written by Sri Sathia Moorthy. I couldn’t agree more with his trenchant views.
For China, investments in IOR islands has immense geo-strategic value: it ensures China’s presence in the Indian Ocean choke-point of the Malay Straits over which the QUAD and AUKUS today are seeking to establish dominance. India has chosen to stay out of both multilateral geo-strategic alliances— a foreign policy reluctance to deal with a judgmental challenge which is also a Geo-political blunder.
What is that judgmental challenge?
It is India’s inability to make up its mind about which of the two evils is the lesser one: To fully align with the QUAD-AUKUS formation in the Indo-Pacific region or to continue with the bilateral route to piecemeal containment/appeasement/resistance to Chinese expansionism on its very own terms? To be or not to be, is the question…
In meeting the challenge of Pakistan over the decades since 1948, India’s foreign policy has clearly overcome its compunctions of pusillanimity. Today India is capable of aggressively responding to any threats Pakistan might pose to her security largely because of Pakistan’s own state of steadily deteriorating sovereignty in both economic and political terms. Indian Foreign policy stance against Pakistan has evolved over the years to assume a degree of clarity of purpose and will that is not similarly reflected in its foreign policy vis-a-vis China.
But China is the exact opposite case of Pakistan … China is an Asian Hegemony and a nearly equal Superpower to the USA. Instead of striving for greater clarity of purpose and will than is in the case with Pakistan, India’s foreign policy response to China instead has ever since 1962 been characterised by only more and more tentativeness, indecisiveness and pussy-footedness. India’s China foreign policy is riddled with contradictions. On one hand, we have frosty political relations caused by irresolvable disputes along more than 3000 kms of borderlines. On the other hand, we have booming trade and investment relations with the same country even in the times of a pandemic worldwide lockdown.
India only manages to blow hot and blow cold through its Chinese foreign policy while China quietly keeps blowing only scalding steam in its reciprocatory relations with India.
Foreign policy pundits in India often, as is their sophisticated and sophistical wont, are in the habit of expounding the “dominant strategic intent” of the country’s China-policy through the use of that rather pedagogic, pedantic expression or cliche : “doctrine of strategic restraint” or prudence. To an ordinary citizen of India like me on the street however the phrase over the decades since 1962 has become too well-worn and passé .
In the context of today’s geopolitical, Geo-strategic tensions and potential conflicts in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR), the doctrine of strategic restraint sounds hollow and effete and no more than a legacy redux of the old Nehruvian Non-Alignment doctrine of “strategic dithering”.
Wake up please, and do something about it, dear Prime Minister, Sri Narendra Modi !
Here are a few of my broad policy suggestions for you and your MEA to consider if not already being considered:
1. Abandon the hypocrisy of “strategic restraint”. Embrace the American position that China poses an existential threat to the territorial and civilisational integrity of India as much it does to the USA.
2. Actively Seek Russia’s tacit if not explicit diplomatic support in undermining/ sabotaging the Chinese BRI project that poses a geostrategic long-term threat in Central Asia to both Russian and Indian interests. Make no secret about this in foreign policy pronouncements as well as formulations.
3. Give Indian Industry fixed deadline to reduce dependence on Chinese imports and introduce disincentives for Chinese-manufactured content in Indian products and merchandise.
4. Work actively to accomplish Signing and sealing a bold 30-year Defence Military Pact with Vietnam, South Korea, Sri Lanka and Phillipines … position it (taking a leaf out of NATO) as SAIOTO —- South Asian Indian Ocean Treaty Organization. Co-opt the USA into SAIOTO with long-term institutional role as a sponsoring “guardian angel” of the pact.
5. Covertly work on the military annexation of Nepal ( a Hindu majority country) or at least establish formidable Indian military bases (nuclear and non-nuclear ballistic missiles ) there aimed at specific Chinese hinterland targets.
6. Mandate and fund our top 3 IT giant companies to develop belligerent covert cyber-warfare weapons within a deadline that can be deployed against specific Chinese targets that could significantly degrade critical infrastructure. Get the MoD to give this project topmost war-footing priority.
The above are some of my top of the mind thoughts Sir …
Sudarshan Madabushi