India’s Self-Inflicted Foreign Policy Challenges in 2020 - The Diplomat, 4 January 2020

In my column for The Diplomat last week, India’s Self-Inflicted Foreign Policy Challenges in 2020, I looked at India's foreign policy challenges for 2020. Sadly, many of them have been the government's own making. Hence, I argue that while the Modi government secured some notable gains during its time in office thus far, challenges lie ahead this year and beyond.

Since becoming prime minister in 2014, Narendra Modi has paid significant attention to India’s foreign relations. Though there could be some quibbles about how much he managed to achieve, there is little doubt that his focus at least led to greater energy and push in India’s foreign policy, even if Modi’s foreign policy has not witnessed any significant shifts.

But since his re-election last summer, India’s foreign policy challenges have been growing. And while the reasons for this may be varied, some of it is because of the BJP government’s own mistakes.

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In his first term, Modi was able to undertake significant strategic outreach to the United States, Japan, and Australia. The revival of the Quad is a great indicator of the pragmatism in India’s diplomacy today. Despite some setbacks in between, India also managed to consolidate its position in two important Indian Ocean countries – Sri Lanka and Maldives. Modi can also be credited with a more effective outreach to Southeast Asia, with its Act East Policy.

But there are also growing difficulties. Managing China, India’s most serious challenge, has seen some success but it remains a major and continuing problem. India’s more active role in the Quad in its second avatar is a positive sign. Despite the occasional wavering in India’s Indo-Pacific policy, elevating the Quad to foreign ministerial level deliberations shows the willingness of all the four Quad members to acknowledge the reality of the China problem and the need for the four to work toward strategic coordination.

But there are serious problems with India’s hard capacity to manage the China problem. General V.P. Malik, the former chief of Indian Army Staff, said during the Kargil war that “we will fight with what we have,” but such an approach while facing a much a larger and strong force in China will be dangerous for India. For all the loud rhetoric on national security, the Modi government’s defense budget allocation has been abysmal. Year after year, it has driven down the defense budget, which now has the lowest allocation since the period before the 1962 Sino-Indian War.

Even within this allocation, much of it is spent on salaries and pension, leaving very little for capital expenditure, thus leaving procurement issues unresolved. All three Indian services have significant gaps and this is going to test India’s ability to defend successfully against China. The Indian focus appears to be on diplomacy to deal with China, but depending on one toll alone could be dangerous.

Another major challenge is the neighborhood, and the problems here are compounded due to India’s internal developments. Today, India’s neighborhood policy is facing serious challenges, in part because of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the proposed National Register of Citizens (NRC). Together, they have had a particularly negative impact on India’s relations with Afghanistan and Bangladesh. With the CAA targeting three Islamic neighbors – Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan – India’s neighborhood diplomacy suddenly faces new problems.

Relations with Bangladesh had improved significantly under Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina but the CAA and the NRC have put the Bangladeshi government in a difficult position. Relations with Afghanistan, another friendly neighbor, are affected also. Moreover, the CAA is seen both as specifically targeting Muslims and as equating Indian citizenship with Hinduism, raising eyebrows across the world. Even India’s partners are questioning its credentials as a multicultural, pluralist society. India did enjoy certain soft power benefit as the world’s largest democracy, with diverse cultures and religions co-existing in a stable political system, but that image has been tarnished by the recent developments.

Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, and even External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar can ignore the global concerns by saying these are internal matters of India. But the reality is that India’s moral standing has taken a hit and it will need significant efforts on the part of the Modi government to demonstrate that India is still a multicultural and secular democracy.

Modi did make a smart choice in getting Jaishankar to head the foreign ministry. Jaishankar, a former foreign secretary, is well-respected around the world, and is known to have been an important reason for many of Modi’s foreign policy successes in his first term. But it is unclear if an experienced technocrat like Jaishankar can weather the storms created by poor domestic political decisions. Jaishankar was successful to a large extent in assuaging the fears around the developments in Jammu and Kashmir, after Article 370 was revoked in early July. His extensive engagements in the United States, speaking in nearly a dozen think tanks, as well as other media interviews, helped stem the damage.

But India’s outreach has been poor after the CAA. Jaishankar’s cancellation of meetings with U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee (HFAC) because the delegation included Ms. Pramila Jayapal, for instance, has angered Democrats in the United States to the point where Jayapal now has another 10 legislators co-sponsoring her resolution in the Congress, seeking a return to normalcy in Kashmir at the earliest. It is not clear that India still enjoys the kind of bipartisan support in the U.S. as it did in the last 15 years.

This comes on top of Modi’s statement, “Ab ki baar Trump Sarkar,” which has not gone down well with Democrats. It would have been better for Modi to not poke his head into the internal politics of another country. The U.S. relationship is absolutely critical in managing the China issue and it will be a challenge to get it back to even keel, especially if a Democrat wins the White House in November.

It is unclear how the India-Japan relationship has been affected. The annual summit, originally slated to take place in Guwahati in December 2019, was postponed because of CAA-related protests. This has been an annual feature for more than a decade and it is possibly the first time that the summit meeting has been skipped.

India’s democracy and stability plays at least a supporting role in India’s partnerships, and even uncertainty can hurt these relations. While India has faced many external difficulties in the past, they have rarely been the result of domestic politics. Handling these new challenges could be much more difficult than the Indian government assumes.

India’s Growing Iran Dilemma - The Diplomat, 25 April 2019

In this week's column for The Diplomat, I write on India's growing Iran dilemma, and the current sanction waiver issue is just the latest manifestation of New Delhi's rising challenge in managing ties with Tehran.

The Trump administration appears to have decided not to extend waivers from sanctions on those countries that continue to buy oil from Iran. The decision not to extend another round of Significant Reduction Exceptions (SREs) will have a significant impact on big Asian oil importers including India, China, Japan, and South Korea, which had each initially secured a 180-day exemption from U.S. sanctions last year.

Among these countries, India is likely to be significantly impacted. India is the second largest importer of Iranian crude oil after China, and New Delhi is reported to be buying a considerable share of its oil from Tehran, making Iran the third largest oil supplier to India after Iraq and Saudi Arabia. This means that the Indian government will find it difficult to accept the U.S. decision.

The issue also raises broader questions about New Delhi’s relations with Washington. Among those is whether India has miscalculated its capacity to manage the United States. Given the centrality of India in the U.S. Free and Open Indo-Pacific strategy, the Modi government may have assumed that India will get another exemption from the sanctions that are to kickstart on May 1.

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Indian Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan tweeted to say that India has “a robust plan for an adequate supply of crude oil to Indian refineries. There will be additional supplies from other major oil-producing countries; Indian refineries are fully prepared to meet the national demand for petrol, diesel & other petroleum products.” But while India may have possibly been ready for additional reduction of oil imports from Iran, New Delhi is certainly not ready for a complete halt.

The U.S. decision is likely to create some negative reaction in New Delhi and raise once again the rhetoric of the United States as an unreliable partner that encroaches on Indian interests and sovereignty. Such a dynamic has been seen in the past as well whenever there have been tensions between the United States and India.

But in truth, India does have alternate options – Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and even the United States are potential suppliers that could replace Iran as an oil source. In fact, a White House statement made just this point: “The United States, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, three of the world’s great energy producers, along with our friends and allies, are committed to ensuring that global oil markets remain adequately supplied. We have agreed to take timely action to assure that global demand is met as all Iranian oil is removed from the market.”

Nonetheless, there are a number of strategic reasons why India wants to continue buying Iranian oil in spite of other options available. For instance, Shia Iran is seen in New Delhi as an ally against the predominantly Sunni Pakistan. Pakistan’s traditionally close relations with Saudi Arabia made Iran a possible ally. Iran’s position on Pakistan’s flank is also attractive, as is the perception of common Indian-Iranian interest in countering Pakistan’s influence in Afghanistan.

From a wider perspective, New Delhi also sees Iran as a conduit to Central Asia, a region that India considers strategically vital. India has invested in Chabahar port in Iran and highways that provide an alternative route to both Afghanistan and Central Asia, bypassing Pakistan. And despite the growing closeness with the United States, there is residual sympathy in New Delhi for some of Washington’s opponents, including Iran, that is rooted in India’s historic cultivation of multiple alignments with a diverse array of states. Finally, there is a question of timing too: In the midst of a tough national election campaign, the Modi government will not want to be seen as bowing to U.S. diktats.

But the impact of the U.S. decision on India can also belie India’s own challenges in its relationship with Iran, which are important to keep in mind as well. For one, India has invested more in its relationship with Saudi Arabia and other anti-Iranian Gulf monarchies. Such improving relationships will put pressure on India to moderate its support for Iran.

India has also grown increasingly close to Israel, a country that is the source of vital military equipment for India, but which is also engaged in severe competition with Iran. New Delhi has so far managed to insulate these relationships, but they also mean that India cannot be seen to be going out of its way to support Tehran.

Iran’s positioning on a number of issues that matter to India is no longer very reassuring to New Delhi. For instance, Iran appears to be more closely aligned to Pakistan on Afghanistan than before, as evidenced by Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan’s recent trip to Iran.

Last and certainly not least, all said and done, the United States itself is an increasingly vital partner for India. Joining Beijing in defying American wishes on the Iran issue may not be particularly wise given the broader interests that Washington and New Delhi and share. All of this ensures that New Delhi will find itself in a strategically difficult position in the coming weeks.

Future of U.S.-India Relations: Beyond the Plateau, report authored by scholars from the Heritage Foundation and Observer Research Foundation....

Here's a new report on the future of US-India relations, authored by scholars from the Heritage Foundation and the Observer Research Foundation. I have contributed one chapter to the report.

The report looks at India-US relations through five key drivers: economy, defense, regional security in East and Southwest Asia, nonproliferation, and counterterrorism.

The report is going to be launched in Washington DC on April 29, 2013.

To read full report, click here.




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