Contradictions Grow Amid Another BRICS Summit - The Diplomat, 19 November 2020

In an earlier column for The Diplomat in November, I wrote on the 2020 BRICS Summit and the contradictions therein.  I argued that the group has always been diverse in terms of economic, political, and security interests.  The question, therefore, is it anything more than an ineffective talkshop?  

BRICS, the Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa grouping, met virtually on November 17 for its 12th summit meeting. Prior to the meeting, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) released a statement saying that the meeting would discuss intra-BRICS cooperation around counterterrorism, energy, trade, health, and ways to mitigate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Each of the five leaders stressed various aspects of cooperation in the face of the pandemic and the resultant economic slowdown. 

For the full post, click here.  

Chinese President Xi Jinping talked about “global epidemiological security” and said that “the BRICS countries firmly believe in the primacy of international law” and considered the World Health Organization to be the leading institution in addressing the pandemic. He added that once the pandemic is taken care of, focus must shift to economic recovery. Here, he argued “China can once again lead the way.” Citing how China’s “economy already bounced back from its low point earlier this year,” he said, “its new development paradigm of dual circulation where domestic and international circulation mutually reinforce one another will help stimulate the global economy” as well as “repair the damage done by some countries’ protectionist policies.” He concluded by saying that there will be “hiccups along the way” but “the trust-based relations between the BRICS countries could serve as a very stabilizing factor during this unprecedented transition in global political and economic affairs as the world begins to embrace new models.”  

Xi’s statements on the primacy of international law and trust-based relations within BRICS are bound to be taken with more than a little skepticism given China’s punitive economic actions against many of its neighbors and even partners further away. Such statements from China are not new. At the BRICS Foreign Ministers meeting last week, Wang Yi, China’s foreign minister, said that the BRICS countries should come together in addressing the challenges of the pandemic and global economic recovery, and foster multilateralism and seek “political settlement of hot-spot issues.” 

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi also spoke about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the reform process that has been initiated by his government to get the economy back on track. Modi highlighted the need for reform of multilateral institutions such as the IMF, WHO and WTO, but his particular emphasis was on terrorism, which he characterized as “the biggest problem today.” Modi said that the group must ensure that “countries that support and help terrorists are also held to account.”  

It is doubtful that the other members of BRICS necessarily share India’s view of the terrorism problem, but that is not the sole difficulty. The BRICS summit is also taking place at a time when India and China have squared off at their border, a temporary line called the Line of Actual Control (LAC). BRICS, as a multilateral platform, cannot address bilateral issues and hence, it was, understandably, not expected to address that particular issue. And given that the summit was held virtually, the possibility of informal bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the summit was nonexistent.  

The group itself has always been diverse in terms of economic, political, and security interests. These have only grown over the last two decades as Abhijnan Rej highlighted recently. China has emerged as the world’s second largest economy, while Brazil, Russia, and South Africa are nowhere near the indicators that brought them into the grouping initially.  

Politically, too, the group is diverse, with few common political interests other than singing the song of multilateralism. Even that rhetoric may not hold for long given the yawning gap between China’s rhetoric of multilateralism and its unilateral aggressive behavior on the ground.  

China and Russia have an anti-American political goal for the grouping, which sits very uneasily with Indian interests, considering India has invested significantly in building and nurturing its bilateral ties with the United States as well as engaging in strategic minilaterals such as the Quad and various trilaterals in the Indo-Pacific.  

That India works with China in the BRICS format, when the aim of India’s Quad and other such minilaterals are to restrict and restrain China’s aggressive and bullying behavior, adds to the growing array of contradictions. Certainly, BRICS cannot be a military and security grouping given the significant differences between each of the players, most notably between India, China, and Russia. The success of groupings such as BRICS will depend on the health of bilateral ties among those within the group. India-China relations in the backdrop of the Galwan conflict do not suggest that all is well on the bilateral front or even in the regional context.  

India’s aim in engaging with BRICS may be an effort to demonstrate that it retains strategic autonomy and that it engages with all major powers irrespective of these incongruences. In this respect, it may serve a limited domestic political agenda. But as contradictions keep piling up, questions about the future of BRICS as anything other than an ineffective talkshop are bound to grow.  

Deepening US-India Maritime Ties in Focus with Navy Chief Visit - The Diplomat, May 15, 2019

In last week's column for the Diplomat, "Deepening US-India Maritime Ties in Focus with Navy Chief Visit," I examined the deeper engagement between Indian and the US navies in the face of growing maritime threats in the Indo-Pacific. A recent interaction highlighted this aspect of relations between the two countries.

Admiral John Michael Richardson, the chief of naval operations of the U.S. Navy, has just wrapped up a visit to India to explore additional areas of naval cooperation between the Indian and U.S. navies. Richardson’s trip provided the opportunity for both sides to deepen their naval collaboration as part of their broader defense ties.

For the full essay, click here.



During his visit, Richardson met with a number of Indian officials, including Indian naval chief Admiral Sunil Lanba, who is also chairman of India’s Chiefs of Staff Committee (COSC), as well as Indian Defense Secretary Sanjay Mitra and other senior officials. They are reported to have discussed all issues covering operations and exercises, training interactions, as well as capacity building and enhancement.

The visit comes against the backdrop of U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s statements that the United States is reorienting its ties with like-minded partners in nurturing “a free and open order” in the Indo-Pacific. He said that the United States is “banding together with the likeminded nations like Australia, India, Japan, and South Korea to make sure that each Indo-Pacific nation can protect its sovereignty from coercion.”

Like this one, many of the recent initiatives have been in the backdrop of a more muscular China that has been using infrastructure investment and other economic tools to further its narrow interests, even when China understands the economic non-feasibility of these projects.

A particular concern, as Admiral Richardson’s visit shows, is China’s growing naval power, a concern to both India and the United States. The PLA has traditionally been a land-focused force, but this is no more the case. Both the specific need of protecting China’s sea routes of commerce – vital for a nation as dependent on foreign trade as China – and China’s larger ambition to return to its traditional great power role, require China to expand its naval power.

The Chinese naval base in Djibouti established in 2017 is a case in point. It has also established a firmer foothold in the Indian Ocean by acquiring Sri Lanka’s Hambantota part for 99 years. (Interestingly, possibly to demonstrate its control over the port, Sri Lanka held a week-long exercise with the United States known as Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training (CARAT) in Hambantota). China also has access to Pakistan’s Gwadar port, which adds to its growing maritime footprint.

China’s naval push is leading India and the United States to do a lot more together, especially in the seas. Even though India has been trying to improve relations with China, New Delhi has also stepped up its security engagements with Washington. India’s recent decision to join the United States, Japan, Australia, and the Philippines in sailing through and conducting a naval exercise in the South China Sea demonstrated India’s growing concerns with a belligerent China and the need to cooperate and coordinate with other like-minded partners in the region.

The United States, too, has changed, with the Trump Administration, in particular, taking a much more strategic and longer-term approach to India that is more clearly directed at China. The United States granted the ‘Major Defense Partner’ status to India in 2016 and the ‘Strategic Trade Authorisation-1’ (STA) rank to India in 2018, evidence of the changing view in Washington regarding India’s role in the region. The 2+2 Strategic Dialogue between the two sides also had its inaugural edition in September 2018 and the signing of the Communications, Compatibility, Security Agreement (COMCASA) have added more substance and depth into the defense and strategic cooperation.

The recent U.S. decision to approve the sale of two dozen multi-role MH-60R Seahawk maritime helicopters to India for around $2.6 billion is important in the context of having strengthened anti-submarine warfare capabilities against China. These helicopters can operate from a number of different platforms including frigates, destroyers, cruisers and aircraft carriers and can be used for multiple missions including anti-surface and anti-submarine warfare operations along with secondary missions including vertical replenishment, search and rescue, and communications relay. Other important developments in this respect include the Seahawk helicopters to be armed with Hellfire missiles. These are capable of undertaking multiple missions with anti-submarine warfare missions being a critical one.

The two sides have also strengthened education, training and joint exercises in recent years – the two navies recently concluded a joint submarine-hunting exercise in the Indian Ocean, with the goal of having more reinforced and coordinated maritime patrol and reconnaissance missions in the region. The United States has sold India a number of major non-naval items also, underlining the broader nature of military ties. Earlier, India took possession of four of the 15 Boeing-made Chinook heavy-lift helicopters ordered in 2018. In addition, India has placed orders for 22 Apache attack helicopters from the United States, the first of which was handed over to the Indian Air Force last week.

Richardson’s visit will help in furthering the growing cooperation between the two sides. Because this cooperation is being driven by external pressures that both the United States and India feel, it is likely that it will deepen, irrespective of the outcome of the current national elections in India.

Why Postponing the New US-India Dialogue Matters, my essay for The Diplomat on the postponement of the 2+2 Dialogue, June 29, 2018

This week, I published a second essay for The Diplomat on why postponing the New US-India 2+2 Dialogue matters. The postponement may have been entirely a scheduling issue but such developments only exacerbate the challenges of managing differences in an important, complex relationship.



Speaking in New Delhi recently, Nikki Haley, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, characterized the U.S.-India relationship as a high priority one saying, “Perhaps no other partnership has as much potential for global peace and prosperity over the next 10, 20, or 50 years.”

In reality, despite being a high priority, significant challenges remain for the relationship that require both sides to address, and recent developments have only compounded some of these. That was most recently demonstrated by the fact that even a supposedly regular mechanism such as the U.S.-India inaugural “2+2 dialogue” was postponed.

The U.S. Embassy in India issued a short statement saying that the dialogue postponement was “prompted by reasons entirely unrelated to the bilateral relationship.” As this article went to publication, reports indicate that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will be travelling to North Korea next week, which suggests a possible reason for the postponement.

Irrespective of the details, the big picture is clear: even as Trump administration officials have reiterated that India is a priority country and high on the agenda, this is the second time that this new dialogue has been postponed within a year of its formulation.

For the full essay, click here.



This new dialogue initiative between India and the United States was agreed upon by the two sides during the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the United States in June 2017. Before the postponement, India’s Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj and Defense Minister Nirmala Sitharaman were to travel to Washington, D.C. for this inaugural dialogue, where a number of tricky but significant issues were to be taken up.

The dialogue was meant to re-energize the relationship against the backdrop of a possible downward trend in trade and economic ties. It was also critical in the context of possible strains over the CAATSA (Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act) issue – a law passed by the United States in August 2017 and which came into effect in January this year. CAATSA penalizes entities that undertake significant transactions with Russia in the intelligence or defense sectors. New Delhi engages Moscow on both these fronts, with the defense sector being more critical.

While U.S.-India relations have broadly been on the right track, there are clearly some troubles ahead. The postponement will add one more issue to the mix, particularly with respect to the ever-lingering perception that the United States is not giving sufficient importance to India. It will also add to the existing issues that were already slated to be discussed. Rescheduling the dialogue is not an insignificant task because a number of bilateral issues need attention now and could exacerbate if they are not addressed soon.

As an example, on the economic front, India announced last week that it will impose retaliatory tariff on 29 U.S. products that will take effect on August 4, in response to unilateral U.S. imposition of higher import duties on steel and aluminum from India. India had earlier asked the U.S. government to make an exemption for India but Washington did not heed the request.

The U.S. duties will increase the cost of steel exports to the United States by $198.6 million and aluminum exports by $42.4 million. India in this regard is also reported to be taking the United States to the World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute settlement mechanism. This could galvanize support from other countries as well, including the European Union (EU) and China. After a month of verbal retaliation, the EU has also begun taking more concrete steps. Japan, Mexico, Canada, and other countries are also considering similar responses to the U.S. imposition of duties. China has already imposed a series of measures targeting the United States, to which President Donald Trump has already threatened to retaliate.

The overall impact of these measures is unpredictable but potentially quite dangerous. More worryingly, the trade war is also bringing China and U.S. allies and partners together, thus strengthening Beijing and weakening efforts to counter its other more aggressive political and military tendencies.

Another reason for a quick rescheduling of the 2+2 dialogue is because of the CAATSA headache. Though New Delhi has diversified its defense trade partners, Moscow continues to dominate the Indian defense inventory to the tune of about 70 percent. Further, India’s plans to acquire important platforms including the S-400 air defense systems could run into serious problems.

Even as the CAATSA sanctions are not aimed at India, its security implications for India will be significant given the continuing Indian dependence on Russia for defense equipment. Congressman Joe Crowley, the House Democratic Caucus chairman recently ousted in a primary, while speaking at a U.S.-India Friendship event stated that CAATSA “is a serious issue that needs to be dealt [with]. There needs to be a dialogue between the U.S. and India. Our goal is not to sanction India.” He added that “understanding the needs that India has as a nation for self-defense as well … has to be taken into consideration.”

Given that the S-400 deal with Russia is an important one for New Delhi from a national security perspective, this is likely to be an issue at the 2+2 dialogue. Acknowledging this, Nisha Desai Biswal, the former assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asia and the current president of the U.S.-India Business Council said, “It is something that we are all mindful of and looking at very very carefully. But I do think that we need to acknowledge and address the continuing importance for India of its relationship with Russia and how we how we manage the way forward on that issue.”

If the United States wants a strong India as its partner, Washington cannot come up with such blanket sanctions that might hamper its defense capacity-building. This could also increase some of the fears that the United States is not a credible and secure defense partner.

A third issue that needs attention is the Communications, Compatibility, Security Agreement (COMCASA), an agreement that will offer a legal framework for India to obtain more secure, encrypted, and advanced communication equipment from the United States. This would in turn create better interoperability between the two militaries as also with other militaries that use U.S.-origin platforms with similar communication links.

The framework agreement, originally called the Communication and Information on Security Memorandum of Agreement (CISMOA) was changed to COMCASA to suit India-specific requirements. This is part of the three foundational agreements that the United States has sought with India in order to further the India-U.S. defense partnership. India in August 2016 signed the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA), which was earlier called the Logistics Services Agreement (LSA).

Looking at the slow pace with which India approached the LEMOA and the negotiations underway for signing the COMCASA, the third agreement, Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement for Geospatial Cooperation (BECA) will be a long off. Reports indicate that India and the United States are closer to signing the COMCASA, and officials familiar with the negotiations say that it only needs the political will to sign. A lot of ground was believed to be covered during the visit of Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale and Defense Secretary Sanjay Mitra to the United States earlier in April.

These agreements are significant because they are critical for aspects of cooperation to go forward. As an example, India’s plans to buy Guardian Avenger armed drones from the United States cannot be expected to progress if COMCASA is not signed.

It is unclear if there are technical glitches to India signing the agreement. Some reports indicate that India is concerned about possible “intrusive American access to Indian military communication systems, and about the violation of Indian sovereignty due to visits by U.S. inspectors to Indian bases to inspect the COMCASA-safeguarded equipment.” It is also argued that India’s Russian dominant defense inventory “may not be compatible” with COMCASA. But like LEMOA, the Indian opposition is almost entirely political in nature.

While each of these issues can be problematic, both New Delhi and Washington need to be mindful of the larger Asian strategic issues that have brought the two closer in the first place. If the United States wants to see a capable India that is able to balance China in an effective manner, Washington has to become more understanding of some of India’s choices. Equally, New Delhi needs to be more pragmatic about which fights it wants to pick with the United States on what issue and what it stands to lose.

Whether the two sides can accomplish this is the question. Postponing the dialogue may have been unavoidable, but it does not help either India or the United States in working out a path forward.