India-Japan: Alignment assured

On Sunday, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will be our honoured guest at the celebrations of India’s 65^th Republic Day. On display for Abe will be India’s cultural diversity and defence muscle. What he is likely to be more impressed with, however, will be our commitment to Asia, evidence of which has dimmed of late.

It wasn’t that long ago that India reached the high watermark of international interest. In 2010, when our growth rate was in the double digits, the leaders of all the permanent five members of the UN Security Council visited us, even as the three western powers, U.S., UK and France, were struggling economically. While our children danced with Michelle Obama in a Mumbai school in November 2010, in Delhi defence deals worth billions were cut by western corporations. The scale was dizzying. Later though, the truth dawned: they got the jobs and we have become the world’s largest arms buyer.

Our star has since dimmed considerably. Just as the western economies are entering more cheerful growth climes, we have slid from 9.5% GDP to a miserable 4.8% in 2013. Relations with the U.S. have touched rock-bottom over the controversy of Devyani Khobragade’s domestic worker; France is absorbed in its own economic travails and, uncharacteristically, President François Hollande’s private life; Chinese soldiers keep crossing over, uninvited, to our side of the Line of Actual Control; and Russia is preoccupied with recovering its place at the high table by besting the West over Syria and conducting an incident-free winter games at Sochi. Only the UK Prime Minister David Cameron still sees hope in the Indian economic miracle – as evidenced by his third visit in as many years.

At home too, the ruling Congress government is bedevilled by charges of corruption and ineffectiveness. Latest polls show that approval ratings for its putative candidate for Prime Minister place him a distant third in the forthcoming national elections.

At a time of such chaos, it is remarkable that the Japanese are showing so much interest in India. This is the third high-level visit in a row. Prior to Abe and pursuant to our PM’s trip to Tokyo in May 2013, came the first ever visit of the Japanese Emperor and Empress to India in December 2013, followed by the trip of Defence Minister Itsunori Onodera.

This unprecedented, concentrated outreach to India reflects the urgency with which Japan assesses the threat from the resurgent nationalism of an economically vibrant and militarily belligerent China.

As the differences with China over the Senkaku/ Diaoyu islands are expressed in near daily militaristic exchanges, the previously reticent Japanese are moving purposefully to draw global attention to the situation and seek support. At Davos, Abe compared the Sino-Japanese differences with those between the UK and Berlin just before the First World War. Although he recalled Japan’s pledge forswearing war in perpetuity, Japan has upped its own defence budgets, issued a new National Security Strategy and resumed the debate to amend Article 9 of its Constitution, which forbids “the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes.”

Although the sheet anchor of its security remains the defence treaty with the U.S., Japan is seeking support from other countries in the region, perhaps because the U.S. has been equivocal in its support to Japan, equating it and China both to maintain the peace. So Japan has pledged $20 billion over five years to ASEAN countries to upgrade maritime connectivity and is looking to revive the India-Japan-Australia-U.S. ‘quadrilateral’, a sort of concert of democracies to balance an increasingly assertive China.

In this effort, Japan is finding some resistance in East and Southeast Asia, mainly because in addition to China, South Korea continues to harbour resentment against Japan for inadequately expressing regret for war time atrocities. Germany, the other defeated power in the Second World War, has set the gold standard for repentance and been able to amend its peacetime Constitution with the support of its NATO partners. Not only have German political leaders apologised unequivocally, the country continues to build memorials to the victims, its artists continue to search their souls for explanations for the holocaust and it has contributed an estimated $30 billion to the building of Israel. Japan too has adhered to its peacetime constitution and also given over $30 billion in development aid to China but has failed to articulate, to the satisfaction of its neighbours, regret for the atrocities committed by its armed forces, including the deaths of up to 14 million Chinese, the phenomenon of south Korean comfort women and a host of other unspeakable acts of violence.

Although India also has reasons to be concerned about China, it cannot entirely ignore the sensitivities of other Asian countries which experienced Japanese war time occupation. Still it is hard not to note recent reports suggesting recurring platoon-sized breaches by China of the Line of Actual Control, including the prolonged 2013 Depsang incursion that occurred days before Premier Li Keqiang’s visit to India. That echoed the then Chinese Ambassador to India, Sun Yuxi’s reactivation of claims to Arunachal Pradesh just ahead of former Premier Hu Jintao’s visit to India in 2006.

And all this while, the gap between India and China’s economy and military strength has been steadily increasing.

It is probably in India’s best long term interests not to become a junior partner in the American pivot, rechristened the ‘rebalance’ to Asia. However with power and unprecedented economic shifts underway in Asia, India does not have the luxury of remaining ostentatiously non-aligned. This is particularly so in light of the pressures—whether blatantly military, political or economic – being exerted by China on neighbouring countries including Japan, India, Vietnam, Philippines, and the blatant insensitivity for our concerns regarding its closest ally, Pakistan.

When Abe views the Parade on Sunday, we must articulate to him, clearly, our commitment to a multi-polar Asia, for which we will work with Japan and other countries that share our democratic values.

Neelam Deo is Co-founder and Director, Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations; She has been the Indian Ambassador to Denmark and Ivory Coast; and former Consul General in New York.

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