India, major regional power or world super power?
India's "field choices" will be decisive for the balance of power between the US and China, and therefore for the new global order. The analysis of General Carlo Jean
India's "field choices" will be decisive for the balance of power between the US and China, and therefore for the new global order. Its alignment with Washington and its allies could be formalized in the "Summit of Democracies", which Joe Biden will organize in the spring. It would mark the prevalence of democratic and liberal capitalism over the authoritarian and illiberal of the Chinese type. What the new US president is hoping for is not sure to come true. It has already been partially compromised by the new investment agreements between the EU and China. India's positive impact will then only be possible if it succeeds in consolidating its democratic institutions, endangered by Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalism, while overcoming traditional political fragmentation and litigation. Only radical political, economic and even cultural reforms will allow India to make its weight felt fully in the world.
Gone are the days when the country could limit itself to being a "quiet giant" on the world stage, limiting its influence and projection of power at the regional level. He must acquire the ability to project his power. It implies internal stability and a real and proper cultural and institutional revolution, which cannot be taken for granted. To fully exploit its potential, India will also have to abandon protectionism and its closure to the world economy. Only in this way will it be able to exploit the benefits of globalization and attract indispensable foreign investments. In other words, it will have to adopt an economic policy similar to that imposed on China by Deng Xiaoping. It is not necessarily the case. It has not joined the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership ( RCEP ), which both China and Japan are part of, officially for fear of seeing its industry crushed by imports from China.
From a purely quantitative point of view, India is already a great power. It is the second most populous country in the world. It has the fifth largest economy in the world (third in terms of purchasing power). It has powerful armed forces that are undergoing major restructuring. The terrestrial component, aimed at maintaining public order and a conflict against Pakistan and, on the Himalayan border, against China, will take second place compared to the navy and the aeronaval component, destined to dominate the Indian Ocean. India has nuclear systems capable of affecting the whole of China. It has remarkable capabilities in both space and cyberspace.
His foreign and security policy interests so far have been primarily regional. Its two pillars are the Saarc (South Asia Association on Regional Cooperation) and the so-called Look East Policy, of growing importance for the economic ties with Asean and also with Japan. In Indian foreign policy the opposition with Pakistan has so far dominated, with which India has disputed influence not only in Kashmir, but also in Afghanistan.
India, since its independence in 1947, has tried to avoid direct commitments on the world stage, limiting itself to exerting moral influence, deriving from its millennial history and culture, as well as its relative economic and military weakness. During the Cold War between the US and the USSR, she headed the Non-Aligned Movement. In fact, after the conflict with China in 1962 and with Pakistan in 1971, it became increasingly linked to Moscow. After the collapse of the USSR, it supported the advent of a multipolar world, even in the brief US "unipolar moment". This policy, which avoided taking direct commitments, was entirely consistent with its limited resources, with internal difficulties and with the need to face Pakistan and Chinese penetration as well as in that country, in the Indian Ocean and in Nepal, Sri Lanka and Seychelles.
With China's economic and military growth, such a policy is no longer enough. Therefore, India has moved closer to the US, its Asian allies and Europe. The process was accelerated by the growing tensions between Washington and Islamabad and by the periodic renewal of clashes with China. The most recent occurred in mid-June: hundreds of Chinese and Indian soldiers clashed in a furious and bloody hand-to-hand in the mountains of the Galway valley, on the Himalayan border.
Moscow's semi-protection during the Cold War has not disappeared. The Pact of Friendship and Partnership, signed by India with the USSR in 1971, was renewed by Putin in 2000. It was consolidated by the fact that Washington supported Pakistan, its essential logistical base, first to reinforce the Afghan revolt against the country. Soviet invasion; then for the supplies of their forces engaged after 2001 against the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Furthermore, relations with the United States were also negatively affected by the growing American economic collaboration with China, which had led Robert Zoellick to hypothesize an organic agreement between the two countries (Chimerica) to regulate the new world order, which marginalized India.
Today, things have changed profoundly. India has significantly improved relations with the USA, with their European allies, especially with France, and with Israel also in the military and technological fields. It tries to remain linked to Russia, despite the growing awareness that it can no longer count on Moscow, which is now weakened and too dependent on China. However, it remains the largest importer of weapons. He collaborates with Moscow in the electronuclear and space fields. This is also why he continues to be an active member of the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization). This participation corresponds to its interests in the fight against internal and Islamic terrorist movements, although China supports the “Naxalite” revolt, active in the eastern part of the Indian peninsula, and is careful not to condemn the attacks by Pakistani terrorists in India. The SCO, in fact, allows New Delhi to maintain access to Eurasia and to have an institutional seat for what remains of the Russian presence in South Asia. However, participation in the SCO prevents India from transforming its relations of collaboration, even military, with the US and Asian democracies into an alliance.
The possibility of India to continue in this balancing act, which some call "Non-Alignment 2.0", is eroding both due to the increase in tensions between the US and China, and to the Chinese policy that has become more aggressive with Xi Jinping in entire Eurasia, including South Asia and the Indian Ocean, considered by India to be areas of its exclusive influence.
The reluctance to transform military collaboration with the US and Japan into an alliance of the 'Indo-Pacific' democracies with an anti-Chinese function remains, even though it has recently been eroded by the prospect of substantial economic agreements between Beijing and Tehran, which exclude the India from the country of obligatory passage to access Central Asia, via the port of Chabahar and Afghanistan, and to European Russia with the North-South Corridor, which from Bandar Abbas and Azerbaijan reaches St. Petersburg. Both these communication routes constitute a kind of Indian response to the Chinese continental Silk Road, with which Xi Jinping tends to unify Eurasia under the economic – and therefore geopolitical – Chinese influence.
India cannot just watch. Its position, as already mentioned, can be specified in the "Summit of Democracies". Sooner or later he will have to choose. Unlike the Cold War, its freedom of action is limited. At that time it was not in contact with the two opposing blocks. Today it is instead in contact with China both on the Himalayan border and in the Indian Ocean. With the Pacific one, it became the center of the new cold war between Washington and Beijing .
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/india-grande-potenza-regionale-o-super-potenza-mondiale/ on Thu, 31 Dec 2020 06:12:57 +0000.