Professor Kanti Bajpai delivered the keynote address at a conference on “India and Japan: Growing Partnership and Opportunities for Cooperation”. The conference took place in Kochi, India, on 26 & 27 February and was hosted by the Centre for Strategies Studies (CPPR) in collaboration with the Consulate-General of Japan in Chennai.
Full text of the Keynote Address titled: "India and Japan: Strategic Partners for the 21st Century"We meet here to discuss the possibility of India and Japan as partners in the shadow of three global changes. The first is the astonishing rise of China which may be the most salient development for India and Japan. The second is the reaction against globalization in the West and particularly the United States. It has produced Donald Trump as President and a new approach in US foreign policy. That approach has been marked over the past year by an economic conflict between America and China and a go-it-alone strategy. The third development is related, and it is Trump’s impatience with the US’s traditional allies in Europe and Asia, including in some measure, Japan. India, which was trying to forge a closer relationship with the US has also felt the sting of Trump’s foreign policy. It is in this strategic environment that we gather to assess India-Japan cooperation.
I will not chart China’s rise or US foreign policy under Trump. There is enough written on those subjects to fill several rooms. I want instead to focus on India-Japan relations, which is the theme of this conference. Clearly, the coming together of these two countries is driven by several factors including the economic interests of both. But beyond the economic drivers are the strategic drivers of their cooperation: here, China’s rise and the US’s erratic behaviour and possible retrenchment from Asian alliances are key. I will not attempt to show that these are the drivers of India-Japan strategic convergence; I simply assert them, as they seem too obvious to need justifying.
I will instead attempt an analysis of the strategic choices for India and Japan in the context of China’s rise and the US’s erratic behaviour. I will begin by sketching in some highlights of India-Japan relations since the early 20
th century, to make the point that they have never been dedicated enemies or close friends. I will then go on to assess the strategic choices before India and Japan in dealing with a rising China at a time when the US, the reigning superpower, seems erratic and unreliable. Essentially, the choices for India and Japan are to
bandwagon, hide, hedge, or balance. My analysis of these options suggests that bandwagoning, hiding, and hedging are not politically and strategically viable. Among India and Japan’s balancing options –
internal, external, and soft balancing – soft balancing is the most viable for the foreseeable future. Complicating China’s strategic calculations, which is the essence of soft balancing, is a sensible course; outright confrontation is not. This is strategic common sense, but sometimes the case for common sense needs to be explicitly made.
A Little Recent History
It is fair to say that India and Japan have not been terribly close historically. Indeed, India and China, over thousands of years, have been closer – geographically, spiritually, economically. The two were even allies, during the Second World War, against Japan. Rabindranath Tagore’s interest in the Land of the Rising Sun and his trip there in 1916 remind us there was promise of great cultural traffic. But Tagore was dismayed when he went to Japan, remarking on the rising militarism: in his famous three essays on nationalism he worried about both Western and Japanese nationalism. During the Second World War, Indian and Japanese troops fought each other. On the other hand, after the war, India expressed its discomfort with the war-trials of Japanese officials and officers. Radha Binod Pal, the Indian judge on the war-crimes tribunal, wrote the dissenting note, arguing against war-crimes punishments.
By 1960, Japan, which had hoped that India might be a force for stability and development in Asia, had decided that New Delhi was neither geopolitically nor economically aligned with Japanese interests. In turn Nehruvian India had concluded that Japan was not an independent power. It is fair to say that India and Japan remained stayed apart more or less for the remainder of the Cold War.
After the US rapprochement with China in 1972, Tokyo engineered its own rapprochement with Beijing in that year. Geopolitically and economically, the two East Asian powers had parallel interests. Geopolitically they lined up against the Soviet Union, India’s quasi ally; and economically they dramatically opened up to an economic partnership featuring aid, investment, and trade, with Japan in the lead. This was at a time when India’s economy was stubbornly closed. In sum, from 1972 onwards, China and Japan came to be on the opposite side of the Cold War from India which tilted towards the Soviet Union.
A conclusion we can draw from the above is that India and Japan do not have a deep history of cooperation and closeness in the modern period. As a quick aside: they do have one modern instance of strategic partnership, if it can be called that – and that is Subhash Chandra Bose working with the Japanese to fight British colonial rule in India. That strategic story is being recalled in India now, especially under the Modi government; but it is not a chapter that Japan would want to highlight. It is not therefore a memory on which to build a strategic partnership.
India and Japan did come together in one very important sense after the second world war. In 1958, Japanese aid began to flow to India. Despite the fact that Tokyo did not see trade and commercial opportunities in India’s closed economy, it did become one of its biggest aid providers. By the late 1980s, Japan was India’s largest aid donor, a position it has retained to the present. Since the 1980s, India and Japan have come some way, particularly economically. Trade between the two has grown steadily and stands at about $16 bn, and Japan is the third largest investor in India. Diplomatically and strategically too, the two sides know each other better than ever before, which I will return to later.
This is a rather sketchy review of India-Japan relations from the early 20th century to the present. But it gives us a sense that while India and Japan have never been enemies, they have not been close friends or partners either. This does not mean that they cannot be close in the future; it just means that they do not know each other well, either out of hostility or friendship.
India and Japan’s Strategic Options
The most important reason for India and Japan to come together is the rise of China. While they resist saying so publicly, this is the elephant in the room. The question is: what are the options in dealing with a China that will probably be the biggest power on earth by 2030? Eventually, China may account for 40 percent of global GDP, making it bigger than the next set of powers combined – an international behemoth as the US was after the Second World War. This is a scary future for India and Japan, both of which are neighbours of China. Both powers have unresolved territorial quarrels and a history of conflict and rivalry in the modern period with China. What are India and Japan’s options with this powerful and potentially dangerous power? Theoretically, they have four broad options: bandwagoning; hiding; hedging; and balancing.
Bandwagoning
The first option is for both countries to bandwagon with China – to go along with Beijing as junior partners and to receive protection in return. This would entail accepting Chinese leadership on global and regional issues. Most importantly, it would mean accepting its assertions on territorial conflicts: the border and the state of Arunachal Pradesh in India’s case; and the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands in Japan’s case. Globally, India and Japan would be expected to curtail their relations with the US – in Japan’s case this would mean leaving the alliance. Regionally, they would have to accept that East Asia and South Asia are Chinese spheres of influence. In return for going along with Beijing, New Delhi and Tokyo would get protection, principally from China itself. They would also get to be a part of a huge Sinic economic zone.
Clearly, bandwagoning is a theoretic possibility and no more. India has never been part of the Sinic regional order and never been a tributary. Some parts of India sent tributary missions to China historically, but no pan-Indian empire as far as we know ever conceded superiority to it. Chinese cultural influences also were limited, though not altogether absent (as we can see in Kochi’s famous fishing nets). The Indian view generally is that India gave more than it received, primarily in the form of Buddhism. Japan was geopolitically and culturally part of a Sinic order, though by the 7th century it had started to move away from China. In the 16th century, it even tried to take over the Middle Kingdom’s hegemonic role when it mounted an invasion of Korea as a prelude to invading China. Unlike Korea and Vietnam, it was never conquered by China. From the late 19th century and into the Second World War, it harboured ambitions of colonizing China. Today, neither Indian nor Japanese public opinion would tolerate bowing before China. Both peoples have too strong a sense of their own importance, politically and culturally, and harbour strong feelings of nationalism. Bandwagoning with China is not impossible, but it seems a very unlikely future.
Hiding or Hedging
There are at least two other conciliatory stances that India and Japan could take with China: hiding and hedging.
Hiding. The historian of Europe’s international history, Paul Schroeder, has suggested that contrary to the view that Europe operated a “balance of power system” in which smaller powers either balanced or bandwagoned, in fact they made other choices as well. These included what he calls “hiding”. Hiding refers to staying out of the gunsights of bigger powers. It amounts to a form of neutralism in which staying out of the gunsights of the more powerful includes not taking sides between them. Hiding is a conciliatory stance that falls short of bandwagoning, but for India and Japan it would mean conceding to China. In relation to China’s quarrels with the US and other Western powers, New Delhi and Tokyo would take a Swiss-like position of abstention. For Japan more than India it would be capitulation, as hiding/neutralism would require Tokyo to end its alliance with the US and its opposition to China.
Hedging. Hedging is another relatively conciliatory option. What is hedging?
…[T]he basic assumption is that…a state spreads its risk by pursuing two opposite policies towards another state….[S]tates carry out two contradictory policy directions simultaneously: balancing and engagement. A state prepares for the worst by balancing – maintaining a strong military, building and strengthening alliances – while also preparing for the best and engaging – building trade networks, increasing diplomatic links, and creating binding multilateral frameworks.[1]
In Southeast Asia, it is often said that the regional states are hedging with China. They feel free to have strong economic relations and multilateral links with China (e.g. ASEAN, East Asia Summit); but they also recognize the security risks from the north and turn to the US for strategic reassurance. India and Japan are in exactly the same position. China is their biggest trading partner or one of their top partners. Both, in addition, are members of regional organizations such as ASEAN where they engage with Beijing in the company of others. At the same time, they feel vulnerable in the security domain. India hedges primarily by its own internal balancing – its military power, including nuclear weapons – and Japan by its alliance with the US.
How effective are hiding and hedging? Can powers as big as India and Japan truly hide? It is one thing for small European states during the classical balance of power era to have hidden themselves from France, Prussia/Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Britain; it is quite another for India and Japan to do so. It is particularly hard to imagine when China and the Western powers could press India and Japan to choose sides. Furthermore, given that India and Japan have enduring territorial quarrels with China, is hiding from Beijing really a possibility? As China continues its more or less unstoppable rise, it will insist on settling these quarrels on its terms. At that point, where will India and Japan hide? Either they capitulate, or they stand firm – alone or with others.
Similarly, while hedging is attractive, it is vulnerable. Fundamentally, a deepening engagement with China, especially economic, means that both could be drawn into its economic sphere. They would then be prone to manipulation and coercion by a mercantilist-minded Chinese leadership. Southeast Asia may have in varying degrees already reached the point where hedging is becoming problematic. Cambodia and Laos have largely thrown in their lot with China. The Philippines is unpredictable under President Rodrigo Duterte but seems to have moved a considerable distance into a Chinese sphere. Myanmar and Thailand could well turn. The gravitational pull of the Chinese economy should not be underestimated, particularly if the US and Western powers continue their slide towards protectionism and falter economically. Even the US under Trump is rethinking its own hedging strategy of economic engagement and strategic balancing: the desire to “decouple” from China economically, specifically on technology, is an expression of America’s realization that hedging is not indefinitely sustainable. Modi’s hardening of India’s China policy from 2014 to 2017 was driven by the fact that hedging, going back to 1988 when India normalized relations with China, had not softened Beijing on the crucial issue of the border quarrel or its strategic penetration of South Asia.
Balancing – Internal, External, and Soft
If bandwagoning is politically not feasible, and if hiding and hedging do not seem plausible strategically, what is left? Broadly, India and Japan could resort to some form of balancing against China.
International Relations scholarship identifies three major types of balancing – internal, external, and soft. Internal balancing is military balancing of an adversary by means of one’s own armed force. In the nuclear era, the primary instrument of internal balancing is nuclear weapons, at least against a nuclear armed rival or a formidable conventional military power. External balancing is teaming up militarily with other powers to deter and defend against a bigger rival – essentially, external balancing means an alliance. Soft balancing is what states do when they cannot hard balance either through internal or external balancing. It consists of a combination of non-military activities designed to complicate a militarily-superior adversary’s decision making and to prevent or rollback unilateral actions. It could involve public shaming, procedural delaying and stalling in international institutions, turning to international legal remedies and instruments, demarches, and so on.[2]
Internal balancing. What are the prospects of India and Japan being able to balance against China through their own military efforts?
In 2018, China had 2 million active military personnel. Estimates of its nuclear forces vary, but it has roughly 280 strategic weapons, mostly land-based and sea-based. Its navy has over 59 submarines (55 are tactical), and 87 principal surface combatants including 2 aircraft carriers, 27 destroyers, and 59 frigates. Its air force has over 2400 combat aircraft.
What about India and Japan’s military power?
India has 1.44 million active military personnel. Estimates of its nuclear forces vary considerably: it may have produced enough fissile material for 130-140 weapons, but it is unclear how many actual warheads it has. Its navy has 15 tactical submarines and one SSBN, 28 principal surface combatants, including 1 aircraft carrier, 14 destroyers, and 13 frigates. Its air force has roughly 814 combat aircraft.
Japan has 250,000 active military personnel. It has no nuclear forces, though it is no secret that it could go nuclear very quickly. Its navy has 20 tactical submarines and 49 principal surface combatants including 2 aircraft carriers (Izumo class), 33 destroyers, and 10 frigates. Its air force has 547 combat aircraft.
A comparison of military budgets: China $168 billion, India $58 billion, and Japan $47 billion.
In sum, on a crude comparison, one can say that China has 1.5:1 in military personnel to 3:1 superiority over India in virtually every class including the defence budget, and 4:1 or 5:1 over Japan in every class. In addition, in terms of overall national capabilities, India’s nominal GDP is about one-fifth of China’s, so there is little prospect of it catching up with China any time soon. Indeed, the gap is likely to grow. China’s nominal GDP is $14 trillion, India’s is $2.8 trillion, and Japan’s is $5.1 trillion (the US is at $20 trillion). This suggests that for India and Japan to close the gap militarily will be an enormous challenge. Given their domestic needs, it is simply not viable to increase defence allocations dramatically.
This is admittedly a crude comparison of internal balance. All three countries have other security challenges. China has more land neighbours than any other country in the world. It has 4 nuclear neighbours and amongst the biggest conventional military neighbours. India has 2 nuclear neighbours and 2 conventional military neighbours of strength. Japan is an island, but it must worry about 3 nuclear neighbours and 3 formidable conventional military neighbours in China, Russia, and North Korea. What this means is that China has to deploy its forces in many directions, and the figures we have cited exaggerate its superiority. Nevertheless, China is militarily a giant that will be difficult to hold if it should decide to attack either country. Of course, terrain, weather, fighting spirit, tactics and strategy all count, but China’s superiority is plain to see.
India has nuclear weapons which is the ultimate deterrent. If a conventional war turns against it in the high Himalayas, it could threaten nuclear retaliation. Here we simply note that exactly the argument that India uses against Pakistan – namely, that India has escalation domination over Pakistan – is true for China over India. China has escalation domination over India in every category of violence. Any Indian nuclear retaliation could be more than trumped by China’s response.
External balancing. If internal balancing is limited, it would seem India and Japan must opt for external balancing or alliance. Our figures show that India- plus-Japan is still overwhelmed by China except in respect of major naval combatants. Here India-plus-Japan comes out roughly even with China. A case could be made therefore for naval cooperation between India and Japan – which is indeed already happening.
India and Japan in alliance, in the end, is not a sufficient balance. It is only when the US joins the alliance calculus that balancing occurs. This is obvious, and we need no statistics to substantiate the case. Let us note the following here. The US and Japan are already in alliance. The US and India are not, though military cooperation is increasing. The key point is that Japan already has an alliance partner that can help with its security; India adds little. India does not have a formal partner, but it does have a growing relationship with the US – in which case, it does not need Japan.
This is of course the case on a static analysis. On a dynamic analysis, India, with its growing economy and population could be a balance against China. Indeed, going by its population size and demographic structure (a huge number of young people), it could pose a serious challenge to China’s projected dominance. By 2050, India’s population is projected to be 1.68 billion whereas China will have 1.34 billion. In 30 years from now, there will be a population gap of 340 million in India’s favour. Leaving aside the sustainability of India’s rates of economic growth, the quality of its population, and the resources available to its people (health, education, skills; per capita income, energy, and food), this would be an enormous gap in population. India would be young with the #1 population; China would be ageing and firmly #2.
In other words, there is a case to be made for a ‘latent’ external balancing partnership between India and Japan. This is particularly the case if the US continues to retrench and eventually removes itself from Asia altogether. An India-Japan strategic partnership, say 30 years from now, would be a balance against China.
What would this partnership amount to? It might eventually be an outright entente or alliance. But the key challenge is building Indian capacities so that it can with its 1.6 billion people be a prosperous and stable power rivalling China. Building its capacity is of course India’s own responsibility; but Japan has a potential role. Tokyo played a key role in helping build China’s capacities from the mid-1970 onwards. Japan’s economic interest but also its strategic interest in containing the Soviet Union drove Japanese ODA and investments to China. In partnership with America, Japan helped the rise of China. After 2001, George W. Bush committed the US to a similar role in building Indian power. As the US goes into retrenchment, Japan could step up to fill the US role. It will take great patience and a long-term vision to engage India, as New Delhi is notoriously difficult. But if China is the big threat, there may be little choice for Tokyo.
In the meantime, India and Japan can deepen their military understanding of each other. They have already signed the Implementing Arrangement for Deeper Cooperation between the Indian Navy and the Japan Maritime Self-Defence Force (JMSDF). Negotiations also began in October 2018 on the Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement (ACSA) that would allow the Indian Navy to access the Japanese base in Djibouti. In return, the Japanese military would be permitted to use India’s military installations on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Japan joined the annual Malabar exercises in 2015 as a permanent invitee alongside India and the US. India and Japan have held three JIMEX bilateral naval exercises, the last one in October 2018 after a five-year gap. They also conducted the first Counter Terrorism Exercise between the JGSDF and the Indian Army in November 2018. In addition, the two sides have instituted a Defence Policy Dialogue, the National Security Advisors’ Dialogue, a Staff-level dialogue between each service, and a bilateral dialogue between Coast Guards. In October 2018, the “2+2” Ministerial Dialogue was announced which would involve a meeting of the foreign and defence ministers on a regular basis. Looking ahead, deeper intelligence sharing, especially on China, would be a crucial investment.
Soft balancing. If internal balancing is not immediately viable and if external balancing is only viable with the US or in the distant future, can India and Japan soft balance against China? Soft balancing, as noted earlier, is non-military strategies designed to complicate and “trip up” a rival that has military superiority. Soft balancing strategies include public shaming, procedural delaying and stalling in international institutions, turning to international legal remedies and instruments, demarches, among others. But it could also involve creating new institutions and practices as also investing in capacity-building among weaker third parties to check the influence and reach of an adversary.
India and Japan have already tried shaming tactics against China. New Delhi and Tokyo have insisted on freedom of the high seas as a rebuke to China. On China’s BRI, they have both implicitly criticized Beijing: India has refused to join the BRI arguing that the projects are in China’s “national interest” and not a cosmopolitan project for the good of others. Japan has suggested that its own connectivity stands for quality infrastructure as against China’s presumably shoddy infrastructure. New Delhi has drawn attention to the debt burden of BRI. As various projects in South and Southeast Asia have led to repayment problems, Indian and Japanese scepticism has found an audience in both regions and has caused China to rethink its approach.
India and Japan are members of an array of regional and multilateral institutions where they can act as a check against Chinese power. They are both members of the ASEAN-related set of institutions – ARF, ADMM+, and the East Asia Summit (EAS). They are also members of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), where Japan heads the organization. Japan is an observer at SAARC (as are China, the US, and several other powers), and Tokyo has supported the organization economically. In addition, India and Japan are members of the G20 and both want permanent membership of the UN Security Council. As aspirants they have worked together for Security Council reform. These are all arenas where they have used and can use procedures and debates to stall China – to bring attention to Chinese actions that hurt others.
India and Japan can also soft balance by creating and sustaining new institutions, particularly in Asia. We usually think the Western countries led by the US and now China are the makers of institutions and the creators of norms in the international system. But in fact, during the Cold War, India and Japan were energetic agents of change and shapers of regional and world order. India played a role in championing Afro-Asian solidarity, non-alignment, the New International Economic Order, the Indian Ocean as a Zone of Peace (IOZP), a variety of disarmament efforts (including the CTBT and NPT), the UN’s human rights charter, UN peacekeeping, and climate change accords, among others. Regionally, New Delhi was a leading part of the 1950s Colombo Plan (indeed the idea grew out of a proposal by the Indian historian and diplomat, K.M. Panikkar). More recently, India has shaped the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) as also the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA).
Contrary to the view that Tokyo is diplomatically passive or self-centred and a mere camp follower of Washington, Japan too has contributed to international society. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is probably its greatest contribution. We forget that the original proponent, funder, and builder of connectivity in Southeast Asia was Japan, through the ADB as well as bilaterally. Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) can be traced back to a Japanese proposal from 1966 to set up a Pacific Free Trade agreement. Internationally, Japan was a key proponent of human security in the wake of the Cold War. In 1997, to deal with the region’s economic crisis, it proposed the creation of an Asian Monetary Fund (AMF), only to have Washington veto the initiative. Later, it was the force behind the Chiang Mai Initiative (CMI) and played a key role in ASEAN + 3. Most recently, it has advanced two key initiatives. The first is the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTTP), which is the Tokyo-led successor to the TPP. The second is the Japan-Mekong Initiative, which is building cooperation with the Mekong river countries even as US interest in the Lower Mekong Initiative (LMI) has waned.
India and Japan are attempting to create new forms of Asian strategic cooperation. They are already involved in the India-Japan-US, India-Japan-Australia, and India-Japan-South Korea trilateral dialogues. New Delhi is keen on an India-Japan-Vietnam trilateral as well. Of these, the most active trilateral are the ones with the US and Australia. More important has been the idea of the Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP) which built on Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Foreign Minister Taro Aso’s ideas about the strategic link between the Indian and Pacific oceans. Related to FOIP is the “Quad” of Australia, India, Japan, and the US, the largely naval discussions between FOIP members. In the realm of connectivity, India and Japan have their own projects in Southeast Asia but are also trying to cooperate in the Asia-Africa Growth Corridor (AAGC) that would link Southeast Asia, South Asia, and Africa. At the heart of all these endeavours is undoubtedly a common concern: to build resilience and ties between India and Japan as well as third powers. The objective is not so much to directly contain China as it is to strengthen the bargaining hand of both New Delhi and Tokyo in relation to Beijing and to complicate Beijing’s strategic calculations.
It is worth noting here that India and Japan have bilateral defence ties to Southeast Asian countries. India has defence cooperation with virtually every Southeast Asian country. This includes training, arms sales, repair and maintenance of equipment, joint exercises, port calls, and even the use of Indian military facilities. Japan is exploring the sale of military equipment to the region, participates in multilateral and regional naval exercises in the South China Sea, and is building maritime capacity in the region. Japan’s 2016 Vientiane Initiative of defence cooperation with ASEAN is significant. In themselves, the Indian and Japanese efforts are not terribly consequential and material, but they are politically and psychologically significant for Beijing and for the regional states.
Conclusion
India and Japan have not been terribly close historically. But they have also not been enemies. Their relationship has gone through phases since 1945. For the second half of the Cold War, they were on opposites sides. With the rise of China, they face a regional threat as never before. Their strategic choices in dealing with that threat are to bandwagon, hide, hedge, or balance. In the long term, after mid-century, India could be in a position to stand with China and the US as one of the three greatest powers. Everything will depend on India getting its domestic governance right. Japan could help build Indian economic and technological capacities as it helped China after 1972. India and Japan could come together militarily and diplomatically, but right now there is a limited agenda in front of them. A more active agenda is in the realm of soft balancing. Here they have already done quite a bit unilaterally, bilaterally, and multilaterally.
Finally, whatever India and Japan do, there is little that they can do prevent the Eurasian heartland from being dominated by China in league with Russia. India is cut off from the great landmass of Eurasia by Pakistan and Afghanistan and the Himalayas. Japan stands off shore. What they can do is to build is a coalition in Southeast Asia as well as Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands states to counter Chinese power and influence in maritime Asia. Even this will require a concerted and creative effort. The past decade has shown that India and Japan have the incentive to come together. Slow and steady progress is the key. In a race, the tortoise can beat the hare.
[1] John Hemmings, “Hedging: The Real U.S. Policy Towards China?” The Diplomat, 13 May 2013, https://thediplomat.com/2013/05/hedging-the-real-u-s-policy-towards-china/.
[2] See Robert Pape, “Soft Balancing against the United States,” International Security, vol. 30, no. 1 (Summer 2005), pp. 7-45; and T.V. Paul, “Soft Balancing in the Age of US Primacy,” International Security, vol. 30, no. 1 (Summer 2005), pp. 46-71.