Three To The Tango: The Fast Shifting Indo-Pacific Balance

The Indo-Pacific strategic balance seems to be shifting forms with every tidal wave that the two oceans throw at our shores. The US, which has always been chary of India’s BRICS dalliance with China and Russia, has already publicly punished India by slapping an unprecedented 50 per cent tariff on its exports for buying huge stocks of Russian oil, even as US President Donald Trump was trying to get Moscow and Kyiv to sign a peace deal.

Consequently, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a conclave with Chinese Supremo Xi Jinping and President Vladimir Putin at Tianjin two months ago, it seemed to signal a shift in the Indo-Pacific power balance where hitherto India was ranged alongside the US, Japan, and Australia to defend the freedom of navigation in the South China Sea.

Tianjin seemed to signal the fraying of the “coalition of democracies”, acting in concert against China’s “imperial” ambitions, and a coming together of the two Asian powers, even if with a wary eye on each other.

However, the inking of another 10-year defence pact last week, which deepens India’s integration with the US, seems to bring the QUAD (Quadrilateral Security Dialogue), a US-led four-nation initiative which, though apparently a grouping of like-minded states wishing to police the Indo-Pacific oceanic commons, is in reality a construct to check China, back to even keel.

This defence deal was sweetened by Washington for New Delhi by giving Indian firms and ships working in Iran’s Chabahar port an extended exemption from the US sanctions against Tehran. The Chabahar port being built by India is vital as a route to Afghanistan and Central Asia, which bypasses troublesome Pakistan.

India’s latent fears of encirclement by China have certainly been accentuated, firstly, by intelligence that China has completed work on 36 hardened aircraft shelters at Lhunze, a few minutes flying time from Tawang near the contested 3,500 km long Himalayan frontier. And secondly, by news that the Bangladesh armed forces are buying Chinese fighter jets and missiles and that numerous Pakistani army delegations have been visiting Dhaka.

For New Delhi’s defence planners, this poses the nightmarish vision of a possible three-border conflict sometime in the future. The only way to stave off such a scenario is to continue building trust with China while buying some form of insurance from the so-called “concert of democracies”.

The USA, too, seems to be following a similar two-track approach. Even as the US smoked the peace pipe with China on the trade war that has broken out since President Trump’s unilateral tariff imposts on almost all countries, it worked hard to re-open military channels of communication between the two countries.

However, at the same time, President Trump has gone on record warning China of consequences if it invades Taiwan. China, of course, has been conducting regular threatening naval drills meant to intimidate the tiny island nation, which Beijing wants to “unify” with the mainland.

In some ways for India, the defence of this island and the defence of its Himalayan border are linked, and that is why Washington’s latest outreach to New Delhi, despite the past erratic behaviour of the nation, needs to be accepted and utilised.

As a Taiwanese strategic commentator recently stated at an event here, the island nation’s real concern isn’t a direct invasion or open war; it is infiltration to subvert its sovereignty. Its strategic thinkers worry about a shadow war waged through cyberattacks, disinformation, and other forms of physical infiltration and intimidation from China, which could erode its people’s will to withstand a forced unification with a Communist-run mainland.

Whichever way, if Taiwan is occupied, the first of the six wars that Chinese strategists have long said they need to win to become a great power would have been won, and the others can well follow afterwards, as China moves into the second half of the twenty-first century.

The wars that may follow, according to Chinese thinking, are the reconquest of the Spratly Islands, which together with control over Taiwan would give Beijing unhindered access to the Pacific; the “reconquest” of Arunachal Pradesh, or what China calls Southern Tibet; the reconquest of the Senkaku and Ryukyu Islands from Japan; the re-unification of Mongolia; and the forced return of “lands lost to Russia”.

Given the chronological order of the six wars and the importance that Beijing places on the Pacific, China would try to win the Taiwan conflict first. However, the priorities could change as new opportunities arise.

That is perhaps why, for Beijing, India’s growing proximity to the US represents a challenge to its traditional dominance in continental Asia; for New Delhi, the partnership serves as a strategic equaliser, reinforcing deterrence while keeping diplomatic options open.

The Quad, regardless of how weak the alliance is, also gives India another unexpected benefit. India has for too long thought of itself as a land-based power without taking into account its rich maritime history and its historical links with the seas of Southeast and East Asia.

India has not yet developed a real geographical sense of its reach as a maritime power. Culturally and historically, all of Southeast Asia has been deeply influenced by India—through trade, religion, and maritime links—and it is time India reinforced those links through physical presence on the high seas.

While India’s naval presence near Chinese shores in concert with the US, Japanese, and Australian navies may be seen by Beijing as “provocative”, in a sense it would also be a warning to the dragon that if it uses the high ground of the Tibetan plateau to launch a pincer attack on either or both of the Himalayan regions of Ladakh and Arunachal, there could be a price to pay on the high seas.

As it is, China’s planners worry about how India’s Andaman and Nicobar Islands can act as an “iron chain”, which could effectively stop China’s access through the narrow straits of Malacca, through which two-thirds of China’s maritime commerce and 80 per cent of its oil and gas imports travel.

The ability of the Indian navy, amplified by the Quad alliance, could be a major additional worry for Beijing’s defence think tanks.

At the same time, by retaining its “strategic independence” by actively helping build BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation as viable poles around which the global south can rally when in need, India, despite its many weaknesses, may well manoeuvre to carve out a place for itself in the new multipolar world order that is coming about because of the weaknesses of the current unipolar balance of power.

The writer is former head of PTI’s eastern region network.