By Rahul Bhonsle
Bilateral engagements in May 2013 seem to be a precursor to the future power balance in Asia. While China’s Premier Li Keqiang visited India, his first to any foreign country after taking over the august office, this was preceded by a three week long border stand off on the Depsang plateau in Ladakh where Chinese troops had transgressed 19 kms on the Indian side of Line of Actual Control. This incident placed a shadow over the visit, which nevertheless went through after some skilful diplomacy. While Mr Li made a very favourable impression in New Delhi and Mumbai , a wary government which had come under severe criticism for soft pedaling the transgression calling it an, “acne,” or a local incident, rightly concluded that the answer to Chinese aggressiveness in Ladakh lay in expanding engagement with Beijing’s traditional rival in Asia, Japan.
While India Japan relations are expected to improve substantially under Mr Shinzo Abe, who has a special fondness for New Delhi, the annual summit between the two Prime Ministers assumed additional significance against the back drop of Indian necessity to send a subtle message to Beijing. This was evident with Dr Man Mohan Singh spending an extra day in Tokyo, having extensive interaction with Japanese political and business leaders and an audience with the Emperor. Japan is also willing to consider defence technical cooperation with India and there is a strong possibility of an offer to sell the Shinmyawa US 2 amphibious plane under the dual use clause materialising. The Chinese may now be left to calculate the gains of Mr Li’s visit even as the Global Times published some caustic commentaries in Beijing in the usual acerbic style subtly warning both India and Japan against encirclement of China.
Ironically concomitantly with the India Japan Summit, President Mahinda Rajapaksa of Sri Lanka was in Beijing and was promised a plethora of aid and assistance in what could be seen in Delhi as an attempt by China to extend the footprint in South Asia and the Indian Ocean Region through a partnership that seems to be matching that between China and Pakistan.
Incidentally Mr Li’s next stop after Mumbai was also in Islamabad where he was escorted in by JF 17 fighters jointly developed and produced by both the countries. Dr Man Mohan Singh on the other hand visited Thailand a strategic ally of the United States and firmed up defence and maritime cooperation in a bilateral summit with Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinwatra. India’s Defence Minister will also be visiting the country in the first week of June in a tour that will take him to Singapore and Australia, all three countries close partners of the United States. To complete the circuit of military diplomacy, Indian Navy’s Eastern Fleet is on what in earlier days was known as, “gunboat diplomacy,” ports of call and joint exercises in Singapore, Vietnam and Philippines passing through the contentious South China Sea in what has now become an annual feature.
Briefly speaking, a series of strategic shifts, US Asia Pacific rebalancing which had been reviewed with concern in China’s latest Defence Paper, China’s new found territorial aggressiveness, Japanese neo nationalism and India’s overtly soft diplomacy seem to be shaping Asia’s strategic balance in the years ahead.
This Article first appeared on Security Risks and is reposted here under a Creative Commons license.