By Ankit Panda
Shinzo Abe’s latest visit to New Delhi resulted in several important agreements on security and economics.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was the chief guest at India’s annual Republic Day parade in New Delhi, which took place on Saturday. Abe, the first Japanese Prime Minister to be invited to the Republic Day parade, met with his counterpart Prime Minister Manmohan Singh the same day and the two resolved to deepen the strategic and global partnership between India and Japan. Abe’s visit to India comes a little over a month after Japan’s Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko made an historic trip to India and speaks to even warmer ties between Asia’s second and third largest economies.
The two Prime Ministers issued a joint statement – standard procedure for high-level meetings between Indian and Japanese leaders – in which they emphasized India and Japan’s common identities as Asian democracies and expressed a desire to “contribute jointly to the peace, stability and prosperity of the region and the world, taking into account changes in the strategic environment.” Additionally, Abe emphasized his desire to make Japan a “proactive” contributor to peace and stability in the region.
Much has been said about Abe’s pro-India posture; even during his first term as Japan’s prime minister from 2006 to 2007, Abe demonstrated that he appreciated India not only out of strategic sensibility but also out of a sense of historical respect. Abe’s views on Japan’s place in the world are appreciated in India, and his presence at the Republic Day parade in New Delhi highlights a burgeoning sense that India and Japan are headed in the direction of profound security cooperation – somewhat of a nightmare scenario for China. The Republic Day parade in New Delhi is generally a show of military hardware, although not exclusively a military event.
Read the full story at The Diplomat