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| Image: Flickr user narendramodiofficial |
By Ankit Panda
Narendra Modi should visit Japan as his first trip abroad as prime minister.
Narendra Modi’s first international visit as India’s prime minister should be, and likely will be, to Japan. Predicting the future is a dangerous game, but the strategic logic of Modi dropping by Tokyo on Shinzo Abe’s invitation early on in his tenure as India’s prime minister is too sensible to ignore. Expect a Modi visit to Japan before the end of the summer.
Bilateral relations between India and Japan have been on a positive swing since 2000, when former Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori’s visit to India normalized relations after Japan sanctioned India for its 1998 nuclear tests. More significantly, after the two nations declared their “Strategic Global Partnership” in 2006 (a declaration made under Abe’s first tenure as prime minister) economic and security ties between the two countries have grown rapidly. While the convergence between India and Japan is in part due to the rise of China and its growing assertiveness towards its interests in the Asia-Pacific, China at the same time was a limiting factor for India’s United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, which feared upsetting China by making any moves that would be perceived by Beijing as overt encirclement. Narendra Modi and the BJP, by contrast, see the benefits of growing ever closer with Tokyo as outweighing the costs of raising suspicions in Beijing.
Readers might recall that The Diplomat was host to a debate last month about the similarities and differences between Narendra Modi and Shinzo Abe. Whatever the similarities and differences might be between the two leaders on a personal level, what matters most is that the underlying nationalism motivating both Abe and Modi will encourage them to build on the strong foundations in India-Japan relations that were forged by both of their predecessors. Even ignoring security issues and the China factor, Modi would do well to engage Japan early in his tenure as prime minister. India and Japan have a free-trade agreement in the form of the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) and Japan is a major investor in Indian infrastructure projects such as the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC). Modi has made economic growth and good governance a priority for his administration — enlisting Japan as a reliable partner could only have benefits.
Read the full story at The Diplomat