India’s membership of the SCO is a manifestation of the reality that
India’s interests are as much in the Indian Ocean as the Eurasian
landmass.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Astana, Kazakhstan, to attend
the 17th summit of Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), in which
India and Pakistan participated as full members, does not have the
razzmatazz of his visits elsewhere. His encounter with Nawaz Sharif, his
speech at the summit, his meetings with the principals like President
Xi Jinping of China, were all low key, perhaps befitting our rookie
status in the organisation.
Nevertheless in his
speech to the summit, he
emphasised the importance of upholding the principle of sovereignty and
territorial integrity in formulating connectivity schemes
(China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and Pakistan Occupied Kashmir). He
also raised the issue of sustainability and inclusivity and spoke of
India’s commitment to the Chahbahar project and the International North
South Transportation Corridor, and its desire to join the Ashgabat
agreement. He spoke of the importance of the fight against terrorism, as
well as radicalisation, recruitment and financing, and said that the
SCO efforts in this direction were praiseworthy. In attacking terrorism,
Modi was not as direct as he has been in other recent instances when he
pointed fingers at Pakistan.
Likewise, Indian official noted that the Modi-Xi meeting was
“positive and cordial”. Clearly, Modi did not badger Xi on account of
Nuclear Suppliers Group and Masood Azhar, leader of the terrorist group
Jaish-e-Mohammed, this time. He remained content to tell Xi that the two
sides should strengthen their coordination and communication in
international affairs, respect each other’s core concerns and
appropriately handle their differences. This mirrored the Chinese view
where, according to Chinese foreign ministry, Xi told Modi that the two
states should “appropriately control and manage differences on sensitive
issues.” Modi acknowledged in a tweet that his discussions with Xi were
about “how to improve and further ties.” China will assume the
presidency of the SCO in 2018.
Joining the SCO is a smart move by India that will offer us a long
term, rather than any short-term, gain, provided we understand what that
means. By itself, China would not have liked to include India in the
grouping. But it has done so at the insistence of Russia and has
finessed things by insisting on simultaneous membership for its protégé
Pakistan.
India’s membership of the SCO is a manifestation of the reality that
India’s interests are as much in the Indian Ocean as the Eurasian
landmass. Srinagar and Leh are nearly at the same latitude as Kabul and
north of Lhasa and Kandahar.
Indian history reflects this duality since it features great maritime
empires such as that of the Cholas, as well as the continental ones of
the Mughals. The grand strategy of British India, who shaped the
identity of India as we know it now, was to maintain total control of
the Indian Ocean, even while ensuring no major land power came within
striking distance of India.
Independent India has always been friendly with Afghanistan and after
the collapse of the Soviet Union, it befriended Central Asia. But in
recent years, with Afghanistan in turmoil and with Pakistan blocking
land access, India had to take the back seat to China, which has used
its proximity to not only develop important economic linkages to Central
Asia and Afghanistan, but it is now using the region as a junction for
its ambitious Silk Road Economic Belt heading to Europe.
The SCO membership offers multiple opportunities to Indian diplomacy.
First, it provides a platform for India to engage Pakistan in a wider
regional setting. Our ties with Islamabad are not going to be
permanently frozen as they are now. In fact, the SCO platform may be a
good way to unfreeze them by pushing Pakistan to enable India’s overland
access to other SCO countries. It is true that Pakistan can always be
counted on to cut its nose to spite its face. But some prodding by other
members like China and Russia could help and it is difficult to believe
that Pakistan will maintain its blockade forever.
Second, it is an opening for India to reach out to China, bilaterally
as well as to deal with Pakistan. China is seeking to promote its
China-Pakistan economic corridor. But Chinese investments in Pakistan
will not provide the returns they seek, unless the Pakistani economy is
integrated with the larger South Asian region. China is not unaware of
India’s importance as a market and as a destination of its overseas
investment. It is for this reason, it has taken a fairly relaxed stance
on New Delhi’s rejection of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
Third, it provides India with a hedge for its maritime strategy which
emphasises cooperation and developing security networks with the US,
Japan, Australia and Vietnam. With the US pulling out of the
Trans-Pacific Partnership and its posture on the erstwhile Asian pivot
uncertain, India needs to shore up its continental strategy. Even Japan
is now backtracking a bit and seeking to reach out to China by
supporting BRI and considering membership in the Asian Infrastructure
Investment Bank.
As for India, it is right and proper for the government to emphasise
India’s claim over Gilgit-Baltistan, pending the resolution of the
dispute with Pakistan. However, there is also something called
pragmatism. New Delhi needs to take a pragmatic approach to the projects
in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, considering it has lived with the
Karakoram Highway that passes through Gilgit-Baltistan since the 1970s.
India could negotiate this issue with China, possibly getting Beijing to
lift its hold on the funding of development projects in Arunachal
Pradesh. Pragmatism, of course, will have to be a two-way street. But it
is the only road to what the Chinese call “win-win” formulations in the
India-China-Pakistan context.
In this, the presence of Russia in SCO is an important element.
Moscow has never been too enthusiastic about China’s goals of closer
integration of China, Russia and Central Asia because it considers its
former republics as part of its own sphere of influence. Even today,
though there is formal cooperation between the BRI and the Eurasian
Union, the latter keeps Chinese trade away from Central Asia, to the
extent that it can. Russia is an old friend of India because they have a
congruence of interests. The SCO will now have a roughly triangular
shape with China, Russia and India being three important points and
given China’s growing military power and its economic strength, India
and Russia may find common cause in shaping the future of Eurasia.
From the point of view of its new members, the most interesting
aspect of the SCO will be its military component. It may be recalled
that the organisation itself sprang from the Shanghai 5, an outfit that
emerged from border demarcation and demilitarisation negotiations
between China and the Central Asian republics.
In 2001, it gave way to the SCO, and included Uzbekistan and, in
2002, its charter was fleshed out with the view of resisting the US push
in Afghanistan and Central Asia. Its charter spoke of the goals of
promoting cooperation in politics, trade, economy, technology and so on
and to making joint efforts to promote peace, security and stability.
Its two permanent bodies are the secretariat in Beijing and the Regional
Anti-terrorist Structure based in Tashkent.
There have been a regular stream of military exercises and in 2007,
the SCO also signed an agreement with the Russian-led Central Security
Treaty Organisation for closer cooperation and joint exercises. This
stoked fears in western countries that it was emerging as a
counter-weight to NATO. However, with the American failure and draw-down
from both these places, the push towards a closer military integration
of SCO has also reduced.
Since then Beijing has moved bilaterally by developing pipelines and
railroad routes to shift the centre of gravity of the CARs towards
China. In this it has moved carefully so as not to upset Russia, which
had created the customs union of the CARs and Russia into an Eurasian
Economic Union (EAEU), an energy powerhouse holding a significant
proportion of the world’s energy reserves. But the relative weakness of
the Russian economy and the strength of the Chinese, has resulted in
steady gains for the latter, including a proposal announced after a
Russia-China summit in march 2015 to link BRI with EAEU. The idea is to
move towards an free trade agreement.
For Russia, an Asian pivot is a means of off-setting the economic
sanctions of the West European nations, while for China, it is part of a
long term project that seeks to integrate Eurasia under Chinese
auspices. For the Chinese, Xi in particular, the assumption of the
chairmanship of the SCO, which overlaps many important BRI initiatives,
will be an important means of positioning Beijing as a leader of
globalisation in the Trump era.
It could well be the forerunner of an Asian security system, of the
type Xi proposed in 2014 when he presided over the fourth summit of the
Conference on Interaction and Confidence building measures in Asia
(CICA), an outfit that fits in well with SCO since it was initially
mooted by Kazakhstan. Today, CICA counts as its members countries of
SAARC, GCC, China, Russia, Turkey Vietnam, Mongolia and Israel.
As we enter the SCO, we need to look at the larger context of Asian
geopolitics, and the inroads China has already made and plans to make
through BRI. As Modi hinted, India is not without options such as its
Chahbahar scheme and the International North–South Transport Corridor.
But this requires resolute leadership, especially since the Trump
administration seems determined to rock the Iran agreement boat.
The Wire, June 10, 2017
