A new power triangle
Source: By Sreeram Chaulia: The Asian AgeThe relative decline
of America’s military, economy and soft power has led to new possibil-
ities for restructur- ing leadership. Russia, India and China have been
grasping at these new horizons.
Two back to back diplomatic
summits between India and Russia, followed by India and China, are
manifestations of an altered world order where major nonWestern actors
are pooling resources and strategies. Although Indian Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh’s meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin and
Chinese President Xi Jinping are exclusive of each other and bilateral,
they play into a broader dynamic of intensifying linkages and
coordination that has ushered in a world with multiple power centres.
While
the Brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) formulation
has captured attention over the last decade, a parallel “RIC” grouping
comprising just Russia, India and China has existed since 1996. RIC was
the first front that sparked questioning about the unipolar,
US-dominated international system of the post-Cold War years.
More
explicitly anti American coalitions like the Shanghai Cooperation
Organisation (SCO) arrived after RIC had sown the seeds of a multipolar
world.
At the time of its founding, RIC sounded like bravado with
no concrete basis to challenge an American-dictated world. But the
relative decline of the US military (exemplified by its defeats in Iraq
and Afghanistan), the US economy (since the financial crisis of 2008)
and US soft power (its form of governance and conduct in world affairs
have lost attraction) has thrown open new possibilities for
restructuring leadership and steering international affairs. Russia,
India and China — each in varying degrees— have been grasping at these
new horizons.
Russia, whose economic interdependence with the US
and exposure to Western commercial exchanges are the least among the
trio of RIC, is the most consistent critic of Washington’s foreign
policy. Mr Putin articulated the case for moving on from an American-led
dispensation by writing in a much-cited New York Times article that
“millions around the world see America not as a model of democracy but
as relying solely on brute force.” Russia’s forceful diplomacy to avert a
direct American military attack on Syria has lent weight to the general
sense that the US is no longer the sole arbiter of key international
conflicts. Even as Russian economic growth has stumbled lately, the
boldness with which Mr Putin has emerged as a power broker and problem
solver has come at the expense of a US whose own economy is in shambles.
Compared
to Russia, China is economically enmeshed with the US and hence quieter
in its anti-American posturing. However, China makes up for its verbal
reticence in frontally attacking the US through other means, viz. aid
and energy diplomacy to challenge American influence in Africa and Latin
America, and a steady campaign to overthrow the hegemony of the US
dollar as the global reserve currency.
Last month, the Chinese
Renminbi or Yuan entered the league of the world’s 10 most traded
currencies, jumping from number 35 to number nine in the standings in
less than one decade.
At such a dizzying speed of ascent —
provided China liberalises its capital account, issues Yuandenominated
sovereign debt, and universalises trading agreements that are Yuan-based
— the Renminbi could rise to number one by 2020.
America’s high
and worsening debt-to-GDP ratio and its serialised horror show of
domestic political wrangling over budgets and spending have, in the
words of US President Barack Obama, “encouraged our enemies and
emboldened our competitors.” The most emboldened of all competitors is
China, whose state-run Xinhua news agency recently issued a clarion call
for a “de-Americanised world” whose cornerstone would be “introduction
of a new international reserve currency that is to be created to replace
the dominant US dollar.” Nonetheless, the entrenched economic symbiosis
between China and the US means that Beijing cannot be as stridently
anti-American as Moscow is.
India is the farthest within the RIC
triangle from going on an offensive against the US’ position and
performance in world affairs. Although multipolarity is an official
pursuit of the Government of India, many of its elites nurse a somewhat
time-warped notion that America is still the “sole superpower” and that
we need its partnership to counterbalance the Chinese threat to our
borders and to our rise in Asia.
Indian power consciousness has
crawled slowly from a sub-continental to a larger continental Asian
mindset, implying that it still does not envisage a global foothold and
force projection. The chances of India colliding with the US outside
Asia are presently low because New Delhi limits its strategic ambit and
asset deployment to its own expanded neighbourhood and does not think in
terms of worldwide sway, unlike Beijing and Moscow.
Yet, India
is a participant in some ambitious new ideas that cement multipolarity
and work against American preferences. For instance, Mr Putin’s dream of
a “Eurasian Union” that would forge a common economic front of all the
former Communist bloc states, is viewed by New Delhi as an opportunity
for us to associate with for expanding our exports in Central Asia and
beyond. Where concrete material gains are in the offing, India has not
kowtowed to American will, which is absolutely negative towards the
Eurasian Union concept.
In 2012, the then US secretary of state
Hillary Clinton bluntly revealed that America is “figuring out effective
ways to slow down or prevent” the Eurasian Union from materializing.
Undeterred, the Kremlin disclosed on the eve of Prime Minister Singh’s
visit to Russia this week that India will be engaging in talks to
“develop privileged strategic links with the Eurasian Union.” Similarly,
India has invested in building the International North South Transport
Corridor (INSTC) that can open a land trade route from South Asia to
Europe via Iran, Russia and Central Asian space.
This project is
expected to intersect and connect with China’s “New Silk Road”
blueprint, which, in turn, is a challenge to the US’ separate scheme of
reviving the ancient Silk Road by keeping Iran out.
Despite
remaining ambivalent about attenuating American power, India is enacting
its own role in the RIC strategic triangle by joining economically
beneficial multilateral initiatives which may hurt American interests.
Dr Singh’s latest bilateral visits to Russia and China contain plenty of
nitty-gritty deliverables on energy, trade and defence cooperation. One
could get lost in the density of details contained in these specific
agreements and lose sight of how the sum total of interactions in this
triangle is reshaping the world.
