US-led allies attempt to outflank China in Asia Pacific trade, security

Tribune News Service

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New Delhi, September 2

When PM Narendra Modi agreed at one day’s notice to deliver the keynote address on Thursday at the ongoing US India Strategic Partnership Forum (USISPF), it was another indication of the strategy brewing among a clutch of Asia-Pacific democracies to pool in their security and economic interests led by the US flag.

At present, India’s diplomatic engagements seem to be more Kremlin-oriented. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh has travelled to Moscow for the second time in recent months, while Foreign Minister S Jaishankar will interact with his Russian and Chinese counterparts under the SCO and BRICS formats.

That will be overlapped by interactions seeking to put more punch into an economic and security answer to China. “Our strategy is to push back China in virtually every domain,” US Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun admitted at a USISPF session.

With the clashes at the Line of Actual Control (LAC), India appears to have signed on to a concept of Quad plus.

As Biegun revealed, Foreign Secretaries of six Asia Pacific countries have been in unprecedented weekly. The other countries are India, Japan, Australia, South Korea, Vietnam and New Zealand, all of whom are informally called Quad Plus.

India, once touted to be the weakest link, has shed its inhibitions and is set to host its first in-person diplomatic engagement after the pandemic broke in March with a two plus two with the US.

The conversation between Mike Pompeo and Mark Esper with S Jaishankar and Rajnath Singh would set the tone for a Quad ministerial meeting later this year involving the External Affairs Ministers of the US, India, Australia and Japan.

The US Foreign Secretary also emphasised both legs – security and economic — of a joint strategy will gradually seek to involve five democracies of the region and Vietnam. “We’re doing it in terms of outsized demands to claim sovereign territory, whether it’s in the Galwan valley of India on the India-China border or whether it’s in the South Pacific. We’re also doing it economically,” he had said.

His equal emphasis on the economic part would seek to bring back the balance from the present, heavy tilt towards the security side. As former NSA Shivshankar Menon wrote, “Where India and the US once collaborated on a wide range of issues in pursuit of common goals, they now cooperate on security to the exclusion of much else.”