A time of strategic partnerships: 

A time of strategic partnerships: 

Context

The article discuss about the importance of strategic partnership in the context of India-Japan relationship.

What is the importance of strategic partnership with Japan for India?

• The India-Japan “Special Strategic and Global Partnership” (a designation and status New Delhi accords to no other partner) has reached new heights.
• Reasons: The rise of China and questions about America’s commitment in Asia have drawn India and Japan into a deepening security-cum-economic relationship.

What are the basic elements of synergy between India and Japan?

The India-Japan synergy has following key elements:

• Japan is investing heavily in strengthening its critical infrastructure to enhance its economic and potential defence capabilities.
• Simultaneously, the two countries have begun working on a joint infrastructure development and connectivity drive traversing the Indian Ocean, from Myanmar to Sri Lanka to Iran and encompassing the Asia-Africa Growth Corridor.
• On defence matters, Japan and India have agreed to establish regular consultations in the “2+2” format of their defence and foreign ministries.
• Japanese investment in the strategically placed Andaman and Nicobar Islands is likely to help New Delhi establish a major security sentinel in the eastern Indian Ocean.

What are strategic partnerships? What is its relevance in today’s world?

• We live in a world today driven by “strategic partnerships”. States find themselves in an interdependent system where the traditional power politics doesn’t fit.
• For example, every major relationship is characterized by strategic tension such as U.S.-China, Japan-China, India-China is simultaneously one of economic gain. The U.S. and China are each other’s chief trading partners, while China ranks at the top for Japan and India. Besides, India might confront China at Doklam but it also wants Chinese investment.
• Strategic partnerships carry certain characteristic features falling short of alliances. Unlike alliances, they do not demand commitments to a partner’s disputes with other countries.
• Strategic partnership means that both retain the flexibility to continue political engagement and economic cooperation with their common adversary. Second, they avoid “entrapment”, or being dragged into a partner’s disputes and potentially into conflict, which happened in the First World War. Third, regular high-level political and military interactions facilitate a collaborative approach to strategic policies over a range of economic and military activities.
• The aim of major strategic partnerships is to strengthen defences against marginal conflict, convey a determination to stand up to a strategic adversary and, overall, generate a persuasive environment that discourages potential intimidation.
• Occasionally, as between India and China, a “strategic partnership” is a way of opening a channel of communication and minimal cooperation intended to stabilise and develop the potential for a détente and conceivably something warmer.

Way forward

• India’s two main strategic partnerships, with the U.S. and Japan, are dovetailing nicely.
• For New Delhi, U.S. will remain its chief backer both to enhance India’s conventional defence capabilities and to draw political support in global political institutions, for example in components of the nuclear non-proliferation regime.
• Japan, in the meantime, is becoming its primary collaborator in developing its economic sinews and for building a geostrategic network that offers Indian Ocean states an alternative to dependence on China.
• Together, the emerging structure of triangular cooperation should give Beijing time to think.