{"id":33242,"date":"2018-10-30T11:29:15","date_gmt":"2018-10-30T05:59:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=33242"},"modified":"2018-10-30T11:29:15","modified_gmt":"2018-10-30T05:59:15","slug":"looking-for-balance-in-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/looking-for-balance-in-power\/","title":{"rendered":"Looking for balance in power"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/opinion\/lead\/looking-for-balance-in-power\/article21665570.ece\">Looking for balance in power<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Context<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The Russia-India-China trilateral meet is New Delhi\u2019s attempt to overcome challenges in ties with Moscow and Beijing<\/p>\n<p><strong>Scope of talks<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The broader discussions, according to a joint communique of the 15th meeting, \u201ctook place in the backdrop of the political scenario in West Asia and North Africa, numerous challenges in putting the world economy back on the growth track, concerns relating to terrorism, transnational organised crime, illicit drug trafficking, food security, and climate change.\u201d<strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Growing Divergences<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>But what was perhaps interesting was Russia and China\u2019s continued attempts to frame global and regional politics through a similar lens, and the growing divergences between India and them<\/p>\n<p><strong>Russia wants India to join OBOR<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made it clear that he believes that India can benefit by joining China\u2019s Belt and Road Initiative<\/li>\n<li>The specific problem in this regard should not make everything else conditional to resolving political issues<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Criticism of Closed bloc arrangements\/Cliques\/spheres of Influence<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Targeting India\u2019s participation in the \u2018Quad\u2019, he also underlined that a sustainable security architecture cannot be achieved in the Asia-Pacific region with \u201cclosed bloc arrangements.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi also cautioned against \u201cspheres of influence\u201d and \u201ccliques\u201d by arguing that China opposed \u201chegemony and power politics and disagree with the sphere of influence and cliques and promote the democratisation of international relations.\u201d<strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Needs for Cooperation<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>China, meanwhile, continued to take an aggressive posture on Doklam and its aftermath. China and India have far greater shared strategic interests than differences, and far greater needs for cooperation than partial friction<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tension in the air<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The tensions in the trilateral framework are inevitable given the changes in the global geopolitical environment<\/p>\n<p><strong>The origins<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The original conception of this framework was a response to a very different global environment<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Proposal from Russian PM in 1998<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The proposal for a Moscow-Beijing-Delhi \u2018strategic triangle\u2019 had originally come from former Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov during his visit to India in 1998, when he argued that such an arrangement would represent a force for greater regional and international stability<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>No Response from India or China<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This did not elicit as enthusiastic a response from China and India as Russia had perhaps hoped for. Thereafter, the three countries continued to focus on improving the nature of their bilateral relationships, maintaining a safe distance from the Primakov proposal<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>A start in 2002<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>But, this idea of a \u2018strategic triangle\u2019 took a tangible form when former Foreign Ministers of Russia, China, and India \u2014 Igor Ivanov, Tang Jiaxuan and Yashwant Sinha \u2014 met on the margins of the UN General Assembly in New York in September 2002<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Regular Feature now<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Despite the fact that nothing concrete emerged out of that meeting, it represented the first major attempt by the three nations to deliberate on world affairs, and since then has become a regular feature of interactions among the three states.<strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Different Expectations of each nation<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The three nations had very different expectations from this trilateral<strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Russia\u2019s move against the US<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Russia\u2019s role was key as its loss of power and influence on the world scene was a major cause of concern for its leadership<\/li>\n<li>Russia tried to establish itself as the hub of two bilateral security partnerships that could be used to counteract U.S. power and influence in areas of mutual concern.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>China\u2019s ally against US<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>China emerged as a rising power that saw the U.S. as the greatest obstacle, if it was to achieve a pre-eminent position in the global political hierarchy<\/li>\n<li>As a consequence, China recognised the importance of cooperating with Russia to check U.S. expansionism in the world, even if only for the short term<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>American Policies brought both nations closer<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In fact, American policies towards Russia and China moved the two states closer to each other, leading to the formation of a new balance of power against the U.S.<\/p>\n<p><strong>India\u2019s stance<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>India, on the other hand, had different considerations, as it was still far from becoming a global power of any reckoning.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Way of bringing balance in the global order<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>India saw in the trilateral a mechanism to bring greater balance in the global order as it believed that a unipolar U.S.-dominated world was not in the best interests of weaker states like itself, even as strategic convergence deepened between Washington and Delhi.<strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Strengthening of Bilateral Partnerships only<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Moreover, all three countries realised the enormous potential in the economic, political, military and cultural realms if bilateral relationships among them were adequately strengthened.<\/p>\n<p><strong>No Major Outcomes of the Trilateral<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It merely resulted in declarations which were often critical of the West, and of the U.S. in particular.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Changing bilateral relationships<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Yet this was also a period which saw significant shifts in Indo-U.S. ties as bilateral relations expanded while Russian and Chinese links with the U.S. have witnessed a downward shift.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Joint Declaration<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The joint declaration of the recent trilateral meeting said: \u201cThose committing, organising, inciting or supporting terrorist acts\u201d must be held accountable and brought to justice under international law, including the principle of \u201cextradite or prosecute.\u201d<strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Stopped Short<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It stopped short of naming Pakistan-based terror groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, something that India would have liked in line with the most recent BRICS declaration.<strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Chinese resurgence affecting the arrangement<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>An arrangement that had started with an attempt to manage American unipolarity is now being affected fundamentally by Chinese resurgence<\/li>\n<li>Both Russia and India are having to deal with the externalities being generated by China\u2019s rise<strong style=\"font-size: 1rem;\">\u00a0<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Multipolar world order<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>While Russia is getting closer to China, India is trying to leverage its partnership with other like-minded states in the wider Indo-Pacific region<\/li>\n<li>As a multipolar world order takes shape, India will have to engage with multiple partners so as to limit bilateral divergences.<strong style=\"font-size: 1rem;\">\u00a0<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Challenges<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The Russia-India-China template comes with its own set of challenges<\/p>\n<p>China\u2019s\u00a0Global Times, commenting on the recent trilateral, suggested that \u201cthe leaders of the three only meet with each other on international occasions,\u201d adding, \u201cthis indicates it does not have high status in diplomacy and cannot bear more functions.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>India is capable of holding its own<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>While this may be true, New Delhi\u2019s continued engagement with the duo suggests that India is today confident of setting its own agenda in various platforms<\/li>\n<li>Just as China engages with the U.S. on the one hand and with Russia on the other, a rising India is quite capable of managing its ties with Washington, Beijing and Moscow simultaneously<\/li>\n<li>It will not always be easy, but in an age when the certitudes of the past are fast vanishing, diplomacy will have to tread a complex path.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Looking for balance in power Context The Russia-India-China trilateral meet is New Delhi\u2019s attempt to overcome challenges in ties with Moscow and Beijing Scope of talks The broader discussions, according to a joint communique of the 15th meeting, \u201ctook place in the backdrop of the political scenario in West Asia and North Africa, numerous challenges&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/looking-for-balance-in-power\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Looking for balance in power<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-test-1","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1704764480},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33242\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}