What is the issue?
- India is being pulled into multiple alliances to counter China’s connectivity initiatives and growing clout.
- But India needs to exercise caution due to the costs involved and the uncertainty prevalent.
What are the recent developments?
- Officials from India, Australia, Japan and the U.S. held discussions on the sidelines of the East Asia summit in Philippines.
- The discussions focussed on cooperation based on their converging vision and values for promotion of peace, stability and prosperity.
- Lately, U.S. has vouched for the inclusion of Australia in the India-Japan-U.S. security cooperation in the Indian Ocean Region.
- Taking it a step further, Japan has called for the inclusion of France and Germany.
- In this backdrop, the prospect of a quadrilateral security alliance (Japan, US, India, Australia) is very real.
Why is BRI being opposed?
- Recently, U.S. Secretary of State Mr.Tellerson, stressed that an Indo-Pacific alliance would prevent predatory economics.
- The ‘predatory economics’ remark was referring to China’s investment model being pioneered through BRI.
- He stressed that the financing mechanism of BRI would saddle the consenting nations with enormous debts.
- Hence, he called for alternative “financing mechanisms” in a multilateral way.
How much progress has been made?
- Discussion on the quadrilateral alliance is still at a nascent phase.
- It is largely expected to be a counter narrative to China’s Belt and Road Initiative – BRI.
- Notably, India is already working on connectivity projects on its own in its neighbouring countries and ASEAN.
- India has also vouched to support any project of countries whose broad goals are aligned to it in the region.
- U.S. has also begun investing in India’s periphery – notably, a $500 million agreement with Nepal to build infrastructure there.
- Japan is attempting to align its own development initiatives to improving connectivity in the region through high-profile projects.
- Hence, the proposed quadrilateral is a broader attempt to institutionalise this into a structured format.
Why India needs to be cautious?
- Cooperative mechanisms are crucial to maintain stability in the Indian Ocean Region.
- But it would be prudent on India’s part to do a cost-benefit analysis of building such grand alliances during uncertain times.
- Even countries wanting to shape an alliance to counter China are deeply intertwined with China in terms of trade.
- Hence, caution is needed and excessive dependence on multilateral frameworks to fulfil national objectives may prove a costly mistake.
Source: The Hindu
