Is the Aukus alliance a sign of a US pivot away from India?

India’s difficulties at home and strategic hedging abroad threaten to engender a trust deficit as Washington searches for reliable allies
If Delhi wants to increase its relevance in the region and avoid being overshadowed within the US-led security sphere, it must first fix its domestic failings

Mohamed Zeeshan

Published: 8:45am, 2 Oct 2021

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When the US signed the Aukus agreement with Australia and the UK recently, there were two aggrieved parties in America’s ally network. France has been sulking vocally, having lost a US$66 billion submarine deal with Australia. But the less vociferous of America’s troubled allies is India.

Unlike Japan, which has welcomed the deal, India has been publicly quiet about it. But New Delhi appears to be privately suspicious of the new agreement. A few days after the deal was concluded, India’s foreign ministry said Aukus was not “relevant” to the Quad partnership, which features India, Japan, Australia and the US.

Then, shortly before he departed for a Quad summit in Washington, Prime Minister Narendra Modi rang French President Emmanuel Macron to discuss the Indo-Pacific. Modi appeared to express solidarity over Aukus.

India does have reason to be suspicious of Aukus. In the aftermath of the border clashes with China last year, many Indian analysts have become increasingly hawkish. They see this boost to Australia as a welcome development to the balance of power in the Asia-Pacific region, yet Aukus could also indicate a pivot away from India in US policy.

For years, the US has been hopeful of India’s rise as a democratic counterweight to China. India’s large size, youthful demographics and geographic location all make it integral to any US-led democratic coalition against China in the Asia-Pacific. Yet, on many levels, India’s potential has flattered to deceive so far.

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The nationwide lockdown last year and the devastating second wave of Covid-19 this year have left a lasting impact on India’s economy. While growth had already slowed considerably before the pandemic, it has only got worse.

In the quarter from April to June this year, economic output was 9.2 per cent lower than during the same period in 2019. Forecasts suggest it could take years to undo the damage.

The pandemic has also threatened to lay waste to India’s much-touted demographic dividend. As a result of the move to online education, the wide digital divide between urban and rural areas and a significant loss of income for many poorer households, millions of children were forced out of schools across India.

A recent survey found that Indian students suffered a loss in learning outcomes of between 40 and 60 per cent – twice as much as in Group of 7 countries.

Vaccine diplomacy – India’s greatest strategic opportunity at the start of the pandemic – has also stalled. India has not exported any vaccine doses since April, at which point it had sent out 66 million. Meanwhile, China has delivered hundreds of millions of doses across the Asia-Pacific region.

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India’s decision to leave the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership trade deal has also not helped in terms of boosting its footprint and influence in the region.

Washington has also been worried about a steady decline in democratic values following a downgrading of India’s democracy on various global indices. When Modi went to the US recently, both US President Joe Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris publicly spoke about the need to “uphold democratic values” in his presence.

Delhi has often believed that these factors can be offset by India’s strategic value to the United States, reflected by its participation in the Quad. But Washington also has cause to be sceptical of its strategic convergence with India.

Despite the two countries perceiving China as a common threat, they don’t appear to agree on what that threat constitutes. India still remains disconnected from broader Western concerns – the South China Sea, Xinjiang, Taiwan or Japanese and Korean security. It does not yet join the West in articulating concerns on any of these issues in multilateral forums.

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Instead, for India, the China threat is entirely focused on its border dispute in the Himalayas – an issue that the West considers far from its top priority.

Almost as an open and public admission of these differences, India continues to hedge its bets. Just a week before Modi attended the Quad summit in Washington, he held a virtual meeting with the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation led by China and Russia – a forum which the US and its allies see as a rival coalition.

In light of all this, Aukus could be Biden’s effort to find more reliable allies in the quest to balance against Beijing’s influence in the Indo-Pacific. On most counts, Australia is easily a better candidate.

Australia has long been far better aligned on norms and values with the US. In recent years, Australia has sought to walk a tightrope in the great power game between China and the US in the interest of economic integration with Beijing. But that policy turned around last year following trade conflicts with China.

For India, these trends are quickly descending into a series of lost opportunities with the US. Its difficulties at home and strategic hedging abroad also threaten to engender a trust deficit with Washington – one that could widen silently beneath the affable rhetoric.

But if Delhi wants to increase its relevance in the Indo-Pacific and guard against being overshadowed within the US-led security architecture, it will first have to work at home – both on realising its economic potential and strengthening its democracy. Foreign policy influence is invariably limited by domestic frailties.

Mohamed Zeeshan is a foreign affairs columnist and the author of “Flying Blind: India’s Quest for Global Leadership”