Monish Tourangbam*
Published on 18 September 2024
As India, the US, Australia and Japan gear up for the long postponed Quad Summit in Delaware, the home state of outgoing US President Joe Biden on the 21st of this month, China just concluded the 11th Xiangshan defence and security forum in Beijing. Often touted as China’s response to the premier defence summit of the Indo-Pacific, Shangri-La Dialogue, the Xiangshan forum was, reportedly, attended by official delegations from over 100 countries and international organizations, plus more than 200 Chinese and foreign experts and scholars. If Beijing’s accounts were to be believed, China champions multipolarity and global peace unlike Washington’s hegemonic tendencies that are the cause of regional instability. On the other hand, if American sources are to be believed, China’s predatory economics and muscle flexing in the Indo-Pacific are imminent concerns for all stakeholders of a rules based order. Both the US and China also accuse each other of exploiting the World Trade Organisation (WTO) system and engaging in unilateral activities. So, what is the reality that will shape the future of Indo-Pacific in particular, and the global order at large?
Countries, big and small, desire and aspire regional and global multipolarity and any expression of support for such an order cannot go wrong, at least in optics if not in substance. The US is no longer the power that it used to be in the early part of the post-Cold War years. In fact, the latest National Security Strategy of the United States contends that the “post-Cold War era is definitively over and a competition is underway between the major powers to shape what comes next.”
The divided political atmosphere in the United States in the wake of a deeply polarised presidential election and the way in which the US left Afghanistan in the hands of the Taliban, after 20 years of intervention, left American predominance highly questioned. In the East and South China seas, the Taiwan Straits and the broader Indian Ocean, the power projection of US military and its allies stands challenged by China’s military aggression like no other time. The Chinese Defence Minister Dong Jun speaking at the Xiangshan forum in a rebuke to US Indo-Pacific strategy, and its alliances, said, “In foreign relations, it is only by not taking sides, not being dependent on others and not being subjected to others that one can make the right decision that best meets its fundamental interests.” Beijing was on a focussed drive to push ahead its Global Security Initiative (GSI), and build a consensual narrative, by engaging a number of officials and non-official participants from the Global South at the Xiangshan forum to make favourable comments on the GSI, as a China led roadmap towards global peace.
Of late, Beijing and Moscow have become a band of brothers, to use every opportunity to condemn US foreign policy and more specifically, the Indo-Pacific strategy of creating “closed associations and bloc structures in the Asia-Pacific region.” With violent wars raging in Europe and West Asia, the US has its hands full as it aims to reassure its allies and partners that America’s diplomatic and military resources have not retrenched in the face of Chinese onslaught. Recently, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, and US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin jointly wrote an Op-ed in The Washington Post, contending that Biden’s Indo-Pacific strategy had upgraded the old “hub and spoke” alliance to a new model of integrated and interconnected network of partnerships.
Indo-Pacific partners have put ASEAN centrality as a prime operating principle of multilateral engagements and initiatives in the region. It is as a bulwark against China’s territorial transgression in the South China Sea and unilateral domination over regional issues. However, ASEAN centrality does not automatically translate to ASEAN unity. Member countries in prioritising their own national engagements with Beijing have played into the Chinese playbook of driving wedges within the grouping. Even as the Philippines enters the most volatile phase of its dynamic with China, and calls out for active intervention from the United States, dealing with China’s industrial overcapacity, and entry of cheap Chinese goods affecting their own domestic markets, consume the policy bandwidth of many countries in the region. On the other hand, the United States in particular and many European countries are fighting their own battles of balancing economic interdependencies with China and growing call for restrictions on new tech imports from China. In other words, the global supply chain is going through a profound transition that is reshaping globalisation in real time.
India aspires and aims big, to come out as a leading power through these geopolitical, geo-economic and technological transitions, reaching out to multiple partners across the world and calling for inclusive development in the Global South. New Delhi is putting a premium on peace in a global security environment that is in critical condition, with conflicts of various kinds engulfing several regions of the world. However, closer to home, India faces a challenging task of navigating a rising cauldron of geopolitical fallout, governance breakdown and regional balance slipping out of hands. Pakistan is a perennial migraine; Afghanistan in Taliban hands is a roulette; Maldives is cruising without control; Bangladesh is in a historic zeitgeist; Nepal’s hedging is at heights; Sri Lanka is paused until the polls, Bhutan’s unbreakable bond is not to be taken for granted; and the great game in the East is playing out full throttle in restive Myanmar. Therefore, New Delhi literally has its hands full and a bit more. In the final analysis, the near future of multilateralism in multipolarity looks murky and the quest for rules and norms in a crowded Indo-Pacific looks messy.
*Monish Tourangbam is Director at the Kalinga Institute of Indo-Pacific Studies (KIIPS)
Disclaimer: The Views expressed are of the Author
Image Credits: Xiangshan Security Forum
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