The renaming of the Pacific Command represents nothing more than an increased degree of cooperation between India and USA in response to Chinese posturing in the region.
“What’s in a name?”, asked Shakespeare. A lot, it turns out.
On 31 May, the United States renamed its strategically crucial Pacific Command to ‘US Indo-Pacific Command’. This is USA’s largest ‘combatant command’, and covers over half the global population in its vast ‘Area of Responsibility’.
While many commentators have called this new name a “mere geographical descriptor”, to ignore the connection that it has with the rapidly changing face of Indian foreign policy would be absurd.
Seen in light of China’s aggressive posturing in the Indo-Pacific region, this move brings India, one of China’s key competitors in the struggle for regional dominance, to the negotiating table.
The End of Indian Non-Alignment
Given India’s historic commitment to Non-Alignment since the Cold War, this move seems to be anomalous. To dismiss Non-Alignment as a Cold War relic would be inaccurate, given India’s fixation with this ideology well into the 21st century. In fact, as recently as 2012, leading Indian strategic analysts emerged with a policy report titled ‘NonAlignment 2.0’, which attempted to reinvent this philosophy to suit India’s changing role in the world order.
However, after Modi’s ascent to power in 2014, India has visibly distanced itself from this philosophy. Any uncertainty about this was put to rest when PM Modi chose not to attend the NAM summit in 2016 in Venezuela. Besides, India’s shift away from non-alignment reflects the ground reality: its ever-growing relationship between with USA.
With specific regard to defence cooperation, the Indian and American navies have conducted the ‘Malabar Exercise’ on a regular basis since 1992.
In August 2016, a few weeks before the NAM summit in Venezuela was scheduled to be held, India went a step further by signing the bilateral Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA) with the USA.
Not only did this represent an unprecedented degree of defence cooperation between the two countries, but also signalled a clear break from India’s non-aligned past.
As a matter of principle, NAM was a necessity in a bipolar world order. In today’s multipolar age with highly regional power centres, however, non-alignment is not as much a detrimental policy as it is an ineffective one.
The renaming, therefore, signals the start of a new chapter in India’s policy of strategic cooperation and indicates its growing regional status. Clearly, India harbours the desire to compete for regional hegemony with China, even if it wishes to avoid direct conflict.
Renaming Does Not Indicate a Remarkable Shift in Indo-US Relations
Undoubtedly, the renaming can be taken to indicate that India and the US are forming a joint sphere of influence in the Indo-Pacific. But the claim that this is a full-blown anti-China military alliance is fallacious. This can be attributed to two reasons: trade relations, and the Korean peace deal.
1. Trade Relations
Following a bitter but brief tariff war, USA and China have signed a joint agreement to decrease their extremely bloated trade imbalances, and have paused the roll-out of hefty tariffs on each other. While the Trump administration and Chinese authorities are yet to see eye-to-eye, they have certainly reached a temporary understanding.
On the other hand, USA’s trade relationship with India is still quite tense. The former has recently moved the WTO against India’s supposedly bloated export subsidies. Trump’s steel and aluminium tariffs do not exempt India – much to the latter’s chagrin.
Moreover, even India has slapped multiple tariffs on imported products, which has earned strong protest from the Trump administration. Given the protectionist urges of both Trump and Modi, this trade tussle between India and the United States is unlikely to be resolved soon.
On the one hand, therefore, USA is cautious about moving against China, lest it jeopardise their recent trade bonhomie, which is a priority for Trump. On the other hand, India and the US are still far from achieving any kind of comparable settlement in this arena.
2. Korean Peace Deal
The second relevant factor is Trump’s North Korea project. China's partnership with USA in sanctioning North Korea played a key role in bringing Kim Jong-Un to the table.
If China had not supported these UN-imposed sanctions, the possibility of the historic meeting between Trump and Kim would have been bleak.
India’s role in this arena must be taken into account as well. Not long ago, Indian officials visited Pyongyang.
Among other things, this visit involved an Indian endorsement of the rapprochement between the two Koreas and the ‘Kim-Trump’ meeting.
Further, as President Trump himself noted in a press conference with Modi in Washington last year, India's implementation of the UN sanctions was crucial to putting 'maximum pressure’ on North Korea, given that India is the Hermit nation’s second-largest trading partner.
Seen in light of such circumstances, the renaming of the Pacific Command does not imply a substantial strategic or tactical military arrangement against China – which neither the US nor India is prepared to commit to at this point.
The only takeaway is that India is no longer content with operating under the veneer of non-alignment, and has now transitioned into the far more useful policy of strategic cooperation. The United States has not only recognised this transition, but has also made itself an integral part of it. Nevertheless, it has, and will in the foreseeable future, maintain a safe distance due to multiple extraneous considerations.
(Aditya Prasanna Bhattacharya is a 2nd year law student at NLSIU, Bengaluru & Founding-Editor at Law School Policy Review. Harsh Tiwari is a 2nd year law student at the University of Bristol, UK, and a Senior Fiscal Policy Editor at The Millennial Review. This is an opinion piece. The views expressed are the authors' own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)
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