The Prime Minister is going to India this week, heading a large team that includes Cabinet ministers and leading companies. ‘[It] is likely to be the most heavyweight British delegation to the country since the Raj came to an end’, according to one report. George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, made a similar point in an article for The Daily Telegraph. The delegation is the ‘strongest’ to visit India from Britain in modern times, he wrote, and it is a sign of the seriousness of our attempt to create a new partnership with the country. ‘Our coalition Government is profoundly committed to a new special relationship with India – between our governments, our businesses and our peoples.’ Alongside closer economics ties, Osborne highlighted a strategic aspect. ‘We want India to become a special partner in tackling a range of international challenges.’ This includes combating terrorism, but India is sometimes suggested as also a counterweight to China in an eastern balance of power – one that is gradually becoming the world’s centre of gravity. From Britain’s perspective, however, it is difficult to see the strategic potential to any special partnership with India.
Speaking at the Foreign Office earlier this month, William Hague made a bleak point to his audience. ‘The world has changed and if we do not change with it Britain’s role is set to decline with all that that means for our influence in world affairs, for our national security and for our economy.’ Part of his solution is cultivating strong bilateral relationships with emerging powers, which will increase our global leverage as we edge away from Europe and lose our ‘uniqueness’ to the United States. David Cameron made this message the overarching theme to his trip to America last week, and for years both he and the Foreign Secretary have seen India as the emerging power to court. The Prime Minister first paid a visit to the country in 2006, and made clear his intentions then. ‘Serious and responsible leadership in the twenty-first century means engaging with far greater energy in parts of the world where Britain’s strategic interests will increasingly lie.’ Talking about a new strategic partnership is easier than achieving one, however, and these well-meaning intentions may prove worthless when it comes to the nitty-gritty of great power diplomacy. Shashank Joshi has written an excellent piece about the kind of concessions that Cameron and Hague would have to give to India to create the kind of partnership they desire. One such concession is to acquiesce in Kashmir being considered an ‘internal’ matter for India and to be dealt with between it and Pakistan, which would contrast with the Labour government’s ham-fisted attempts to intervene in the dispute. This has been signalled by Hague already. ‘Our approach would not be to tell those countries what to do, they must take forward their own bilateral relations’. As Joshi points out, however, this could affect our relationship with Pakistan who furnishes us with significant intelligence on potential terrorist plots. Thus from a counterterrorism point-of-view, our interests are arguably better served by Pakistan at the moment than India.
The ‘counterweight’ argument is also questionable, not only from Britain’s ‘grand strategic’ perspective but also as a proposition. With regard to the former point, we are in danger of making favourable outcomes into unnecessary vital interests. A stable balance of power in the Far East is a favourable outcome in our mind, but it is not a vital interest. The United States has more at stake in building up India as a check on China and is better placed to do it than we are. ‘No other state can assist India’s rise to the same extent as the United States’, the former diplomat Chandrashekhar Dasgupta has written. ‘Relations with Washington must, therefore, be accorded top priority in our foreign policy.’ Those who take this counterweight line also assume that India wants to have this role and is capable of fulfilling it. Although there is some suspicion of China in the country, there is also an aversion to being used to contain it. Dasgupta argues that India should not take part in any such scheme. ‘The rise of the two Asian mega states rests on solid domestic foundations; neither can be “contained” by external forces.’ It is important to realise too that diplomatically and militarily, China is way ahead of India for the foreseeable future. Thus it is difficult to see how a special partnership would benefit Britain ‘grand strategically’ also.
‘India matters’, the Chancellor wrote this weekend. This is true, and there is a lot we can do to help the emerging power strategically, from Kashmir and Pakistan to working for its permanent membership of the UN Security Council. It is difficult to work out what India can do for our strategic position, however; which is separate from the many trade and investment opportunities it offers. ‘The low-hanging fruit, particularly economic agreements and lofty rhetoric, will dominate the first stage of the diplomatic agenda’, writes Joshi. But the partnership will only become special if we can identify mutual strategic benefits that go above and beyond our relationships with many other countries, including the United States.
A special thanks to Shashank Joshi and Vijay Vikram for providing me with some handy research material
Ed
July 27, 2010
Pakistan is a basketcase that we would have absolutely no interest in whatsover if it wasn’t a breeding ground for terror. It would be of no more interest to us than the Congo or Burma. Pakistan is playing a devious game of making itself indispensible to us so we indulge it and shelter it from India while on the other hand supporting terror against us in Afghanistan and against India. The Pakistanis have no interest in really erradicating terrorism as they have nothing to offer other than their half-hearted support.
Instead of being indulged, Pakistan should be faced with a brutal choice of abandoning terror and Kashmiri irredentism or being left friendless and starving while clinging futureless to its nukes like North Korea.
India is a country with a future that we can benefit greatly from and that is rapidly outstripping Pakistan economically, militarily and technologically. We cannot let the semi-failed state of Pakistan hold us to ransom over our relations with India.
neel123
July 27, 2010
Any good partnership should be based on mutual benefit. When you look for strategy to get into a partnership, it only means that you are looking for benefit at the expense of the partner.
In the Anglo-Indian context, this is even more relevant given the colonial history starting in the garb of the East India Company, later spreading its tentacles, which is still fresh in the minds of the people in India. The British are also known to host a number of anti Indian separatists and terrorist organizations for many decades. Given the history, India will be wary of any friendly overture from the British.
The British are going through a rough economic patch, and seem to be tired of playing the poodle of the mighty Americans. They see a great economic opportunity in a growing India, which is good. However, India must never fall into the trap of anti-China alliance with the western powers, and must learn to grow as an independent entity. Only then it would earn respect and be able to defend itself, either against outright Chinese hostility, or western deceit in the hour of crunch.
Aaron Ellis
July 27, 2010
I disagree with your assertion that when you look for strategy in a partnership, it is to gain something at the expense of the partner. My point throughout the piece is that it is difficult to discover what India offers Britain strategically that would distinguish it from all our other relationships, including the United States. Unless you have that, then to us the partnership can’t be described as ‘special’.
jedibeeftrix
July 27, 2010
Interesting piece Aaron, I will give it some thought myself.
JBT
dptrombly
July 29, 2010
Good post, and a nice take down of some of the lofty rhetoric thrown around in diplomacy these days. You’re right that there is little “special” about the Anglo-Indian relationship unless we view it through a more historical and sentimental lens. While India will certainly become more important economically, I do not think a “special relationship” is key to taking advantage of this. Economic ties will deepen unless one of the governments makes an active effort to intervene. And even then, they will never be so strong as to make the relationship special.
There does seem to be some potential security cooperation in the realm of counterterrorism – Pakistan may be the more important relationship, but particularly as the Afghan war winds down, the UK may find it easier to cooperate with Indian intelligence on tracking South Asia-based or trained terrorist groups in the long run. In general, however, you’re correct that India offers the UK little grand strategic benefits. All those concerns about balancing China or East Asian power rivalries can be addressed through the UK’s relationship with the US, I would think.