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Escalate to deter the Pakistan army

As the Indian government considers how to respond to Pakistan army’s latest provocations, it should keep in mind that proportional retaliation will prove to be no more than a temporary slave. The key is to convince the Pakistan army that India will not hesitate to escalate, and that the Pakistan army will not win the escalation race. Though military escalation will be painful to both sides, and there are always uncertainties in any military venture, Pakistan army’s leadership has repeatedly demonstrated that its threats to escalate are not matched by its actual behaviour, which has been far more cautious. The Pakistan army leadership, rightly, fears escalation more than its rhetoric lets on, and this provides India a deterrence leverage that it needs to take advantage of.

Read also | India now controls the escalation ladder

Escalation is the only real option that India has to deter the Pakistan army. Diplomacy is useful to an extent, and it is important for India to make its case to the rest of the world. But diplomacy will not solve the terrorism problem. It is foolish for India to expect that one more bilateral statement with some visiting foreign leader will change the Pakistan army’s calculations. Even states that agree with India about the Pakistan problem will not do much because this is not their problem. In this, they are no different than India: it is not as if New Delhi is going to help any other country with their terrorism problem either.

Escalation is the only real option that India has to deter the Pakistan army. Diplomacy is useful to an extent, and it is important for India to make its case to the rest of the world. But diplomacy will not solve the terrorism problem.

The other aspect of diplomacy, bilateral diplomacy with Pakistan, also offers no solution. Most importantly, though India should always be open to negotiations, expecting that bilateral diplomacy with the civilian leadership in Pakistan will solve the Kashmir problem is foolish because Pakistan’s civilian leadership have little control over the Pakistan army, especially when it comes to India or Kashmir. This is well-known, and has been demonstrated clearly and often.

In addition, there are no magical solutions that some back-channels can come up with, that will solve either the Kashmir problem or the India-Pakistan problem. And of course, these problems are not the same. The India-Pakistan problem, rooted in the imbalance of power in the region, will persist even if the Kashmir problem is resolved, though that is not to suggest that no effort must be made to solve at least the Kashmir problem. It is also silly to cut off talks or sports or other interactions with Pakistan every time there is some transgression because all this does is illustrate Indian helplessness, not strength or confidence. India should always be open to talks and negotiations with Pakistan, even as it responds forcefully to every assault from the Pakistan army.

Because it is the Pakistan army that controls the levers of terrorism against India, India’s deterrence policy should focus on the Pakistan army. The aim should be to deter the Pakistan army from seeing terrorism as a no-cost option by threatening — and when needed, imposing — a very high cost on the Pakistan army for such behaviour.

Indian Army surveillance in Uri, September 20, 2016 | Courtesy: Indian Army/Twitter

So far, India’s military response has failed to put the Pakistan army, the only arbiter of its India policy, under adequate pressure. India’s exaggerated fear of escalation has been a serious constraint. Until the “surgical strikes” last year, New Delhi’s fear of escalation was so great that it did not acknowledge military retaliation even when it took them. So openly owning to such retaliatory strikes was a significant breakthrough. But it is also necessary to acknowledge that, outside of publicising it, these strikes were not very different from the other border actions that the Indian forces had carried out before. More importantly, the retaliatory attacks in September 2016 were carefully calibrated, and also appears to have been designed to signal that India did not want to escalate further, as I pointed out then. The India attack was shallow, targeted mostly terrorists rather than the Pakistan army and it did not attempt to seize territory, characteristics similar to previous Indian retaliatory strikes. The strikes were escalatory only in relation to previous Indian behaviour, not in relation to Pakistan’s actions itself. Considering that Pakistan had ordered a direct attack on an Indian army camp, resulting in the death of seventeen Indian soldiers, an escalatory response should have been much more severe. But the limited aim of the surgical strike was understandable because India was already making a significant change in policy and signaling resolve by publicising the strikes. But such a limited response will not suffice this time; escalation would need to be in relation to Pakistan’s behaviour rather than to standard expectations of Indian behaviour.

India’s exaggerated fear of escalation has been a serious constraint. Until the “surgical strikes” last year, New Delhi’s fear of escalation was so great that it did not acknowledge military retaliation even when it took them.

India’s reluctance to escalate so far is surprising for two reasons. One is that, logically, it is the stronger state that has the option to escalate. India’s conventional military superiority may not be as great as it should be given that India’s GDP is almost eight times as large as Pakistan’s and India’s military budget is about seven times larger but it is clearly the stronger side in the equation. And in a short offensive with specific territorial targets (such as the Haji Pir pass, for example), India’s current superiority should be sufficient, especially since India should be able to gain tactical surprise. The Pakistan army may know that India is gearing up for an attack along the LoC, but it will not know where that attack might come. In short, the stronger side has more options, and a bigger margin for error, and India needs to recognise it.

The second is that despite all the rhetoric about Pakistan’s propensity to escalate, Rawalpindi has repeatedly chosen not to escalate. In Kargil, when India employed its air force, Pakistan complained and warned of escalation dangers but chose not to escalate. And the Pakistan army simply abandoned its Northern Light Infantry (NLI) troops. Similarly, in 2016, India’s surgical strike did not lead to any escalation by the Pakistan army, despite almost two decades of constant threats to escalate. In between, there have been repeated artillery duels and cross-LoC raids, not one of which the Pakistan army escalated. If the Pakistan army was really so trigger-happy to escalate, it has had plenty of opportunity. That it has not so far escalated suggests that Pakistan army leadership knows that it will face significant and disproportionate cost if it escalated. Indian military superiority might not be great enough to give it an easy win over Pakistan, but it is difficult to imagine Pakistan winning either.

This is the key issue. To the extent that Pakistan cannot win, there is little incentive for the Pakistan army to escalate. Much of the argument about escalation between India and Pakistan is based on the assumption that the Pakistan army will climb all these steps on the ladder, doubling-down on a losing bet until escalation reaches the nuclear level. But each of these steps represent an expensive and irrational gamble, and the Pakistani army leadership is not irrational. They have made bad bets — Operation Grand Slam and Kargil definitely were — but they have shown no propensity to double down when their initial gamble failed. Rather, they have usually chosen to walk away and find another game to play.

Pakistan army’s behaviour is perfectly rational: as is well-recognised, its domestic legitimacy is built on its role as defender of the Islamic Republic against India. If it cannot perform this basic duty, its domestic legitimacy will suffer, as will its outsized role in national politics, economy and society. It is not without reason that Pakistan disowned the NLI troops in the Kargil war or refused to acknowledge that India had conducted a retaliatory strike last year. More than anything else, the Pakistan army fears defeat at Indian hands. Despite its rhetoric, it fears escalation because escalation carries with it the very real possibility of a just such serious defeat. Much like a Haka war dance, Pakistan’s threats are designed to intimidate but are not actual predictors of behaviour.

It is this fear of escalation, which the Pakistan army has masked behind bombastic threats, that India needs to exploit. It gives India a clear deterrence leverage. But it also requires India to look to the actual behaviour of the Pakistan army leadership rather than assume that Rawalpindi’s rhetoric is an indicator of how they will behave.

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Kabul, New Delhi’s pushback

Russia hosted a six-nation conference on Afghanistan’s future in Moscow two weeks ago which saw participation from India, Iran, Pakistan, China and Afghanistan. This was Russia’s second initiative after the first trilateral conference in December last year which only included China and Pakistan. These Moscow talks come almost 38 years after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 and underscore a significant shift in Russia’s Afghanistan policy.

After facing flak for not inviting Afghanistan to the December conference on the nation’s future, Russia decided to broaden its outreach by inviting India, Iran and Afghanistan. The Afghan government had registered a strong protest after its exclusion from the December conference, underlining that regardless of the intentions of the participants, excluding Kabul from the talks would not help the situation in the country. “Even if such talks are organized with good will, it cannot yield any substantial results because no one from the Afghan side is there to brief the participants about the latest ground realities,” Kabul had argued.

This became even more significant as the December conference agreed upon “a flexible approach to remove certain [Taliban] figures from [United Nations] sanctions lists as part of efforts to foster a peaceful dialogue between Kabul and the Taliban movement.” The three states also underscored their concern “about the rising activity in the country [Afghanistan] of extremist groups, including the Afghan branch of IS [the Islamic State]” and underlined that the Taliban was a necessary bulwark in the global fight against the IS. This took Kabul as well its other partners like New Delhi by surprise.

Read also | How Russia gave a blow to India’s stakes in Afghanistan and later made it up to Delhi

This time Moscow was more careful. It invited most of the regional stakeholders even as the US and the NATO were pointedly left out. It was left to Afghanistan to underscore the centrality of the US in the unfolding dynamic in the country by pushing for the inclusion of the US as one of its most important partners to “end war and usher in sustainable peace in Afghanistan.” Afghanistan also took on Pakistan at the conference when it underlined the need to “effect a change in the behaviour of certain state actors” in order to end the violence that has reached record levels in the last year. In fact, Afghanistan strongly pushed back against the “good Taliban, bad Taliban” discourse being championed by Russia, China and Pakistan when its representative at the talks, M. Ashraf Haidari argued that “the key challenge to the process remains a policy selectivity by some to distinguish between good and bad terrorists, even though terrorism is a common threat that confronts the whole region, where if one of us doesn’t stand firm against it, others’ counter-terrorism efforts will not bear the results we all seek.”

Read also | The nuclear deterrence dialogue in Asia

This was of course welcomed by New Delhi which too underlined the need for Afghan-led and Afghan-owned reconciliation efforts only to be facilitated by “friends and well wishers of Afghanistan.” India also reiterated that denying “safe havens or sanctuaries to any terrorist group or individual in countries of our region,” remains central for the long-term stability of Afghanistan.

It was ironic that the Moscow conference happened at a time when Afghanistan-Pakistan ties have hit their nadir. More recently, after a spate of terror attacks in its territory, Pakistan has accused Afghanistan of not doing enough to go after armed groups that launch attacks in its territory. Pakistan Army has even moved heavy artillery to the Pak-Afghan border. As Washington remains distracted by the seemingly never ending drama in the White House, Russia wants to fill that vacuum in South Asia by taking a lead on Afghanistan. Its engagement with Pakistan has been gathering momentum and its partnership with China is aimed at becoming a global bulwark against the West. It is in this wider context that emerging fault-lines in South Asia become important. It is not simply Afghanistan but the very future of South Asia is at stake.

This commentary originally appeared in DNA.

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BJP’s huge win means it will also inherit the Congress’ curse

At first sight, the results from the local polls in Maharashtra – not just to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, but those for 9 other local governments – seems to be more of the same. The Bharatiya Janata Party has done well, if not as sweepingly as in 2014, and the Congress has continued its apparently inexorable downward slide into the history.

But there’s a deeper significance here that’s worth teasing out. And that is that these two things have indeed happened at the expense of each other. Essentially, the BJP is the new Congress. And, in many words, terrible as this is for the Congress, it’s not great news for the BJP either.

The BJP is the new Congress because its ideology – muscular, centralised Hindutva hypernationalism – has largely replaced the Congress’ mushy centrism as the dominant centralising pole of Indian politics. It is the BJP and not the Congress that is now, to adopt Rahul Gandhi’s phrase, the “default operating system” of Indian politics. In the BMC election, the party’s excellent showing has come largely at the expense of the Gandhi Congress, which has dipped from being second with 50-plus seats in the last corporation to being a very distant third. For those uncomfortable with the regionalism and patronage mechanisms of the Shiv Sena, it is the BJP that is now the obvious choice and not the Congress. It is the BJP that is now the party of the high command, of national unity, of “Indian” rather than local affiliation. I could well argue over whether the BJP’s ruling ideology is in fact “Indian” or “national” – but, from the point of elections, it doesn’t matter if who wins that argument, only that enough voters see it as the dominant strain of national ideology today.

Elsewhere too, the BJP is replacing the Congress as the “national” pole of regional politics. In Odisha, some believe that it is now the main challenger to the Biju Janata Dal. In Bihar, the Gandhi Congress is in alliance with regional parties, and the BJP is alone in opposition – after it fought an election without a state-level figurehead. In Telangana, the BJP genuinely believes that it, and not the Congress, will provide the “national” element in local politics over the coming decades. And so on.

There is space only for one national party in India. It was long the Congress. Now it is the BJP. The BJP had long been an agglomeration of regional parties in some ways, with different priorities in different states and strong satraps. That is slowly dying out, as an Indira-like high command exerts its will over the party organisation – a will rendered unchallengeable by the PM’s Indira-like connection with voters.

So how on earth could this be any other than brilliant news for the BJP? Well the answer lies visible before you in these Maharashtra elections: it has done very well, but not enough to win. The truth is that the “Congress-mukt Bharat” the party’s leadership endlessly promises would be the BJP’s worst nightmare. For the Congress, the “national” vote plus its old minority-Dalit-Brahmin coalition used to be enough to win. But for the BJP, the “national” vote plus its own core Hindutva vote might not be enough to win. We’ve seen this demonstrated again and again in elections when the declining Gandhi Congress isn’t the BJP’s main opponent.

And what is that main opponent of the BJP, if not the Gandhi Congress? Well, it’s what the main opponent of the Congress was before the rise of the BJP: sub-national political forces, ranging from the benign to the somewhat xenophobic. This centralising vs regional pole is the essential division of Indian politics. Even new parties, such as AAP, know they have to be a coalition of regional forces first even if they have national ambitions – see what it’s up to in Punjab, where it is running a clearly sub-nationalist campaign. Remember also that in most places where the BJP rose against the Congress, in the north and the west and Karnataka, it did so primarily as a state-centric party driven strongly by local caste coalitions. Now the position is reversed: the BJP is the homogenising centralising force, and its primary opponent will be the local, deeply rooted party – such as the Shiv Sena in Mumbai, the undisputed winner of this set of elections.

The breakdown in relations between the Shiv Sena and the BJP is not a transitory phenomenon. Even if the two parties come together again sometime in the future, the Shiv Sena can hardly settle for being a junior partner locally. That is too much of a blow to local pride. No regional party suffers being a junior partner to a national one in its own state if it wants to survive. (The NCP did for years, and it isn’t surviving.) And if the BJP now represents the “national”, then the Shiv Sena, as the local Maharashtra representative of sub-nationalism – of the most extreme kind – can hardly do anything but, eventually, come to oppose the BJP. Such are the natural poles of Indian politics.

So, the BJP can look at a rosy future in which it is the new Congress. But it must also reckon with the fact that it will inherit the Congress’ curse: anti-Congressism will become anti-BJPism. Disdain for centralisation, the power of the PM’s outsize personality, and fear of homogeneity and high commands will force regional political parties together just as opposition to the Gandhi Congress did in the past. And this will be worse for tomorrow’s BJP than yesterday’s Congress, because its base is just not large enough to triumph consistently if BJPism vs anti-BJPism becomes the new norm.

If the BJP is sensible, it will realise that becoming the new Congress means it will actually have to become more like the old Congress: expand its sociological and ideological footprint, recognise that sometimes a certain muddiness of ideology can allow disparate forces to live together under the same umbrella. If that happens, maybe we’ll return to a stable equilibrium of BJP and non-BJP governments, with the Gandhi Congress reduced to a bit player, strong in some states, occasionally supporting other regional forces. If the BJP is unable to expand its social coalition – well, it had better enjoy its success, because the chances are it won’t last for as long as it would like.

This commentary was published in ndtv.com

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Resetting China’s energy security goals

According to BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2016 (BP Stats 2016), China, with 23% of global energy consumption, is the largest energy consumer of the world. It also remains the world’s largest net importer of energy, with 16% of its energy needs met from imports, mostly from oil and natural gas, which comprises 61% and 30% respectively.

Further, BP Energy Outlook 2035 (BP Outlook) projects the share of oil and gas imports of China to grow by 79% and 40% respectively in 2035, signifying its unabated ‘going out strategy.’ It is well integrated into China’s energy security. The strategy initiated in 1999 by the Chinese government for promoting its investments abroad continues to help China aggressively seek overseas oil and gas.

However, BP Outlook suggests China’s steady shift towards low carbon fuels by reducing the consumption of dirty fossil fuels such as coal and oil. The share of coal in its energy mix, for instance, will come down from 64% in 2015 to 42% in 2035, while in the case of oil the increase is projected by just 2% to 20% in 2035. Interestingly, it is the enormous increase in the demand of cleaner energy fuels and renewables during the projected period which is set to make a big difference in China’s existing energy strategy and curbing emissions, significantly. The biggest projection in demand is observed in natural gas (186%), renewables in power (695%) and nuclear (644%).

With China still being the largest emitter of carbon dioxide, since it surpassed the US in 2007, its task is to move along a low-carbon path.

The biggest factor behind the recent shift towards low-carbon economy is the Paris Agreement, which is seen as a milestone in climate negotiations. Countries across the globe, including China, adopted international climate agreement at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of the Parties (COP21) in Paris in December 2015 by submitting their Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC). China’s NDC aimed to achieve peak carbon emissions by around 2030 or sooner; to lower carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP by 60% to 65% from 2005 levels and to increase the share of non-fossil fuels in the primary energy mix to approximately 20%.

The effort to control the usage of coal and implement targets to increase the capacity of wind and solar and also to increase the share of natural gas is already evident in BP Stats 2016. There has been a significant increase in the consumption of non-fossil fuels in the primary energy mix with nuclear and renewables increasing by 28.9% and 20.9% respectively in 2015 on a year-on-year basis. The share of natural gas consumption too showed an upward trajectory with over 77% increase since 2010.

Beijing’s old economic model based on investment and manufacturing, enabled it to maintain double digit economic growth over the past three decades. It also resulted in China’s demand for energy to grow at 6% per annum over the past 20 years. But with recent attempts to restructure the old economic model and a policy commitment to move to cleaner, lower carbon fuels, that is less energy and emissions intensive has helped China upgrade its old growth model to a ‘new normal.’

Beijing’s old economic model based on investment and manufacturing, enabled it to maintain double digit economic growth over the past three decades.

Thus, recent attempts to shift towards a newer growth model from the quantity of input to the efficiency of input, through innovative means could help China curb its energy demand to just 2% per annum, from 6% at present, as projected by BP Outlook.

However, China will have to walk a tightrope between its continued oil ambitions and the need to act fast on low-carbon growth. The present low oil prices and the need to accumulate oil for its strategic reserves will challenge its urge to do away with energy and emissions intensive growth.

China continues to play with fire by increasing its dependence on oil imports through its dubious energy plans issued in January 2017 by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and the National Energy Administration (NEA). Accordingly, China’s oil production targets set for 2020 is four million barrels per day (mbpd), down by 6.8% from 2015, while allowing net oil imports to increase by 17% during this period. In other words, China’s oil consumption over the next five year period would come almost entirely from oil imports. These developments are not only putting at risk China’s energy security goals, given its increasing reliance on politically vulnerable countries in the Middle East and Africa, but also the process of economic transformation through less energy intensive means.

Thus the co-existence of China’s geopolitical approach to energy security and its attempt to increase the share of non-fossil fuels in its primary energy mix will test its intention to decarbonise its economy. The origin of this strategy can be traced to the late 1990s,which was being pursued irrespective of the surge in oil prices. In 2003, Hu Jintao, then President and General Secretary of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) articulated China’s energy security concerns through the term “Malacca Dilemma.” The fact that 80% of China’s energy moves through the waterway of the Malacca Strait, it poses great risks of being cut off, reflecting China’s energy security challenge.

China’s insecurities about its energy supplies is also reflected in its new One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative.

However, to allay its fear, China needs to intensify its association with several global energy institutions such as the International Energy Agency and capitalise on its recent engagement with it by integrating with the global energy market. This will not only help China insulate itself from external supply and price shocks but also help Beijing gain greater access to energy producers and buyers. Aligning with energy buyers, for instance, could help bring down the cost of procuring energy, such as liquefied natural gas (LNG), significantly, while keeping intact its clean energy goals with greater usage of natural gas, a cleaner fossil fuel.

Further, China would do well to work on its core strength towards energy technology innovation, which has already placed China as the world’s largest wind power market as well as the largest producer of solar photovoltaic batteries and hydroelectricity. Efforts towards these have helped China in bringing electricity to more people than any other country in a very short period of time and the world stands to benefit from China.

China has taken a step forward in this regard under its new energy vision laid out by former Chinese President Hu Jintao in 2006 at the G8 Summit in St. Petersburg. Jintao called for greater international cooperation on supplies of oil and gas between both energy exporting and energy consuming countries, while ensuring secure energy transport routes with less politicisation of energy security. Besides being associated with the IEA, China can play a significant role in shaping its own sustainable clean energy agenda by using platforms such as the Group of Twenty (G20), the International Energy Forum, the Joint Oil Data Initiative (JODI), Energy Charter Treaty Organisation and Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), which though is not an energy governance platform per se, holds great promise for energy cooperation in Asia.

This will help China extricate itself from its old geopolitical approach towards energy security while offering greater scope for its integration into the global energy value chain.

[14orfonline-blog]

India, Indonesia inch closer

Making its ‘Act East’ policy more robust, India has now decided to hold its first-ever joint air combat exercise with Indonesia. India has also offered to train sailors from Indonesia in submarine operations in a boost to maritime security cooperation. The two countries also agreed to cooperate in defence manufacturing and expand military-to-military cooperation. Indonesian President Joko Widodo was in India in December last year and the two nations had agreed to “conclude a substantive bilateral defence cooperation agreement” and “explore collaboration between defence industries for joint production of equipment with technology transfer.” Against the backdrop of changing regional balance of power, this growing Delhi-Jakarta relationship assumes significance.

During Widodo’s visit, the two nations took aim at China’s aggressive stance on the South China Sea when they “stressed the importance of resolving disputes by peaceful means, in accordance with universally recognised principles of international law, including UNCLOS”. This is significant as both India and Indonesia do not have a direct stake in this dispute. But both are concerned about China’s territorial expansionism and its reluctance to abide by global norms. Modi and Widodo also want their nations to emerge as major maritime powers to ensure a stable maritime order in the region, one that is under stress because of China’s rapid rise and America’s growing reluctance to be the sole guarantor of regional security. Whereas India is worried about the security of the sea lanes of communication in the larger Indo-Pacific, Indonesia is concerned about Chinese maritime intrusions near the Natuna islands, which it claims as part of its exclusive economic zone, as well as Chinese attempts in the past to include the island chain in its territorial maps.

India and Indonesia have been gradually enhancing their security and political ties. The two signed a strategic partnership agreement in 2005 that started an annual strategic dialogue. The next year, they ratified a defence cooperation agreement, initially signed in 2001, which focused on areas of defence supplies and technology, as well as on joint projects. The two have signed an extradition treaty and also a “mutual legal assistance treaty” for gathering and exchanging information to enforce their laws. Joint naval exercises and patrols, and regular port calls by their respective navies, have become a regular feature of the India-Indonesia relationship in recent years. India has also become a major source of military hardware for Jakarta.

Such cooperation is a natural result of geography. Indonesia’s location, combined with its naval forces, allows it to work effectively with India to ensure security in the sea lanes of communication between Europe, the Middle East and South-East Asia. Together, they control the entry point from the Bay of Bengal in the Indian Ocean to the Strait of Malacca. Similarities in democratic governing systems and broad foreign-policy outlooks have helped dramatically. Viewing India’s maritime presence as benign, Indonesia has openly invited India to help littoral states in the region maintain the Strait’s security.

New Delhi’s ambitious policy in East and South-East Asia is aimed at significantly increasing its regional profile. Smaller states in the region are now looking to India to act as a balancer in view of China’s growing influence, while larger states see it as an attractive engine for regional growth. It remains to be seen if India can indeed live up to its full potential, as well as to the region’s expectations. But with the Modi government’s wooing of regional states, India is signalling that it is indeed serious about its presence in South-East Asia. As India moves away from its traditional ‘non-aligned’ mentality, recent trends in India-Indonesia partnership are likely to usher in a new era in the bilateral relations between two of the most prominent Indo-Pacific powers.

This commentary was originally published in DNA

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Globalism, radicalism, populism on Raisina Hill

In many ways, the Raisina Dialogue hosted by Observer Research Foundation and the Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India, set the tone for the year’s momentous developments in geopolitics. 2017 is yet to complete fifty days, but the events of the last few weeks will have a lasting impact on our times. The Raisina Dialogue, in particular, highlighted the clash between liberal “internationalism” and the radical movements that threaten to upend it. Keynote speeches by three leaders at Raisina stood out for their pronouncements on globalisation. The first, by India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, sounded a note of caution about the “gains of globalisation” being at risk. “Economic gains are no longer easy to come by,” said PM Modi, who went on to cite the “barriers to effective multilateralism.” The Prime Minister’s message was direct and simple: that globalisation needs new inheritors who can help promote the projects, regimes and norms of the 20th century. This responsibility would invariably fall on the shoulders of a class of nations that we have come to know as “emerging powers.”

“Globalisation needs new inheritors who can help promote the projects, regimes and norms of the 20th century.” — Narendra Modi

A second perspective on globalisation came from former Canadian PM Stephen Harper, who highlighted the role that religion plays in these turbulent times. Mr. Harper noted the role that Pope John Paul II, a Pole, played in providing “anti-communists in Poland effective leadership outside the country” in their struggle against the Soviet Union. PM Harper was hinting at the capacity of a religious leader whose tacit support of the Western ethos ensured resistance to entrenched nation-states. In this respect, religion returned to world politics (to destroy the Soviet Empire) in the eighties, long before the rise of the Islamic State. Can tendencies driven by religious sentiment today — whether through the rise of terrorist groups like ISIS, or through the counter-movements against migration in Europe — defeat the globalisation project driven by states?

Can tendencies driven by religious sentiment today defeat the globalisation project driven by states?

And finally, British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson offered yet another take on globalisation, in balancing his full-throated defence of Brexit with his call for greater economic cooperation with Britain. The “selective” or “a la carte” globalisation that Secretary Johnson pushed for at the Raisina Dialogue reflects the desire of many Western states to preserve its economic benefits while assuaging “nativist” tendencies at home.

What do these three speeches at the recently concluded global conclave tell us about the world today? For one, they concede that globalisation of a certain kind has run its course. This was a globalisation spurred by Western leadership in the 20th century, promoting ideas and institutions to salvage economies that had been devastated after two great wars. The urgency and desire to create those linkages no longer exist in the trans-Atlantic universe, so this period is witnessing selective de-globalisation.

Second, the leaders’ speeches acknowledge that globalisation is a victim of its own success. In true Hegelian fashion, the “idea” has been destroyed by its “actualisation.” Globalised economies today promote the free and rapid flow of information, bringing communities, societies and peoples together. These connected networks are by no means homogenous. They are miscellaneous groupings that often have little in common, by way of political heritage or intellectual traditions. As a result, they begin to sense their respective differences quickly and conspicuously. To be sure, the world was just as polarised or opinionated before the Information Age. But digital spaces have made distances shorter, and differences sharper.

Digital spaces have made distances shorter, and differences sharper.

Third, their utterances indicated globalisation is in need of new torchbearers, who may not be able to project strength or underwrite stability in the same vein as the United States or Europe, but will preserve its normative roots regionally. These torchbearers will emerge from Asia, Africa and Latin America: they may not be connected by a lingua franca but their political systems will share a common commitment to free expression and trade. Their rise will be neither smooth nor inevitable. If disruptors today find the cost to destabilise the global system rather low, its custodians realise it is expensive to fix the mess they leave behind.

Prime Minister Modi astutely observed at the RaisinaDialogue that the dust has not yet settled on what has replaced the Cold War. Russian Parliamentarian Vyacheslav Nikonov, one of the speakers at the Dialogue, went one step further: “We may not be the number one military in the world,” he said, “but we [Russia] are not No. 2 either.” With the traditional leadership of Western powers giving way to the rise of regional powers, it is anyone’s guess if they will emerge as preservers or destroyers.

Above all, the speeches by Mr. Modi, Mr. Johnson and Mr. Harper at the Dialogue reflect their desire to couch globalisation in normative terms. The Washington Consensus was not solely about free markets, but also untrammelled expression and political dissent. The room for promoting such norms, for all the reasons mentioned above, is considerably limited today. The rise of China presents perhaps the biggest challenge to an ideas-based global order. Beijing has pursued with transactional vigour and single-minded ambition the setting up of regional financial architecture to bankroll its infrastructure projects. These initiatives place little regard for notions held sacred in the international order.

At the Dialogue, PM Modi highlighted the importance of these norms for the continued execution of the globalisation project. “Only by respecting the sovereignty of countries involved, can regional connectivity corridors fulfil their promise and avoid differences and discord,” said PM Modi.

It should be clear then that there is only one legitimate inheritor to the global liberal order of any consequence: India. New Delhi alone can pursue the expansion of regional and global economic linkages while staying true to the ideals that drive them. The Raisina Dialogue itself was an example of how a global platform can be forged in India, bringing together contradicting opinions and voices from across the world. As the steward of the process, the Prime Minister cited the Rig Veda, inviting “noble thoughts […] from all directions.” The future of the globalisation project is intimately tied to India’s modernisation and rise. There is no growth without ideas, and conversely, no innovation without prosperity. India is the world’s best shot and perhaps the last shot at achieving both in these turbulent times.

[14orfonline-blog]

Is the “Asian Century” over before it has begun?

Ever since Japan began to be viewed as an economic juggernaut in the 1970s, the world has anticipated the “Asian Century.” Predictions of America and Europe’s inevitable decline and Asia’s inexorable rise have been staples of books, newspaper and magazine articles, and news shows for decades.[i] In a tectonic shift in global power similar to the one that took place in the early 20th century, we are told, the countries of the Indo-Pacific will begin to dominate global economics, politics and security.[ii]

Such claims seem merely to reflect reality. Over three billion people live in the great geographic arc from India to Japan, and one in every three persons on our planet is either Chinese or Indian. The formerly war-ravaged and impoverished countries of the Indo-Pacific now export forty percent of the goods bought by consumers around the world.[iii] The world’s most populous countries and largest militaries are in the Indo-Pacific, and millions of Asian immigrants are changing the societies to which they have moved. Asian art, cuisine and pop culture have spread throughout the world. Whether you care about the Indo-Pacific or not, it is a part of your world.

Meanwhile, more Asians than ever in history are benefitting from economic growth and political stability. The region has not seen a real war since the Sino-Vietnamese clash of 1979. Since the mid-1980s, democracy has spread to Taiwan, South Korea, the Philippines, Mongolia, Indonesia and elsewhere. Hundreds of millions of Chinese, Indians, Vietnamese and others have been lifted out of poverty. Lifespans throughout the region have increased, and the standard of living in Asia’s major cities now rivals (sometimes exceeds) that of the West. Scientists and scholars from Asian countries play leading roles in research institutes, laboratories and universities around the globe. Some of the world’s most advanced industrial factories are in countries like Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.

Perhaps because much of Asia has been peaceful for a few decades, many outside the region—and inside it as well—seem to take for granted that it will always be so.[iv] As their European counterparts did in the first decade of the 20th century, many observers today argue that the great volume of trade, the unhindered movement of people and the bevy of regional political organisations have made war in Asia impossible. Perhaps most importantly, when compared with the strife-torn Middle East, aging Europe or crisis-beset Africa, the Asia-Pacific region looks like the one major area of the world where opportunity, economic growth and political development are still possible. In short, the global future looks increasingly Asian.

Perhaps the main reason for that is an economic one. Most global consumers can hardly imagine a world without Asia as its workshop. China and Japan are two of the world’s three largest economies, and the majority of clothing, textiles and consumer electronics are produced in Asia.[v] A massive building boom accompanied the decades of post-World War II growth, as capital investment in plants, ports, roads, airports and office buildings transformed rice paddies into business parks, while sleepy capital cities became financial and industrial magnets. Today, 18 of the world’s 25 largest container ports are in Asia, including all of the top eight, while the largest US port, Los Angeles, is only ranked nineteenth.[vi]Perhaps even more impressively, urbanisation has erased traditional villages across Asia, and megacities like Tokyo-Yokohama, Shanghai, Jakarta and Mumbai now burst with tens of millions of people, from the world’s wealthiest tycoons to its most poverty-stricken strivers.

The story of global economic activity for the past two decades largely has been the story of China, taking over from Japan and the Four Asian Tigers as the driver of economic growth in Asia. In the space of one generation, China has become the largest or second-largest trading partner of 78 countries around the globe, including the United States, Japan and South Korea.[vii] By some measures, China is now the first-, second- or third-largest trading partner of nearly every nation on earth.

According to the International Monetary Fund, China is central to the entire world economic structure, as its imports help prop up the economies of major players such as Germany, smaller ones like Australia, and fledgling countries in Africa.[viii] The world has grown used to miracle stories of people like Jack Ma, the founder of e-commerce giant Alibaba, who became China’s richest man in a few hours when his company’s initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange netted him $13 billion.[ix] Shelves of books have been written about China’s economic explosion and how it is transforming the world.[x]

China is just one example of how hundreds of millions of Asians have been pulled out of deep poverty. As late as 1990, just before Deng Xiaoping made his famous push to revitalise economic reform, per capita GDP in China was just $340. Ten years later, it had almost tripled, to $945, and in 2014, the World Bank estimated it to be $7,590, more than a sixfold increase in twenty years.[xi] In 1953, just 13% of China’s people lived in urban areas. In the 2010 census, that figure stood at 49% and had grown by 13 percentage points in just the previous decade.[xii] China’s largest cities have exploded in size, and the country now boasts 170 cities with over a million people, as well as five with over 10 million.[xiii]

Like its more developed neighbours, China has rapidly become a technologically sophisticated society. China had nearly one billion mobile phone users in 2011, with millions signing up every month. Sina Weibo, the world’s biggest social networking site, attracts a large percentage of China’s nearly 600 million internet users.[xiv] Such success stories of modernisation can be repeated throughout Asia, lending credence to the idea that Asia’s future is a golden one.

What most of the cheerleaders for Asia miss is the other side of the story. Despite enormous progress, growth and modernisation, Asia still struggles with enormous problems. Because so many of those weaknesses have been ignored, they now threaten the region’s future. From economics through domestic politics and security, solving the challenges facing Asia will demand the full attention of policymakers, thinkers, business leaders and citizens.

The world is just beginning to wake up to the fact that Asia’s economic miracle is at risk. After decades of hearing about double-digit economic growth in Japan and China, and impressive growth in the Four Tigers, the pace of GDP growth has slowed dramatically. Japan’s generation-long stagnation is perhaps the best known example, but when China’s stock market crashed in the summer of 2015, many observers for the first time appeared to recognise that the problems in the region were widespread and endemic.

Among the suspect assumptions that have driven hype over the Asia Century are that China’s economy will continue to grow for decades, that India is poised to take its place if it should falter, and that Southeast Asia remains just steps away from explosive economic performance.

In reality, from Japan to India, the nations of Asia struggle to maintain growth, balance their economies and fight slowdowns. In most of these countries, the days of high-flying growth are long over, while for others, they never began. It is past time for the rest of the world to pay attention to the threats to Asia’s economic health. Uneven development, asset bubbles, malinvestment, labour issues and state control over markets are just some of the features of economic risk in the Asia-Pacific. And because Asian economies are increasingly interlinked, problems in one country spill over to others. Even if Asia’s economies manage to muddle through, the world must ask what will happen to global trade and investment if growth in Asia simply cools off.

There is little doubt that the world must prepare for a China whose growth has dramatically slowed if not stagnated, and for mature economies like Japan to never recapture their former economic vibrancy. As for the developing states, the risk is that they will never attain the growth needed to ensure the modernisation of their societies.

Most of Asia’s developed countries, including Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore, are facing or will soon face unprecedented demographic drops. China’s one-child policy and horrendous environmental pollution will also bring a population decline in the world’s most populous nation, at a time when the country is not yet rich enough to deal with the resulting dislocation. On the other hand, India has a growing surfeit of young people and needs to improve educational standards, expand its urban and rural infrastructure, and find them all jobs. Much of Southeast Asia is in the same situation as India.  Demographics will put enormous pressure on Asia’s domestic political and economic systems; understanding this is a must for understanding risk in the region.

Another enormous area of risk is Asia’s unfinished political revolutions, in both democracies and autocracies. How political leaders respond to economic and social challenges will ensure domestic tranquility or produce civil unrest. An Asia whose political systems fail to provide stability, legitimacy and growth is an Asia that will become increasingly troubled. The region’s history is full of examples of domestic failure leading to wider dislocation.[xv] At the same time, embattled regimes have regularly sought to defuse tensions at home by exporting instability abroad, even to the point of invading neighbouring countries.

The gains of democracy continue to be put at risk by corruption, cliques, protest, cynicism and fear of instability. The spread of democracy, which has succeeded so well in recent decades, may be reaching a limit—how temporary is impossible to say. Even mature democracies, like Japan, face a crisis of political confidence, and a “political arthritis” that leaves vital problems unsolved.

Democracies are afflicted by malaise, cynicism and anger at the growing gulf between the haves and the have-nots. In Japan, where life remains comfortable and envied by most other Asian nations, voter participation rates in elections continue to drop, as many young people turn away from politics, convinced that the country will never pull out of its economic stagnation. South Korea is in the midst of a political crisis, as President Park Geun-hye was impeached for a bribery and influence-peddling scandal, after millions of South Koreans demonstrated in the streets against her. The Thai military continues to hold power after overthrowing the elected government, while in Malaysia, Prime Minister Najib is under fire for a billion-dollar financial scandal. Democrats around Asia are pessimistic about the future, helping stir populism and broader discontent.

Autocracies are in similar straits. In China, the Communist Party has become ever more isolated from the citizenry and is seen as corrupt, inefficient and often brutal. President Xi Jinping has cracked down on civil society, arresting lawyers and pressuring non-governmental organisations, even as he has gathered more power into his own hands.

Fearful of its lack of legitimacy, the Chinese government remains unshakably committed to preventing any geographic area from splitting from the country at large. This dynamic drives the government’s repressive policies towards Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet and Xinjiang, and is rooted in the knowledge that these regions would readily sever ties with Beijing if they could. A China riven by fission among its parts is the central leadership’s greatest fear. Fears about the future of Chinese stability are growing, in part due to uncertainty over Xi Jinping’s future plans. Nor is it far-fetched to conclude that China’s increasing belligerence over territorial disputes comes from a desire to shift attention away from increasing government control at home.

But if Asia’s domestic political systems are under strain, its diplomatic relations are at just as much risk. Few observers think about war in Asia. After all, the Indo-Pacific has not seen a region-wide total war since 1945. After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the last major clash between Asian nations was the 1962 Sino-Indian War, and there has been no extended conflict between Asian nations since the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese border war. Given the growing trade and wealth in the region, a casual visitor to Asia could be excused for assuming that Indo-Pacific nations are too busy getting rich to waste time on territorial disputes and military confrontations. In fact, modernisation and economic growth have led to a new era of insecurity and a growing threat of armed conflict.

More than any other region, the Asia-Pacific remains fettered by centuries of history. Its largest and most powerful nations, China, Japan and India, were also its major imperial powers through millennia of history. Today, these giants have no formal allies among their neighbours, and few close partnerships. Because of this, Asia lacks longstanding, tested, respected political mechanisms for cooperation between states. This is a problem for a region with both major security tensions and a need for continued economic integration. Given the stakes, all countries in the region should be striving to create and maintain a political community that contributes to both growth and political stability. Yet such an achievement is far off on the horizon.

Despite facing many of the same problems, there is little that links Asia’s nations together. Beyond a rudimentary sense of “Asian-ness,” there remains no effective regional political community. There is no NATO, no EU in Asia that can try to solve common problems in a joint manner, or work to address bilateral issues in a broader framework. This lack of regional unity is a largely underappreciated risk factor.

The danger of a lack of political community is that there are no mechanisms for mitigating such deep antipathy, certainly between major players such as India and China or Japan and Korea. A nation like China is all too ready to threaten economic or political action in response to their antagonists. The various nations have few working relationships that can help defuse crises. Nor is there a core of powerful liberal nations committed to playing an honest broker’s role or trying to set regional norms. How well can Asia weather another regional economic crisis like the one in 1997, or a major border dispute?

The immediate cause of rising insecurity is simple: as China has grown stronger, it has become more assertive, even coercive. Beijing has embraced the role of a revisionist power, seeking to define new regional rules of behaviour and confronting those neighbors with which it has disagreements. Japan and Taiwan, along with many countries in Southeast Asia, fear a rising China, as does India, though to a lesser degree. That fear, fueled by numerous unresolved territorial disputes in the East and South China Seas and by growing concern over maintaining vital trade routes and control of natural resources, is causing an arms race in Asia. The region’s waters have become the scene of regular paramilitary confrontations: From the divided Korean peninsula to the Taiwan Strait, and from the Kurile Islands in the north to the Spratleys and Paracels in the South China Sea, coast guards, paramilitary forces, maritime patrols and air forces jockey for position, sometimes leading to the ramming of ships and the sinking of fishing vessels.

The Indo-Pacific contains its own ‘great game’ between great and small powers. Some of this competition is simply for greater influence, but some is for concrete gain such as wresting away territory or gaining de facto client states. At the highest level, that between China and its neighbours, it is for determining the basic structure of the region and the rules and norms that guide it. It is a contest in which no one, not even China, feels assured of its own strength. Asia’s simmering military competition, stand-offs, mini-confrontations and saber rattling have until recently been ignored in good-news discussions of the Indo-Pacific.

The rapid transformation of Asia’s security environment threatens to undo the work of decades. China’s rise is upsetting the political and military equilibrium and causing other nations to build their own military power. In addition, an increasingly nuclear capable North Korea has moved from bizarre annoyance to deadly threat, while numerous territorial disputes between countries both large and small are helping fuel the arms race. Even without an ongoing war, the region now spends more than Europe on military budgets, paying out $287 billion in 2013 for weaponry.[xvi] An accident or miscalculation on the part of any of these great and small powers in the region, fueled by nationalist passion, could result in an armed clash that might spiral out of control.

 The “Asian century” thus may not turn out to be an era when Asia imposes a peaceful order on the world, when freedom continues to expand, or where the region remains the engine of global economic growth. What it imposes may instead be conflict and instability. The nations of the Indo-Pacific and the world must prepare for the possibility of economic stagnation, social and political unrest, even armed conflict. The emergence of those would mark the end of the Asian century.