That is interesting.
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In his speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore earlier this month, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi articulated a vision for India’s place in the Indo-Pacific region. This role embraces a form of security competition with China, but in a way that applies India’s own unique form of leverage. India seems to calculate that uncertainty about its strategic intentions, and especially its relationship with the United States, helps to keep competition with China at a manageable level.
In the speech, Modi leveled veiled but pointed criticisms of China, arguing for a rules-based regional order that values sovereignty, international law, and freedom of navigation, and rejects impossible debt burdens. But, equally, he abjured a future based on rival alignments, rejecting the notion that India should ally with the United States in a bloc to contain China. India would compete — “competition is normal,” after all — but on its own terms, not as part of an American agenda. More recently, at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Qingdao, Modi conspicuously abstained from supporting China’s Belt and Road Initiative and instead trumpeted “inclusive, sustainable, and transparent” connectivity projects.
Rather than joining in a compact with the United States against China, Modi was staking out a an authentically Indian position: standing up to China on its own terms, as a champion of the rules-based order. Modi thus gave coherent voice to a pattern of policies that have already emerged in practice. In 2017, India boycotted the Belt and Road Initiative conference, resisted territorial encroachments at Doklam, and resuscitated the informal consultative mechanism between India, the United States, Japan, and Australia, known as the Quad. The Shangri-La speech codified Indian policy as a defense of an inclusive, rules-based order, rather than a self-aggrandizing contest with China.
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Using Uncertainty as Leverage: India’s Security Competition with China
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In his speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore earlier this month, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi articulated a vision for India’s place in the Indo-Pacific region. This role embraces a form of security competition with China, but in a way that applies India’s own unique form of leverage. India seems to calculate that uncertainty about its strategic intentions, and especially its relationship with the United States, helps to keep competition with China at a manageable level.
In the speech, Modi leveled veiled but pointed criticisms of China, arguing for a rules-based regional order that values sovereignty, international law, and freedom of navigation, and rejects impossible debt burdens. But, equally, he abjured a future based on rival alignments, rejecting the notion that India should ally with the United States in a bloc to contain China. India would compete — “competition is normal,” after all — but on its own terms, not as part of an American agenda. More recently, at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Qingdao, Modi conspicuously abstained from supporting China’s Belt and Road Initiative and instead trumpeted “inclusive, sustainable, and transparent” connectivity projects.
Rather than joining in a compact with the United States against China, Modi was staking out a an authentically Indian position: standing up to China on its own terms, as a champion of the rules-based order. Modi thus gave coherent voice to a pattern of policies that have already emerged in practice. In 2017, India boycotted the Belt and Road Initiative conference, resisted territorial encroachments at Doklam, and resuscitated the informal consultative mechanism between India, the United States, Japan, and Australia, known as the Quad. The Shangri-La speech codified Indian policy as a defense of an inclusive, rules-based order, rather than a self-aggrandizing contest with China.
...
Using Uncertainty as Leverage: India’s Security Competition with China
