Modi’s Japan Visit: Need for a Paradigm Shift in Strategic Ties

Brig (Retd) Vinod Anand, 

Senior Fellow, VIF

After evaluating the emerging strategic environment in the neighbourhood and beyond, Prime Minister Narendra Modi preferred to visit Bhutan first and thereafter Japan. While the visit to Bhutan underscored his understanding of the crucial strategic importance of Bhutan to India and the need to correct the drift in relationship which had crept in during the UPA’s tenure, Modi’s forthcoming visit to Japan is expected to bring in a paradigm shift in the nature of relationship between the two nations.

Although Japan has been somewhat disappointed with the postponement of his visit scheduled for first week of July to August, the ensuing time gap is expected to provide adequate time for both sides to address some of the constraints that inhibit strengthening further the economic and strategic relationship. For instance, Japan wants India to make its domestic laws including the tax regime investor friendly to enable Tokyo to go in for huge investments in India. And India would like Japan to loosen some of the restrictions and limitations that restrain the cooperation in civil nuclear field, high end technology and defence industry.

The top priority of the Modi-led government is to return to the high growth trajectory that entails developing a robust infrastructure for which according to India’s 12th Five year Plan, the requirement is over 1 trillion US dollars. Japan has been very active in providing Overseas Development Aid (ODA) to India (in terms of grants and soft loans which has been around USD 36 billion till last year). However, with the right investment climate, Tokyo could provide New Delhi a very large proportion of the funds needed for development of infrastructure. While Japan is already involved in development of the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC), many more such projects are needed across the length and breadth of India.

During Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s visit to India in January, Japan was invited to invest in India’s North East region for development of infrastructure. Japanese companies were also invited to develop a new port in Chennai which would improve connectivity to Dawei port in Myanmar (being developed by Thailand) and beyond. Not only this, there has been a Japanese promise of helping India's Export-Import Bank develop more attractive funding packages for Indian projects in regional countries. All this needs to be given a practical shape in the coming visit to Japan.

While India and Japan have set a target of US dollars 25 billion for 2014, it is much less than the trade figures of both nations with China. Despite the signing of Comprehensive Economic Partnership between the two countries in August 2011, the overall economic relations have not progressed beyond a point. This is more so in the areas of cooperation in strategic industries like defence, cyber security, space and civil nuclear energy. It is here that some of the constraints that could be either political or constitutional in nature need to be attenuated or removed altogether. PM Modi’s massive mandate would be very helpful in ushering in economic reforms and address some of the concerns of Japanese and other international investors. On the other hand, PM Shinzo Abe’s government has also embarked upon certain reforms including changing the pacifist nature of Japanese Constitution that would help in enhancing defence and security cooperation.

What could be a game changer in the evolving Indo-Japan strategic relationship is the likelihood of Japan signing the civil nuclear agreement during the forthcoming visit of Modi. This agreement would also have implications for some of the American nuclear energy companies who have apprehensions in cooperating with India in the civil nuclear sector as they are owned by the Japanese. (For instance, Westinghouse Electricity (Nuclear Energy) Company is owned by Toshiba). Both sides at present are exploring ways and means as to how some of the mutual dissonance in this arena could be overcome.

Both Japanese and Indian political leadership share common perceptions about the evolving security situation in the Indo-Pacific region and understand the need for preserving strategic equilibrium that has been impacted upon negatively by China’s assertive policies. Therefore, it makes strategic sense for both to work together in defence and security areas in order to create a degree of balance that would serve both countries’ national interests.

Realizing this need, both countries had made a joint declaration in 2008 to strengthen defence and security cooperation. Consequent to the declaration, the India- Japan 2+ 2 dialogue mechanism was evolved wherein Foreign and Defence Secretaries meet regularly to discuss foreign policy and security issues such as maritime security, cyber security and space. Even though there has been some progress in these areas so far, much more substantial needs to be achieved.

Japan has also moved forward in revising its pacific outlook and is revitalising its defence capabilities. Besides strengthening its alliance with the US, Japan’s New Defence Policy Guidelines and new security strategy postulates ‘strengthening cooperative relations with countries with which it shares universal values and strategic interests such as Republic of Korea, Australia, the countries of ASEAN and India’. Strengthening bilateral relations with India in broad range of areas including maritime security is one of the cornerstones of the Japanese new defence strategy.

Japan’s relaxing of restrictions on exports of defence technology and weapons and possibilities of joint development in defence industry need to be exploited. Modi’s visit should be used for laying down a comprehensive framework for Indo-Japan defence cooperation something similar to that of the 2005 Indo-US Framework for Defence Cooperation but which is much more substantial. Cooperation in cyberspace and outer space would be critical to meet the challenges arising in these domains. China has been very active in cyber space wherein besides some other nations India and Japan have been at the receiving end of cyber attacks originating from China.

India is keen to acquire ShinMaywa US-2i amphibian aircraft for the Navy to strengthen its naval aviation arm. Some progress has been made on the subject but there are still some reservations on the part of Japan. There is also the question of manufacturing the aircraft jointly. While there is considerable scope for joint research development in high end technologies in both civil and military arena, the political push by both sides is necessary to move forward in these areas. Given the personal equation between both the Prime Ministers, some of the constraints in imparting positive momentum to Indo-Japanese defence relationship could be overcome.

There is also a need to have a candid dialogue on perceptions of regional and international security environment and evolve suitable responses. While India has been pursuing its Look East Policy since early 1990s, Japan has also been strengthening its relations with the ASEAN and East Asian nations. Both India and Japan are well placed to work together and build on many of the existing bilateral and multi-lateral initiatives in the region. There is also a great potential for initiating fresh trilateral frameworks where both nations can cooperate with a third country.

Given the great degree of strategic convergence between Japan and India that is supplemented by the mutually complimentary economies, the forthcoming visit of the Prime Minister to Tokyo could bring in a paradigm shift in the nature of relationship between India and Japan. In the coming days, Indo-Japanese relationship could become critical in contributing to peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region.

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Courtesy: Vivek: Issues and Options; May-June 2014

India must Solidify Ties with Japan for Growth, Moderating China

Kanwal Sibal, 

Dean, Centre for International Relations and Diplomacy, VIF

The visit of Japan’s royal couple to India, the first in the history of India-Japan relations, deserved greater attention by our media. The government did make special gestures to underline the visit’s importance, with the Prime Minister receiving the couple at the airport and the External Affairs Minister acting as the Minister-in-waiting. But the media did not amplify the government’s political signals, which a mature media with geopolitical sense should have.

Special

Our media gives excessive coverage to visits by the US President or Pakistani leaders, down to frivolous details of fashion and food. The coverage of the royal couple’s visit was muted by comparison, even though much could have been said about the exceptional dignity and grace of the guests. Perhaps the Japanese side may not have wanted to promote celebrity coverage of the visit, as that might have been incompatible with the relationship of respect and distance between the Japanese public and the royal couple. Nonetheless, we seemed to have lost the sense of the moment, as the visit of the Emperor and Empress of Japan- a 2600 years old monarchy- had special significance in historical terms.

The rising tensions between Japan and China unduly coloured the media commentary on the visit. No doubt India and Japan see a shared interest in dealing with the challenges posed by an increasingly assertive China. The visit of the royal couple coincided with China’s declaration of a new Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ) that covers the disputed Senkaku islands, which made the China dimension of the developing India-Japan strategic partnership more topical.

The Japanese political managers of the royal visit rightly did not want to narrow its purpose by overemphasising the China context. To avoid unnecessary China-baiting and put matters in perspective, they briefed the media on the comparative content of the Japan-China and the Japan-India relationships, showing dramatically how the latter is a pale shadow of the former. Japan’s $345 billion trade with China far surpasses the $18.5 billion trade with India. China is Japan’s largest trade partner, with Japan’s FDI there totalling $69 billion in 2011, as against its $ 15.9 billion total investment in India. 80,000 Chinese were studying in Japan in 2009 compared to India’s 541. Whatever the degree of deterioration in Japan-China ties, the stakes the two have in each other are enormous.

Japan has been Asia’s leading Asian power for long, regaining that position soon after its devastation during the second World War. For the last two decades, the Japanese economy, suffering from persistent deflation, has eroded Japan’s international standing, with the perceived failure of the Japanese economic model, the country’s fractious politics and the social challenges generated by its ageing population.

Disparity

During this period China has risen, becoming now the world’s second largest economy and the largest exporter too. Political pundits note that never in history have China and Japan risen together and that when one has been rising the other has been in decline, a point that even Chinese diplomats openly make.

Would this mean that if Prime Minister Shinzo Abe wants to revive Japan’s economy and its international status, putting Japan once again into an upward curve, he is inevitably putting his country into a collision course with China? Closer analysis will show that while Japan has been a formidable power economically, it has been politically undersized because of its defence dependence on the US and the post-war limitations imposed on its defence establishment constitutionally by the US. China’s exaggerated ventilating of its historical grievances about Japan is self-serving as it seeks to give political and moral justification for its actions that stoke tensions in the East China Sea.

It cannot be that China, a nuclear power with military muscle that aims at countering US power in the region through access denial capabilities, really feels threatened by Japan, even if Japanese armed forces cannot be trifled with. Its accusations that nationalism and militarism are being revived in Japan would have more credibility if China were not guilty of the same iniquity.

Need of the hour

Japan seems to be the sharp edge of China’s growing power struggle with the US. The strategic subjugation of Japan would be essential for the rollback of US power from the region. China’s provocations in the South China and East China seas, and now its ADIZ declaration, are calibrated moves to test US resolve, push it to temporise to protect its massive political and economic stakes in China and, in the process, gain more strategic space for itself. The objective is to weaken US hegemony in the region and replace it with China’s own hegemony.

The implications of China’s aggressive posture in the east are serious for us in the west as the forces driving Chinese policies are more important than their geographical expression at a point in time. China is currently presenting a relatively more conciliatory face to us, though it is also insidiously strengthening its territorial claims on Arunachal Pradesh by inventing new Tibetan names for it. We are inclined to assess China’s political conduct based less on its totality than on our bilateral engagement. China is actually not bereft of “soft-power” as even its adversaries, including India, are receptive to justifications for its unacceptable behaviour based on its narrative of past humiliations. China’s conduct towards Japan derives from its growing great power consciousness and the re-ordering of global equations that this must lead to in its view.

We have to face this reality as a rising Asian power. We must therefore solidify our relationship with Japan primarily for accelerating our own growth with injections of Japanese investments and technology, which will serve also to moderate China’s ambitions.