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India-Japan-US Security Cooperation

Ties with China may be of the greatest significance to India in East Asia, but to hold Indian relationships with other countries in the region, as captive moons in orbit around the Sino-Indian pivot, is foolishness. A recent opinion piece in The Hindu, "Perils of three-way security cooperation" (14 February 2006), appeared to call for a go slow in the increasing movement toward an India-Japan-US security triangle. Certainly, caution is imperative where strategic matters are concerned. But the possibilities here are not limited only to the strategic front. For those who can think big, India is being offered the chance to apply bold brush strokes on a larger canvas.

Japanese politics is in flux and at a crucial juncture in its history. Unlike the insular and chauvinistic underpinnings of its rise in the pre-World War II era, Japan today is attempting to rise as a democratic nation and in the company of other like-minded nations. If India can be a part of that process, it must not hesitate. In January, appearing on public broadcaster NHK, Shinzo Abe, chief cabinet secretary to Junichiro Koizumi and widely tipped to be his successor, called for Japan to boost its ties with India. In particular, he stressed, that India had "common values with Japan such as freedom, democracy, basic human rights and rule of law." He also admitted that relations had "been relatively weak though [India] is a country very friendly to Japan," and stressed the need for strengthening ties and developing strategic relations.

Certainly history, its current interpretations, and territorial disputes in East Asia are potential minefields, around which India will need to move with care and tact, but to expect, as the article in The Hindu does, that India worry about Chinese and South Korean misgivings over the direction of Japanese foreign policy, is to unnecessarily constrain India's field of action. After all, Japan is not alone in the region, in distorting history and to argue about degrees of guilt is to obfuscate the issue. Nor should Japan's territorial disputes with China and position on Taiwan, enter into the Indo-Japanese equation, just as Indian protestations do not affect the "all-weather" friendship between China and Pakistan.

Moreover, if Sino-Japanese trade continues to increase in importance to both countries despite their frequent political disagreements, India should not be diffident about embracing bolder political and strategic relationships with China's neighbours. With each of the three Japanese service chiefs visiting India from February to April, and visits by the Indian Defence Minister and later the Prime Minister to Japan all expected in the first half of the year, India needs to do its homework and take advantage of the increasing Japanese interest in India.

Japan's foreign environment being what it is, the US will continue to figure prominently in the scheme of things for some time to come but a trilateral framework for dialogue and security cooperation involving Japan and the US need not be seen as "ganging up" against China. It also needs to be underscored here that the Japanese are not necessarily happy about their continued dependence on the US. Partnership with India in this context, allows Japan the chance to be seen, domestically, as an equal player rather than as a "junior" partner. India would in return be earning considerable goodwill from the Japanese.

By exhibiting "little enthusiasm" for the trilateral relationship, India is foregoing the chance to act out of the box. If India needs to be "wary" at all, in this matter, it betrays a lack of confidence in its engagement with China or doubts about its ability to hold its own in the three-way relationship. India is, after all, not drawing up a secret alliance against China and governments are not conned into pacts that go against their own national interests. Whatever the American intentions, it must be understood that it remains a necessary catalyst in enhancing India's profile in East Asia. If anything, with Japan for company, India stands a greater chance of not being railroaded into the China "containment" fallacy. For despite its own concerns over Chinese long-term intentions and rising Japanese nationalism, Japan is less likely than the US, to rush to hasty judgments on China. Cooperation with Japan also makes available to India, the tremendous Japanese expertise on China. Further, when Indo-US relations come under stress, as they inevitably will in the future, the trilateral forum might provide the opportunity to touch base again.

India will find that a closer and active engagement with the rest of East Asia will begin to yield results on the China front as well. It also does not take a genius to figure out that the India-Japan-US relationship is a far more promising triangle than the India-China-Russia chimera, espoused some years ago.