Igor Pankratenko. Is a Russia-India-China triangle possible?
February 2 in Beijing will host a meeting of foreign ministers of Russia, India and China. The agenda includes issues related to the conflict in Ukraine, promotion of the negotiation process on the Iranian nuclear program, as well as the situation in the Middle East, primarily in Syria and Iraq. For Russia, this meeting is important. At the end of 1990, Yevgeny Primakov put forward the idea of uniting Moscow, Beijing and Delhi into a world center of power, alternative to the West. A bold political plan that did not have any serious objective prerequisites for a long time remained in the status of political fantasy. However, in the current conditions of acute conflict with the West, this idea has once again begun to hover in the air of Moscow near-power corridors.
For an objective assessment of the Russia-India-China alliance, you need to get answers to two questions of principle. 1. Is there a “pro-Russian” Indian leadership course? 2. How serious are the contradictions between Beijing and New Delhi? These questions are so intertwined that sometimes it is very difficult to distinguish between where Russian-Chinese relations end and problems begin between New Delhi and Beijing. For the triangle to be equilateral, relations between Russia and India must be as partnership as with China. Unfortunately, this is far from the case. Inertia of thinking plays a cruel joke with experts. The principle of "Hindi-Rus bhai-bhai" belonged to the Soviet period, but for some reason is automatically transferred to today. The “golden era” in relations between Moscow and Delhi is gone for quite objective reasons. The main of which - the rapid rise of India over the last quarter of a century. We have before us a regional power, in which its strategic interests have taken shape and opportunities have emerged to build independent political combinations.
Russia, unlike the USSR, is no longer so interesting to India as a strategic partner, including in military-technical cooperation, on which the "special relationship" between Moscow and New Delhi was largely based. According to official Indian data, since 2011, the United States has been their main supplier of weapons and military equipment (WME), Russia is the second. There is no doubt that Moscow's loss of its position in the Indian arms market will continue. This is New Delhi's principled course, which was confirmed during Barack Obama's three-day visit. Upon completion, it was announced that a contract for the purchase of 22 American Boeing AH-64E Apache attack helicopters and 15 CH-47F Chinook heavy-lift helicopters for a total of $ 2,5 billion was under approval by the government of the country. The United States and India entered into an agreement to jointly develop and production of miniature drone RQ-11 Raven.
Even worse is the situation with the trade. For 2013 / 14 fiscal year, Russia was not included in the top ten major trading partners of New Delhi, while the United States with the turnover index of $ 61,5 billion was ranked second among the major trading partners of India. It is safe to say that India will not only continue to develop partnerships with the United States, but will also increase them in every way. By the way, Obama's visit had an interesting continuation. A few days ago reports appeared in the Indian press that Washington and New Delhi agreed to use each other’s military bases, primarily in the Indian Ocean, for the needs of their armed forces. From a military point of view, this event is rather insignificant. But from the political - very indicative.
For the Indian ruling elite, a rapprochement with the US seems logical. Russian-Chinese relations are developing dynamically today, and Beijing is considered to be the main strategic threat in New Delhi. Therefore, partnership with the United States and the weakening of ties with Russia are represented in India as a successful form of maintaining balance. There is one more circumstance. India has little concern about the "unipolar world" and the "injustice of the world order." For New Delhi, the main priority remains its own problems, among which the growing influence of Beijing is considered as a top priority threat. And to neutralize it, India is ready to cooperate with anyone. As an example: during a recent visit to the country by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Japan, Fumio Kisida, the negotiations with his Indian counterpart Swaraj Singh officially confirmed the desire of the two countries to strengthen cooperation in the trilateral format (with the participation of the United States) "in the face of the growing assertiveness of China’s Asian policy ".
During the visit, Kisida for the first time responded positively to the unequivocal Indian calls for Japan to take part in the development of logistics and transport infrastructure in the regions bordering on China. This infrastructure should be one of the most important elements of strengthening the defense capability of India on the so-called "Actual Control Line", the unofficial Indian-Chinese border four thousand kilometers long. Although the parties constantly report progress in resolving contentious issues, the secret war of intelligence does not stop for a day. India claims that Beijing supports various ethnic resistance groups in northeastern India (Meghalaya, Tripura, Mizoram, Nagaland, Assam), and China blames India for providing asylum to Tibetan separatists.
By and large, these are small injections. Much more serious New Delhi perceives the strengthening of the Chinese presence in Pakistan. Beijing is the largest supplier of weapons to this country, is actively involved in the modernization of its armed forces, and besides, it is increasing its economic presence and already fully controls the port of Gwadar - the geostrategic “key” to the entrance to the Persian Gulf from the Indian Ocean, just 18 miles from Dubai At the same time, the Pakistani Gwadar is a strategic point in the implementation of one of the directions of the Chinese New Silk Road, under which Pakistan will dramatically increase its regional and international weight. This does not suit New Delhi, which perceives the “Gwadar project” not only as an element of strengthening its traditional enemy, Pakistan, but also as part of the Chinese strategy “pearl string” - creating base bases in the Indian Ocean, which are already Hainan, Wooded Islands (Woody Islands) near the Vietnamese shores, Chittagong (Bangladesh), Sittway and Coco (Myanmar), Hambantota (Sri Lanka), and Seychelles.
Another “stumbling block” in Indian-Chinese relations has become the Chinese project to build a hydroelectric power station on the Yarlung Tsangpo River, the Indian name for which is the Brahmaputra. And the issue here is not even the reduction in the amount of water for Indian agriculture, but rather the fact that India itself was going to build a power station there. If the Chinese project is implemented, this construction will be impossible. On the eve of the meeting of the foreign ministers of Russia, India and China (January 31), India successfully tested the Agni-5, a three-stage solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile missiles with a warhead weight of 1,1 tons. Range - 5 thousand kilometers. Enthusiastically commenting on this success, Indian media note that with the adoption of the missile into service, most Chinese cities are within reach of a nuclear strike.
In recent years, Beijing and New Delhi have reduced the intensity of mutual recriminations and accusations. China is the first in the top ten major trading partners of India. But this is only the tip of the iceberg of bilateral relations. "Under the water", hidden from prying eyes, there is a fierce competition, to mask that peace-loving rhetoric turns worse. And any attempts by Russia to “bring together” China and India, to smooth out the contradictions between them in the name of creating some kind of alternative “center of power” are doomed to failure. Moscow does not have enough influence for this.
If we abandon globalism in the approaches to the Russia-India-China triangle, then in two aspects the cooperation of the three countries can be effective - in Afghanistan and in relation to the expansion of Islamic radicalism. In these two "points" interests coincide. And although this “list of coincidences” is practically limited, for the formation of a new, more advantageous for Moscow architecture, regional security will be quite enough. By creating a successful precedent of cooperation in the Afghan sector and in the fight against terrorism, it will be possible to move to a solution in a trilateral format and other problems.
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