India joining China-led bloc a boost for a 'New Asia'

By Mubasshir Mushtaq

MUMBAI, India

India attends the meeting of a China-led security bloc in Russia on Friday as an observer state but it does so with the hope of joining up as a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). 

India first applied to join in 2014, apparently as part of the country's attempts to diversify its foreign policy under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has spent his first year in power in a whirl of foreign visits aimed at opening new partnerships. 

And Analysts have welcomed the move, saying it could allow India to help carve out a "new Asia". 

Pratinav Anil, a scholar on Europe and Asia at Paris’s Sciences Po, told Anadolu Agency that India's membership "makes sense" because the SCO was set up to settle border disputes between China and it's neighbors, a category India fits into. 

He also emphasized that though the grouping -- which includes Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan -- describes itself as political and economic, it is focused mostly on defense and counter-terrorism in a similar framework to NATO. 

“I think that there is no contradiction in a democratic India being part of the SCO, which has a large number of totalitarian or single-party countries,” Anil said. “India has military interests in Dushanbe [in Tajikistan] and economic interests in a number of Central Asian Republics - being part of the ‘New Asia’ that SCO is carving would only help India integrate with the region and would create a platform for the countries to align their interests in the most mutually-friendly manner.”

Mumbai-based foreign policy analyst Harish Nambiar agreed that despite India being considered the world's largest democracy and having never had a military government, unlike the other members states and fellow prospective member Pakistan, there should be no issues in aligning their interests. 

“I think we should get over this obsessive predicating on democracy whenever we discuss international geopolitics. It is a Cold War shibboleth,” Nambiar told Anadolu Agency. 

He pointed to Brazil and South Africa, members of the BRICS economic grouping, and flaws in their democracies as well as in India itself. 

“The South African democracy too is not sufficiently satisfactory, Indian democracy too is mystifyingly different from the time when ‘spreading democracy’ was a major slogan,” Nambiar said, adding that the creation of new international and regional alliances has been the result of shifting global power. 

“What all the countries that constituted the third world in the aftermath of World War II and now populate the ‘emerging’ and ‘frontier’ economies have learnt is that foreign policy is an enmeshing of national interests,” Nambiar said. “India will and has been a natural part of this new world order that is emerging organically.”

 Anil said that one of the many agendas of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) and SCO is to challenge American dominance but that India, despite its membership, will likely continue a position of non-alignment in order to keep open partnerships with all sides. 

“BRICS would like to challenge America by providing an alternate system of funding independent of the World Bank, IMF system, they may want to contest positions that American companies have in Central Asia and Africa,” Anil said. 

“Since this is no Cold War platform, India can safely continue its non-alignment while being a part of both platforms, while being an ally of America in terms of intelligence, military, nuclear and economic cooperation," he said, adding that India could use its membership to strengthen its relationship with the U.S. “Rather than alienating the Americans, it might just be the very reinforcement tool that India is seeking.”

Though China has traditionally been a rival of India, and supported India's other rival Pakistan, foreign policy analyst C Raja Mohan noted that it may support India's application to the SCO to prevent the country from moving closer to the U.S. 

"Beijing may not want to push India into a US-led coalition against China. Its support to the full membership of India and Pakistan in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation is part of this new calculus," he wrote in the daily Indian Express on Monday. 

“The Russian and Chinese presidents, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, would certainly want to draft Modi as part of the Eurasian continental alliance they are building,” Mohan wrote in another article on Tuesday. “Delhi will need to make some difficult judgments on where its interests might lie when push comes to shove among the great powers.”

With Pakistan also pushing for membership of the SCO, Anil said that it would be a "fatal mistake" to include one of the two countries at the expense of the other, while Nambiar thought there was actually a benefit to having both involved. 

“It is perfectly fine that India and Pakistan are both likely to be on the high table,” Nambiar said, adding that membership of the SCO itself would not give greater leverage over one or the other in the India-Pakistan rivalry.  “It spreads the risks, economically. And, that is good geopolitics too for India as well as Pakistan."

A prize in Central Asia

Anil said that groupings with central Asia and China's "Silk Road" projects were ways for emerging non-Western powers to counter the West's increasing influence in the region, adding that its vast natural resources would be a “prize” for China, Russia and India. 

Turkmenistan has the world’s fourth largest gas reserves, while Kazakhstan is the world’s largest uranium producer. 

“India stands to benefit significantly if they can tap into this region,” Anil said, adding that Indian company Oil and Natural Gas Corporation is already active there and India has a military base in Tajikistan. “It is evident that India’s commitment to the region is quite strong.”

He added that India, by eyeing economic and energy cooperation with the SCO, could ensure it gains from any potential future economic union in the region.