On his first visit to India, US secretary of state Antony Blinken sat down for a conversation with Indrani Bagchi on the Quad, the future of Afghanistan and the US-India priorities going forward. Excerpts from the interview:

Where are we on the Quad? what have we accomplished with working groups?

Well, first, we had the first ever leaders level meeting of the quad. That was in and of itself, very significant, because it just underscored the importance that the four countries India, the United States, Japan, and Australia attach to the quad. And what we’ve achieved already is bringing together four like-minded democracies in common purpose to deal with some of the most important problems and challenges facing our countries and in fact, facing the region, and even the world, starting with Covid-19. And a commitment to work together to finance, produce and distribute millions of vaccines.

Has there been any progress on the vaccine front?

Yeah, I think we’re making we’re making progress, and when the leaders get together next they’ll be able to assess that. Of course, Covid-19 remains a huge challenge for for all of us. Since the first virtual leaders meeting, the second wave hit India. I’m proud that the United States was able to come to India assistance as India came to our assistance early during the pandemic, when we had real challenges.

We’ve seen reports of the US proposing a digital services agreement among countries. Could you tell us a little more about it?

We’re doing work in a wide variety of areas to include not just Covid-19, on the climate crisis, on infrastructure, on maritime security, as well as on emerging technologies. And that includes the digital space.

How do you see the China challenge? Indians have shed blood so we see it in a certain way. Can you describe the China challenge in the way you see it?

For the United States, in a way as for India, it’s both one of the most consequential and most complicated relationships that we have. I think we’ve seen unfortunately, the government in Beijing act more repressively at home and more aggressively abroad. In recent years, that posed a challenge for all of us. We see a relationship that is in parts adversarial, in parts competitive and also in parts cooperative.

I think what we found is that the best, most effective way to engage China is working with other countries that are similarly situated, and that face similar challenges. India, of course, is a strong partner for the United States in this respect.

Do you think the era of cooperation with China is over?

No. I think the relationship has different elements in it. Cooperation remains one of them, because on some issues, it’s profoundly in our mutual interest to to cooperate — climate may be the best example. That’s an issue that is important to all of us.

As you withdraw from Afghanistan, do you think it affects the US credibility as a as a partner? Second, for 20 years, women have had a good run in Afghanistan. Do you think we are sort of leaving them to the wolves?

It’s been 20 years, we have to remember why we went to Afghanistan in the first place. It was because we were attacked on 9/11. We went to do justice to those who attacked us and to try to make sure that it couldn’t happen again. And we’ve largely succeeded in that effort. Osama bin Laden was brought to justice 10 years ago, and Al Qaeda in terms of its capacity to do that again, from Afghanistan, that’s been vastly diminished.

It’s now 20 years, a trillion dollars later and more than 4500 American soldiers who have lost their lives. Afghanistan ultimately has to be able to shape its own future. But with our support. Even as we withdraw our forces, we are staying very much engaged in Afghanistan, with a strong embassy, with programs to support women and girls, economic development, humanitarian assistance, and the security forces. We’re remaining very much engaged also, with our diplomacy, because the only resolution to the conflict in Afghanistan is at the negotiating table, not on the battlefield.

Pakistan continues to support the Taliban. Are we seeing the same effect in Afghanistan today that we saw for the last 20 years?

Pakistan has a vital role to play in using its influence with the Taliban, to do whatever it can to make sure that the Taliban does not seek to take the country by force.

What are your priority areas with India? When do we expect a presidential visit?

I can’t put a date on it. But I know that President Biden will very much look forward to visiting India, and similarly to having Prime Minister Modi in the United States. But no date yet.

In terms of priorities, the relationship is both so wide and so deep. There are, as we discussed today, for several hours with foreign minister Jaishankar, a multiplicity of places where we’re working together.

But I would say, again, we’re focused on Covid. Together, we’re focused on climate, on the role of emerging technologies. But also on strengthening our trade and investment relationship, bringing our scientists and technologists and innovators together, strengthening people-to-people ties.

We look forward to welcoming nearly 70,000 Indian students to the United States for this next semester. So it’s incredibly broad. And what we’ve seen over the last 20-25 years, through different administrations in both countries, is a relationship that’s only gotten stronger and deeper, especially in last one year.

India will probably take delivery of S-400 from Russia later this year. How would that impact US-India relations?

Well, we have our laws, we will apply our laws, we shared our concerns with India, about this. But I’m not going to get ahead of myself. We’ll see how things evolve in the coming months.

The Covid pandemic has put health, vaccines, supply chains and therapeutics into the world’s foreign policy lexicon. With Joe Biden in the White House, climate change too is slowly getting top billing among foreign policy priorities.

Last week, US climate czar, John Kerry (former Secretary of State) spent three days in India prepping for a virtual climate summit of 40 countries, to be hosted by Biden on April 22. The idea is for the US to reclaim some of its lost leadership on the climate front, push nations to do more to cut emissions, change the energy mix to include more renewable energy, float ideas about carbon taxation or carbon markets and maybe push for a “net-zero” pledge by all countries.

The Biden summit will be followed by a G-7 summit in June, where India is a special invitee. But this year of climate politics will culminate in the COP 26 summit in Glasgow in November. India is not likely to pledge a “net-zero” like China has (it has promised to get to net-zero by 2060) but India will be under some pressure to declare a new bunch of climate goals.

Kerry’s visit ended up being a refreshing reality check. Defying all climate analysts, who predicted a train wreck between the US and India over a “net-zero” demand, Kerry said, “That wasn’t my message in my meetings with the Prime Minister. He understands the challenge. India understands the challenge. It would be great if India wanted to say that, but I don’t think it’s an absolute requirement in the sense that India is doing all the things that it needs to do to get us there, then that’s better than a lot of nations.”

The message Kerry took back from India, is this: India wants to go green; India wants financial and technological assistance for its green transformation; but India would resist any effort by the developed world that could have an adverse implication on its development.

Kerry understood. He emphasised the importance of India as a “red hot investment” for green tech and renewable energy. “I want to see India flourish as a clean tech hub of Asia, producing and deploying clean technologies and playing a critical role in global clean supply chains,” he said. In March Kerry told an energy conference that he was putting together a consortium of countries and companies to finance India’s renewable energy ambitions which could cost about $ 600 billion. “India has a plan to produce about 450 GW of renewable power by 2030, … but they need about $600 billion … finance is perhaps one of the biggest challenges with respect to India. I’ve put together a small consortia of a number of countries that are prepared to help India with some of the finance and transition. I’ve been working with major investment houses and asset managers in our country to try to determine how much private sector capital can be directed in the right place here so that we can make this transition faster.”

Which countries? Kerry said UAE was one. “I’ve talked to other countries, but I can tell you there are some in Europe, there are some in our continent. The bottom line is that we need to do some working through the details with the Modi government, but we will continue to try to grow this out very, very quickly over the course of the next weeks.”

Preventing Earth from growing warmer by by 2 degrees C might seem fantasy for many — after all, the world has been trying to battle this in various forms since 1992, through disastrous efforts like COP 15 in Copenhagen in 2009 to the mildly successful Paris Accord in 2016.

Since 2016, the US has been missing in action from the climate debate. Donald Trump, the celebrated climate change denier, walked out of the Paris Agreement in one of his first acts after becoming President. (The Paris pact was an outcome, in many ways, of unprecedented close collaboration between the US and India.) In the past four years, global efforts on climate change missed the US.
One of Biden’s first acts was to take the US back into the fold of the Paris Accord. From his campaign to his initial actions, Biden has made climate change a big focus of his foreign policy. Among his first acts was to set up a climate czar, Kerry, who has a place in the National Security Council, which indicates that the Biden administration sees climate change not only as an environmental issue but a national security issue as well. That needs careful watching from India’s point of view.

The first ever Quad summit of leaders of the US, India, Japan and Australia on March 12 set up a high-level working group on climate change and one on emerging and critical technologies. Both these issues are the matter of current geopolitics as well as about saving the planet.

India has moved a long distance in its approach to climate change – from being seen as obstructionist to seizing the tech and economic opportunities of climate change by becoming one of the leading developing nations with an active interest in combating climate change. In contrast to right-wing, conservative governments in the west (think Trump and Bolsonaro), the Modi government embraced the entire concept of climate change early on. India and France co-founded the International Solar Alliance during the COP 21 in Paris to bring together countries who could tap solar energy and develop technologies to harness renewable energy, while India and US worked to get acceptable INDC [Intended Nationally Determined Contributions] declarations.

The geopolitical-tech-economic future of climate change policies will be determined by a handful of nations – US, EU, India, China, Japan. Everyone else come afterwards. India therefore has a unique opportunity to leapfrog.

The winners of the 21 st century will be the countries who can stay on top of the technology race. India is a tech power, but its tech development has been very haphazard. While its initial growth was in the shadow of governmental ignorance, that model can no longer work.

The new world will be governed as much by technology as the source of that technology as well as the rules that govern the world of technology. For all these to move in tandem, the Indian government and the private sector, including the startup ecosystem, will have to work closely together.

China is now way ahead in developing green technologies as well as in manufacturing. For instance, it’s the acknowledged global leader in photo-voltaic cells which is essential for solar power. India should ideally be pitching to manufacture the next generation of PV cells, ones that are more efficient, and use materials that don’t require total dependence on China.

Even though India is resisting committing to a “net-zero” pledge, a recent study by TERI and Shell says India could transition to net zero by 2050 if it deploys much faster large-scale solar, wind and hydro power to enable electrification; move quickly to develop new fuels like liquid bio-fuels and the holy grail, hydrogen. But before getting there, India will have to improve its energy efficiency, and utilise carbon capture and storage technologies to remove carbon. But India is still on a steep development trajectory, and coal continues to play a big part in its energy mix.

For India to turn climate change into a geopolitical advantage, it will have to move on many fronts. What India has going for it is scale, and political will at least in the present government. If India goes green, the world’s climate change indices automatically look better. That is for India to leverage for better access to finances and better technology.

India has pitched its geopolitical tent on the side of the western powers, as China has become the common strategic challenge for them all. If telecommunications and 5G determine the course of one part of the tech future, climate change is another. For both, India can be a consumer and a developer.

India made eight commitments under INDC at Paris. Three quantitative goals —Reductions in emissions intensity by 33-35 % over 2005 levels by 2030; 40 per cent cumulative electric power installed capacity from non-fossil fuel based energy resources; creating an additional carbon sink of 2.5 to 3 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent through forestation and increasing tree cover. In fact, according to the Climate Action Tracker, India is well on its way to meet its Paris goals, unlike either the US or China.

Next week will show the direction India intends to follow on climate change. It will have huge implications for India’s development and global politics.

“The four leaders did discuss the challenge posed by China, and they made clear that none of them have any illusions about China. But today was not fundamentally about China.” Jake Sullivan’s succinct remarks after the first-ever Quad summit on Friday showed clearly what the Quad is and what it could become.

There’s no doubt a resurgent, aggressive and hegemonistic China is the wind beneath the Quad’s wings. From deadly clashes in eastern Ladakh to rampaging through the South and East China Seas; coercive trade practices, tech theft and cyberattacks; threatening Taiwan and annexing Hong Kong’s politics; unleashing a fishing militia and a trigger-happy coastguard; banning pineapples and wine imports; and that coronavirus from Wuhan felling the rest of the world … we’re confronting a global power like no other.

The Quad’s the thin end of the wedge in what promises to become an expanding “toolkit” of a massive counterbalancing exercise. The “coming of age” party for the Quad now makes it a “force for global good” and a “pillar of stability” as PM Modi put it pithily. A joint oped by the four leaders declared, in what you could call a socially distanced ‘high-five’: “The Quad is a flexible group of like-minded partners dedicated to advancing a common vision and to ensuring peace and prosperity.”

Hosting the summit allowed the US to reclaim global leadership, a key element of President Biden’s poll plank. It fixed the US strategic priority of going up against China with allies who had clear skin in the game. The US regained some lost moral equity – by piggybacking on India’s vaccine manufacturing capability to make for the world. US tech leadership will need countries like India and Japan on the same side. US climate leadership can go nowhere without India on board.

The rejuvenated Quad gives Australia and Japan much needed support to stiffen their spine against relentless Chinese coercion. Reeling under recurring Chinese import bans on its barley, coal, wine, there were times when Australia wondered whether it was fighting a lonely battle.

This week, the Japanese envoy to Australia, Shingo Yamagami, said, Australia’s “not walking alone”. “Each and every day Japan is struggling because of … China, and the rise of China, the dramatic increase of defence spending … I do marvel at the consistent, persistent, steadfast, resilient response shown by people [in Australia].” Japan has been struggling against China’s coastguard law, import dependence and isn’t doing very well against Covid either. All four countries have felt Chinese aggression to the bone, India’s the only one to have shed blood.

For India, the Quad could be another Y2K moment – 20 years ago a calendar glitch started India off on its journey to becoming a tech and knowledge power. The pandemic and the Quad have given India another moment. Biological E (which, by the way, is a woman-run company, something the government didn’t bother to highlight) could be just the first of many more vaccine giants India can build.

Covid-19 has taught us that the next pandemic isn’t far away. India can put itself ahead of the game by being able to develop vaccines and therapeutics rather than only manufacture them. Adar Poonawalla is right, allow the pharma sector to grow. Modi wants India to be “pharmacy to the world”. Make it happen. China’s doing the slimy thing of raising API prices, but honestly, that pain should go away in a few years.

On climate change, India has positioned itself as proactive, after spending years being the “No” nation. Last week John Kerry, Biden’s climate czar, said, “India has a plan to produce about 450GW of renewable power by 2030, it’s a very ambitious goal. … I’ve put together a small consortium of a number of countries that are prepared to help India with some of the finance and transition.” If this works, and we’ll know by COP-26, that could be another growth engine. India today is probably the only big power that can meet its climate goals.

The most important expert group the summit threw up is on technology – going directly to Biden’s aim of creating techno-alliances. That should resonate in India – from 5G to AI to semiconductors and critical materials, these are the discussions and building blocks of the future. This isn’t the time to get nationalistic about tech, it’s the time to put in stakes and build.

This brings me to the absence of mention of security and defence in the Quad statement. There’s been growing “interoperability” between members. India and the US have signed four agreements, the others are Cold War treaty allies. This cooperation is unlikely to be put down on paper. Two things need to happen though – India and the US have to overcome the CAATSA barrier, and India and Japan should be invited as observers to the Five Eyes.

The Quad needn’t grow. But there could be Quad-Plus arrangements – we’ve seen two, one with Vietnam, New Zealand and South Korea, and the other with South Korea, Brazil and Israel. Defence and security Plus groups could have France and Indonesia, one on semiconductors would need Taiwan, Korea and the Netherlands, and so on. The UK will have to do more than send a carrier strike group on a cruise to warrant a place. These would be flexible, coming together for specific purposes. They may not include China.

The Quad joint statement is the first that came with a title. But reading beyond the text, it’s clear the scope will go beyond. If the four countries stay on course and don’t break up the party. For India, the opportunities are considerable. The problems will be much bigger too.

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India and the US began a journey in 1998, with the first conversation between Jaswant Singh and Strobe Talbott. This week, the two countries signed off on Book 1 of that journey, when India signed the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement (BECA), the last of the ‘foundational agreements’ which seals defence interoperability between the two sides, and brings us all out of the closet.

The fact that India managed to close this deal with the US a week before they elect another president is significant in and of itself. For those hyperventilating about doing it in the dying days of the Trump administration, they fail to read the moment. India has had a good run with President Donald Trump and it was important to rack up this foreign policy achievement for both sides. At a time of a tense standoff with China, a well-oiled India-US interoperability is critical.

In an interview to this paper, foreign minister S Jaishankar had warned China should not view India through the US lens. In a sense, India has also freed itself from an unspoken Chinese veto. The new and improved Quad, Malabar exercises with Australia in it, an obviously closer military embrace and this visible show at 2+2 is India exercising choices and going through with them.

In a different age, Indian officials would have held back on the deal until a new administration took charge in Washington. Reasons would have mostly centred around the belief that such a deal is akin to India bestowing favours, and let’s do it with the new guys. From all accounts, many in this government tried their best – it tells you how far we have to travel when an aggressive China, chewing up Indian territory, invites less suspicion among our babus than America!

Trump may or may not be history next week. Through his chaotic four years, the one thing which stood out was the remarkable consistency of his China policy, that saw China for exactly what it is and what it aims to be. Trump also picked up on the Indo-Pacific as a premier geo-strategic policy to pursue, both of which has had strong convergence with Indian interests. In fact, he undertook the sharpest course correction on China in recent US history.

Joe Biden, whose chances look increasingly bright, has been encouraging on India, and refreshingly realistic on China. Bill Burns, senior adviser to Biden, reflected their current policy in recent remarks. “Preventing China’s rise is beyond America’s capacity, and our economies are too entangled to decouple. The US can, however, shape the environment into which China rises, taking advantage of the web of allies and partners across the Indo-Pacific – from Japan and South Korea to a rising India – and engaging the Chinese leadership directly…” We’ll see how that goes when the rubber hits the road.

Biden will be facing a very different China from where he left it four years ago. As is India. This is a China unafraid to bare its teeth – it has been in a hyper-aggressive mode certainly since the beginning of 2020. All the criticism raining down on China from the coronavirus to 5G is apparently bouncing off.

A Biden administration could, like previous Democrat ones, give India a hard time on things like human rights and minority rights. India will probably take a few bullets there, just as it bears the scars of Trump’s trade craziness over the past four years. Hopefully New Delhi will build its own means to deal with an activist US – if the Congress is heavily Democrat-led, you could worry about the “progressives” pushing the bilateral agenda. Otherwise Biden is as centrist as they come.

He has stacked up an impressive foreign policy team, led by the likes of Anthony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, and including Kurt Campbell, Ely Ratner and a host of Washington’s foreign policy elite. Blinken said recently, “Strengthening and deepening the relationship with India is going to be a very high priority. It’s hugely important to the future of the Indo-Pacific and the kind of order we all want; it’s fair, stable and hopefully increasingly democratic and it’s vital to being able to tackle some of these big global challenges.”

Walking with a superpower has not been easy for anyone, and won’t be for us either. At every new level, there will be more hoops to jump through. It will be for India to stay ahead of the game.

You might think the interoperability debate is behind us – until the US Congress sits down in 2021 to decide whether to impose CAATSA sanctions on India when we take delivery of S-400 from Russia. On the other hand President Vladimir Putin’s remarks last week about a possible military alliance with China last week will give India pause – “It’s certainly imaginable. I’m not only talking about sale and purchase of military products, but the sharing of technologies, which is more important.”

If we look a little deeper though, Russia and the US are in the process of negotiating a new 21st century arms control agreement that aims to bring China into the tent, and has implications for India. India won’t play this game by staying at the margins.

However, India has walked that extra mile on this relationship and that’s important. Behind an obvious shift in mindset, there is an acknowledgment of another, more sobering, reality – that India’s global stardom is not pre-destined. That India needs to work hardest to ensure its own rise. In other words, India’s best foreign policy is within. BECA shows that lesson may be sinking into South and North Blocks.

This story first appeared in The Times of India

At this moment, those with idle fingers and competing political agendas are fighting an India-China boundary conflict on social media, which include calls to fire top army commanders, satellite images of dry Galwan river bed and everything in between.

But up in the northern bank of the Pangong Tso, an Indian patrol was stopped by the Chinese at Finger 4, where they were patrolling at Finger 8 just last summer. A little distance away, in Galwan valley, an undisputed spot since 1962, Indian and Chinese forces face off against each other at three points, one across the fast-flowing (not dry) Galwan river. Far away in Naku La in Sikkim, Indian soldiers are on alert after an “incident” on May 9 which left a Chinese major bleeding.

We’re in familiar territory – Chinese mission creep, change ground positions, fake outrage about Indian “intrusion”, threaten us with the Stone Age, quieten down with diplomatic negotiations, demand “face” be saved, call for a summit and new border management SOPs, which would be violated by the following summer. This time, it’s much more serious, because the numbers are more alarming.

Rajnath Singh laid the matter to rest by confirming Chinese troops had come “in large numbers”. Indians, after a bruising bout of fisticuffs, have not only mirrored the Chinese deployment but bettered it – an entire division has been moved to the LAC, weapons, equipment, all. India’s supply lines are shorter, troops are acclimatised, we can land huge transport aircraft at Daulat Beg Oldi with reinforcements. India is not too badly off.

The Chinese have been building roads on their side for years. India is trying to overcome its “second mover” disadvantage, by building its own roads, importantly, connecting to the Karakoram Pass. The Chinese don’t like that.

New Delhi is maintaining Doklam-like silence, which plays poorly inside the country but is important at this point. The Modi government is not yet rolling out big guns S Jaishankar and Ajit Doval to negotiate, leaving it to military commanders like the Mandarin-speaking General Joshi and his colleagues in Leh. What is the trigger for Beijing’s aggression?

Let’s see what it’s not – it’s not a response to India’s Article 370 decision of August 2019. China would have taken “steps” in 2019 itself, so that’s not it. Yes, the Indian Darbuk-Shyok-DBO all-weather road is a problem, but that road has been under construction for years, including a changed alignment. China is also unlikely to be using a border stand-off where it may not achieve victory to retaliate against India’s new FDI restrictions. For those who didn’t notice, China has retaliated by banning pork imports from India.

Bertil Lintner wrote in his book, China’s India War, that the 1962 war was China’s way of diverting attention from the failure of its Great Leap Forward programme. In 2020, the ducks are not lined up for President Xi Jinping. China has a credibility problem regarding Covid-19, which has a knock-on effect in global bodies key to China’s place as the presumptive superpower.

“De-coupling” will be terrible, even if imperfect. China’s growth model will be hit, particularly if global supply chains have to be diversified away from China. This might seem like a good time to demonstrate dominance on the only undemarcated boundary, teach the Indians a lesson, give India’s vaulting ambitions a reality check by showing up its inadequacies: struggling with a pandemic, crashing economy and floundering on national security. India shouldn’t get away with “uninstall Chinese apps”.

Two countries have inserted themselves into India-China tensions: the US and Nepal. President Donald Trump, secretary of state Mike Pompeo and Congress leaders have publicly ranged themselves on India’s side. Honestly, India could have done without it. But the US offer of help has rung loud alarm bells in Beijing, introducing a new and hostile element into a reasonably predictable dispute.

KP Oli, Nepali PM, played a cynical political game and is now rushing into a confrontation. New Delhi is unlikely to bend now that he has directly challenged Indian sovereignty in Lipulekh. Is it “inspired” by China? Perhaps. Given the volatility of India-Nepal relations, India should consider taking Nepal to the International Court of Justice for a final settlement of the tri-junction.

As for China, India should be prepared for more trouble on the boundary as it continues its infrastructure building activity and improves defence deployments. Indians should step away from talking of “differing perceptions” of the LAC. They are not “perceptions”. They are two claim lines that overlap in certain areas. When we say, “perceptions”, we are essentially giving the Chinese a free pass to change the position on the ground and claim that to be the LAC. India made its boundary alignment clear to the Chinese in 1960, through six exhaustive meetings in Delhi, Beijing and Rangoon (Yangon).

At the political/ diplomatic level, India should reconsider the “informal” summit with Xi where both sides take back very different perceived outcomes. India believes Xi understands Prime Minister Narendra Modi. China believes Modi kowtows to Xi. Neither is correct, of course. But it leads to avoidable crossed wires in both capitals.

In 1960 S Gopal, who negotiated the boundary with the Chinese, found them to be most inconsistent with their claims. He observed, “the Chinese alignment, as was apparent from Chinese statements, was inexplicable on the basis of any geographic principle”. Most places it was merely a “broad line”. That showed to Gopal as it does to today’s officials, that China keeps these lines “flexible” so they can be redrawn on the ground. This year will be a very long summer stand-off in Ladakh. A final settlement is a much longer way away.

Until then, we can keep the peace by following two practical steps – pre-empt and prevent.

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