India’s new foreign secretary doesn’t see his country’s warmer ties with the U.S. as coming at the expense of its relationship with China — at least that was his stance during a recent trip to Atlanta.
“Our relations with the U.S. will grow; they don’t threaten China. Our relations with China will grow. They don’t necessarily impinge negatively [on the U.S.],” said Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, who was tapped as foreign secretary two days before his scheduled retirement from India’s diplomatic service.
Mr. Jaishankar visited Atlanta in November while serving as ambassador to the United States, a post he took up in 2013 after spending four years as his country’s top diplomat in China. Those two roles – plus a stint in Singapore as high commissioner – have given him a unique perspective on a trilateral relationship that has taken center stage in Asia in recent weeks.
During an interview with Global Atlanta, he outlined how India views itself in this fraught triangle, where many analysts see each set of partners seeking to improve bilateral relations while simultaneously counterbalancing and appeasing the other.
At the time of the interview, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had not yet hosted Mr. Obama for India’s Republic Day celebrations, a visit that made him the first sitting president to visit India twice. Mr. Obama joined Mr. Modi for a military parade featuring parts of India’s arsenal including American-made planes and equipment. The U.S. president made explicit reference to India’s growing role in regional and global security. Mr. Modi had already relaxed restrictions in in the defense sector as one of his first acts of reform upon taking up office.
They issued a joint statement on protecting maritime security and air space in Asia, which some took as a thinly veiled message aimed at curbing China’s regional assertiveness.
While Mr. Modi cited a “transformed” relationship, Chinese state media were less enthused about the cozier ties between the world’s two largest democracies. State media called Mr. Obama’s gestures “symbolic,” prompting an incredulous response from the White House.
“I was surprised when I heard that the Chinese government had put out these statements. China doesn’t need to be threatened because we have good relations with India,” Mr. Obama said of China’s reaction to his visit.
Speaking with Global Atlanta, Mr. Jaishankar said it’s easy for reality to be clouded by political rhetoric but that pragmatism mostly wins out. He used a metaphor to illustrate his point that criticism and headlines often fail to reflect the level-headedness of real-world diplomacy.
“We generally assume that the mind is faster than the body, so your hands are always slower than your eye. Actually, when it comes to international politics, apparently, it’s the other way around,” he said. “If you look at the actions of countries, they are pretty smart actions. If you look at people’s thinking, often the thinking is lagging behind what is happening in the real world.”
Mr. Modi’s actions prove the new foreign secretary’s point. Just after hosting Mr. Obama, he sent External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj to China to pave the way for a visit and summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping in May. The two are slated to visit Mr. Xi’s home province of Shaanxi as they discuss further cooperation.
Their relationship has faced hardships for decades. Even Mr. Xi’s September visit, during which he announced $30 billion in deals, was preceded by a standoff in disputed Himalayan border territory over which the two sides engaged in a brief war in 1962.
Mr. Jaishankar said policy makers know that the rules of the global economy have changed, and labeling other nations as friend or foe simply doesn’t work in a world of overlapping interests and economic interdependence.
“You do business today even with adversaries, and all definitions have become much fuzzier because it’s a much more complex and contradictory world,” he said.
It’s not an idea institutionalized in Indian policy, just a recognition that things are different now, he said.
“I just think the world is moving in a certain direction. The fact that you’re global and interdependent doesn’t mean that it solves all the big problems in the world; it just means there are different kinds of problems, but I also won’t view it in a more anachronistic way,” he said.
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