Quad 2.0 in flux, how possible? A study of India’s changing ‘significant other’

ABSTRACTWhen the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) was resuscitated in November 2017, it was framed as a minilateral grouping of liberal democratic countries to build a free and open Indo-Pacific in the shadow of China’s growing assertiveness. However, this Quad 2.0 had not taken collective action until 2021. The four states neither held leaders’ summit meetings nor issued joint statements after lower-level meetings. They took no joint quadrilateral actions to deter China either. From a constructivist perspective, this paper addresses this puzzle by critically revisiting the alleged common identity of the four states. It argues that India’s national identity has not been built on the ontological difference between liberal democracy and autocracy but on a complex amalgamation of non-alignment, post-imperial ideology, Hindu nationalism and Indian exceptionalism. India, having held a vision of establishing an India–China partnership in Asia, did not regard China as its significant Other until the deadly border clashes between them in June 2020. China’s expansionism has challenged India’s identity as the pre-eminent power in South Asia and its vision of an equal China–India partnership. Despite India’s increased cooperation with its Quad partners since then, the Quad is built more on geopolitical pragmatism than on shared liberal norms and values.KEYWORDS: Indiathe Quadnational identitysignificant otherHindu nationalismChina AcknowledgementsThe authors are very grateful to Cecilia Ducci, Ian Hall, Bec Strating and Jasmine-Kim Westendorf for their incisive and helpful comments on early versions of this article. The paper was presented to the Australian Political Science Association 2022 annual conference and the Oceanic Conference on International Studies 2023 conference. We thank the participants in the two conferences for their questions and comments on the paper. Thanks also go to two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on the manuscript.The research conducted in this publication was supported by a grant from the Australia-China Relations Institute (ACRI) at the University of Technology Sydney, Australia. The views expressed herein are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of the ACRI.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Quad 1.0 was initiated by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and supported by his Australian and Indian counterparts, John Howard and Manmohan Singh, respectively, and US Vice President Dick Cheney (Buchan and Rimland Citation2020). As discussed below, China has long held that the Quad is an Asian version of NATO, aimed to contain China.2 The standoff had lasted 73 days in June-August 2017. Both sides announced in late August 2017 that they pulled back their forces from the disputed territory (Gettleman and Hernández Citation2017).3 As said below, the first summit was not held until March 2021. See: https://www.dfat.gov.au/international-relations/regional-architecture/quad.4 This paper does not argue that India was the only factor that inhibited quadrilateral cooperation and action. One may attribute it to President Trump’s lack of interest in leading the minilateral grouping; instead, he was more interested in dealing with Indo-Pacific states bilaterally. As discussed in detail below, the relations between Australia, Japan and the US, and China did not experience a major turning point in 2020 as India-China relations did, even though the three states’ ties with China have worsened since 2017.5 In March 2021 ‘democratic values’ and ‘democratic resilience’ were written in the Quad Leaders’ Joint Statement (The White House Citation2021).6 Both Roy (Citation2018) and Smith (Citation2020a) did not have privileged access to India’s senior leaders and could not tell what ‘really caused’ India to be more sensitive to China’s concerns than Australia, Japan and the US.7 As Kux (Citation1992, 68) has argued, the US (under the Truman administration, 1945–53) was at odds with post-independence India over numerous foreign policy issues unrelated to the Cold War, in addition to the Kashmir dispute. They included international control of atomic energy, Palestine/Israel, Indonesia and Indochina.8 India did not want China to station troops permanently in Tibet and granted political asylum to the Dalai Lama after the Tibetan uprising in 1959. Mao claimed that India and in particular Nehru were at fault (Garver Citation2016, 110–11, 150).9 Trying to link the offer of American aid to India to a resolution of India-Pakistan disputes, President Johnson suspended both military and economic assistance to India amid the second Indian-Pakistani war of 1965. It is, however, noteworthy that India’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Subrahmanyam Jaishankar in June 2023 referred the end of the American military aid in 1965 to as an ‘arms embargo’ (Economist Citation2023a).10 Lal Bahadur Shastri was India’s second prime minister. He succeeded Nehru after he passed away in May 1964.11 Madan argues that the Indian-Pakistani war of 1965 led to the growing disappointment on both India and the US. The disappointment later became disillusionment. India wanted to diversify its dependence and consider the nuclear option while deciding to not sign the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (Madan Citation2020, 186–218).12 Carter was viewed with special interest in India, partly due to his mother Lillian Carter’s services in India as a Peace Corps volunteer in the 1960s (Nagarajan Citation1980).13 It is the capital city of the Marathi-speaking state of Maharashtra in western India. After the Shiv Sena, a right-wing Marathi party, had won the state assembly election in 1995, they renamed the city, saying that Bombay was an ‘unwanted legacy of British colonial rule’ (Beam Citation2006).14 India under the Mughals was a major power in Asia as well as the world from 1526 to the early 18th century. Present-day Hindu nationalists aspire to create ‘Akhand Bharat’, an ‘undivided India’, which would incorporate modern-day Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Tibet. We are grateful to Jabin Thomas Jacob of Shiv Nadar University, India for introducing the Hindu notion to us.15 As pointed out by Miller (Citation2013, 88–89), since the 1962 Sino-Indian border war, there had not been any major outbreak of hostilities between the two countries for three decades. We therefore argue that China was not India’s significant Others in the 1990s.16 The other four countries are Pakistan, Israel, North Korea, and South Sudan. North Korea signed up to the NPT in December 1985 but announced its withdrawal in January 2003 (https://treaties.unoda.org/a/npt/democraticpeoplesrepublicofkorea/ACC/moscow).17 Unlike its first nuclear test, which the Indira Gandhi administration referred to as a ‘peaceful nuclear explosion’, the 1998 Pokhran-II tests were named ‘Shakti’—a reference to ‘strength’ (Miller Citation2013, 83).18 The trilateral was proposed in 1998 by Yevgeny Primakov, then-Russia’s Foreign Minister, and institutionalised in 2002 when the first trilateral meeting of foreign ministers were held in New York (Chen and Shuai Citation2016).19 BRIC was formed in September 2006 and its first formal summit was held in Russia in June 2009. In the following year, South Africa joined it, which has then been known as BRICS (Chun Citation2013).20 While some argued that the end of the standoff was a ‘major strategic victory for India’, the fact on the ground was simply that ‘Indians withdrew first and … Chinese would continue to patrol Doklam as they did in the past’ (Joshi Citation2020).21 Pathak and Hazarika similarly assert that the Galwan clash was a ‘watershed moment’ in the history of India-China relations (Pathak and Hazarika Citation2022, 96).22 In December 1988 Rajiv Gandhi, the grandson of Nehru, paid a visit to China; it was the first visit by an Indian Prime Minister to China since the one by Nehru in 1954. He held a summit meeting with Deng Xiaoping in which Deng framed both countries as developing countries with many common interests. He also called on Gandhi to cooperate to create a new international order for the interests of the developing world. The joint communique, issued at the end of the visit, called for the development of friendly and cooperative relations on the basis of the Five Principles of Coexistence. The visit marked the start of the Sino-Indian rapprochement (Garver Citation2016, 443–44).23 According to the Russian news agency TASS, 45 Chinese servicemen died in the clash (Dutta Citation2021).24 On 16 June 2020 Colonel Zhang Shuili of the PLA’s Western Theatre Command said that ‘the sovereignty over the Galwan Valley area has always belonged to China’ (ANI Citation2020). See also the Press Conference by Zhao Lijian of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the PRC, 17 June 2020; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08DmABOy20E (accessed 12 February 2023).25 Pangong Tso or Pangong Lake is deemed to be a disputed territory because the LAC passes through it, and a part of it is under Chinese control.26 According to Indians, Galwan was part of the princely state of Kashmir under the British rule, and therefore had never been Chinese territory (Kondapalli Citation2020).27 India held the G-20 presidency from December 2022 to November 2023.28 Garver pointed out that China ‘has sought to prevent the possibility of Indian domination or unification of the South Asian region’ (Garver Citation2001, 30).29 Vice President Kamala Harris attended the East Asia Summit.30 In a visit to India in March 2022, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi said, ‘China does not pursue a so-called ‘unipolar Asia’ and respects India’s traditional role in the region’ (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the PRC Citation2022). The fact that Wang sought to reassure India about ‘unipolar Asia’ and its traditional regional role indicated clearly Indian concern over Chinese intent (Mohan Citation2022).31 Sanskrit is the sacred language of Hinduism.32 They are cited in his book, Never Give an Inch (Pompeo Citation2023).33 Modi became a permanent member of the RSS in the late 1960s (Jaffrelot Citation2021, 35).34 The BJP is an affiliate of the RSS.35 The narrative of Akhand Bharat, an idea of imagined geography of an undivided India, can be understood as a means to overcome the Hindus’ ontological insecurity (Midha Citation2023).36 According to Charles Croucher, the chief political editor of the Australian 9News, the main purpose of the Quad summit meeting in Hiroshima, Japan in May 2023 ‘was to contain China’ (9News Citation2023).Additional informationNotes on contributorsLai-Ha ChanLai-Ha Chan is Senior Lecturer in the Social and Political Sciences Program, School of Communication, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology Sydney, Australia. Her current research foci centre on minilateralism, especially in the context of the Indo-Pacific, and (global and China’s) health governance. She is an author of two scholarly books and one edited volume. Her peer-reviewed articles have appeared in Asia Policy, Australian Journal of International Affairs, Contemporary Politics, China Security, East Asia, Global Change, Peace and Security, Global Governance: A Review of Multilateralism and International Organizations, Global Public Health, PLoS Medicine, Review of International Studies, and Third World Quarterly. She can be reached at Lai-Ha.Chan@uts.edu.au.Pak K. LeePak K. Lee is a Senior Fellow of the Conflict Analysis Research Centre and a Research Fellow of the Global Europe Centre in the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Kent, Canterbury, United Kingdom. Until April 2023, he was a Senior Lecturer in Chinese Politics and International Relations in the same School. His most recent monograph is Order, Contestation and Ontological Security-Seeking in the South China Sea (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020) (with Anisa Heritage). His work has appeared in leading peer-reviewed academic journals such as Australian Journal of International Affairs, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, China Quarterly, Contemporary Politics, East Asia, Global Governance, International Politics, Nationalities Papers, Pacific Review, Review of International Studies, and Third World Quarterly. He can be reached at P.K.Lee@kent.ac.uk.