How France is now second guarantor for India’s strategic interests – Firstpost
Even as the Quad foreign ministers’ call for reaffirmed their shared commitment to strengthening a free and open Indo-Pacific where ‘sovereignty and territorial integrity are upheld and defended’ may be coming under stress from within elsewhere, the further flowering of India-France bilateral relations is stabilising an emerging Indo-Atlantic strategic linkage that is becoming important for both nations and also the region as a whole.
France has remained a quiet, and hence relatively unnoticed, friend and ally of India, even before the end of the Cold War, but more so in the post-Cold War era, coming up to the present. Long before New Delhi procured Rafale jets from France, it had begun procuring Mirage 2000, which was among the most modern fighter aircraft of its time, as far back as 1982-83. Technically, the Cold War ended six years later, when Mikhail Gorbachev and Bush Senior announced it at the Malta Summit in 1989.
Earlier, France was the only P-5 nation, other than old friend Russia, reduced from the erstwhile Soviet Union, that had refrained from commenting on India’s Pokhran-II nuclear tests. On the contrary, Paris even declared that the nuclear tests would not affect bilateral nuclear cooperation. This was at a time the US was egging on allies across the world to impose sanctions on India. They replayed it all after the Pokhran-II nuclear tests in 1998.
Coming ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s planned visit to France, the Quad meeting should not be seen as self-contradicting from the Indian angle. Instead, it is a further reflection of the ‘strategic autonomy’ India has practiced even during the Cold War, but not compelled by inherent weaknesses, starting with the economic front, but with the newfound strength in these and other fields, post-reforms, post-Cold War.
Conformist approach
This is what External Affairs Minister (EAM) S Jaishankar has been continuously vocalising as a ‘non-conformist’ approach to foreign and security policy, the phraseology referring to the ‘conformist’ approach that the US, among other Western powers, had wanted from India. The Ukraine War, otherwise unfortunate, provided an occasion/opportunity to demonstrate what it had identified as ‘robust strategic autonomy’.
In a way, the halt-watch-and-go Indian approach to step-by-step revival of pre-Covid, pre-Galwan ties with China, too, has to be viewed in such a perspective, however limited that vision be. Jaishankar’s message became further clear on the ‘conformist’ theory approach when he said that India reserved the ‘veto’ on matters where friendly nations strongly felt how New Delhi should act on or react to issues.
France was among the few Western fronts of India that did not pressure New Delhi not to procure ‘cheap oil’ from Russia and thus ‘indirectly fund’ what they termed as an ‘unholy and indefensible’ war. Yet, on the European front, France has remained among the nations that oppose Russia on the Ukraine War. The nation seems to have substance in New Delhi’s decision to draw its own course, at times exploiting the geo-economic space that the geo-strategic conundrum in Europe provided countries like India.
At the same time, India also did not seek to defend Russia over the Ukraine War, as New Delhi had silently acquiesced to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in another era. Prime Minister Modi repeatedly reiterated to Russian President Vladimir Putin how it was not an ‘age of war’ and that both Russia and Ukraine had to resolve it through negotiations. He was known to have said the similar to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky.
India’s sphere of influence
It does not stop there. French Reunion Island sits on the mouth of the southern Indian Ocean, from the Indian shores to the open seas. In a way, with France parking its men and material on the island and also conducting an occasional joint naval exercise with India in those parts, Reunion may become the first line of defence at the mouth of the Indian Ocean approach, along with India’s own military bases in the Andamans and the Lakshadweep, flanking the mainland on either side.
The larger and better-equipped Diego Garcia base of the US is in the middle of what should be considered as an ‘Indian pond’, so to say. By most reckonings, France does not seem to have a problem accepting such a construct, though neither has been openly expressed. But there are apprehensions if the US would like New Delhi or any other to describe it all by the Cold War adage, as being among ‘India’s traditional sphere of influence’.
US President Donald Trump’s threats for Canada and Greenland to merge themselves with his country, for Denmark to ‘sell’ Greenland, likewise, and to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the ‘Gulf of America’ all have issues for India. On the face of it, when push comes to shove, New Delhi would be called upon to take a principled position in such matters, forgetting for once that Washington is a friend and ally, maybe compared to other nations on the list. Independent of all these, Trump has also revived his threat to pull out of transatlantic NATO, originally mooted during his first term.
Closer to India
But Trump may have already brought the issue closer to India when his aides expressed reservations to the emerging pact between Mauritius and the nation’s colonial British masters on the ownership and sovereignty over the Chagos Islands. The US military base in Diego Garcia belongs there, and the MoU between the other two nations had provided for Mauritius to give Diego Garcia on a 99-year lease to the UK for monetary consideration, when the latter could lease it out in turn to the US.
For now, the British leased out Diego Garcia for 50 years in 1965, followed by a 20-year extension. During long, drawn-out proceedings before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the UN General Assembly (UNGA), and negotiations, Mauritius had indicated a willingness to lease out Diego Garcia directly to the US if and when its ownership was confirmed. The proposed arrangement between the UK and Mauritius only takes a different route to the final outcome, though here again the self-proclaimed rights of Chagossians displaced by the US base in the previous century might have been ignored.
It is unclear why Team Trump had opposed the vexatious Chagos MoU in the run-up to the inauguration and if they are going to maintain the same official position as the new administration. If that were to become so, it could force India to take a stand without reviewing the current position. Already, India was among the front-line nations to back the Mauritius claim in the UNGA as the right step in the post-colonial era. New Delhi cannot (be seen as) going back on the principled position, nor would it.
In context, New Delhi will be keenly watching the developments on the Canada-Mexico-Greenland fronts, where the nations involved might end up making the Trump/US claim a matter for international politics, both inside the UNGA and outside. Barring the possible renaming of the Gulf of Mexico, none of them may want to go to the ICJ prematurely, but on that one issue, the littorals not stopping with Mexico may have a view of their own.
India may have another problem flowing from the Trump construct on the Gulf of Mexico. For a decade or so now, Chinese academics and the government-run media have been arguing, off and on, that the ‘Indian Ocean is not India’s Ocean’. In the evolving circumstances in the neighbourhood, some of India’s other adversarial nations may want Beijing to reopen the controversy, especially if the Trump administration proceeds with its threat to ‘rename’ the Gulf of Mexico.
Changing circumstances
Whether China would succumb to such pressures under the ‘changing circumstances’ in bilateral ties with India remains to be seen. However, Beijing has not taken kindly to the Quad foreign ministers’ reiteration of their previous calls for ‘open seas’ and ‘rules-based order’ in the maritime domain. If anything, Beijing opposed the Quad foreign ministers’ joint statement as ‘coercion’ in the Indo-Pacific, saying ‘group politics… is not conducive to peace and stability’ and any multilateral cooperation ‘should not target any third party’.
Indians are also uncomfortable with the possibility of Trump wanting to, and actually closing the trade issues with China, which problem was triggered during his first term as President—and more so, its impact on the trilateral India-US-China equations in the future, near and afar. All of it means that India can do with a new guarantor on the geopolitical front as much as on the geostrategic front, independent of geoeconomics. For France, unlike the US, has been known to keep geo-economics apart from geopolitics and geostrategy.
This makes France a second guarantor for India’s permanent interests, going beyond Russia, the traditional ally, which might have been stuck to a greater or lesser degree by its political and strategic commitments in the Ukraine War and the consequent economic losses and compromises. Of course, in terms of geo-strategic considerations, the US and the Quad are visible constants, but with a Trump White House, the unpredictability makes it tentative, at least in theory.
That may make the difference, in the coming months and years, and through the decades, as in the past.
The writer is a Chennai-based Policy Analyst & Political Commentator. Email: sathiyam54@nsathiyamoorthy.com. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.
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