India needs a new, integrated approach to Eurasia

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 2

Context:

India’s National Security Advisor has invited his counterparts from Pakistan, Iran, Central Asia, Russia, and China to join the discussion on Afghanistan. 

• This week’s consultations in Delhi on the crisis in Afghanistan among the region’s top security policymakers, following the US withdrawal, is part of developing a Eurasian strategy. 
• Pakistan’s reluctance to engage with India reinforces the urgency of an Indian strategy to deal with Eurasia.

Indo-pacific and Eurasia

• The Indo-Pacific describes the long stretch of tropical waters from the east coast of Africa to the central Pacific.
  • After years of self-doubt, Delhi has made the Indo-Pacific integral to India’s foreign and security policies. 
  • The strategic alliance Quad or the Quadrilateral forum that brings India together with Australia, Japan and the US, highly impacts the Indo-Pacific debate. 

• Eurasia is the name of a tectonic plate that lies under much of Europe and Asia. 
  • India must now devote high energy to the development of a “Eurasian” policy. 
  • If the Indo-Pacific is about Delhi’s new maritime geopolitics, Eurasia involves the reorientation of India’s continental strategy.
  • As in the Indo-Pacific, so in Eurasia, there is no shared international understanding of what constitutes the region. 
  • In Russia’s definition, Eurasia covers the former territories of the Soviet Union, which collapsed in 1991.
  • It is about Russia’s political claim to a sphere of influence in its “near abroad”. 
  • Then there are various older terms like “inner Asia” and “Central Asia” that cover parts of the region. 
  • There is a deep connection between Muslim Central Asia and West Asia, therefore the term “Greater Middle East” is used to describe parts of this region.
  • For India it makes sense to use the broadest possible definition of Eurasia in reimagining the region.

Dynamics of Eurasian politics

• The most important development in Eurasia today is the dramatic rise of China and its growing strategic assertiveness, expanding economic power and rising political influence. 
• Beijing is 
  • adopting muscular approach to the long and disputed border with Bhutan and India, 
  • hoping for security presence in Tajikistan, 
  • actively searching for a larger role in Afghanistan, and a greater say in the affairs of the broader sub-Himalayan region 
• As the world’s second-largest economy, China’s commercial influence is felt across the world. 
• Physical proximity multiplies China’s economic impact on the inner Asian regions.
• The impressive expansion of China’s Belt and Road initiative across central Asia and Russia, onto the shores of the Atlantic, and Europe’s growing economic interdependence with China have added to Beijing’s powerful support system in Eurasia. 
• China is deepening its alliance with Russia. Russia’s disputes with Europe and America have increased Moscow’s reliance on Beijing.
• Shift in USA’s Eurasian policy

• Washington has begun to rethink its strategic commitments to Eurasia. The US withdrawal from Afghanistan is just the beginning of this rethinking.
• Europe has had a massive deployment of US military resources since the Second World War. Washington and Europe are now in the middle of an important debate on how to rebalance the trans-Atlantic responsibilities for Europe’s collective defence.
• Europe must necessarily take on a larger regional Eurasian security role. More broadly, regional powers are going to reshape Eurasia.

Significance of Indo-Eurasia relations

India has certainly dealt with Eurasia’s constituent spaces separately over the decades. What Delhi now needs is an integrated approach to Eurasia. Like the Indo-Pacific, Eurasia is new to India’s strategic discourse.

• Cultural significance: There are references to India’s ancient civilisational links with Eurasia. The collaboration between the Sangha and the Shreni in the Buddhist era produced lasting interaction between the two regions. 
• Historical ties: The arrival of the British in India and the consolidation of the Raj as a territorial entity in the subcontinent saw the outward projection of India’s influence into Central Asia. 
• British rivalry with Russia during the Great Game in the 19th and early 20th centuries put Eurasian geopolitics at the top of undivided India’s security agenda. The Great Game was a political and diplomatic confrontation that existed for most of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century between the British Empire and the Russian Empire over Afghanistan and neighbouring territories in Central and South Asia. It also had direct consequences in Persia and British India.
• The Partition of the subcontinent: This event physically disconnected India from inner Asia. It also cut India off from Eurasian geopolitics. 

Challenges:

• India will surely encounter many regional contradictions in each of the three areas — between and among America, Europe, Russia, China, Iran, and the Arab Gulf. 
• Pakistan is the geographic limitation and a challenge to an expanded Indian role in Eurasian geopolitics.
  • Turkey’s alliance with Pakistan is hostile to Delhi.
• India’s drift towards Russia: Before independence, many Indian nationalists turned to Europe to secure the nation’s liberation from British colonialism. 
  • After independence, Delhi’s drift towards an alliance with Moscow saw India neglect Europe’s strategic significance. 

As in the Indo-Pacific, so in Eurasia, Delhi should not let these contradictions hold India back.

Way forward:

• Intensify the dialogue on Eurasian security with Russia: While Indo-Russian differences on the Indo-Pacific, the Quad, China, and the Taliban are real, Delhi and Moscow must get together on Afghanistan and widen cooperation on continental Eurasian security.
• Increasing Indian collaboration with both Persia and Arabia: Persia’s location makes it critical for the future of Afghanistan and Central Asia. 
  • The religious influence of Arabia and the commercial weight of the Gulf capital are quite consequential in the region. 
  • India’s partnerships with Persia and Arabia are also critical in overcoming Turkey’s alliance with Pakistan that is hostile to Delhi.
• Put Europe back into India’s continental diplomacy: As India now steps up its engagement with Europe, the time has come for it to begin a strategic conversation with the European Union on Eurasian security. This will be a natural complement to the engagement between India and Europe on the Indo-Pacific.
  • India’s Eurasian policy must necessarily involve greater engagement with both the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. 
  • A dedicated military office in the Indian mission to Brussels, where both the European Union (EU) and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) are headquartered, will be a crucial step towards a sustained security dialogue with Europe.
  • The European Union is a group of European countries that operate as a cohesive economic and political block.
  • NATO was completely successful in its mission of protecting the “Euro-Atlantic area” from Soviet expansion and preventing war between the two superpowers.

The current flux in Eurasian geopolitics will lessen some of the current contradictions and generate some new antinomies in the days ahead. But the key for India lies in greater strategic activism that opens opportunities in all directions in Eurasia.

The Indian Express Link:

https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/india-needs-a-new-integrated-approach-to-eurasia-7613805/

Question- Describe the significance of the Eurasian region for India’s economic and security interests.