By Uditha Devapriya
US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland is on a tour in South Asia this week. From January 28 to February 3, she will be travelling to Nepal, India, and Sri Lanka, before flying to Qatar. Each of these visits will center on solidifying relations with the US. The official State Department press release notes that Nuland will be in Sri Lanka to mark 75 years of bilateral ties, and to offer “continued U.S. support for Sri Lanka’s efforts to stabilize the economy, protect human rights, and promote reconciliation.”
This is the second time Nuland has paid a visit to Sri Lanka. The first was in March last year, when Gotabaya Rajapaksa was President. During her tour, she made it a point to meet business and civil society leaders, as well as to co-chair and participate at the U.S.-Sri Lanka Partnership Dialogue. Nuland’s second visit comes in the wake of widespread austerity, growing unrest, and a crucial upcoming local government election in Sri Lanka. Whoever wins the latter will not, of course, govern the country at once. But the winning party may change and shape the course of Colombo’s foreign policy, considerably.
The second visit also comes against the backdrop of heightened tensions in the Indo-Pacific, as well as a somewhat subtle shift in the Indo-US dynamic. South Asia is going through the most unprecedented financial crisis in living memory. Sri Lanka felt the brunt of this crisis last year. Now Pakistan threatens to follow suit. Bangladesh and Nepal are still reeling from their share of political and economic convulsions, while China is being pushed against the wall to grant these countries, many of whom have borrowed billions of dollars from Beijing, to offer debt relief. Pakistan alone owes a third of its foreign debt to China.
South Asia’s economic freefall coincided with, and followed from, two key developments: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and a sudden surge in US-China tensions. These brought to the fore some fundamental divisions in the global order. While Western analysts are content in depicting this as a Manichean contest between Western and non-Western norms, the truth is that the West in general, and the United States in particular, has reached a turning point in the post-Cold War landscape. Against such a backdrop, it is natural that the US should be wary of two burning issues in South Asia: domestic unrest and a looming leadership vacuum. The question that may be bedeviling US officials is, who will fill that void?
China, for its part, has shown that it is unwilling to go along with US pressures in the region. Though it has made efforts to renegotiate debts in countries like Zambia, it has repeatedly made clear that it will not conform to the IMF playbook. “The key to easing Zambia’s debt burden,” Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Mao Ning noted at a recent press conference, “lies in the participation of multilateral financial institutions and commercial creditors in the debt relief efforts.” In all probability, this is what drives Beijing’s vague stance on Sri Lanka’s debt restructuring process too: it has offered a two-year moratorium, but doubts remain whether that will be enough, at least according to IMF and World Bank criteria.
By now, the Russia-Ukraine War has led to a concurrent decoupling and recoupling within the world order: decoupling vis-à-vis the West, Russia, and to a considerable extent China, and recoupling vis-à-vis Russia and China on the one hand and the so-called “rest of us”, including the membership of BRICS and the Non-Aligned Movement, and more broadly the Third World, on the other. The latter covers South Asia.
As the regional hegemon in South Asia, then, India’s actions in the aftermath of the Russia-Ukraine War, and its intentions within the wider Indian Ocean, will be of some concern to US officials. This is so particularly since the Narendra Modi government has made it clear that its foreign policy choices – including its antagonism with Beijing – will not be driven by the priorities and concerns of other countries. These other countries obviously include the US and Europe. Paraphrasing what India’s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar noted last year in Slovakia, “Europe’s problems are not India’s problems.”
Such statements may be indicative of a broader shift in India’s foreign policy, but the truth is that the country is prioritizing two things now: strategic autonomy and regional hegemony. The one is best seen as complementary to the other. India wants its choices restricted by no one, and it wants to consolidate its position in South Asia and the Indian Ocean. While it has been experimenting with different strategies over the decades, from Act East to Look West, it is under Narendra Modi that Delhi’s drive towards establishing itself as a major player has accelerated. The Russia-Ukraine War and China-US tensions have certainly reinforced these trends, and not just on the political front: India’s economy may also benefit from them, with companies like Apple announcing plans to shift production to India.
So far, the US has not made clear about where it stands on India. On the surface, Indo-US relations remain where they are, with the one viewing the other as an essential counter to China’s aims and ambitions in the region. The Russia-Ukraine War, however, has unearthed a sore point. Even if US officials are not exactly perturbed at India’s reticence about trading with Russia, they are doing their level best to wean India away. Prior to her South Asian visit, Nuland herself argued that helping India find alternatives to Russian military equipment was part of the “job we have to do.” Of particular concern has been India’s decision to continue acquiring S-400 missile defense systems from Moscow, an agreement that the two countries signed in 2018 despite warnings, and threats, from the Trump administration.
India wants to consolidate its strategic autonomy. This makes sense in a multipolar system, where different states pursue different interests, within a cobweb of changing alliances and antagonisms at the inter- and even intra-state level. Whether that will be to the US’s liking, in a context where it wants to contain China in the Indo-Pacific and gain a foothold in South Asia, remains to be seen. Certainly, the recent disclosures by Hindenburg Research on Adani Group show that contradictions between the US and India are emerging. “For the US,” Omar Rajaratnam, an international relations observer, notes, “Russia, China, and India are rivals. It has mobilized everything it has against Russia and China. India is going to be a tougher nut to crack.” What this means it that the US will need a different approach, if it ever decides to contain India vis-à-vis its Indo-Pacific strategy.
For now, however, it seems unlikely that the US will go gung-ho against India. “The US has long considered India a useful ally,” Rathindra Kuruwita, another international relations observer, argues. “India resents depending too much on any one external player, but clearly the odds are against it.” Kuruwita adds that despite much optimism about manufacturing shifting to India and Vietnam, “there’s just so much that these countries can handle. China is clearly poised to remain an economic winner. India will not equal its record, certainly not for some time.” Nuland’s visit, in that sense, is more about reinforcing Delhi’s ties with the US rather than hinting at a shift in its strategy. “India is still a useful ally for the US, regardless of differences between these countries over issues like Ukraine.”
There is no doubt that India is setting itself up to be a major player in the international system, and not just at the regional level. Be it at BRICS, the G20, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, or even groupings closer to home like SAARC, BIMSTEC, and of course ASEAN, Delhi wants a bigger slice of the multipolar pie. The US has two choices: it can accommodate the country’s incredible rise or it can contain it. As Thomas Friedman put it in a recent essay to the New York Times, a superpower should never confront two rivals at the same time. Yet this is what the US is doing. Against such a backdrop, it would be foolish if Washington were to antagonize India also. There is no doubt the US wants a bigger stake in South Asia, indeed in the Indian Ocean. On a balance of scales, though, it is likely that it will try doing this while appeasing India and adjusting to its needs. The breaking point is yet to come.
Uditha Devapriya is the Chief Analyst – International Relations at Factum and can be reached at uditha@factum.lk.
Factum is an Asia-Pacific focused think tank on International Relations, Tech Cooperation and Strategic Communications accessible via www.factum.lk
The views expressed here are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the organization’s.
