Partnership with Japan will help India secure its strategic space in Asia: Shyam Saran

Former foreign secretary and chairman of the National Security Advisory Board Shyam Saran has termed the consolidation of an India-Japan partnership agreed during the ongoing visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Japan as helping India secure its strategic space in Asia viz-a-vis China.

Saran pointed out that with the United States-Russia tension pretty high in the wake of the ongoing Ukraine crisis, China has acquired a strategic lift which has limited India's strategic space.

In this regard he said, "In the US-China-Russia triangle it is China that has emerged as the pivot. This means that the U.S. pivot to Asia to limit China's strategic expansion has become even less credible than it has already been."

Saran asserted that in order to offset such a pressure one element in India's response has already unfolded in Japan, the consolidation of an India-Japan partnership that will help the second and the third largest powers in Asia to shape the emerging security and economic architecture in this part of Asia.

He added that, "This must go hand in hand with what our Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj has proposed, that is to "Act East", beyond just "Look East". He remarked that Australia and South Korea also fall into the definition of this East for India. And even with its diminished pre-eminence the U.S. remains an economic, military and technological powerhouse, whose support and partnership remains indispensable to India's pursuit of its own national agenda.

During his inaugural lecture on the theme of Changing Asia, initiated by the Society for Policy Studies in collaboration with the India Habitat Centre here yesterday evening, Saran once again reminded how China, which is the only country that impacts most directly on India's strategic space, citing several reasons such as the unresolved boundary, the lingering shadow of the Tibet issue, the long standing Chinese support to Pakistan in its hostile posture towards India, these are realities that we must confront in managing relations with China.

He further added saying that there is the uncomfortable reality that the asymmetry between our two countries which is increasing. Saran said, "China is now four times the size of India in terms of GDP. This makes China attractive economic opportunity even as the imbalance limits India's room for manouvre."

Saran stressed that India's response will need to be subtle and nuanced to determine the precise balance between promoting India- China cooperation in areas of convergent interest, such as was evident in our participation in the BRICS led New Development Bank, and constraining its predilection towards the unilateral assertion of power. This must be pursued with the confidence that if there is any country in the world today which has the potential to match and even surpass China in all the indices of comprehensive national power it is India. The actualization of that potential is what will give India the wherewithal to overcome the changing geopolitical challenges that confront it.

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