Press Release
Dr. C. Raja Mohan, one of India's leading strategists and a Fisher Family Fellow with The Future of Diplomacy Project, discussed India’s views on the planned U.S. pivot to Asia in a presentation to students, faculty and experts at the Harvard Kennedy School on October 31, 2013. Mohan discussed shifting power in Asia and the emerging tension caused by rising Chinese power. India could seek to preserve the status quo and stall change, or attempt to find opportunities in this geopolitical shift, he said.
Mohan organized his lecture around four themes: India’s historical role in the Pacific; the India-China-US dynamic; India's response to the US pivot to Asia and India’s view of itself. The Raj army, he noted, had been the “order-retaining” military power in the region for decades, but with the country’s independence, it had turned inward. In the last several decades India and the US had generally been on opposite sides with respect to their individual China policies, until Indo-US relations had seen a “substantive expansion” during the George W. Bush presidency. During those years, the emphasis had shifted from a “G-2 conversation” with China to the beginning of an actual pivot.
India had five possible responses to the US pivot to Asia, Mohan suggested: It could partner with the US, submit itself to Chinese influence, engage with both, strengthen its own power or partner with regional powers to form a separate power block, thus “shaping the balance, rather than responding to it.” Despite India's history of non-alignment, India was historically not averse to forging alliances as evidenced by India's close relationship with the USSR for much of the twentieth century. Mohan also suggested that, despite deep resistance to this prospect in India, partnering with America in some fashion was the most likely outcome. "The question [for India regarding the US] is not yes or no, but rather what are the terms?" he said. “India will not be Britain to the United States, it won’t even be France,” he said, but that did not mean that strategic autonomy prevented the formation of closer ties. India had a number of other questions to answer for itself over the coming years including whether it wanted “to be a big tree” – willing to provide security for other powers in the region. He also noted that paving a path to reconciliation with Bangladesh and Pakistan and stabilizing border institutions in Kashmir would be crucial to regional advancement. “If you resolve your internal issues, your power can radiate outwards,” he noted referencing the complex road ahead India is likely to face following upcoming elections in 2014 and the coalition-building process to follow that vote.
In the conversation that followed the presentation, Faculty Director R. Nicholas Burns suggested that the US was still coming to terms with India's need for a more egalitarian relationship. Mohan cited anti-colonialism, historical memory in the nuclear scientific community and nativism as three sources of anti-Americanism in India today. Mohan fielded questions from the audience about India's foreign policy history, the BRICs, India-Pakistan relations and Indo-China relations. On the last point he said, "[India and China] don't mean what we say and we don't say what we mean."