India-Japan relationship: Shared values to shared interests

By: Brahma Chellaney
Strategic Affairs Analyst

At a time when the spectre of power disequilibrium looms large in Asia, the just-concluded visit of Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda of Japan to India cemented a fast-growing relationship between two natural allies. Japan and India need to add concrete strategic content to their ties, including building close naval collaboration.

The balance of power in Asia will be determined by events principally in two regions: East Asia and the Indian Ocean. Japan and India thus have an important role to play to advance peace and stability and help safeguard vital sea lanes in the wider Indo-Pacific region, which is marked by the confluence of the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

Asia's booming economies are bound by sea, and maritime democracies like Japan and India must work together to help build a stable, liberal, rules-based order in Asia. As Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said at the East Asia Summit (EAS) meeting in Bali last month, Asia's continued rise is not automatically assured but "dependent on the evolution of a cooperative architecture."

Japan and India - as energy-poor countries heavily dependent on oil imports from the Persian Gulf region - are seriously concerned by mercantilist efforts to assert control over energy supplies and transport routes. The maintenance of a peaceful and lawful maritime domain, including unimpeded freedom of navigation, is critical to their security and economic well-being. In this light, Japan and India have already agreed to start holding joint naval exercises from the new year. This is just one sign that they now wish to graduate from emphasizing shared values to seeking to jointly protect shared interests.

The fastest-growing bilateral relationship in Asia today is between India and Japan, despite their messy domestic politics and endemic scandals. Since they unveiled a "strategic and global partnership" in 2006, their political and economic engagement has deepened remarkably.

A growing congruence of strategic interests led to their 2008 Joint Declaration on Security Cooperation, a significant milestone in building Asian power stability. The joint declaration was modelled on Japan's 2007 defence-cooperation accord with Australia - the only country with which Tokyo has a security-cooperation declaration. The India-Japan security agreement, in turn, spawned a similar India-Australian accord in 2009.

A free-trade accord between Japan and India, formally known as the comprehensive economic partnership agreement (CEPA), entered into force just in August. By covering more than 90% of the trade as well as a wide range of services, rules of origin, investment, intellectual property rights, customs rules and other related issues, CEPA promises to significantly boost bilateral trade, which remains small in comparison with Japan's and India's trade with China.

Today, the level and frequency of India-Japan official engagement is extraordinary. Noda's New Delhi visit was part of a bilateral commitment to hold an annual summit meeting of the prime ministers. More important, Japan and India now have a series of annual minister-to-minister dialogues: a strategic dialogue between their foreign ministers; a defence dialogue between their defence ministers; a policy dialogue between India's commerce and industry minister and Japan's minister of economy, trade and industry; and separate ministerial-level energy and economic dialogues.

In addition, Japan and India, along with the U.S., have initiated a trilateral strategic dialogue, whose first meeting was held in Washington just on December 19. Getting the U.S. on board can only bolster the convergences of all the three partners and boost India-Japan cooperation. As Japanese foreign minister Koichiro Gemba said recently, "Japan and the U.S. are deepening a strategic relationship with India," and the trilateral dialogue is "a specific example of collaboration" among the three leading Asia-Pacific democracies. Such collaboration is likely to become quadrilateral with Australia's inclusion.

Bilaterally, Japan and India need to strengthen their still-fledgling strategic cooperation by embracing two ideas, both of which demand a subtle shift in Japanese thinking and policy.

One is to build interoperability between their formidable naval forces. These forces - in cooperation with other friendly navies - can undergird peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region. As former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe put it in a recent speech in New Delhi, the aim should be that "sooner rather than later, Japan's navy and the Indian navy are seamlessly interconnected." Presently, Japan has naval interoperability only with U.S. forces.

Another idea is for the two countries to co-develop defence systems. India and Japan have missile-defence cooperation with Israel and the US, respectively. There is no reason why they should not work together on missile defence and on other technologies for mutual security. Their defence cooperation must be comprehensive and not be limited to strategic dialogue, maritime cooperation, and occasional naval exercises.

Japan and India should remember that the most-stable economic partnerships in the world, including the transatlantic ones and the Japan-US partnership, have been built on the bedrock of security collaboration. Economic ties that lack the support of strategic partnerships tend to be less stable and even volatile, as is apparent from Japan's and India's economic relationships with China.

Through close strategic collaboration, Japan and India must lead the effort to build freedom, prosperity and stability in the Indo-Pacific region.