Evasive Balncing

Evasive balancing:
India’s unviable Indo-Pacific strategy
RAJESH RAJAGOPALAN *
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Over the past decade, India’s focus on the Indo-Pacific has increased dramatically.
New Delhi has built or upgraded existing strategic partnerships with a number of
key actors in the region, and has embraced the new ‘Indo-Pacific’ concept with
uncharacteristic speed. At the same time, India’s objectives and strategy have been
left unclarified. While the original ‘Look East’ policy, launched in 1991, appeared
to be focused on the pursuit of economic growth by slipstreaming behind the
dynamic economies in south-east Asia, strategic concerns occasioned by China’s
rise eventually became an important consideration. India’s Indo-Pacific strategy
has now become, in the main, a subset of its China policy, with other elements
fading into the background. But contradictions also abound. The Indian govern-
ment is loath to admit that China is the main driver of its Indo-Pacific policy,
and indeed actively discourages any such idea—even while its actions and words,
especially its increasingly close strategic relationships with the United States and
its allies, such as Japan, suggest that very interpretation.1 As Rajesh Basrur points
out, India’s ‘relationships with the US and Japan are clearly a response to the rise of
China, though policy-makers are predictably chary of saying as much’.2 Equally,
India also periodically seeks accommodation with China, further clouding the
logic of its policy.
It is not just India, of course, that is attempting to fashion a complicated mix of
policies to deal with China’s rise and its consequences for the region, and finding
the process fraught with contradiction.3 Most of China’s other neighbours are
also engaged in similar efforts. There is little consensus in the theoretical litera-
ture about how to characterize these policies, many scholars describing them as
‘hedging’ while others insist that most states are actually balancing.4 I argue that
* This article is part of the January 2020 special issue of International Affairs on ‘Unpacking the strategic dynamics
of the Indo-Pacific’, guest-edited by Kai He and Mingjiang Li.
1
Harsh V. Pant and Kartik Bommakanti, ‘India’s national security: challenges and dilemmas’, International
Affairs 95: 4, July 2019, pp. 835–58.
2
Rajesh Basrur, ‘Modi’s foreign policy fundamentals: a trajectory unchanged’, International Affairs 93: 1, 2017,
pp. 7–26.
3
Joseph S. Nye, Jr, ‘The rise and fall of American hegemony from Wilson to Trump’, International Affairs 95:
1, Jan. 2019, pp. 63–80; Christopher Layne, ‘The US–Chinese power shift and the end of Pax Americana’,
International Affairs 84: 1, Jan. 2018, pp. 89–112; Doug Stokes, ‘Trump, American hegemony and the future of
the liberal international order’, International Affairs 84: 1, Jan. 2018, pp. 133–50.
4
Van Jackson, ‘Power, trust, and network complexity: three logics of hedging in Asian security’, International
Relations of the Asia–Pacific 14: 3, 2014, pp. 331–56. The balancing argument can be seen in Darren J. Lim
International Affairs 96: 1 (2020) 75–93; doi: 10.1093/ia/iiz224

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INTA96_1_FullIssue.indb 75 16/12/2019 08:44

Rajesh Rajagopalan
neither of these concepts fully captures the combinations of contradictory policies
adopted by states in the region, including India. Instead, I characterize these
policies as ‘evasive balancing’, which I define as an effort to engage in balancing
while trying to reassure the target.
India’s primary objective in the Indo-Pacific is to prevent China from
dominating the region. The country’s leaders have not stated this explicitly, but
that is the underlying logic of its policy. For example, in a major foreign policy
speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue in June 2018, Prime Minister Narendra Modi
repeatedly invoked the principle of the equality of all nations, ‘large and small’, a
not-too-subtle reference to China’s relations with its smaller neighbours. ‘We see
the assertion of power over recourse to international norms,’ he said, in another

reference to China’s assertive behaviour in its neighbourhood, and called for a
‘common rules-based order for the region ... that must apply to all ... [based
on] sovereignty and territorial integrity’.5 While these are not unusual principles
to invoke, doing so in the context of the Indo-Pacific cannot but be read as an
implicit statement that India does not accept that any special privileges should
accrue to China, despite the gross disparity between Chinese power and that of
other states in the region.
On the other hand, this effort is undermined by a number of factors. The most
important one is New Delhi’s contradictory effort to reassure Beijing that India
is not seeking to balance against China. Reassurance strategies rarely work;6 and
reassurance combined with balancing is even less likely to succeed. There are also,
in addition, questions about India’s capacity, given its tendency to focus much
more on normative power than on material power.7 Paradoxically, although Prime
Minister Modi declared that ‘India does not see the Indo-Pacific as a strategy’, the
strategic elements of the country’s Indo-Pacific policy makes it less likely that
Beijing will believe him, and thus even less likely that this reassurance strategy
will work.
India faces well-known problems related to state capacity to build the domestic
infrastructure that is necessary to achieve New Delhi’s ambitions of connecting
itself to south-east Asia. Although these are serious problems, they do not explain
the challenges that India faces in respect of its Indo-Pacific policy. A number of
analysts have correctly pointed to a larger, political problem confronting India:
namely, a strategic culture in which ‘ideas about an anti-imperialist internation-
alism and non-alignment continue to inform India’s state-building project and
its “over-riding” priority of economic development’.8 There is little doubt that
and Zack Cooper, ‘Reassessing hedging: the logic of alignment in east Asia’, Security Studies 24: 4, 2015, pp.
696–727.
5
Government of India, Ministry of External Affairs, ‘Prime Minister’s keynote address at Shangri-La Dialogue’,
1 June 2018, http://www.mea.gov.in/Speeches-Statements.htm?dtl/29943/Prime+Ministers+Keynote+Addre
ss+at+Shangri+La+Dialogue+June+01+2018. (Unless otherwise noted at point of citation, all URLs cited in
this article were accessible on 26 Sept. 2019.)
6
Evan Braden Montgomery, ‘Breaking out of the security dilemma: realism, reassurance and the problem of
uncertainty’, International Security 31: 2, Fall 2006, pp. 151–85.
7
Ian Hall, ‘Narendra Modi and India’s normative power’, International Affairs 93: 1, Jan. 2017, pp. 113–31.
8
Priya Chacko, ‘The rise of the Indo–Pacific: understanding ideational change and continuity in India’s foreign
policy’, Australian Journal of International Affairs 68: 4, 2014, p. 448.
76
International Affairs 96: 1, 2020

current Indian foreign policy shows significant continuities with that of past
decades, despite changes in the ideological make-up of the country’s leaders,
suggesting the strength of foreign policy tradition and culture.9 This recognition
pinpoints the problem in the making of national foreign policy; but because it
focuses only on India’s choices, it ignores a larger structural dynamic that affects all
states in the region that have to grapple with China’s rise. For this type of uncer-
tain, haphazard policy response is a problem not confined to India but character-
istic of most of the region, suggesting a larger structural dynamic that affects all
the countries of the Indo-Pacific.
In the next section of this article, I outline the evolution of India’s policy from
‘Look East’ to ‘Act East’ to ‘Indo-Pacific’. In the following section I consider the

inadequacy of the existing theoretical literature on state behaviour in the region
and develop an alternative approach—evasive balancing—to explain India’s
policy towards the Indo-Pacific region, and to describe both the balancing and
the reassurance components of this policy. In the penultimate section, I explain
why India’s combination of balancing and reassurance is unlikely to work. The
concluding section summarizes the main argument and its implications.
From ‘Look East’ to ‘Act East’ to ‘Indo-Pacific’

India’s approach to east Asia, broadly today’s Indo-Pacific, has gone through a
number of variations over the past century.10 It shifted from a perception of a spiri-
tual affinity with a wider Asian culture, especially in the early twentieth century
when it was seen as in opposition to the materialist ‘West’, to a political relation-
ship at mid-century, to disengagement and mutual incomprehension during the
later years of the Cold War era. The end of the Cold War led to further changes,
as India sought to emulate the success of the east Asian economies through closer
economic integration and physical connectivity, but also through a relationship
that included security and humanitarian assistance components.11 Over the course
of the post-Cold War period, India’s declaratory policy towards the region has
gone through several stages—‘Act East’ being the latest iteration—in the course
of the expansion of its geographical focus from India’s regional neighbours in the
early 1990s to the entire Indo-Pacific today.
India’s primary focus has been on the Association of Southeast Asian Nations
(ASEAN). The original Indian effort to increase connectivity through its ‘Look
East’ policy was motivated by hopes of greater trade and investment flows that
could benefit India’s economic development. This goal has been only partially
realized. India’s trade with major actors in the Indo-Pacific (other than China) has
9
Ian Hall, ‘The persistence of Nehruvianism in India’s strategic culture’, in Ashley J. Tellis, Alison Szalwinski
and Michael Wills, eds, Strategic Asia 2016–17: understanding strategic cultures in the Asia–Pacific (Washington DC:
National Bureau of Asian Research, 2016), pp. 141–68.
10
Christophe Jaffrelot, ‘India’s Look East policy: an Asianist strategy in perspective’, India Review 2: 2, 2003,
pp. 35–68; Amitav Acharya, ‘India’s “Look East” policy’, in David C. Malone, C. Raja Mohan and Srinath
Raghavan, eds, The Oxford handbook of India’s foreign policy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 452–65.
11
Jonah Blank, Jennifer D. P. Moroney, Angel Rabasa and Bonny Lin, Look east, cross black waters: India’s interest
in south-east Asia (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2015).
77

Rajesh Rajagopalan
not taken off as steeply as had been hoped; trade with Japan has even contracted,
with a trade deficit deepening over several years.12
Along with changes in nomenclature and scope have gone changes in the objec-
tives of India’s approach to the region. While trade and connectivity remain impor-
tant, strategic concerns—specifically, with China’s dominance over the region and
the consequences of this dominance for freedom of navigation in waters that are of
critical significance to Indian trade—now appear to be edging out and redefining
other factors that influence India’s view of the region.13 While strategic concerns
were part of the mix of Indian objectives from the very beginning, their relative
importance vis-à-vis trade and connectivity concerns have changed. The Indian
government admitted as much in parliament, stating that ‘the policy which was

originally conceived as an economic initiative, has gained political, strategic and
cultural dimensions’.14 And, though Modi emphasized both aspects in his Shangri-
La speech, he also linked economic prosperity to peace in the region.15
India’s conception of the Indo-Pacific

India’s Indo-Pacific strategy is a component—possibly, indeed, the most impor-
tant component—of its China strategy; and managing China has become the
primary purpose of its Indo-Pacific strategy. India defines the Indo-Pacific
somewhat differently from the other powers in the region that have also
embraced the concept, reflecting its somewhat different interests.16 While all
these states share a focus on China, some, such as Japan and the United States,
appear inclined to situate India within an Indo-Pacific conceptualized in terms
of the east Asian and Pacific space, to manage China’s economic and political
heft there, reflecting their primary concern with the effect of Chinese power
in south-east and north-east Asia. India itself, however, defines the Indo-Pacific
more widely, as including all of the Indian Ocean, because of its concerns about
the expansion of China’s power there. Thus, India has defined the Indo-Pacific
as extending, in Modi’s words, ‘from the shores of Africa to that of the Ameri-
cas’.17 This redefinition itself is indicative of India’s changed priorities. The
original orientation of the ‘Look East’ stance indicated India’s primary interest
in economic linkage, while the inclusion of the Indian Ocean is clearly strategic
in conception, possibly born out of an interest in encouraging any future coali-
tion to pay as much attention to India’s concerns in the Indian Ocean as to the
South China Sea and the Pacific.
12
Embassy of India, Tokyo, Japan, ‘India-Japan economic relations’, January 2019, https://www.indembassy-
tokyo.gov.in/india_japan_economic_relations.html.
13
David Scott, ‘India and the allure of the Indo-Pacific’, International Studies 49: 3–4, 2012, pp. 1–24.
14
Government of India, Ministry of External Affairs, ‘Act East Policy’, 23 Dec. 2015, http://pib.nic.in/newsite/
PrintRelease.aspx?relid=133837.
15
Government of India, Ministry of External Affairs, ‘Prime Minister’s keynote address at Shangri-La Dialogue’.
16
Tomohiko Satake and John Hemmings, ‘Japan–Australia security cooperation in the bilateral and the multilat-
eral contexts’, International Affairs 94: 4, July 2018, pp. 815–34; Brendan Taylor, ‘Is Australia’s Indo-Pacific strat-
egy an illusion?’, International Affairs 96: 1 Jan. 2020, pp. 95–110; Shogo Suzuki and Corey Wallace, ‘Explaining
Japan’s response to geopolitical vulnerability’, International Affairs 94: 4, July 2018, pp. 711–34.
17
78

Thus, while ‘Look East’ and ‘Act East’ represented, at least formally, an effort
to foster closer cooperation with Asian economies to its east, India’s approach
to the Indo-Pacific is much more directly designed to counter China’s growing
power and expansion into south Asia and the Indian Ocean. The connectivity
and trade objectives remain in place, at least rhetorically, with the Indo-Pacific
seen ‘as a positive construct of development and connectivity, in which India can
play a unique role by virtue of its geographical location and economic gravity’.18
Framing the concept in terms of economic development and connectivity enables
New Delhi to claim that it is not joining other powers seeking to contain China.
Indeed, India has repeatedly emphasized the ‘inclusive’ nature of the concept,
and explicitly stated that it is not meant to target any power. While it is not clear

whether Beijing will pay as much attention to the semantics, they do appear to
be important to India.
But the strategic aspect clearly predominates. It is driven by at least three
concerns about China. First and most important is the perception in New Delhi
that ‘China’s policy is one of strategic encirclement’ of India.19 New Delhi
worries about China’s expansion into the south Asian region, which India has
long regarded as its own backyard.20 Second, India is concerned about freedom
of navigation in the South China Sea, on which it relies for trade links, and it
has repeatedly drawn attention to this issue.21 Thus the evolution of the concept
from simply ‘Indo-Pacific’ to the ‘free and open Indo-Pacific’, with an emphasis
on international law and norms, fits well with India’s concerns.22 Although India
has not fully embraced this formulation, Indian officials have used similar forms
of words: for example, the Indian foreign secretary has stated that national policy
‘will be based on the values of peace, stability and prosperity on a free, open,
prosperous and inclusive Indo-Pacific’.23 Third, Indian officials have expressed
concern about Chinese naval forays into the Indian Ocean, some under the cover
of anti-piracy patrols.24 This concern goes back several years, to the time when
18
Government of India, Ministry of External Affairs, ‘Address by foreign secretary at the Regional Connectiv-
ity Conference: south Asia in the Indo-Pacific context’, 1 Nov. 2018, https://www.mea.gov.in/Speeches-
Statements.htm?dtl/30556/Address+by+Foreign+Secretary+at+the+Regional+Connectivity+Conference++S
outh+Asia+in+the+IndoPacific+Context.
19
Abhijit Singh, Aparna Pande, Jeff M. Smith, Samir Saran, Sunjoy Joshi and Walter Lohman, The new India–US
partnership in the Indo-Pacific: peace, prosperity and security (New Delhi: Observer Research Foundation, 2018), p.
11.
20
Constantino Xavier, ‘The new Indian realpolitik: China is pushing India’s foreign policy into unchartered
waters’, Foreign Affairs, 20 Dec. 2018, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2018-12-20/new-indian-
realpolitik; Sumit Ganguly, ‘India and China: on a collision course’, Pacific Affairs 91: 2, June 2018, pp. 231–44.
21
See e.g. Government of India, Ministry of External Affairs, ‘India–Vietnam joint statement during state visit
of President to Vietnam’, 21 Nov. 2018, https://www.mea.gov.in/bilateral-documents.htm?dtl/30615/indiav
ietnam+joint+statement+during+state+visit+of+president+to+vietnam; Douglas Guilfoyle, ‘The rule of law
and maritime security: understanding lawfare in the South China Sea’, International Affairs 95: 5, Sept. 2019,
pp. 999–1017.
22
Jeff Smith, ‘Unpacking the free and open Indo-Pacific’, War on the Rocks, 14 March 2018, https://warontherocks.
com/2018/03/unpacking-the-free-and-open-indo-pacific/.
23
Government of India, Ministry of External Affairs, ‘FS’s keynote address to the 1st Disarmament and
International Security Affairs Fellowship’, 14 Jan. 2019, https://www.mea.gov.in/Speeches-Statements.
htm?dtl/30910/fss+keynote+address+to+the+1st+disarmament+and+international+security+affairs+fellows
hip.
24
Indrani Bagchi, ‘Chinese subs in Djibouti to fight “pirates” worrying: navy’, Times of India, 10 Jan. 2019,
79

Rajesh Rajagopalan
China started to build naval bases in the region and deploy ships and subma-
rines there.25 India’s Indo-Pacific policy is a way to balance against these threats
together with other countries that are also concerned about China’s actions and
intentions. While India is expanding its own military capabilities, partnering with
other states offers it one way to augment its capacity.
Theorizing India’s approach to the Indo-Pacific

Two concepts—hedging and balancing—have been employed to analyse the kind
of behaviour currently being practised by India in respect of the Indo-Pacific,
but both are problematic in this context. Hedging is a policy response to inter-

national structural uncertainty that falls between bandwagoning and balancing
strategies. Hedging states adopt a mixed strategy of building economic and other
non-security ties while also engaging in limited amounts of balancing.26 Though
this mixture of seemingly contradictory policies appears to accurately describe
the current Indian approach, the mixture is itself a problem. As Adam Liff argues,
it is wrong to suggest that a state that is economically and politically engaged
with another state cannot also be balancing.27 The problem, as another recent
analysis points out, is that ‘hedging as currently constructed inappropriately
includes economic and political engagement as components of security strate-
gies and indicators of states’ alignment choices’.28 This identifies a problematic
assumption in hedging: that if states have economic or political engagement, they
cannot then be balancing. Because even states that are balancing may have some
degree of political and economic engagement with the state against which they
are balancing, it is difficult to distinguish when states are balancing and when they
are hedging. This lack of clarity might also partly account for the disagreements
between scholars about how states in the region are responding to China’s rise,
which some characterize as balancing,29 others as hedging.30
Existing theories of balancing also have their drawbacks. To begin with,
balancing theorists who criticize hedging want to narrow down the coverage
of hedging to security policies by ‘excising’ non-security components such as
economic and political engagement.31 The problem is that though such economic
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/with-80-news-ships-in-last-5-years-chinese-navy-is-here-to-stay-
admiral-lanba/articleshow/67458929.cms.
25
Andrew North, ‘India and China, the new great game’, BBC News, 13 Dec. 2011, https://www.bbc.com/
news/world-asia-16149397.
26
Evelyn Goh, Understanding hedging in Asia–Pacific security, PacNet no. 43 (Honolulu: Pacific Forum, 31 Aug.
2006), https://www.pacforum.org/analysis/pacnet-43-understanding-hedging-asia-pacific-security.
27
Adam P. Liff, ‘Whither the balancers? The case for a methodological reset’, Security Studies 25: 3, 2016, pp.
420–59.
28
Lim and Cooper, ‘Reassessing hedging’, p. 697.
29
Derek McDougall, ‘Responses to rising China in the east Asian region: soft balancing with accommodation’,
Journal of Contemporary China 21: 73, 2012, pp. 1–17; Adam P. Liff and G. John Ikenberry, ‘Racing towards
tragedy? China’s rise, military competition in the Asia Pacific, and the security dilemma’, International Security
39: 2, Fall 2014, pp. 52–91; Liff, ‘Whither the balancers?’; Lim and Cooper, ‘Reassessing hedging’.
30
Goh, Understanding hedging in Asia–Pacific security; Jackson, ‘Power, trust, and network complexity’; Brock F.
Tessman, ‘System structure and state strategy: adding hedging to the menu’, Security Studies 21: 2, 2012, pp.
192–231.
31
Lim and Cooper, ‘Reassessing hedging’, pp. 697–8; Liff, ‘Whither the balancers?’.
80

and political engagement is often the result of non-security-related calculations,
it can also sometimes be an aspect of security policies.32 As I suggest below, such
engagement can also be a component of a reassurance strategy that is explicitly
security-orientated. This is certainly so in the case of India, and may also apply in
other cases. When such engagement becomes part of a security strategy, it needs
to be explained rather than excised.
The rest of the balance of power literature is also unhelpful in understanding
India’s current behaviour. Some concepts, such as asymmetric balancing, which
refers to relations between states and non-state actors, are clearly inappropri-
ate.33 Nor is ‘covert’ balancing, another candidate concept, appropriate: this is
usually ‘of the internal kind because it is less visible’, whereas many aspects of the

balancing behaviour in the Indo-Pacific are of the external kind and not particu-
larly covert.34 Similarly, ‘soft’ balancing not only presents a variety of conceptual
problems but is, at best, a supplementary explanation to ‘hard’ balancing.35
I characterize many of the regional responses to China’s rise—including
India’s—as evasive balancing, which I define as a policy of balancing while attempting
to reassure the target that one is not doing so. Evasive balancing includes elements
of both balancing and reassurance. It is a response to an overwhelming threat that
needs to be balanced amid uncertainty about the feasibility of such balancing and
fear about the consequences should such balancing efforts be ineffective. There-
fore, states attempt both to balance against the threat and also to reassure the threat
that they are not balancing.
There are risks to expanding the concept of balancing. Some recent work
has expanded balancing to include almost any strategy that reduces the security
deficit, not limiting it to purely military efforts.36 But it goes too far when even
appeasement is considered as a ‘complement to balancing’.37 Such expansion would
make balancing synonymous with almost any foreign policy, reducing the term’s
conceptual clarity. On the other hand, states do engage in security policies that
combine balancing with other measures, especially to address security concerns
relating to adversaries that are far stronger than themselves and thus may not be
easily balanced. The trick is to figure out which of these other measures are driven
by security considerations, and, unlike the concept of hedging, how to distin-
guish such measures from normal diplomatic or economic policies. Dismissing
all such measures as non-security policies risks throwing the baby out with the
bathwater, while including all diplomatic or economic intercourse risks incor-
rectly expanding the ambit of security policy.
32
Daniel H. Nexon, ‘The balance of power in the balance’, World Politics 61: 2, 2009, pp. 330–59.
33
T. V. Paul, James J. Wirtz and Michel Fortmann, eds, Balance of power: theory and practice in the 21st century
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004), p. 3.
34
Paul et al., eds, Balance of power, p. 369.
35
Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth, ‘Hard times for soft balancing’, International Security 30: 1,
Summer 2005, pp. 72–108; Kier A. Lieber and Gerard Alexander, ‘Waiting for balancing: why the world is
not pushing back’, International Security 30: 1, Summer 2005, pp. 109–39.
36
Nexon, ‘The balance of power in the balance’, pp. 340–47.
37
Norris M. Ripsman and Jack S. Levy, ‘Wishful thinking or buying time? The logic of British appeasement in
the 1930s’, International Security 33: 2, Fall 2008, p. 151.
81

Rajesh Rajagopalan
Evasive balancing takes a middle path by combining traditional military
balancing with reassurance strategies. Reassurance strategies are explicitly security
policies, so are admissible as part of a balancing strategy. Proponents of reassur-
ance strategies suggest that ‘countries should sometimes exercise self-restraint
and pursue cooperative military policies, because these policies can convince a
rational opponent to revise favourably its view of the country’s motives’.38 On
the other hand, as Robert Jervis points out, ‘states often want security, but they
cannot reach this goal through cooperative mechanisms that defensive realists like
Glaser believe often should be employed’.39 Reassurance theory suggests that if
mistrust and fear are the basis of the security dilemma, states can send signals that
could placate their potential adversaries, thus reducing the potential for conflict.

But such signalling has to be ‘costly’: ‘gestures with little risk attached will be
dismissed as feints by the other side and will not change beliefs’.40 This is a major
drawback; for, as critics point out, ‘the conditions under which benign actors
can reveal their underlying motives without also increasing their vulnerability are
significantly restricted’.41 This is an important reason why reassurance strategies
are impractical and why evasive balancing, in turn, is also likely to fail.
Admittedly, much of the debate about reassurance strategies has focused on
the context of internal balancing efforts and direct military competition in dyadic
conflicts, not that of external balancing efforts such as building partnerships. But
the logic has also been applied more broadly, for example to Chinese efforts ‘to
address the rising international concerns over the rise of China’ and to Soviet ‘new
thinking’ under Gorbachev.42
Though the prospects that evasive balancing will work are slim, it is a better
description than others used hitherto of India’s approach to the Indo-Pacific,
which includes both elements of balancing China and, simultaneously, attempts
at reassuring it. It also helps advance the literature by pushing past the deadlock in
the debate about hedging in the region, which is stuck over whether the evidence
demonstrates that states are balancing or accommodating China. It is a better
explanation than the existing balance of power theory, which does not have a
category to explain the behaviour of states that are neither entirely balancing nor
fully accommodating when faced with threats. Evasive balancing suggests that
states facing disproportionate threats will do both; but it takes into consideration
only those policies that have a security component, rather than assuming that all
political and economic engagement is somehow part of a strategic policy. India
exemplifies this strategy. Evasive balancing provides a single concept that incorpo-
rates the clear evidence that most states are indeed balancing while also explaining
why they are simultaneously engaged in reassurance strategies. It is also possible
to make some predictions about the consequences of such efforts, because of the
38
Charles L. Glaser, ‘Realists as optimists: cooperation as self-help’, International Security 19: 3, Winter 1994–5,
pp. 50–90.
39
Robert Jervis, ‘Dilemmas about security dilemmas’, Security Studies 20: 3, 2011, p. 421.
40
Andrew Kydd, ‘Trust, reassurance, and cooperation’, International Organization 54: 2, Spring 2000, p. 326.
41
Montgomery, ‘Breaking out of the security dilemma’, p. 153.
42
See e.g. Jia Quingguo, ‘Peaceful development: China’s policy of reassurance’, Australian Journal of International
Affairs 59: 4, 2005, pp. 493–507; Kydd, ‘Trust, reassurance, and cooperation’.
82

broad consensus in the International Relations literature about the poor prospects
of reassurance strategies.43 Thus, India’s evasive balancing strategy is unlikely to
succeed.
Balancing and reassurance in India’s Indo-Pacific strategy

India’s Indo-Pacific strategy is driven by the need to balance the threat New Delhi
perceives from China; at the same time, given its limited capabilities, India cannot
afford to provoke China. Together, these mutually incompatible requirements
have prompted India to devise an evasive balancing strategy that emphasizes the
development of partnerships in the region to balance China’s power, while also

trying to reassure Beijing that such balancing efforts are not really targeting it.
Balancing China
Partnering with other states to balance China has become an increasingly impor-
tant aspect of India’s strategy towards the Indo-Pacific, even though it goes against
New Delhi’s traditional aversion to balance of power politics.44 India was never
keen on balancing China: even before independence, its leaders saw China as
a partner because of the countries’ shared anti-colonial heritage, and this view
persisted well after the end of British rule in India in 1947 and the communist
victory in the Chinese civil war in 1949.45 However, over the past two decades, as
the economic and military disparity between the two countries has grown dramat-
ically, India has become much more receptive to the idea of external balancing.
This shift has brought its approach nearer to that of others, for example the United
States, which became much more interested in enlisting India in such efforts,
even though both sides officially dismissed these notions.46 While a number of
scholars have questioned India’s capacity or even willingness to balance China,
much of India’s behaviour in the Indo-Pacific cannot be described as anything
but balancing, however incompetently it is carried out.47 Balancing, it is worth
noting, is a behaviour rather than an outcome.48 India’s current balancing effort
has a number of components, including partnerships not only with the United
43
Montgomery, ‘Breaking out of the security dilemma’; Kydd, ‘Trust, reassurance, and cooperation’; Andrew
H. Kydd and Roseanne W. McManus, ‘Threats and assurances in crisis bargaining’, Journal of Conflict Resolution
61: 2, 2017, pp. 325–48; Kai Quek, ‘Are costly signals more credible? Evidence of sender–receiver gaps’, Journal
of Politics 78: 3, 2016, pp. 925–40.
44
On India’s aversion to balance of power politics, see Pratap Bhanu Mehta, ‘Still under Nehru’s shadow? The
absence of foreign policy frameworks in India’, India Review 8: 3, 2009, pp. 209–33. For opposing perspectives,
see C. Raja Mohan, ‘India and the balance of power’, Foreign Affairs 85: 4, 2006, pp. 17–32; Nabarun Roy, ‘The
anatomy of a story less told: Nehru and the balance of power’, Journal of Asian Security and International Affairs
3: 3, 2016, pp. 337–58.
45
Manjeet S. Pardesi, ‘The initiation of the Sino-Indian rivalry’, Asian Security 14: 1, 2018, pp. 1–32.
46
C. Raja Mohan and Alyssa Ayres, ‘Situating the realignment’, in Alyssa Ayres and C. Raja Mohan, eds, Power
realignments in Asia: China, India and the United States (New Delhi: Sage, 2009), pp. 307–27.
47
See e.g. Frederic Grare, India turns east: international engagement and US–China rivalry (New Delhi: Penguin/
Viking, 2017); Scott, ‘India and the allure of the Indo-Pacific’.
48
Susan B. Martin, ‘From balance of power to balancing: the long and winding road’, in Andrew K. Hanami,
ed., Perspectives on structural realism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 61–82.
83

Rajesh Rajagopalan
States, but with a number of other states in the Indo-Pacific, both bilaterally and
in multilateral settings.49 Because the primary innovation in India’s strategy is the
external balancing component, India’s domestic efforts to build its strength are
only briefly considered here.
India’s American partnership

The most important component of India’s Indo-Pacific strategy is probably its
relationship with the United States. This was, at best, cool through much of the
Cold War era, though it did begin to warm up during the 1980s.50 By the early
2000s, with China’s power growing rapidly, both Indian leaders and American

decision-makers saw the need for their two countries to cooperate more because,
as Ashley Tellis put it, ‘the re-emergence of China as a global power fundamentally
challenges the United States and India in different, but complementary, ways’.51
The US–India nuclear deal in 2008, in which Washington overturned existing
global norms and rules to make an exception for India, helped to convince New
Delhi of the US commitment to this partnership. Over the past decade, India’s
security relationship with the US has grown rapidly. Washington designated India
as a ‘major defense partner’ in 2016, and in the same year the two countries signed
the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA), an India-specific
version of the Logistics Support Agreement (LSA); this was followed in 2018 by the
Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement (COMCASA), an India-
specific version of the Communication and Information Security Memorandum
of Agreement (CISMOA). These agreements were delayed mainly because of
political concern in New Delhi about moving too fast in the relationship with
the United States. But the fact that they were eventually signed is a significant
indicator of the changed nature of the US–India security relationship and how
far New Delhi, in particular, has travelled.52
Another indicator of the deepening defence ties between the two is their arms
transfer relationship. Although the United States is still a distant second to Russia
in arms supplies to India, American arms exports to India rose by 557 per cent in
2013–17 compared to 2008–12.53 Over the past decade, the value of Indian imports
of American arms went from virtually nil to about US$15 billion, making defence
and security cooperation ‘the central pillar of the US–India partnership’.54 In
49
Iskander Rehman, ‘Keeping the dragon at bay: India’s counter-containment of China in Asia’, Asian Security
5: 2, 2009, pp. 114–43.
50
Dennis Kux, India and the United States: estranged democracies, 1941–1991 (Washington DC: National Defense
University Press, 1992).
51
Ashley J. Tellis, Unity in difference: overcoming the US–India difference (Washington DC: Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace, 2015), p. 25.
52
Dhruva Jaishankar, ‘2+2 delay does not mean India–US ties are in trouble’, NDTV.com, 29 June 2018, https://
www.ndtv.com/opinion/5-facts-that-prove-india-us-defence-ties-are-growing-1874850.
53
Pieter D. Wezeman, Aude Fleurant, Alexandra Kuimova, Nan Tian and Siemon T. Wezeman, Trends in inter-
national arms transfers, 2017, fact sheet (Stockholm: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, March
2018), https://www.sipri.org/sites/default/files/2018-03/fssipri_at2017_0.pdf.
54
Statement of Ambassador Alice Wells, US Department of State, before House Foreign Affairs Committee
Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific, ‘Maintaining US influence in south Asia: the FY 2018 budget’, 7 Sept. 2017,
https://docs.house.gov/meetings/FA/FA05/20170907/106375/HHRG-115-FA05-Wstate-WellsA-20170907.pdf.
84

addition, India today conducts more military exercises with the US than with any
other country.55 The significance of such changes cannot be overstated, because
there still remains considerable disagreement among Indian elites about the value
of closer military ties with the US, which is one reason why each additional step
in the relationship is taken only with great deliberation and delay.56 If the relation-
ship is moving forward despite such doubts, the primary reason is that New Delhi
sees it as a necessary tool to balance China in the Indo-Pacific.
Partnership with major Asian powers: Japan and Australia

India’s relations with major US allies such Japan and Australia were traditionally

cool, even cooler than with the United States itself, although, especially with
Japan, there was some ‘harmony beneath the distance’.57 New Delhi was dismis-
sive of these powers for two reasons: one, as a non-aligned state, India looked
down on countries that chose the alignment path, seeing them as nothing more
than dependencies without an autonomous personality.58 Non-alignment was
seen as a moral choice, and alignment accordingly, even if this was not stated
explicitly, as an immoral one that signified some weakness of spirit. Second,
India was particularly dismissive of countries that aligned with the West, now
under American leadership. Although India had stronger cultural, trade and other
links—including democracy—with the West, it appeared far more sympathetic
to states that were aligned with the Soviet Union and the eastern bloc than with
those aligned with the United States. The change in India’s attitude towards these
countries followed the change in its approach to the US and was—at least in
Australia’s case—far slower. Still, the fundamental reason for the different lens
through which India now views these countries is the same as in the case of the
US: China’s rise and the common pressure that puts on all these countries.
India’s relations with Japan, in particular, have improved dramatically. Indeed,
the political roots of the Indo-Pacific idea can be traced to Prime Minister Shinzo
Abe’s speech to the Indian parliament in August 2007, entitled ‘Confluence of
the two seas’. Security cooperation between the two sides was institutionalized in
2008 when India and Japan signed a ‘joint declaration on security cooperation’.59
The increasing closeness continued when Modi became prime minister in 2014,
at which point an existing partnership agreement signed in 2006 was upgraded to
55
‘India and US to participate in more bilateral military exercises’, Firstpost, 11 Dec. 2015, https://www.firstpost.
com/world/india-and-us-to-participate-in-more-bilateral-military-exercises-2541726.html.
56
See e.g. Pratap Bhanu Mehta, ‘The American hug’, Indian Express, 2 April 2016, https://indianexpress.com/
article/opinion/columns/the-american-hug-indo-us-relations-narendra-modi-barack-obama-indias-foreign-
policy/.
57
Thomas F. Lynch III and James J. Przystup, ‘India–Japan strategic cooperation and the implications for US
strategy in the Indo-Asia–Pacific region’, Strategic Perspectives, vol. 24, 2017, p. 5; Maryanne Kelton, Michael
Sullivan, Emily Bienvenue and Zac Rogers, ‘Australia, the utility of force and the society-centric battlespace’,
International Affairs 95: 4, July 2019, pp. 859–76.
58
Madhuchanda Ghosh, ‘India and Japan’s growing synergy: from a political to a strategic focus’, Asian Survey
48: 2, 2008, pp. 282–302.
59
Government of India, Ministry of External Affairs, ‘Joint declaration on security cooperation between India
and Japan’, 22 Oct. 2008, http://mea.gov.in/bilateral-documents.htm?dtl/5408/Joint+Declaration+on+Securi
ty+Cooperation+between+India+and+Japan.
85

Rajesh Rajagopalan
a ‘special strategic and global partnership’.60 Modi’s first state visit outside India’s
neighbourhood was to Japan: it lasted five days, the longest trip he had made to
any Asian country. The next year India and Japan signed a ‘vision statement’ on
working together in the Indo-Pacific region, reiterating
their unwavering commitment to realise a peaceful, open, equitable, stable and rule-
based order in the Indo-Pacific region and beyond ... [and to] uphold the principles of
sovereignty and territorial integrity; peaceful settlement of disputes; ... and freedom of
navigation and overflight.61
These statements of intent have been supported by concrete actions. The two
countries have been holding annual naval military exercises called JIMEX since

2012,62 and their warships now regularly visit each other’s ports.63 Much of this
was made possible because both countries, particularly Japan, decided to put aside
their differences over the nuclear issue and to conclude a civil nuclear agreement.64
India’s security relationship with Australia has not developed as spectacularly
as that with Japan. Even so, India today has significant levels of security inter-
action with Australia, including joint military exercises and frequent bilateral
security consultations at different levels. India and Australia signed a joint decla-
ration on security cooperation in November 2009, and the militaries of the two
countries began to conduct joint exercises, including the AUSINDEX biennial
naval exercise.65 In 2011, Australia also agreed to sell uranium to India. In doing so,
it reversed a previous decision, thus removing a major irritant in the relationship.
Still, there is little doubt that there are greater difficulties in India’s relations with
Australia than in those with Japan, and that ‘a deep ambivalence persists on both
sides’.66 India has refused to invite Australia to the Malabar naval exercise even as an
60
Government of India, Ministry of External Affairs, ‘Tokyo declaration for India–Japan special strategic and
global partnership’, 1 Sept. 2014, http://www.mea.gov.in/bilateral-documents.htm?dtl/23965/Tokyo+Decl
aration+for+India++Japan+Special+Strategic+and+Global+Partnership. See also Rajesh Basrur and Sumitha
Narayanan Kutty, ‘Conceptualizing strategic partnerships’, in Rajesh Basrur and Sumitha Narayanan Kutty,
eds, India and Japan: assessing the strategic partnership (Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), pp. 1–12.
61
Government of India, Ministry of External Affairs, ‘Joint statement on India and Japan vision 2025: special
strategic and global partnership working together for peace and prosperity of the Indo-Pacific region and
the world’, 12 Dec. 2015, http://www.mea.gov.in/bilateral-documents.htm?dtl/26176/Joint_Statement_on_
India_and_Japan_Vision_2025_Special_Strategic_and_Global_Partnership_Working_Together_for_Peace_
and_Prosperity_of_the_IndoPacific_R.
62
Ankit Panda, ‘India, Japan begin anti-submarine warfare exercise in Arabian Sea’, The Diplomat, 31 Oct.
2017, https://thediplomat.com/2017/10/india-japan-begin-anti-submarine-warfare-exercise-in-arabian-sea/;
Government of India, Ministry of Defence, Press Information Bureau, ‘First Japan–India maritime exer-
cise ( JIMEX) in Indian waters from 19–22 December’, 17 Dec. 2013, http://pib.nic.in/newsite/PrintRelease.
aspx?relid=101825.
63
‘Indian naval ships visit Japan in pursuance of Act East policy’, Hindustan Times, 13 Oct. 2017, https://www.
hindustantimes.com/india-news/indian-naval-ships-visit-japan-in-pursuance-of-act-east-policy/story-
5OQCVnO06TOEHQt548LJ2N.html.
64
Tyler Rodgers, ‘India, Japan nuclear deal implemented’, Arms Control Today, 1 Sept. 2017, https://www.
armscontrol.org/act/2017-09/news-briefs/india-japan-nuclear-deal-implemented.
65
‘India invites Australian army for special forces exercise to be held in October’, Indian Express, 16 July 2016,
https://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/india-invites-australian-army-for-special-forces-
exercise-to-be-held-in-october-2915749/; Government of India, Ministry of Defence, Press Information
Bureau, ‘Eastern fleet ships enter Fremantle to participate in AUSINDEX-17, a bilateral maritime exercise
with Australian Navy’, 13 June 2017, http://pib.nic.in/newsite/PrintRelease.aspx?relid=165603.
66
Frederic Grare, The India–Australia strategic relationship: defining realistic expectations (Washington DC: Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace, 2014), p. 23.
86

observer, both because of the continuing lack of confidence in Australia’s commit-
ment to the security relationship and out of concern about irritating China.67 On
the other hand, some of these problems existed even in India’s relations with the
United States and Japan; and, as in those cases, India is likely to move cautiously
but nevertheless steadily forward in building its security ties and balancing efforts
with Australia.
South-east Asian powers: Vietnam, Singapore, Indonesia

As with Japan and Australia, so India has also sought to build security ties with
south-east Asian powers. South-east Asia was, indeed, the original focus of India’s

‘Look East’ policy. But, as noted above, security relationships have become increas-
ingly important in India’s approach to the region, overtaking its focus on trade and
connectivity.68 This security focus is particularly visible in India’s relations with
Vietnam, Singapore and, more recently, Indonesia.
While India has always enjoyed close relations with Vietnam, more recently
the latter has become ‘a pivotal state in India’s Act East policy’.69 In 2007, India
and Vietnam signed a ‘joint declaration on strategic partnership’, and in 2016
this was elevated to a ‘comprehensive strategic partnership’.70 These, and earlier
defence agreements, have given impetus to India–Vietnam defence cooperation,
which now includes military exercises involving the armies and navies of both
countries; India has also extended a US$500 million line of credit to Vietnam to
buy Indian military equipment and has agreed to train Vietnamese fighter pilots71
and submarine crews.72 Overall, India’s security relationship with Vietnam has
moved forward steadily, though slowly.
India’s longest security relationship in south-east Asia is undoubtedly with
Singapore. In 2015, the two countries signed an upgraded defence cooperation
agreement, which includes an annual dialogue between the defence ministers of
the two countries. In the same year, the two countries also concluded a ‘strategic
partnership’ agreement. New Delhi has also allowed Singapore to train its army
and air force in India—a major shift for a country that has long opposed foreign
military presence on its soil.73
67
Arzan Tarapore, ‘Sop to China or signal to Australia?’, Indian Express, 11 May 2018, https://indianexpress.com/
article/opinion/malabar-navy-exercise-modi-xi-summit-india-us-japan-australia-malabar-exercise-5171940/;
Abhijit Singh, ‘India remains cautious about the “Quad”’, The Interpreter, 26 April 2017, https://www.lowyin-
stitute.org/the-interpreter/india-remains-cautious-about-quad.
68
Grare, India turns east.
69
Harsh V. Pant, India and Vietnam: a ‘strategic partnership’ in the making, RSIS policy brief (Singapore: S. Rajarat-
nam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, April 2018), https://www.rsis.edu.
sg/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/PB180409_-India-and-Vietnam.pdf.
70
Government of India, Ministry of External Affairs, ‘Joint statement between India and Vietnam during the
visit of Prime Minister to Vietnam’, 3 Sept. 2016, http://www.mea.gov.in/bilateral-documents.htm?dtl/27362/
Joint+Statement+between+India+and+Vietnam+during+the+visit+of+Prime+Minister+to+Vietnam.
71
Rajat Pandit, ‘Eye on China, India to train Vietnam fighter pilots’, Times of India, 6 Dec. 2016, https://timesofin-
dia.indiatimes.com/india/Eye-on-China-India-to-train-Vietnam-fighter-pilots/articleshow/55825101.cms.
72
Sandeep Unnithan, ‘Why India needs to ramp up its token training of Vietnamese submariners’, DailyO,
3 Sept. 2016, https://www.dailyo.in/politics/modi-vietnam-submarines-indian-navy-vietnames-peoples-
navy/story/1/12726.html.
73
David Brewster, ‘India’s security partnership with Singapore’, The Pacific Review 22: 5, 2009, p. 606.
87

Rajesh Rajagopalan
As for India’s relationship with Indonesia, until recently—although the two
countries did sign a strategic partnership agreement in 2005, and the Indonesian
navy had repeatedly participated in multilateral naval exercises in India—it could
not really be characterized as close. But Indonesia’s increasing anxiety about
China’s behaviour in the South China Sea has paralleled Indian concerns and
laid the foundation for a more intense security relationship. In 2018, when Prime
Minister Modi visited Indonesia, the original strategic partnership agreement was
upgraded to a ‘comprehensive strategic partnership’ and the two countries agreed
to enhance their defence cooperation. As Modi put it, their ‘worries are similar.
It is our duty to ensure maritime security and safety.’74 The visit also led to the
signing of a joint agreement to develop the strategically vital Indonesian port of

Sabang, which sits astride the Malacca Strait.75
There can be little doubt that there is a pattern to India’s efforts in south-east
Asia. While its execution is certainly open to criticism, New Delhi’s broad strategic
intention to seek partnership with countries in the region that have expressed
similar concerns about China’s behaviour, and the repeated stress on common
themes (such as freedom of navigation and peaceful settlement of disputes
according to international law and UNCLOS—code phrases that target China),
suggest a clear commitment to form a united front to balance China in the region.
Internal balancing
The balancing component of India’s China strategy includes both internal and
external balancing elements. The Indo-Pacific strategy is only a subset of the
larger strategy and it is primarily focused on external balancing, as outlined above,
but there is an internal balancing component also. This includes setting up a new
army strike corps facing China, building up Indian infrastructure along the joint
border, repositioning Indian air power to this border and building up India’s
nuclear and space deterrence capabilities. All of these efforts are facing difficulties:
the army strike corps has been reduced because of its cost, infrastructure-building
has been delayed because of bureaucratic incompetence, the Indian Air Force’s
squadron strength has declined by a quarter because of delays in acquisition, and
two decades after the nuclear tests India still does not have a long-range missile
that can cover all of China from any part of its own territory.
India is also seeking to build up its naval power. It has bought a number of
advanced P-8I naval surveillance aircraft from the United States, and there are
plans to increase the numbers of both aircraft carriers and submarines. These plans
are running well behind schedule because of the general difficulties that afflict all
Indian defence acquisitions; but India’s naval modernization faces a more funda-
mental problem too. Allocation of resources for the Indian Navy not only remains
74
‘India, Indonesia elevate ties’, The Hindu, 31 May 2018, https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/india-
indonesia-elevate-ties/article24039667.ece.
75
Jayanth Jacob, ‘India, Indonesia agree to step up defence and maritime cooperation during Modi’s visit’,
Hindustan Times, 30 May 2018, https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/india-indonesia-agree-to-step-
up-defence-and-maritime-cooperation-during-modi-visit/story-vMI9DjVMMAwHRPS7qYxkqI.html.
88

the lowest among the three military services, but has actually declined from 19 per
cent of the total military budget in 2010/11 to just 15.5 per cent in 2018/19, with
the navy’s share of capital expenditure also declining from 30 per cent to 25 per
cent over the same period.76
Reassuring China
While India’s Indo-Pacific strategy can definitely be seen to be helping to balance
China by building up security relationships and strategic partnerships all around
the Chinese periphery, New Delhi is also attempting to demonstrate to Beijing
that these efforts are not directed at China or designed to contain it. This attempt

at reassurance is consonant with India’s traditional reluctance to form or join
alliances. The enduring power of this reluctance is indicated by the difficulties
and pauses that have characterized the shift towards a closer relationship with
the United States, while variations of the concept of non-alignment still find
resonance even in the Modi government, although the term itself has been
discarded in favour of synonymous alternatives such as ‘strategic autonomy’.
Furthermore, the restraint inherent in reassurance also fits with India’s self-image
and projection as a responsible state that abides by international rules and norms,
which has been considerably bolstered by China’s behaviour in the region. There
are five specific strands to New Delhi’s reassurance strategy, of which the fifth is
of most critical importance.
First, New Delhi has made direct and repeated declarations that India has no
interest in containing China. Indian leaders have directly addressed the concern
that China may view India’s partnerships as an effort to create an anti-Chinese
alliance. For example, in his speech to the Shangri-La Dialogue in 2018, Prime
Minister Modi explicitly stated that the Indo-Pacific was not an exclusive
grouping, that it was not ‘directed against any country’, and that India’s ‘friend-
ships are not alliances of containment’.77 Some months later, India’s ambassador to
China explained that his country will work with all powers, including China, and
that the only side it took was its own.78 Such repeated disavowals of alliances and
containment echo speeches made by previous senior Indian leaders. In 2014, Vice-
President Hamid Ansari used words more or less similar to Modi’s, saying that
India did not ‘subscribe to alliance building’ or ‘believe in the logic of contain-
ment’, adding that India’s and China’s ‘common interests far outweigh our differ-
ences’.79
76
Ajai Shukla, ‘India has a grand maritime strategy, but the naval tools are missing’, Broadsword, 1 July 2018,
https://ajaishukla.blogspot.com/2018/07/india-has-grand-maritime-strategy-but.html.
77
78
‘India will pursue own interests in the Indo-Pacific: envoy’, Economic Times, 16 Nov. 2018, https://econom-
ictimes.indiatimes.com/news/defence/india-will-pursue-own-interests-in-indo-pacific-envoy/printarti-
cle/66650914.cms.
79
Government of India, Ministry of External Affairs, ‘Speech by vice-president of India on “Calibrated futurol-
ogy: India, China and the world” at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing’, 3 June 2014, https://
www.mea.gov.in/Speeches-Statements.htm?dtl/23518/speech+by+vice+president+of+india+on+calibrated+f
uturology+india+china+and+the+world+at+the+chinese+academy+of+social+sciences+beijing+june+30+2014.
89

Rajesh Rajagopalan
Second, India has invested significantly in bilateral and multilateral diplo-
macy aimed at convincing Beijing that its policy is not to attempt to join a
coalition against China or to try to contain it. Despite frequent diplomatic and
military confrontations that repeatedly derail the relationship, New Delhi has
joined a number of multilateral organizations that China dominates and favours,
such as the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), the Asian
Infrastructure Investment Bank and, most recently, the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization. It has also taken common positions with China on international
issues including climate change and freer international trade. While India has its
own interest in doing this, it has also emphasized that both countries want ‘to
further strengthen coordination and cooperation in multilateral forums including

Russia–India–China, BRICS, G-20 to jointly tackle global issues including, inter-
alia, international terrorism’.80
Third, India has also undertaken unilateral measures to convince China of its
goodwill, especially in the period following the Doklam confrontation of late
2017. Among these measures were instructions to government functionaries not to
attend a rally organized by Tibetan exiles in New Delhi to commemorate the 60th
anniversary of the failed Tibetan uprising against China.81 In addition, the Indian
government also reportedly told officials to tone down anti-China statements and
cancelled the annual ‘Asian Security Conference’ held by the Institute for Defence
Studies and Analyses, a think-tank funded by India’s Ministry of Defence, suppos-
edly because its theme was considered sensitive.
Fourth, New Delhi has constantly sought dialogue with China, despite the
periodic difficulties in the relationship. Occasionally, as in respect of India’s appli-
cation to join the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), New Delhi appeared convinced
that it had managed to change Beijing’s mind, though it was later disappointed.
Nevertheless, even after the Doklam confrontation, New Delhi sought to restore
equilibrium in the relationship through dialogue. This fits with a dominant Indian
perspective that India should seek balanced relationships with all powers.82 A
senior adviser to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party reflected the same sentiment
when he called for a multi-stakeholder approach in India’s foreign policy in early
2018, a veiled criticism of the United States.83
The fifth and most critical element is India’s apparent hesitation about the
Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (the Quad), in which it joined with Australia,
Japan and the United States. Bringing the four most powerful Indo-Pacific powers
(other than China) together has obvious security benefits. Conversely, slowing
80
Government of India, Ministry of External Affairs, ‘Q No. 53 discussion on terrorism with China and Russia’,
5 Dec. 2013, https://www.mea.gov.in/rajya-sabha.htm?dtl/22572/q+no53+discussion+on+terrorism+with+ch
ina+and+russia.
81
Amy Kazmin, ‘India orders officials to stay away from Dalai Lama rally’, Financial Times, 6 March 2018, https://
www.ft.com/content/1aa2876c-2149-11e8-a895-1ba1f72c2c11.
82
Sunil Khilnani, Rajiv Kumar, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Lt. Gen. (Retd.) Prakash Menon, Nandan Nilekani,
Srinath Raghavan, Shyam Saran and Siddharth Varadarajan, Nonalignment 2.0: a foreign and strategic policy for
India in the twenty-first century (New Delhi: Centre for Policy Research, 2012).
83
‘India needs to focus eastward: Ram Madhav’, The Hindu, 17 Jan. 2018, https://www.thehindu.com/news/
national/india-needs-to-focus-eastward/article22458036.ece.
90

down or forgoing such a joint effort could have potential negative security conse-
quences. Though India was a reluctant participant in the first Quad meeting in
2007, it was Australia that withdrew from the initiative the following year.84 But
more recently, it has become clear that India is the most reluctant of the four,
leading some analysts to call it ‘the weakest link’.85 Despite repeatedly attending
Quad meetings, India consistently avoids referring to the Quad by name, charac-
terizing them cumbersomely as India–US–Japan–Australia meetings.86 Indeed,
Indian officials persisted in this refusal to use the name even in response to an
explicit parliamentary question about the Quad.87 This reluctance to engage
positively with the Quad is potentially dangerous, because it hurts India’s security
interests and thus represents a ‘costly signal’ that increases India’s security vulner-

ability. Although the Quad is generally seen as an effort to balance China, India’s
tardiness in moving forward with it can also be seen as an effort to reassure China.
China objected to the Quad when the four countries met for the first time in 2007,
and it can be expected to object again if the Quad countries decide to strengthen
or institutionalize the group. There are, of course, a number of reasons why
India has been reticent about the Quad, including a lack of confidence about
the commitment of some of the partners, especially Australia. But there has
certainly been some disquiet in India about unnecessarily antagonizing Beijing,
even though India did take part in the revived Quad meeting in November 2017.
Indeed, once again the Indian statement about the meeting did not mention the
word ‘quadrilateral’.88 Thus, India’s efforts at reassuring China form an important
plank of its strategy towards the Indo-Pacific, though whether they will convince
Beijing is open to question.
Conclusions: is evasive balancing viable?

This combination of balancing and reassurance strategies is usually character-
ized as hedging. But, as Lim and Cooper have pointed out, ‘hedging’ is generally
a mischaracterization of the strategies that east Asian states pursue; ‘balancing
has actually been the dominant response to China’s rise’.89 India’s behaviour is a
good example: although it has attempted to adopt reassurance strategies along
with balancing, New Delhi’s primary approach to the Indo-Pacific has been to
develop a set of tools and relationships to help it counter China’s rise. India is thus
84
Tanvi Madan, ‘The rise, fall, and rebirth of the Quad’, War on the Rocks, 16 Nov. 2017, https://warontherocks.
com/2017/11/rise-fall-rebirth-quad/.
85
Derek Grossman, ‘India is the weakest link in the Quad’, Foreign Policy, 23 July 2018, https://foreignpol-
icy.com/2018/07/23/india-is-the-weakest-link-in-the-quad/; Jeff Smith, ‘India and the quad: weak link or
keystone?’, The Strategist (Australian Strategic Policy Institute), 15 Jan. 2019, https://www.aspistrategist.org.
au/india-and-the-quad-weak-link-or-keystone/.
86
Government of India, Ministry of External Affairs, ‘India–Australia–Japan–US consultations’, 7 June 2018,
https://www.mea.gov.in/press-releases.htm?dtl/29961/indiaaustraliajapanus+consultations.
87
Government of India, Ministry of External Affairs, ‘Question no. 5430 India–Australia relationship’, 28 March
2018, https://www.mea.gov.in/lok-sabha.htm?dtl/30061/question+no5430+indiaaustralia+relationship.
88
Government of India, Ministry of External Affairs, ‘India–Australia–Japan–US consultations on the Indo-
Pacific’, 12 Nov. 2017, http://mea.gov.in/press-releases.htm?dtl/29110/IndiaAustraliaJapanUS_Consulta-
tions_on_IndoPacific_November_12_2017.
89
Lim and Cooper, ‘Reassessing hedging’, p. 697.
91

Rajesh Rajagopalan
balancing, not hedging, because hedging would require it either to take an equidis-
tant position between the United States and China or at least to stop balancing
against China. Like many other states in the region, India is doing neither. What
it is doing is balancing China while also attempting to reassure it. Reassurance,
in this mix, is designed more as a complementary approach to mask balancing
efforts than as an alternative to balancing. Thus, though India has periodically
delayed building a balancing coalition in the region, it has not actually stopped
doing so, far less changed tack. The question, then, is whether this combination
of balancing and reassurance will work.
The short answer is no. Although there has been considerable debate about the
logic and utility of reassurance strategies in international politics, there is little

empirical evidence that states actually attempt such strategies, because of the risks
involved; and half-hearted reassurance strategies are unlikely to help either in
reassuring potential adversaries or in balancing them effectively.
This is a major problem that also highlights the challenge to India’s overall
Indo-Pacific strategy. The dilemma facing India—and other states in the region—
is simple. China will take such reassurance measures seriously only if they repre-
sent significant security sacrifices, including walking away from partnerships with
other powers such as the United States. But this is potentially far too dangerous
a step for India to take, making it unlikely. And the measures that India will
be willing to take—such as a rhetorical commitment to non-hostility through
speeches and bilateral dialogues, and going slow on building partnerships such
as the Quad—will be insufficient to convince Beijing that India is not balancing.
Even steps such as slowing down the Quad have potential security disadvantages,
and so this is likely to be the biggest step India will take. To restate the point,
this is one reason why reassurance strategies rarely work in international politics:
states are generally unwilling to accept vulnerability in order to demonstrate
non-hostility because of the risks involved in an ungoverned international order.
This will prove to be a stumbling block in India’s Indo-Pacific strategy. At the
same time, India’s reassurance efforts are likely to reduce its credibility with its
new partners, potentially undermining its efforts to effectively balance China.
Some of these potential allies could attempt to imitate India’s strategy, or even
shift fully to bandwagon with China, damaging seriously any effort to balance it.
Though it is too early to provide anything more than a cursory assessment
of how India’s evasive balancing strategy has worked—in particular whether,
as predicted by the theory, it will fail in its attempts to reassure China—early
evidence does support the expectations outlined above. India seeks to reassure
Beijing that—as it has stated publicly and at the highest levels—it is not engaged
in an effort with other states to balance or contain China. If China were reassured
that India’s partnerships did not represent an effort to contain it, we should find
some evidence that China no longer opposes such partnerships. There is no such
evidence. China continues to be suspicious of the Quad, which includes India,
stating that ‘politicized and exclusionary’ groupings should be avoided.90 Though
90
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, ‘Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang’s
92

the general state of bilateral relations may not be a good indicator of the efficacy
of India’s reassurance strategy, it is worth noting that there has been a general
improvement in bilateral ties since the Wuhan summit in 2018. Still, there has been
no change in China’s policies on a number of issues that are problematic for India,
such as its support for Pakistan, its commitment to the China–Pakistan Economic
Corridor (which runs through Indian-claimed Kashmir), and its opposition to
Indian membership of the NSG.
India’s Indo-Pacific strategy evolved out of its earlier desire to build links
with states to the east to support its pursuit of economic prosperity. As the
challenge presented by China’s rise became greater, this focus on the east—or the
Indo-Pacific—both expanded and changed priorities, so that it is now concen-

trated much more on security than on trade and investment. But India’s evasive
balancing efforts in the Indo-Pacific attempt to combine two incompatible strands:
preventing China from dominating the region by building balancing coalitions,
while also persuading Beijing that India is not actually attempting to balance
China. In essence, India is asking China to believe what New Delhi says rather
than what Beijing can see. This strategy can neither balance China adequately nor
accommodate it sufficiently. The likely end result is that India will neither please
China, nor satisfy its own new partners, nor achieve a stable, non-hegemonic
Indo-Pacific.
regular press conference on November 13, 2017’, https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/xwfw_665399/

s2510_665401/2511_665403/t1510216.shtml.
93

Evasive Balncing

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Evasive balancing:

India’s unviable Indo-Pacific strategy

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International Affairs 96: 1 (2020) 75–93; doi: 10.1093/ia/iiz224

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From ‘Look East’ to ‘Act East’ to ‘Indo-Pacific’

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India’s conception of the Indo-Pacific

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Theorizing India’s approach to the Indo-Pacific

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Balancing and reassurance in India’s Indo-Pacific strategy

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India’s American partnership

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Partnership with major Asian powers: Japan and Australia

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South-east Asian powers: Vietnam, Singapore, Indonesia

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Conclusions: is evasive balancing viable?

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regular press conference on November 13, 2017’, https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/xwfw_665399/

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