India, Quad & Value of Coalitions

Context: There is a need to shed the obsession with the non-alignment and expand India's capabilities through harnessing synergies with the like-minded countries in the form of alliances like Quad.

Issues with the joining of an alliance system

• Ideological baggage of non-alignment: India is still obsessed over keeping itself out any alliance system and reluctant to shed its obsession over non-alignment.

• The External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has affirmed that India will not join any alliance.

• India's image of an alliance is frozen at the moment when India became independent: 

• As the Western powers — the US, UK, and France —turned against the Soviet after the Second World War, a newly- independent India did not want to be tied down by alliances. 

Arguments to support India's joining of the alliances.

• Alliances are a part of statecraft: Although they have a negative connotation in our foreign policy discourse, alliances are very much part of statecraft and as old as war and peace.

• Features:

• They involve written (in a treaty) commitments to come to the defence of the other against a third party. 
• They come in multiple shapes and forms — they could be bilateral or multilateral, formal or informal and for the long-term or near term. 
• Historical Significance: They figure prominently in India's ancient strategic wisdom embodied in the Mahabharata, the Panchatantra and the Arthashastra. 
• Contemporary Relevance: Indian domestic politics is always about making and unmaking alliances — between different castes and communities.
• India has experimented with alliances in the past: 
• Pre Independence:
• During the First World War, some nationalists aligned with Imperial Germany to set up the first Indian government-in-exile in Kabul. 
• In the Second World War, Subhas Chandra Bose joined forces with Imperial Japan to set up a provisional government in Port Blair, Andaman Islands. 

• Post-Independence:
• Alliance with the three Himalayan kingdoms – Bhutan, Nepal and Sikkim.
• India has turned to the United States (US) for military support to cope with the Chinese aggression in 1962.
• India signed a security cooperation agreement with the Soviet Union in 1971 to cope with the crisis in East Pakistan. 
• India also signed a treaty of friendship with the newly-liberated Bangladesh in 1972. 

• Quad is more of an issue based-coalition rather than just an alliance against China: Formal commitments under the US alliances in the past have not resulted in reality during the war.
• E.g. Pakistan, thought its 1954 bilateral security agreement with the US was about dealing with India, but for the US it was about countering the communist aggression.
• Even within the long-standing US military alliances with Japan and the Philippines, there is much legal dilemma over what exactly is the US's obligation against Chinese aggression. 
• Alliances are not permanent and change with the context and threat: The instrumental nature of alliance makes it context-specific
• E.g. while the 1950 treaty of friendship with Nepal was designed to protect Nepal from Chinese aggression, a large section of Nepal no longer sees China as a danger.
• India's 1972 security treaty with Bangladesh was cancelled after the 1975 assassination of the nation's founder, Mujibur Rahman. 

• Example of China's flexible alliances: 

• Mao aligned with the Soviet Union after the establishment of the People's Republic in 1949 and fought the Korean War against the US during 1950-53. 
• He broke from Russia in the early 1960s and moved closer to the US in the 1970s. 
• Mao, who denounced US alliances in Asia, was happy to justify them if they were directed at Russia that he saw as a greater threat to China. 
• He also welcomed Washington's alliance with Tokyo as a useful means to prevent the return of Japanese nationalism and militarism. 
• India could learn from China in not letting the theological debates about alliances cloud its judgements about the extraordinary economic and security challenges India confronts today.

Conclusion:  An India that puts its interests above the doctrine will find coalitions like the Quad critical for its international prospects.