India-Japan Relations : Prime Minister Shinzo Abe�s Visit

Foreign and security policy of India, like that of any other country, is shaped and influenced by geopolitics, geo-economics, geography, history, cultural parameters, and most importantly vital national interests. The changing economic, military and strategic environment in and around South Asia, South East Asia and East Asia has had its repercussions with India trying to reach out for new avenues for exercising greater mobility and flexibility in the regional sector for the conduct of its foreign policy including in its ‘Act East’ policy. All of these aspects including related security issues had its impact on India-Japan relations with profound policy ramifications.  

After the mutual warmth in the 1950s during the Nehru era, India and Japan drifted apart during the Cold War. Shinzo Abe during his first landmark August 2007 visit to India, however, traced his personal affinity towards India to the sentimental visit of his grandfather and prime minister of Japan, Nobusuke Kishi, who arrived in India during 1957 to a friendly reception from Jawaharlal Nehru. In recent times, this was followed with the meeting in Tokyo on 1 September 2014 between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and subsequently Abe’s visit to India from 11-13 December 2015, pledging to realize the full potential of India-Japan Strategic and Global Partnership for continuing progress and prosperity for their respective people and for advancing peace, stability and prosperity in Asia and the world. Elevating the relationship to a Special Strategic and Global Partnership, they called their meeting the dawn of a new era in India-Japan relations. Both sides also agreed to build complementary skills and resources to build a strong partnership to promote economic and social development, capacity-building and infrastructure development in other interested countries and regions.

In this context, the high profile memorandum of cooperation on the hi-speed 12 billion US dollars export credit of the Shinkansen Bullet Train system between Mumbai and Ahmedabad to be financed with a very minimal yen loan of 0.1 percent has been signed. Japan will create facilities to support Japanese companies investing in India to further Prime Minister Modi’s Make in India objective. The two sides also voiced support for 13 big infrastructure projects to be financed by ODA loans such as Metro projects both in Chennai and Ahmedabad and road network connectivity in India’s Northeastern states.

The rise of China in recent years has compelled Japan to re-evaluate its own long-term options in Asia that many expect would inevitably become Sino-centric for maximising Chinese national interests. The focus of both New Delhi and Tokyo is on widening the window of flexibility and opportunity in their conduct of foreign and security policies in Asia rather than seek an impossible containment of China that would provide no benefits to any party either in the short term or long term. With China's assertive and masculine foreign policy challenge in the East and South China Seas in mind, Modi and Abe have underscored certain principles in sync with the norms of international law: the importance of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, peaceful resolution of disputes without use or threat of use of force as stated under UN charter, freedom of navigation and overflight and unimpeded lawful commerce in international waters. Modi and Abe have called upon all littoral states in the region to avoid unilateral and provocative actions in the South China Sea that could exacerbate tensions in South Asia, South East Asia and East Asia.

The two countries welcomed the significant progress in negotiations on the Agreement for Cooperation in the Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy and subsequently sealed a deal. The legal and technical work that remains to be done essentially relates to Japan's internal bureaucratic procedures and certain technical and legal issues. They directed their officials to further accelerate the negotiations with a view to concluding the Agreement at an early date, and strengthen the two countries' partnership in non-proliferation and nuclear safety. While Prime Minister Abe commended India's efforts in the field of non-proliferation including the affirmation that goods and technologies transferred from Japan would not be used for delivery systems for WMD, Prime Minister Modi appreciated the decision of the Government of Japan to remove six of India's space and defence-related entities from Japan's Foreign End User List. They looked forward to enhanced trade and collaboration in high technology.
Both sides also  affirmed their commitment to work together for India to become a full member in the four international export control regimes: Nuclear Suppliers Group, Missile Technology Control Regime, Wassenaar Arrangement and Australia Group, with the aim of strengthening the international non-proliferation efforts.

As Asia, the largest continent, undergoes major transformation in terms of power configurations, India and Japan are acutely aware of the need for political and security cooperation between the two countries for ensuring order, stability and equilibrium among the region’s great powers. Both Modi and Abe pledged to work together to strengthen connectivity between SAARC and ASEAN. Both India and Japan also affirmed the promotion of political dialogue including Japan-India-U.S. trilateral cooperation, and security cooperation such as joint maritime exercises and continuation of 2+2 dialogue, a formal bilateral framework between their foreign and defence ministers. They also discussed several important bilateral as well as regional and global issues. In view of economic opportunities and geo-strategic compulsions between India and Japan, one hopes that under Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s stewardship and that of India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the same momentum would be carried forward in 2016 and beyond toward a new paradigm of mutual benefit on a win-win proposition. 

Views expressed by the Author are personal.