India Belongs to Global South and That's Where It Should Be, Not the Frontlines of New Cold War

Explaining India’s worldview at the Asia Society in New York on September 24, India’s external affairs minister, S. Jaishankar, showed remarkable ignorance of two key factors at the heart of the re-balancing of the global order.

First, global geopolitics is being re-shaped by two global visions that are as different as chalk and cheese. And second, the unabating technology war between the United States and China will compel nations soon to choose between the technologies of the two global visions for everything from cost-effective and secure digitisation and network-based services to transformation to artificial intelligence (AI) in economics, development and social sectors. Not doing so will create compatibility problems for consumers.

If Jaishankar had understood these two factors, he would not have responded to the moderator’s question of how India could be in the Quad as well as BRICS or the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) by saying – as the moderator subsequently paraphrased him – that India can “chew gum and walk at the same time”.

The minister added that India, like the UAE, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, had the ability to operate in different spaces. Pushed further, he spoke of the utility of Quad and of the two ‘non-Western’ groupings in such a way that the moderator pointed out his references to the former were in the future tense and to the latter in the past tense.  

Let’s understand the two factors to assess whether India’s foreign policy is making the most of the once-in-a-century opportunity of global geopolitical transformation to help the development and prosperity of its 1.4 billion people.

Now, it is universally agreed that the rise of China is the most important factor that has brought global geopolitics from the Euro-Atlantic to the Asia-Pacific. It is also known that the US has identified China as its biggest challenge in this century. What is little known is that the two global visions that have been shaped by the US’s and China’s history, experiences and strengths are dissimilar.

The US vision rests on its three strengths: (i) unmatched military power, (ii) allies and strategic partners that add to its military power, and (iii) the supremacy of the US dollar and the dollar payment system.

Second Cold War and US endgame

The US won the Cold War, enjoyed unparalleled global supremacy during the unipolar years from 1991 to 2017 when it arrogantly declared the end of history, and now believes the world has entered a second Cold War, which it is determined to win the way it won the first Cold War – based on balance-of-power politics.

Since balance-of-power politics does not work in the present multipolar world with numerous independent decision-making centres, the US hopes to bring stability using plurilateral blocks like the Quad, AUKUS and so on.

The key features of this vision are that it is US-led, based on a zero-sum game, rests on the belief that the US-led ‘rules-based order’ and its ideology of liberal democracy are the best for global stability and is supported by US allies (industrialised nations), which constitute 20% of the global population.

India, a developing nation, too supports this vision since it assesses the Quad to be its future and the Indo-Pacific (the name given to the Asia-Pacific by the Trump administration in May 2018) as, according to Jaishankar, the vindication of its Act East policy.

While the US had no experience of partnership with nations, in 2009, it had offered a G-2 (Group of Two) partnership to China, hoping that it could be integrated into the US-crafted global system. That China politely spurned the US offer was evidence that it, as a civilisational state, had an entirely different global vision in mind.

This has not been officially stated but the US’s China policy suggests two objectives: first, to prevent China from getting ahead of the US in the fourth industrial revolution through the denial of hardware and software technology by a ‘small yard and high fence’ strategy. This is because the US fears that technology will make China richer than it, thus replacing it as the global hegemon.

And second, to constrain, if not contain, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in the west Pacific Ocean and prevent it from acquiring power-projection capabilities across the Indo-Pacific region straddling two oceans – the west Pacific and the Indian Ocean.

Rival vision for world order

The other global vision is about connectivity, trade and development where two major powers – China and Russia – have aligned their plans for the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) further expanded to Greater Eurasia. Of the two major powers, China has the economic heft, technology ecosystem, manufacturing base, comprehensive mechanism and civil-military integration to match and even leapfrog the US in the fourth industrial revolution and modern war, since the software-driven new technologies are dual-use.

Unlike the US-led vision of a zero-sum game, this vision believes in a win-win game. It seeks relative or indivisible security instead of absolute security. This vision talks of equal and cooperative partnership rather than being led by the US in balance of policy politics; and it speaks of the UN-based order and UN-based international law, instead of the rules-based order created by the US.

Most importantly, this vision does not support any ideology but is driven by pragmatism. It flows from Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping’s famous saying that it does not matter whether the cat is black or white so long as it catches mice.

This vision is being pursued through various platforms like the BRI, the Digital Silk Road (DSR), the Global Development Initiative, the Global Security Initiative, the Global Civilisational Initiative and the Global AI Governance Initiative (GAIGI) underpinned by new institutions like BRICS Plus (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), the SCO, the G-20, the New Development Bank, the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank and of course the United Nations.

This rival vision has found overwhelming support among Global South nations which are aspirational, shun exploitation, seek autonomy in dealing with the world’s powers and have amongst them a few fast-growing economies. These nations spread across Eurasia, Africa, Latin America and Oceania are less developed or developing and constitute 80% of the world population.

Interestingly, while both visions talk of ASEAN’s centrality, China has annual trade approaching $1 trillion with this ten-nation group, which is much more than US-ASEAN trade. Starting 2022, it has been working on upgrading the ASEAN-China free trade area pact for e-commerce, and the transfer of technology that supports it. And then there is Africa, where 53 out of 54 nations openly support China’s vision of greater development leading to prosperity (I saw this at the 11th Beijing Xiangshan Forum from September 12 to 14).

What is the endgame that China is seeking against the US’s second Cold War notion? The ‘China Dream’ seeks to modernise China and build a global community with a shared future. The latter implies getting the first-mover advantage in the industrialisation of Global South nations by what Xi Jinping calls ‘new productive forces’, which are green industries and industrial internet (AI-supported industries).

Since the US is doing nothing of this sort, China is not competing with the US but with itself. This explains Xi’s offer of a ‘New Type of Major Power Relationship’ to the US and his exhortation to Washington that the world has enough space for the peaceful development of both nations.

The two visions thus can be summed up as the US seeking global dominance versus China wanting global deference or respect and sensitivity towards Beijing’s core and sensitive matters.

Let’s now consider Jaishankar’s pronouncement at the Asia Society that the parallel rise of India and China, each with a population of over one billion, is a complicated issue. And that Asia must be multipolar for the world to be multipolar. These statements underscore India’s belief of being in a regional geopolitical competition with China.

We should consider this exceptional assumption from various angles. Now, if the US is in a global geopolitical competition with China for which it has sought India’s support in the region, can India be big enough to compete with China on its own in the region?

Explained in strategic terms, since China’s rise has brought turbulence in global geopolitics, it means it has emerged as a geostrategic player. The world today has three geostrategic players – the US, China and Russia – which are nations with the capability, capacity and political will to influence events anywhere in the world.

To do so, geostrategic players need regional nations called geopolitical pivots to accomplish their agenda in a particular region. Thus, India, given its geography and huge population, is an excellent geopolitical pivot sought by all three geostrategic players. The US needs India to be its military bulwark in the Indian Ocean region against China, while China and Russia need India to strengthen BRICS and the SCO for quicker stability in the world order.

India, given its hard power (comprising economic, technology and military powers), which matters the most in turbulent global geopolitics, is no match to China’s hard power, and the gap between the two, for various reasons, will remain unbridgeable.

Jaishankar knows this. Since India, like the US, cannot compete with China, and cooperation with China would expose its hard power shortcomings, India has decided to not normalise relations with China. This helps create an illusion of competing with China. 

Cooperation with China as both Modi and Xi had agreed to at the 2018 Wuhan informal summit under the China-India Plus model does not suit Modi’s image. This model implied that both India and China would help smaller nations in South Asia and then elsewhere with connectivity and infrastructure building, which being China’s strengths would automatically propel it to the leadership role.

Thus, by not normalising ties with China, India gains in three ways: (i) it helps create an illusion of competition with China; (ii) the US is not displeased. Normal ties between India and China would gravely impact India-US ties; and (iii) it provides India with the opportunity to project itself as the voice or leader of Global South nations that could be the bridge between the Global North and Global South nations.

This backdrop explains India’s G-20 success at the New Delhi summit in 2023, where it managed to produce a joint statement, since all these geostrategic players need India.

What is overlooked in India’s proposition of being the bridge is the fact that the Global South, unlike the Global North, does not need a leader. The Global South’s vision is based on mutual respect and mutual support irrespective of whether a nation is as big as China or Russia or as small as Gabon in Africa.

And there is no evidence to show that Global South nations are keen to reach out to Global North nations. On the contrary, when the US rejected Chinese electric vehicles (EVs) on grounds of ‘overcapacity’, Nigeria said they wanted Chinese EVs. At the G-20 summit, India could get the African Union as the 21st member, since the forum has both Global North and South member nations.

Let’s now consider Jaishankar’s boast that India can be in both the Quad and BRICS/SCO at the same time. There are two technological issues that have not been considered by India.

The first concerns the security of cyberspace, which is critical for secure digitisation and all network-based services. In 2018, the Trump administration started the splinternet or the separation of the internet into eastern (Chinese) and western technologies. For example, before 2018, the Pacific Light Cable Network was a joint venture of high-capacity fibre optics cables between Google and Facebook with a Chinese company called Dr Peng Telecom & Media Group to lay a 13,000 km-data route between US and Hong Kong. In 2018, the Hong Kong route was dropped, and the cables instead were linked to Taiwan and the Philippines.

The splinternet picked up speed under the Biden administration, with the Quad given the responsibility of secure cyberspace and regional cyber governance issues like digital sovereignty and data flow between Quad members.

At present, in South Asia, nations onboard the BRI have submarine cables laid by Chinese companies, while India’s submarine cables have been laid by Western companies. Beyond the submarine and fibre optic cables, for wireless communications, Huawei 5G was rejected by India, but has been welcomed in BRI nations.

China hosts the world’s largest 5G network and is a global leader in 5G standards and technology. For the global penetration of 5G, China has updated the IPv6 from the earlier IPv4 to accommodate more addresses to support new technologies and applications such as AI and the Internet of Things.

Having laid 5G and updated to IPv6, which are the backbone of the industrial internet, China at the third Belt and Road Forum in October 2023 announced the GAIGI to assist Global South nations with new AI-based industries. Besides offering its AI technologies and services, China has adopted a two-prong approach: to help jointly develop and improve the scientific and technology level of BRI nations, and to help them develop their own rules, regulations and norms regarding cyberspace and industrial internet technologies.

What all this means is that in a few years, most Global South and South Asian nations will have Chinese technology standards, while India will be on Western technology standards, which will create potential challenges in e-business for India within the Global South.

The second issue concerns e-commerce between BRICS Plus nations. The BRICS Plus summit this month in Russia is expected to be an exceptional one with many announcements, especially one on a new payment system that bypasses the US dollar and US dollar payment system.

While a BRICS Plus currency will not happen anytime soon, a digital currency based on member nations’ Central Bank Digital Currency (CDBC) supported by blockchain technology is on the cards for discussion.

Xi had in October 2019 declared blockchain (a distributed ledger that creates an online database where every participant can share and authenticate information) as a strategic technology meant to play an important role in industrial transformation.

Then, in April 2020, China launched the Blockchain Services Network (BSN) to include many blockchain frameworks and make them accessible under one uniform standard on the BSN platform. This technology is likely to be considered by BRICS Plus nations. The BSN would also come handy in the DSR (offshoot of the BRI for cyberspace hardware and software connectivity), which brings advanced IT infrastructure to the BRI nations such as broadband networks, e-commerce hubs and smart cities.

As more nations join BRICS Plus and DSR reaches more nations, the BSN technology would be considered a secure and resilient vehicle for the digital economy by member nations.

India, a founding member of BRICS, would be eyed with suspicion. On the one hand, it would become increasingly difficult for India to stand on the two stools of the QUAD and the BRICS/SCO, and on the other hand, India will get strategically isolated in its neighbourhood.

It is India’s misfortune that at this critical time of great geopolitical opportunity, Indian foreign policy is being driven by jealousy of China, hatred for Pakistan and an irrepressible urge to project the prime minister as a world statesman. India should have cared for its 1.4 billion – mostly poor – people who deserve a better life, which would be possible if India was on the right side of global geopolitics and understood the criticality of peace in South Asia, where we belong.

The writer’s latest book is The Last War: How AI Will Shape India’s Final Showdown With China.