Tokyo, Mar 9:
Many solutions for India and Japan nationally as well as for the region and the world lie in their activities together, especially in the Quad, External Affairs Minister Jaishankar said on Friday, asserting that the two nations are convergent on the “big picture”.
Speaking at the Nikkei Forum on the India-Japan partnership here, Jaishankar said India and Japan’s inclination and ability to respond in a more coordinated manner has also improved.
“And I say this after a long discussion yesterday with my counterpart Minister Yoko Kamikawa. We are convergent on the big picture.”
“My argument is that India-Japan ties will both draw strength from our larger activities together, especially from the Quad but also contribute to its effectiveness and its breadth,” he said.
“The bottom line is that the world is changing, the Indo-Pacific is changing, and India and Japan are changing, but in our relationship, many solutions for us nationally, as well as region and for the world lie there,” he added.
The Quad, comprising India, the US, Japan and Australia, has been focusing on practical cooperation to ensure a free and open Indo-Pacific in the backdrop of China’s increasing military muscle-flexing in the region.
Jaishankar said that in his second book ‘Why Bharat Matters’, he has approached the Japan relationship more explicitly from the perspective of the Quad.
“One question that has intrigued many observers is, why the Quad failed in 2007 but succeeded in 2017 and thereafter. The answer of course is that in 2007, none of the parties was willing to invest the necessary capital, the political capital, to make that happen,” he said.
This was because, with the possible exception of a few voices in Japan, none of them actually had a good reading of how developments in the Indo-Pacific would unfold over the next decade. “In 2017, we were clearly much wiser as a result of intervening events. But even this is not a full answer in itself,” he said.
The fact is that of the Quad members, two of them have treaty relationships with the third. India in many ways, is an outlier, he noted.
However, between 2008 and 2017, India’s bilateral relationship with the US, Japan and with Australia has changed so drastically that a Quad arrangement has become both viable and sustainable, he said.
“I have compared these three bilateral relationships in my book, and you can see that while there is a parallel time frame for improvements between India’s ties with the US and Japan, the Australian one has really played a remarkable catch-up in the last decade,” India’s top diplomat said.
India, the US and several other world powers have been talking about the need to ensure a free, open and thriving Indo-Pacific in the backdrop of China’s rising military manoeuvring in the region.
On a question whether there is any nuclear strategic planning under the Quad framework to address climate change through energy, he said: “The Quad has discussed energy and technology issues but we have not had an explicit coordinated discussion on nuclear energy per se.”
“If you look at the Quad countries, there are three of us – Japan, the US and India — we have very substantial nuclear programmes…Australia is a very big uranium provider. So, we have a common interest in it.
“But, you know in the case of Quad what I have seen since 2017, we are actually moving very, very rapidly, almost every Quad meeting every time the foreign ministers meet every time the leaders meet, more and more issues are getting added on. So, you know, maybe next time we talk, I might have a different answer than I have right now,” he said.
