Conceptualizing Strategic Partnerships (original) (raw)

India and Japan: Assessing the Strategic Partnership

India and Japan: Assessing the Strategic Partnership, 2018

This volume focuses on the rapidly expanding strategic relationship between India and Japan, expanding on the hitherto under-analyzed concept of “strategic partnership,” tracing the history of the interaction, and gauging its current and future trajectories. The rise of China and its challenge to U.S. dominance of the global system is the setting in which the partnership has assumed a major profile, incorporating both defence and economic cooperation on an unprecedented scale. The increasing congruence of Indian and Japanese interests is juxtaposed with the inherent limitations of the partnership to portray a complex picture of a kind of strategic relationship that has become a staple of contemporary international politics.

Framework for Indo-Japanese Strategic Partnership and Cooperation

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India and Japan: Exploring Strategic Potentials Focus

2010

The strategic environment of the world, particularly in Asia, is in a state of dramatic flux. The overwhelming economic and military presence of the United States in Asia is on the wane. China is a rising power, both economically and militarily, and its power projection capabilities are causing concern amongst its neighbours. Though the United States is a declining power, China is not the logical successor, not at least in the near term. These developments have led to realignment of power equations between countries in Asia. In this unfolding strategic landscape, India and Japan, two important players in Asia, are exploring the strategic dimension of their relationships. While growth momentum in the economic domain is not at the desired level, the institutional political structure provides the platform for honing the potentials to their mutual benefits. As a result, a great deal of commonalities is now visible in strengthening bilateral ties in political, economic and security field...

From Condemnation to Strategic Partnership: Japan's Changing View of India (1998-2007)

Japan's strong response to India's nuclear testing in May 1998 sent the bilateral relationship to its lowest point in the postwar period. Loud condemnation, nationally and internationally, and the imposition of economic and diplomatic sanctions by Japan against India, produced a bumpy relationship through the late 1990s. Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori's visit to India in August 2000 was a lubricant for smoothing relations considerably and set the precedent for visits to India by his successors Junichiro Koizumi (2001-2006) and Shinzo Abe (2006-2007). All three prime ministers preceding the current Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda offered firm hands of friendship to India, with 2007 marking a bilateral Year of Friendship. The Japanese leaders sought to strengthen bilateral ties through new initiatives and programmes ranging from economic and cultural linkages to defence and security. What, then, explains Japan's new-found interest in India, especially after Tokyo's highly critical attitude towards India in the late 1990s? Both external and internal factors have inclined Japan to India. Externally, the China factor-China's rapid rise to a nation of great economic and politico-strategic strength-is most dominant in Japan's strategic thinking. In this context, Tokyo perceives India as a strategically valuable counterbalance to China. Even the business community in Japan that regarded India as a basket case, as far as commercial prospects were concerned, is now giving much more attention to India, particularly after public attacks on Japanese businesses in China in 2005 and a more fertile economic climate in India after market-opening reforms. Importantly, since the United States remains Japan's key security ally and major economic partner, Washington's moves to forge stronger politico-security ties with India, particularly evident from the early 2000s, implicitly sanction Japan's strategic relations with India. investment even in smaller Asian countries such as Vietnam, not to mention China. Yet both sides are aware that more can be done in these areas and in recent years both sides have introduced ideas and plans including for a bilateral free trade agreement. Joint study groups and think tanks have produced several reports for the two national governments, recommending steps to improve economic and other bilateral ties. Links at the grassroots level, such as people-to-people exchanges, sister-city programmes, and ties between educational and scientific institutions have also been slow to develop, despite Japan's strong grassroots activism in many Asian countries. The deficit is being tackled at different levels. Now government organisations, think tanks, public opinion makers and media in Japan favour greater engagement with India. Furthermore, the growing Indian community in Japan, especially newcomers such as IT engineers, is also playing a role in enhancing India's image in Japan and building bridges between the two nations. Japanese official perception of India's strategic importance to Japan and the consequent new momentum in the two nations' bilateral relationship are likely to continue no matter who heads government in Japan, given developments now under way on the Asia Pacific region's geo-strategic landscape. Changes in government and political leaders in either country may slow the pace of development. However, it is unlikely that the current move towards a closer embrace strategically and economically will be reversed, as Japanese and Indian official recognition of their shared aspirations and the potential benefit of closer ties is mutual.

Modi’s India and Japan: nested strategic partnerships

International Politics, 2021

The three pillars of India's foreign policy strategy under an overarching preference for 'strategic autonomy' are security, economic development, and status. Japan plays a significant part with respect to all three. We employ an analytical framework that assesses how Narendra Modi, in line with a trend set in motion by his predecessors, has attempted to build the India-Japan partnership through a set of nested strategic partnerships: bilateral (India-Japan), trilateral (India-Japan-United States) and quadrilateral (India-Japan-United States-Australia). We examine the extent to which Modi has contributed to the strengthening of each of these partnerships with respect to institutionalisation, security, economic interaction and status. Our findings show the degree of continuity or change wrought by Modi in each case and the reasons for this. We conclude that Modi's transformative impact has been limited, though he has been able to take two of the three strategic partnerships forward to a significant extent.

Poised for Partnership: Deepening India-Japan Relations in the Asian Century

2016

The growing strategic partnership between India and Japan is one of the most important geopolitical developments of the twenty-first century. This volume brings together a cross-generational group of scholars and analysts from both countries to study four key areas of bilateral cooperation: economics, energy and climate change, security, and global governance. The specific issues covered in the book include: trade, investment, energy security, renewable energy, maritime security, peacekeeping, multilateral institutional reform, nuclear non-proliferation, and the rise of China. The contributors to the volume discuss their respective countries’ interests, how successful their country has been in achieving them, the obstacles to deeper bilateral cooperation, and concrete policies that both sides can undertake to impart vitality and longevity to their partnership. At present, there is a dearth of policy-relevant scholarly literature on India–Japan relations. This volume comprehensively fills this niche at a particularly opportune moment, when New Delhi and Tokyo have signalled their intention to significantly increase bilateral cooperation.

India and Japan: Growing Partnership and Opportunities for Co-operation

This e-book is a compilation of the papers presented by the speakers during a two-day International Conference, curated around the theme ‘India and Japan: Growing Partnership and Opportunities for Cooperation’, organised by CPPR – Centre for Strategic Studies, Kochi in collaboration with the Consulate-General of Japan in Chennai on February 26–27, 2019 at Riviera Suites in Kochi. It consists of eight chapters providing a comprehensive outlook on India-Japan relations.

Japan's strategic outreach to India and the prospects of a Japan–India alliance

International Affairs, 2018

Largely driven by Japan's strategic outreach to India, Tokyo and Delhi have rapidly improved relations and enhanced their strategic cooperation since the turn of the century. Today, developments in bilateral relations are moving faster than journalists and analysts can track, leading many observers to posit the emergence of Japan–India alliance. This article analyses the reasons behind Japan's strategic outreach to India and explores the conditions under which an alliance—understood as a formal association of states for the use (or nonuse) of military force in specific circumstances against a third party—might emerge between the two countries. It draws on existing scholarship on interstate alliances to examine the possible objectives, contours, operation and impact of such an alliance. It concludes that there are major obstacles in the way of an alliance forming and operating successfully. These include India's commitment to strategic autonomy; the incentives for limiting commitments and ‘buck-passing’ within a putative alliance; Chinese opposition and Beijing's ability to economically punish both parties; and differing views on US hegemony, world order and future Great Power status. Ultimately, Japan and India are better off being aligned—as they currently are—and not allied.

Evolution of Strategic Relation: Changing Dynamics of India-Japan Relations

The paper is a review of the book, Changing Dynamics of India-Japan Relations: Buddhism to Special Strategic Partnership (Pentagon Press, 2017) authored by Shamshad Ahmad Khan. The book mainly focuses on deepening Japan-India relations in the fields cultural, political, economic and security, especially maritime security, trade as well as energy. It pays special attention to the recent Nuclear Deal between Japan and India. Further, the book extensively examines the China factor in Japan-India’s thriving relation. Undoubtedly, cultural and religious linkages have played an important role in fostering the bilateral relations even when there were no stronger political and economic relations between the two Asian nations. The author attempts to trace these connections, in the opening chapter, giving an overall aspect of India-Japan relations.

India's Foreign Policy towards Japan: Special Partnership amid Regional Transformation

Ritsumeikan Journal of Asia Pacific Studies, 2020

India and Japan have upgraded their cordial relations to a special strategic partnership. The deepening of this relation is particularly evident since 2014, when Narendra Modi was sworn in as the Prime Minister of India, thus leading the nation to embark on a new journey of consolidating regional influence and establishing itself as a regional power amid the rise of China and regional transformations. India is very keen on furthering the special partnership with Japan, which not only allows Indian presence in regional strategic and security architecture, but also does not hinder the Indian autonomy. This paper, through the analysis of India's Japan strategy, security and infrastructure agreements, especially since 2014, seeks to address how India's foreign policy towards Japan has undergone changes to allow for India's greater role in Asia and what factors have led to these changes in India's Japan policy. The paper argues that realist perspective of balance of power in the backdrop of the rise of China as well as constructivist perspective of India's principle of nonalignment (despite strategic friendships), have been the base of India's Japan policy under Modi government, to pursue and promote greater Indian presence in geo-political and geo-strategic spheres. The paper analyses the India-Japan partnership as a response to emerging regional security challenges, explores the prospects of the partnership and charts the course of changing Indian diplomacy towards Japan.