Thread by @MD_Nalapat

'Indo-Pacific Charter gains support in India, US, Australia and Japan 🇮🇳🇺🇸🇦🇺🇯🇵'

Effective security is significant in promoting a climate for growth, and an Indo-Pacific Charter could be an effective means towards ensuring that.

The Atlantic Charter changed the world, but from 1 July 1997, when Hong Kong was handed back to Beijing by London, it became clear that the Atlanticist world was giving way to the Indo-Pacific.

The rise of China got accelerated by the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1992, and by 2012, when Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping took over, most observers were not asking whether but when China would overtake the US.

In 2020, except for romantics lost in their perpetual fantasyland, it is clear that as when there was a Soviet bloc and a US-led bloc, there is now a Sino-Russian bloc and an alternative bloc led by the US.

India is not in the China bloc, nor in the US bloc, in that its most important defence supplier is Russia, and with the commissioning of the S-400 will remain so for at least a generation.

While the Lutyens Zone is still enamoured of “non-alignment” (which now, as in the past, means an alignment between Moscow and Delhi), more and more voices—including from within policymaking levels—are calling for a reset.

What is essential for prosperity is the avoidance of a war between the US & China. Whether it be in Korean Peninsula, borders of India or Vietnam or China seas, military conflict can only be ruled out if the balance of forces is such as to deter recourse to such kinetic methods.

An Indo-Pacific Charter, a concept first discussed on @NewsX some months ago, is rapidly emerging as an option that is picking up adherents steadily, especially in the US, India, Australia and Japan.

A visitor to China in the 1980s who returns to that country now would be astonished at the transformation, while the same is not usually said of India despite the wealth of brainpower and other human resources it has been blessed with.

Indo-Pacific Charter is already engaging the attention of policymakers in Washington & Tokyo & possibly in Canberra as well, although such an innovative idea would be toxic to the Lutyens Zone, which is as good a reason as any why it should be actualised by […] PM @narendramodi.

Prime Minister Modi may need to balance the world view from within the Lutyens Zone with those of others concerned about India’s long-term security.

Full article @ i.mdnalapat.com/tsg140620

@DrSJaishankar @narendramodi_in