India contradicts US, says no parallel between Russian military build-up around Ukraine and China’s aggression in Indo-Pacific

Even as the United States has been trying to draw a parallel between China's belligerence against India and other nations in the Indo-Pacific region and Russia's military build-up around Ukraine, New Delhi has rejected the argument, saying the situations in the two regions have not been “analogous”.

“I don’t think the situations in the Indo-Pacific and transatlantic are really analogous,” External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday.

President Joe Biden’s administration has been seeking India’s support in opposing Russia’s military build-up against Ukraine. New Delhi, however, has been resisting the pressure from the United States, refusing to align with the western nations against Russia, which has been a “long-standing and time-tested friend of India”.

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Jaishankar said that the security challenges in the Indo-Pacific region were distinct from the ones in Europe.

“Certainly the assumption in your question that somehow there is a trade-off and one country does it in the Pacific and so in return you do something else, I don’t think that’s the way international relations work,” the External Affairs Minister said.

He was asked if the Government of India maintained that different principles should apply in different parts of the world. The questioner from the audience pointed out that New Delhi had spoken out vociferously against China for its aggression along its disputed boundary with India, but had refrained from siding with the United States and abstained from voting against Russia on the issue of Ukraine at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) on January 31.

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Biden’s Secretary of State Anthony Blinken had of late tacitly argued that if the international community remained mute spectator to Russia invading Ukraine, it would encourage China to step up its military aggression further in the Indo-Pacific region. He had argued in a meeting with Jaishankar as well as Marise Payne and Yoshimasa Hayashi, Foreign Ministers of Australia and Japan respectively, in Melbourne on February 11 that Russia’s military build-up had not only threatened the territorial integrity of Ukraine but also put in perils principles that one country could not simply change the borders of another by force.

“If we allow those principles to be challenged with impunity, even if it's half the world away in Europe, that will have an impact here as well. Others are watching. Others are looking to all of us to see how we respond,” Blinken had said at a joint news conference after the meeting of the Foreign Ministers of the Quad – a coalition forged by India, Japan, Australia and the US to counter China’s belligerence in the Indo-Pacific region.

Jaishankar had shared the podium with his counterparts from the US, Australia and Japan in the news conference, but maintained silence even as Payne and Hayashi had joined Blinken in expressing concern over Russia’s military build-up on the borders of Ukraine.

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“We have quite distinct challenges, what is happening here and what is happening in the Indo-Pacific,” Jaishankar said in Munich on Saturday, rejecting the argument put forward by the US and some other western nations drawing a parallel between Russia’s military build-up around Ukraine and China’s aggression against India as well as in the South China Sea, the East China Sea and the Taiwan Strait. “In fact”, he added, “if there was a connection by that logic, you would have had a lot of European powers already taking very sharp positions in the Indo-Pacific. We didn’t see that. We haven’t seen that since 2009.”

He apparently sought to point out that the US and the rest of the western nations had not promptly and adequately responded after China stepped up its aggression and military muscle-flexing in the South China Sea since 2009.

The delicate balance New Delhi has been maintaining in its ties with Moscow and Washington D.C. came under stress after tension escalated between Russia and the US over the issue of Ukraine.

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India told the United Nations Security Council on January 31 as well as on February 17 that it was in favour of diplomatic dialogue to resolve the crisis over Ukraine. “India’s interest is in finding a solution that can provide for immediate de-escalation of tensions taking into account the legitimate security interests of all countries and aimed towards securing long-term peace and stability in the region and beyond,” T S Tirumurti, India’s permanent representative to the United Nations, told the Security Council on February 17.

The Biden Administration had last week too subtly reminded India of its publicly articulated commitment to the principles of “rules-based international order”, which, according to the US, apply not only in the Indo-Pacific but also in Europe.

India’s relations with China hit a new low over the 22-month-long military stand-off along the Line of Actual Control in eastern Ladakh. The stand-off started in April-May 2020 with the Chinese PLA amassing a large number of troops along the LAC in an apparent move to change the status quo along the disputed boundary between the two nations and push the line westward to encroach into the territory claimed by India.

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The Indian Army had also deployed additional troops to counter the Chinese Army’s move. Though protracted negotiations between the two sides resulted in the mutual withdrawal of troops from both banks of Pangong Tso (lake) and the Gogra Post last year, the stand-off could not be resolved in other places along the LAC.

Jaishankar said at the Munich Security Conference that New Delhi’s relations with Beijing were going through a “very difficult phase” as China flouted key border agreements and amassed a large number of troops along its LAC with India. The External Affairs Minister said that the situation along the boundary would determine India’s relation with China.

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