Nothing wrong in India leaning towards U.S. as long as it can justify it, says ex-Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale

Former Foreign Secretary of India and author of “China’s Wars: The Policy and Diplomacy Behind Its Military Coercion”, Ambassador Vijay Gokhale, on Saturday said that “there was nothing wrong in India leaning towards the United States as long as India can justify it and it is beneficial”, here at the Tagore Auditorium, Tamil Nadu Government Music Auditorium in Chennai. The event was organised Chennai International Centre.

In conversation with T.S. Tirumurti, former Permanent Representative of India to the United Nations, former Foriegn Secretary, Gokhale, said India’s first Prime Minister (Jawaharlal Nehru) never said that non-alignment to mean “not taking sides at all”

“I think at the end of the day, if you have to lean, it has to be towards the United States, because our value systems are certainly more compatible, than with China. And secondly, because if there is one of the two which is going to actually share some technology and information with you, it’s going to be from Washington and not from Beijing. But I think we have to also acknowledge that with China, there has to be a nuanced policy. It’s going to be the world’s second most powerful country, perhaps the world’s most powerful country, and we are going to take a long time to catch up to them, in any case, and they’re a neighbour,” he said.

Former Foreign Secretary Gokhale said that the Galwan conflict “completely demolished the framework for India-China relations”, resulting in breakdown of all three pillars on which it stood.

“The first pillar was that India will parallely move the boundary negotiation and other and other bilateral relations on two parallel tracks which will not influence each other. That has been blown to smithereens simply because Galwan has influenced a bilateral relationship in every other field. The second pillar was the Chinese assurance that until the boundary is settled, we will not use military coercion. And they have consistently done it over the last 10 years. And the third pillar, which was that we have enough space to grow as two major powers in the Indo-Pacific, is itself questionable because I don’t think China sees us as equal and therefore is not keen that we grow,” he said.

When Ambassador Tirumurti posed a question about the Iran war and how that has played out, Mr. Gokhale said, “China is hurting economically like how we are hurting economically. you can visibly see signs of a slowing down of the economy, not just in terms of spending in shops or in restaurants, but also in terms of property, which has plateaued. And because of falling demographics, it’s not becoming profitable any more. So, there is no doubt they are 13. But, you know, I think that the presumption that has been made by many Western scholars, that because China has done nothing, said nothing in this situation, the United States is still the unipolar power, is probably a very poor strategic judgment to arrive at.”

He added that China doesn’t exercise hegemony the way United States does – they just go and invades. “China is a much more subtle overlordship…a tributary relationship with states. What is the “Belt and Road” intiative. I’m giving you $5 billion, $15 billion, $10 billion, $8 billion. You do What I say, and you acknowledge my interest, that is Chinese hegemony,” he said.