During his visit to Delhi in March, United States (US) Secretary of State Antony J Blinken will participate in the G20 foreign ministers’ meeting, discuss the India-US strategic partnership with external affairs ministers S Jaishankar, participate in a Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) foreign ministers’ meeting and then head to Raisina Dialogue, where all four Quad ministers will together address a panel for the first time, Donald Lu, assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia has said.
Lu added that India and the US have also had “serious conversations on China”, these will continue during Blinken’s visit, and the US is particularly concerned about how China’s loans to India’s neighbours, going through a debt crisis, may be used for “coercive leverage”.
At the G20 meeting, a second official said, Blinken will support India’s presidency even as US will continue to make Russia’s aggression in Ukraine a key focus and encourage all G20 partners to “redouble their calls for a just, peaceful, and lasting end to the Kremlin’s war consistent with UN Charter principles”. The US focus indicates that differences over the framing of the war in Ukraine will continue to be key obstacle in arriving at joint statements at G20 meetings, as seen at the recent finance ministers meet held in Bengaluru.
Quad and China
Briefing reporters on Blinken’s visit on Friday, Lu said that Blinken and Jaishankar will talk about the strategic partnership “but really focus on how we are working together in the Asian Quad, in the G20, what we are doing on defence cooperation, and the Initiative for Critical and Emerging Technologies that is being run out of the White House and the prime minister’s office.” The national security advisers of both countries launched ICET on January 31 in Washington DC.
Lu added that on March 3, Blinken will also participate in the Quad foreign ministers’ meeting. “What will be even more interesting is immediately following that ministerial meeting, the Secretary will participate in a panel at the Raisina Dialogue..I am not aware that they have ever had an hour-long public event where the four foreign ministers have had a chance to talk about the Quad, and to demonstrate how it is getting tangible and concrete things done in the Indo-Pacific.” These, Lu said, include humanitarian assistance, disaster relief, security in the Indo-Pacific especially in the maritime diplomacy awareness space, vaccine diplomacy, the Quad fellowship programme and the Quad’s business and investment forum. The foreign ministers’ meet comes ahead of the planned summit between Quad leaders’ in Australia this summer.
Asked if India had been reluctant to engage on the military and security dimensions of Quad, Lu pointed out that all four Asian Quad members have said clearly that Quad is not a “military alliance”. “The Quad is not, in fact, an organisation that is against any single country or group of countries. The Quad stands for trying to promote activities and values that support the free and open Indo-Pacific..that’s prosperous and supports the values that we as these four countries represent.”
On the conversations around China, including Beijing’s role in the debt crises in India’s neighbourhood, Lu said that he did not know what exactly Blinken would raise with Jaishankar in Delhi. “Maybe I could take a step back to say that we have had serious conversations about China, both before the latest scandal over this surveillance balloon but in the aftermath. And so I fully expect those conversations will continue.” HT had reported that the India was among the countries the US briefed earlier this month after discovering a Chinese surveillance balloon over its continental airspace; American intelligence has concluded that China has deployed such balloons in 40 countries.
Lu was more explicit on the debt crises and said that the US was deeply concerned about how Chinese loans in “India’s immediate neighborhood” may be used for “coercive leverage”. “And we are talking to India, talking to countries of the region about how we help countries to make their own decisions and not decisions that might be compelled by any outside partner, including China.”
G20 agenda
On the G20 element of Blinken’s visit, Raman Toloui, assistant secretary for economic and business affairs, said that the US was committed to making India’s presidency a success. “Secretary Blinken looks forward to going to Delhi as part of India’s G20 presidency year. We look forward to doing everything we can to support India’s work to make its G20 presidency a success. There is no shortage of common challenges, and we want to deepen our partnership with other G20 countries to address these challenges.”
But while dealing with health, food, energy, climate, development, and humanitarian issues, the US is set to highlight Russia’s war in Ukraine as a key theme at the G20 meeting. “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is not only itself a threat to sovereignty and territorial integrity of states – Russia’s invasion also makes so many of these critical global challenges, from food insecurity to energy insecurity, worse,” said Toloui.
He said that the US was going to engage its counterparts to “ underscore the damage that Russia’s war of aggression” had caused, and encourage all G20 partners to “redouble their calls for a just, peaceful, and lasting end to the Kremlin’s war consistent with UN Charter principles”. “We will continue to describe in clear terms what’s happening in Ukraine, explain our position, which is shared by the vast majority of members of the UN General Assembly and a supermajority of the G20.”
