Differences Over ‘Quad’ May Have Cast Shadow Over Modi, Putin Meeting

New Delhi: Hours after the informal summit between Russia and India at the Black Sea resort of Sochi on Monday, the Russian side claimed Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Vladimir Putin have agreed that that there should be a ‘non-bloc’ security architecture in Asia Pacific.

In the Indian readout of the meeting, there was no mention of the two leaders agreeing to such a thing. In contemporary Russian (and Chinese) diplomatic parlance, the term ‘bloc’ is used to decry groupings that exclude them – such as the ‘Quad’ consisting of the United States, India, Japan and Australia.

According to the state-run news agency TASS, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters that both leaders agreed the security architecture of the Asia-Pacific should be open and based on “non-bloc” principles.

The Indian and Russian leaders held three hours of discussions at the Bocharov Ruchei residence of the Russian president, which was followed by a boat ride on the Black sea.

“A great deal was said about the trends we observe in the Asia-Pacific Region… Both President Putin and Prime Minister Modi were adamant a new architecture of security and cooperation in the Asia-Pacific Region should be based on non-bloc principles, openness, and equitable and indivisible security,” Lavrov said.

The official Indian account of the talks only mentioned that both sides would hold more talks over the Asia-Pacific. “They decided to intensify consultation and coordination with each other, including on the Indo-Pacific Region,” said the communique issued by the Ministry of External Affairs.

While the MEA used the “Indo” centric term for the region now favoured by Washington and New Delhi, Russia, of course, has not yet adopted the nomenclature and sticks to Asia-Pacific.

Russia questions ‘closed bloc arrangements’

In November 2017, senior officials from India, United States, Japan and Australia met in Manila after a gap of the 10 years. While the ‘Quad’ did not release a joint statement, the four countries issued separate readouts with differing priorities. However, they all agreed to strive for a “free” and “open” Indo-Pacific. Analysts have questioned the commitment of the Quad to an “open” region when their grouping excludes a major regional power like China.

A month after the Quad meeting, Lavrov was in Delhi to take part in the trilateral Russia-India-China foreign ministers meeting. “We believe that sustainable security architecture in the Asia-Pacific region cannot be achieved through closed bloc arrangements and is only possible on an open-ended collective basis building upon the principles of indivisible security, rule of international law, peaceful settlement of disputes, non-use of force or threat of force,” he said at a public lecture. In the background of the recent Quad meeting, these remarks were interpreted as signalling Russian reservations about the new grouping.

Lavrov had also claimed that India shared the Russian approach and was an active partner in discussions of regional architecture launched under the framework of the East Asia summit.

He was actually paraphrasing from the 2017 India-Russia joint statement, which had spoken of building a “open, well-balanced and inclusive security architecture in the Asia-Pacific region” in the framework of the East Asia summit.

Incidentally, the Russia-India-China joint statement issued after the meeting of the foreign ministers in December 2017 in Delhi also had very similar language about an “open and inclusive” regional architecture.

For China, ‘foam on the sea’

Moscow’s position on this topic is nearly similar to that of Beijing. Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi had warned that Beijing was opposed to “hegemony and power politics, disagree with the sphere of influence and cliques and promote the democratisation of international relations”.

In March this year, Wang had described the Quad and the ‘Indo-Pacific” as among “headline-grabbing’ strategic ideas that “dissipate” soon like the “foam on the sea’.

While India has endorsed bilateral and plurilateral documents that advocate ‘open’ and ‘inclusive’ security architecture, Indian officials have not always employed those descriptors when laying out New Delhi’s position.

“India has been working with ASEAN towards evolving regional security architecture in the Asia Pacific that hinges on emphasising the peaceful settlement of disputes, finding collaborative solutions to emerging and non-traditional challenges, and support for the centrality of ASEAN,” said external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj in a speech on Asean-India partnership last year.

However, the Delhi Declaration on the occasion of the ASEAN-India commemorative summit this year did commit to ensuring “an open, transparent, inclusive and rules-based regional architecture through existing ASEAN-led frameworks and mechanisms…”

There has been concerns and anxiety among ASEAN countries about not only the significance of the Quad, but the concept of the Indo-Pacific itself. “Frankly right now, the so-called free and open Indo-Pacific has not yet fleshed out a sufficient level of resolution to answer these questions that I’ve posed…We never sign on to anything unless we know exactly what it means,” said Singapore foreign minister Vivian Balakrishnan at a lecture earlier this month.

‘Welcomed ongoing cooperation’ in military, nuclear energy

The Indian prime minister’s visit to Sochi was his second ‘informal’ summit within a month, after his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Wuhan. The new format of an ‘informal summit’ is supposed to facilitate discussions on ‘big picture’ issues globally, as well as, on the bilateral front, without the pressure of issuing a joint statement or delivering agreements.

“They discussed the entire spectrum of our privileged strategic partnership (this is how relations between Russia and India are described). Special attention was focused on economic cooperation. They noted stable growth in bilateral trade,” Lavrov told reporters after the Modi-Putin meeting.

The MEA press release noted that both leaders had agreed to institute a Strategic Economic Dialogue between the NITI Aayog of India and the Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation. They also noted that cooperation in energy was expanding, with the first consignment of LNG from Gazprom set to arrive in India in June.

Before the summit, sources had indicated that the possible impact of US sanctions – under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) – on Indo-Russia defence cooperation could be raised during the talks.

While there was no mention of this in the MEA statement, it noted that “the two leaders reiterated the significance of longstanding partnership in the military, security and nuclear energy fields and welcomed the ongoing cooperation in these areas”.

The two leaders will be meeting again later this year for the annual summit in Delhi.