00:00:20 Serena Jung

shrinking both with respect to the conflict in Russia and Ukraine, as well as the increasing strategic competition between the US and China. Do you agree with the

00:00:29 Serena Jung

assessment that this space might be shrinking

00:00:32 Serena Jung

and how would you explain India's successful presence on the international stage now?

00:00:37 Garima Mohan

Thank you so much for your question, Serena. I think that the space is actually not shrinking for India because what we have noticed in the aftermath of Ukraine is, that one would have expected that be, given India's position of not publicly calling it an invasion.

00:00:55 Garima Mohan

Criticizing the war and maintaining some ties with Russia, one would have assumed that Europe - India engagement would have gone down, but in fact it's been the opposite. The German government just released a new paper on India where it says that despite these divergences in foreign policy, there are many, many areas where

00:01:15 Garima Mohan

Europe and India share common interests and that creates the need for more dialogue. So, in effect we've seen even more engagement from Europe towards India going forward and then obviously with the US strategy on competition with China, India plays a very key role.

00:01:31 Garima Mohan

The US sees India as an important partner, a democratic partner, important partner on technology, defense, security. They share the same views of the dynamics in the Indo Pacific. They share the same views of the challenges posed by China. In fact, there's more convergence between India and the US on this than even Europe and the US.

00:01:52 Garima Mohan

So, I think for India this is a space where a lot of partners want to come and engage with New Delhi. A lot of partners want to work with New Delhi, so it is occupying it. It realizes it's occupying central stage now. How this could change very much depends on the outcome of the US elections

00:02:09 Garima Mohan

and the new administration that comes in put this continue to see in there's a key player, would they continue to invest in India, what attitude would they have towards competition with China? I think depending on that we might see a change in dynamics. But the Europe-India partnership is on the up and up. I think this is a very clear signal. France is a very important

00:02:30 Garima Mohan

Partner, the EU in its new political guidelines with the new Commission led by Vonderleyen also mentioned the need to work with India. Specifically, it is a political guideline and direct direction to all Commissioners and now Germany releasing this very important hallmark paper. I think for the first time in sort of history of its foreign policy, it's focusing so much on India it sees

00:02:54 Garima Mohan

commonalities with it, so I do feel that there, there is a certain high. Of course, G20 made it possible for India to reengage in a way, reinvigorate its partnership with countries in the Global South, particularly Africa. And I think that's also where India will continue to

00:03:09 Garima Mohan

focus. Of course there is competition with China. There too they have Chinas influence, political economic is increasing here. So, there is of course some tension on that front where India is seeking to create space for itself and not let China be, you know, the solo player. But I think that dynamic sort of covers

00:03:30 Garima Mohan

big swaths of the world

00:03:32 Garima Mohan

so Indian foreign policy is positioning itself.

00:03:34 Serena Jung

Stay a moment on the Russia-Ukraine conflict. India's always made it clear that it would not turn its back on Russia due to the support it received during the Cold War from the Soviet Union. And as a token of gratefulness that today's Russia has inherited. But the relation is not just plain historic. India imports oil and gas and still imports

00:03:55 Serena Jung

around 60% of its arms supplies from Russia, but now we also see India investing heavily into building up an arms industry of itself. How do you assess India's investment into the defense

00:04:07 Serena Jung

industry, is it aiming at self-reliance and is it enough to de-risk from Russia?

00:04:12 Garima Mohan

It's an important point about de-risking and I think India is already doing that. In fact, almost a decade ago, India started this policy of diversifying and working with other partners, particularly with the West. When it comes to new technology

00:04:28 Garima Mohan

high tech equipment, etc.

00:04:30 Garima Mohan

But I think it is important to realize that you cannot de-risk the defense industry overnight. These platforms already in use, it takes more than a decade or so to phase them out. It's also very expensive to buy equipment from the West, whereas it has not been so in the case with Russia. Russia in fact started doing

00:04:50 Garima Mohan

coal manufacturing with India, co-development way before the West

00:04:54 Garima Mohan

now sort of comes on to the same train. So, I think it will take time for India to reduce its dependence on Russia completely. And I don't even know if that is the goal. What certainly India's goal is to not ever be dependent on one partner going forward. Therefore, we see in the call for all new tenders that European companies, American companies

00:05:15 Garima Mohan

have to work with Indian counterparts and there's a certain amount of tech transfers etc. So, I think this is the goal of being self-reliant and that India is focusing on and its defense industry but

00:05:27 Garima Mohan

I think the reason why India continues this partnership with Russia, and I often see in Europe the point of oil and gas being brought up, but the bigger question, which I think Europe is also concerned about, is Russia-China coordination and India has historically looked at Russia-China coordination very carefully.

00:05:47 Garima Mohan

In 1962, in the war with China, Moscow sided with Beijing and that really tipped the scales in China's favor. And of course, there is a chance of that happening again with the isolation that Russia

00:05:59 Garima Mohan

faces after Ukraine, Moscow is likely to be a junior partner to Beijing, and if you look at India's geography, that is a huge concern. That would change the dynamics completely. Therefore, part of Indian foreign policy is to keep Russia engaged. But it's also very important to note that Prime Minister Modi visited Ukraine and Poland recently. First time

00:06:19 Garima Mohan

an Indian Prime Minister has visited Poland in 47 years and for the very first time to Ukraine at all. And that really shows the desire of New Delhi to balance, to not be seen as simply only close to Russia. And I think the Ukraine visit was extremely important to become in the middle of a war

00:06:37 Garima Mohan

and the signal that it sends to Russia was also important and I think this sort of shows the balancing act that India is trying to create for itself. So, I don't think the relationship with Russia is as straightforward as it is often presented. Finally on oil and gas, India is 95% dependent on its needs

00:06:57 Garima Mohan

and imports of oil.

00:06:59 Garima Mohan

Som what the Indian foreign list often says is you've closed the possibility of buying from Venezuela, from Iran, from others.

00:07:06 Garima Mohan

And therefore, what they're doing is buying from Russia. Interestingly, who then buys this oil refined from India is European countries. So, I think oil markets are complex, and we have to be a bit careful about, you know, sanctions and how they work in circumvention. And it's not as easy. But I think the signal from New Delhi in the visit to Ukraine

00:07:27 Garima Mohan

was very clear that it is an important relationship with Europe and the West that it seeks to preserve and not just, you know, favoring Russia.

00:07:36 Serena Jung

And I think the signal has been taken up that India is more willing to turn towards the West, at least from Europe and the US and we have seen Russia react negatively but not like very strictly, right? It condemned the visit and engagement but not following up with hard consequences.

00:07:56 Garima Mohan

Yeah, and that has been the sort of game that Russia also has been playing for a long time. India is very, very involved in its relationship with the US, is currently the most important strategic partnership that India has.

00:08:10 Garima Mohan

Very deep defense security cooperation, logistics agreement, interoperability, joint military exercises, being part of the Quad that allows for coordination across different fronts of the government and India has done so despite Russia's opposition and China's opposition. So, I think it also goes the other way. If you were an analyst in in Russia and interviewing

00:08:33 Garima Mohan

us then you would obviously ask about why is India getting more and more closer to the West? I think Russia also needs India to balance and play its own game with China and that also has historically been the key.

00:08:46 Garima Mohan

While Russia supported India's entry in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, so there is that element at play as well.

00:08:53 Serena Jung

Let's stay a moment on the quadrilateral security dialogue with the US, Australia and Japan, and we've seen India being a reluctant partner for quite a while when it resurfaced in the late 2010s. But we have seen it double down on the forum when the forum more clearly focused on collaboration in dealing

00:09:14 Serena Jung

more with local responses like to COVID or to tech infrastructure,

00:09:18 Serena Jung

to economic resilience areas far from the military sector. On the other hand, there's the Malabar exercises that just take took place and where the navies of the four countries worked together exactly on what you just described. This interoperability and maritime cooperation, what's India's view of the two formats?

00:09:39 Garima Mohan

I think the two are very related and let me start with how India engages with the Quad. The idea that India is the weakest link of the Quad

00:09:47 Garima Mohan

has shifted dramatically, US official Kurt Campbell recently said that India is actually the pacing partner. India is currently deciding the speed at which the core countries cooperate. GMF have published a paper recently that has looked at how deeply entrenched the Quad is in the bureaucracy of the four countries, and that is also very much the case for India.

00:10:09 Garima Mohan

Currently sees the Quad as the most important grouping it is a part of because its

00:10:14 Garima Mohan

bilateral ties with Japan, Australia, US are very strong in themselves and then the four of them coming together, I think it is quite important and unsaid part of the Quad sort of an elephant in the room is obviously China. The four countries are very, very aligned on the kind of threats they see

00:10:34 Garima Mohan

coming from China and that is the reason for the cohesion.

00:10:37 Garima Mohan

The Quad, even though they don't talk about security cooperation on paper, it is deeply focused on security in the Indo Pacific. So, giving vaccines was an idea of giving alternatives to China. Investing in countries is alternatives to China. The big sort of Indo Pacific

00:10:58 Garima Mohan

Maritime Domain awareness project. They have Coast Guard training program. It’s to build resilience and capacities of smaller countries in the Pacific against threats in the maritime domain which are currently coming from China. So it is in that sense that we see Malabar as a continuation of the Quad and those security concerns.

00:11:16 Garima Mohan

Nations in Malabar is a way of the four countries to increase their interoperability and India was reluctant back in the day to get too involved in Malabar. But now it's a very, very important partner and I think with the Quad, it's the sum of its parts. So, we have to see the bilateral ties coming together. It sort of contributes to what

00:11:38 Garima Mohan

the forum is doing and therefore it is very, very important. It will remain very important to India and it definitely has a security element because at the end of the day the Quad is all about China. What brings the four partners together

00:11:51 Garima Mohan

is their common assessments of China.

00:11:54 Serena Jung

The Quad is firmly associated with the Indo Pacific region, you mentioned it already. This economic and political strategic space that has attracted so much attention from Europe and European countries and even the EU. But what about the Indian Ocean? We rarely hear about this big mass of water connecting Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia and Oceania.

00:12:16 Serena Jung

But what does India's approach look like to it in terms of security and economy?

00:12:20 Garima Mohan

Thank you for asking that question, Serena, because it's not often that you hear about the Indian Ocean. Strangely, even in Europe. So, the concept of the Indo Pacific, which countries of the region prefer to call the region as such, is because they see the Indian Ocean

00:12:36 Garima Mohan

theater and the Pacific theater as alike.

00:12:39 Garima Mohan

And they are in fact linked, because if you see the sea lines of communication going through the Indian Ocean to the Pacific, they sort of follow the same trajectory. The important choke points, all the world's trade, which is going through these regions makes it extremely important, but also because of the kinds of threats and pressures in the two theaters.

00:13:00 Garima Mohan

One is, of course, from climate change that concerns of small ocean states. It's very, very similar across both, and 2nd is through increasing Chinese presence. So, we often hear about the South China Sea, but the Indian Ocean is the next theater that we have to watch for in terms of military bases. China already has Djibouti.

00:13:20 Garima Mohan

The next one is only a matter of when and not if.

00:13:23 Garima Mohan

Also, undersea footprint is increasing from China and therefore I think we very much need to pay more attention to the Indian Ocean, particularly for Europe. This is Europe’s extended neighborhood. Massive amounts of European exports go to the dynamic economies of the Indo Pacific and they all transit through the Indian Ocean.

00:13:43 Garima Mohan

When we had the case of that ship being stuck in the canal, we saw first-hand the impact on

00:13:48 Garima Mohan

trade, and particularly on export-focused economies of Europe. So, I think this is a very important region for India. The Indian Ocean is its neighborhood and therefore the most important foreign policy priority for the country. First it sees as it as its backyard in the Indian navy plays an important role also as a first responder

00:14:09 Garima Mohan

in case of crises in the region, but also looking at the holistic, non-traditional and traditional security threats which come in this space and of course we have China's influence increasing in all of these countries in Sri Lanka, in Maldives,

00:14:24 Garima Mohan

in Bangladesh, so I think this is also an area of competition. India faces a lot of competition, which makes it open to work with external partners like France, like the US, in order to play a bigger role in ensuring the stability and security of the region.

00:14:44 Serena Jung

It's also connected to the Persian Gulf, right, connected by sea to the Middle East, and I think there's also a new trade route being developed

00:14:52 Serena Jung

by land through the India-Middle East-Europe corridor and we see just India connecting broadly. It most recently signed a free trade agreement with the EFTA states and with it with Switzerland. How fast will others follow in trade agreements that India needs to continue to grow in important sectors or to put it differently, is India

00:15:12 Serena Jung

maybe risking to squander a bit the opportunity to sign an agreement with the EU, with the UK or the US precisely because they're having this big moment in foreign relations, but that might also pass?

00:15:24 Garima Mohan

I think free trade agreements and sort of economic cooperation has been taking place in 2 tracks. 1 is the FTAs and the other is sort of economic cooperation being pushed bilaterally by the governments and for FDI, for India has, it has usually had a very careful approach to

00:15:43 Garima Mohan

FTAs, didn't even do FTAs till recently. The government has sort of put more emphasis on them, precisely realizing what you're saying, that this is an important, crucial moment for India. I think with the EU, the problem is that

00:15:57 Garima Mohan

the bureaucracy and the sort of boxes that you have to check for in FTA are so vast. The EU could not even manage to sign one with Australia. Now I think that they're sort of back on track and renegotiating. So, if you're not able to do that with a very like-minded partner like Australia.

00:16:13 Garima Mohan

Then India is going to be way, way more complicated.

00:16:17 Garima Mohan

I'm glad under the new Commission they have renamed the Commission for Trade as Trade and Economic Security and I think that has a

00:16:27 Garima Mohan

chance of increasing collaboration between EU and India. It is a multi-sectoral conversation. Rather than going through a very bureaucratic route of FTA's, this is exactly what the US is doing. For example, the US is a partner in India's semiconductor mission and is encouraging U.S. companies to invest in semiconductor

00:16:47 Garima Mohan

manufacturing, setting them up in India. Apple, for example, has electronics manufacturing in India too. So, I think this is a different way of making it easier in certain strategic sectors where India wants investment, where Western companies want to go to India.

00:17:03 Garima Mohan

To make those bits easier, and I think it would be interesting more for the EU to go sort of that route because the FTA negotiations will take God knows how long and it's not only important for India, it's also important for Europe as it is looking for more partners in Asia besides China, and companies are looking at a China plus one or,

00:17:24 Garima Mohan

you know, India, Thailand, Vietnam as manufacturing space.

00:17:28 Garima Mohan

It is also important for the EU to seize the moment and, unfortunately, I don't see that happening with the FDA because it's so bureaucratic from both sides.

00:17:37 Serena Jung

You said you don't see the strategic space shrinking for India. It's going to continue on this track.

00:17:45 Serena Jung

But if this strategic space for multi-alignment, for non-alignment or rebalancing gets significantly smaller, what will be the key issues be for India to focus on?

00:17:55 Garima Mohan

So, you mean if India is sort of currently engaged in diversifying its partnerships?

00:18:01 Serena Jung

Exactly because I mean, there's all the diversification also in arms supplies, which is also linked to tech and security concerns. So, one part might just fall away completely if it comes to a crisis or a conflict.

00:18:16 Garima Mohan

Well, I think what is important for India is that it's realized where

00:18:21 Garima Mohan

the West plays a role in its

00:18:23 Garima Mohan

overall foreign policy strategy in developing capacities, resilience, so it will definitely stay engaged. Where I think the momentum might slow down between this partnership between the US and India, Europe and India particularly, is what we touched about trade economic policy. If India is not

00:18:44 Garima Mohan

seen as the attractive market, if it's not able to attract more companies and investments, I think that will sort of slow down the momentum and there are a few other issues for example the focus on values in the US and Europe.

00:19:00 Garima Mohan

And looking at internal developments in India, that is often a sore point also for India and on the other hand, Europe and the US, I think the issue that we have seen of the Indian diaspora, particularly tensions there and there, there are few elements that can slow down the momentum.

00:19:20 Garima Mohan

But it really depends from country to country and region to region. And I do feel that if India is able to live up to the promises that it is offering to these partners, then we see this continuing. But as I mentioned earlier, if the new US government changes its approach to competition with China,

00:19:40 Garima Mohan

doesn't see it necessary to invest in India or invest more in India, that really sets the tone of the of the partnership. But I do feel that in case we have a Trump White House and more isolationist foreign policy, I feel that India will double down on working with Europe because it is looking for more and more partners, partners in the West.

00:19:58 Serena Jung

Thank you very much for this conversation. I look forward to seeing you here in Switzerland for our State of Asia Conference on November 7.

00:20:05 Garima Mohan

Looking forward, thank you.