Forging a G7-G20 nexus: Cooperation between Japan and India
Forging a G7-G20 nexus: cooperation between Japan
and India
WRITTEN BY DR KEI KOGA AND DR KARTHIK NACHIAPPAN
15 May 2023
Possibly for the first time, Tokyo and Delhi can sync their multilateral agendas and priorities as both lead critical summits this year — the G7 summit in Hiroshima this May and the G20 summit in Delhi in September. Indeed, this juncture represents a strategic opportunity for Japan and India to further coordinate their efforts to maintain and enhance the “international order based on the rule of law”. The bilateral relationship is already strong, with Japan and India having gradually deepened ties — militarily, economically, and diplomatically — since the early 2000s.
China has become the factor that drives Japan-India relations, given Beijing’s penchant for challenging the existing international order that the US and its allies and partners have constructed since the end of the Cold War. With China’s increasing maritime presence in the East China Sea, Japan now explicitly describes China as “an unprecedented and greatest strategic challenge”. India considers China a serious strategic threat that needs to be countered to safeguard its sovereignty and territorial integrity, particularly after skirmishes across the Ladakh border in 2020. As such, there are many reasons for Japan and India to garner mutual support for maintaining and developing the existing international order.
Enduring challenges: diverging priorities between Japan and India
Still, challenges abound: Japan’s core agenda in the G7 revolves around gaining international support for condemning Russia’s ongoing aggression in Ukraine and around nuclear non-proliferation. Since Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s political hometown is Hiroshima, he has continuously and explicitly raised concerns about Russia’s nuclear threat. That said, India may not be the best partner to align with, given Delhi’s reluctance to condemn Russia as well as its non-party status to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Rather than focusing on divergences between Japan and India or between the G7 and the G20, the areas of convergence (such as energy and food security, inflation, and climate) should be turned into functional linkages.
Multilaterally, both countries are yet to realise their potential, despite mutual interests when it comes to reforming international financial institutions (IFIs), development cooperation, maritime security, peacekeeping, and trade and technological issues. This is because the two countries’ priorities have not always aligned in a timely manner, leaving both to bring different frameworks and agendas for their economic trajectories. In Japan’s case, this means backing and defending its economic status amongst other developed countries. Japan’s relative inclination to consult with the G7, rather than the G20, for its decision-making is a case in point. This attitude runs counter to India’s strategic posture, which supports international rules and frameworks that allow developing countries to protect their fledgling economic and precarious security balance. While Tokyo has provided copious amounts of financial assistance to developing countries over the decades, it remains ambivalent about its claims for equity within international organisations.
There are also limits to creating new links between the G20 and the G7. Differences exist on issues like the renewed push to design and implement industrial policies in the US and Europe, which could intensify protectionism and inflationary trends, and on digital economy issues, where the G7’s interests may clash with how developing countries like India seek to regulate digital matters.
India’s global digital agenda also veers from Tokyo’s preferred approach towards problems associated with Big Tech. Delhi has spearheaded an ambitious agenda to decouple technological innovation from that of Big Tech companies. It does so by developing and managing digital public infrastructures like the India Stack and Unified Payments Interface (UPI), where citizens interact, communicate, and transact. These infrastructures foreground a paradigm where Big Tech firms adhere to digital rules set by state authorities — not the other way around. Japan, on the other hand, has preferred a light touch approach, expecting Big Tech companies like Google, Amazon, and Meta to not undermine Japanese competitiveness, handicapping their operations. Delhi and Tokyo might not see eye-to-eye on this critical issue, but the discord need not hamper their potential to advance global development.
The initial key to link G7 and G20: functional cooperation
There are, however, areas of convergence. Given the repercussions developing countries face due to COVID-19 and the Russia-Ukraine war, both Japan and India’s renewed emphasis on the Indo-Pacific and the Global South potentially provides fertile ground for enhanced multilateral coordination between Tokyo and Delhi. India has a longstanding history and legacy of leading the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and uses the framework to tackle Global South countries’ economic issues through a flurry of G20 meetings. This approach presents a viable and historic pathway for Tokyo to help address issues like debt relief, energy and food security, climate change, and pandemic recovery.
Concretely, this would mean unlocking pools of capital to drive climate transitions and pandemic recovery; supporting institutional reforms within IFIs and Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) to increase representation; incorporating their agendas to drive economic growth and climate adaptation; pushing developed countries to eschew using export restrictions on agricultural products that further exacerbate food price inflation worldwide; and easing supply chain constraints for clean energy transitions and decarbonisation. These are priorities that developing and emerging countries generally share.
Delhi could lean on Tokyo’s leadership and support to present innovative ideas on such issues, perhaps designing sustainable initiatives that lessen debt burdens for developing countries. This will help developing countries in their attempts to revive their economies in the current economic environment. Unsustainable debt burdens, in particular, could imperil developing countries’ financial conditions as inflationary pressures persist. Through India’s leadership and Japan’s support, the issue of climate finance — left hanging at COP27 — could be realised through a fund that redirects resources to help developing countries deal with losses and damages from recurring climate disasters. Japan’s G7 initiative of driving clean energy transitions could be reinforced through India’s G20 plans.
For its part, Japan has started to pay more attention to the Global South and acknowledged the necessity to engage with it, nurturing its support for existing international rules and norms. Recent speeches made by Prime Minister Kishida indicate that Japan recognises the difference in priorities and values between advanced democracies and Global South countries, but that the multilateral frameworks need to be inclusive and aim to be “rulemaking through dialogue” as part of Japan’s diplomatic principles. At the same time, Japan’s G7 agenda includes energy and food security, climate, global health, and development that overlap with the interests of Global South countries. In this context, India’s experiences and leading role in the G20 would be helpful for Japan to meet developing and emerging countries’ demands — particularly in the Indo-Pacific region — despite diverging interests.
As the war in Ukraine poses global economic challenges, collective efforts by Tokyo and Delhi could have a profound impact. Rather than focusing on divergences between Japan and India or between the G7 and the G20, the areas of convergence (such as energy and food security, inflation, and climate) should be turned into functional linkages. The path to enhancing cooperation is not easy, but Japan and India share similar strategic concerns in the Indo-Pacific region and beyond. Precisely because their strategic ties are stronger than ever before, it is imperative to intensify consultations and policy coordination between Japan and India in leading the G7 and the G20.
DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.
Author biography
Dr Kei Koga is Associate Professor/Head of Division at the Public Policy and Global Affairs Programme, School of Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He is also a non-resident fellow at The National Bureau of Asia Research (NBR) and a research committee member at the Research Institute for Peace and Security (RIPS). His recent publications include the open access book, “Managing Great Power Politics: ASEAN, Institutional Strategy, and the South China Sea” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022).
Dr Karthik Nachiappan is a Research Fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore. His publications include “Does India Negotiate?” (Oxford University Press, 2019). Image credit: Wikimedia Commons/内閣官房内閣広報室.