India’s Prime Minister Modi navigates path between China and US on regional security

Leader takes apparent swipe at Beijing’s belt and road plan, but says Asia and the world have a better future when India and China work together

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Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi delivers a keynote speech at the 17th Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore on Friday. Photo: Xinhua

Published: 1:02pm, 2 Jun 2018Updated: 11:09pm, 2 Jun 2018

US Defence Secretary James Mattis described India as the “fulcrum” of security in the Indo-Pacific region as he travelled to an annual security conference in Singapore, attended for the first time by an Indian leader.

But if Mattis was hoping that Prime Minister Narendra Modi would use the platform to join the US, Japan and Australia – a grouping known as the Quad – in a more muscular challenge to China’s regional expansion, he was disappointed. Instead, India’s strongest leader in decades navigated carefully between the two regional military powers.

Modi studiously avoided any mention of the Quad in his speech, and he hammered the kind of protectionism currently practised by the US, both of which were sure to satisfy Chinese delegates.

“Asia and the world will have a better future when India and China work together in trust and confidence, sensitive to each other’s interests,” he told defence ministers and military officials assembled for the Shangri-La Dialogue, an event organised by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.

He did echo US appeals for “freedom of navigation, unimpeded commerce and peaceful settlement of disputes in accordance with international law.” And he attacked governments that put other nations under “impossible burdens of debt”. Both were likely references to China for its behaviour in the disputed South China Sea and its “Belt and Road Initiative” infrastructure projects – which can come courtesy of large loans – in other countries.