Has the time really come for reviving the Russia-India-China (RIC) trilateral cooperation? And if so, what are the prospects of it becoming significant in the prevailing state of international geopolitical relations?
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov thinks that such a time has come indeed!
Speaking at a security conference in Eurasia in the city of Perm on May 29, he said, “I would like to confirm our genuine interest in the earliest resumption of the work within the format of the troika — Russia, India, China — which was established many years ago on the initiative of (ex-Russian prime minister) Yevgeny Primakov, and which has organised meetings more than 20 times at the ministerial level since then, not only at the level of foreign policy chiefs, but also the heads of other economic, trade and financial agencies of the three countries”.
It may be noted that the last RIC foreign ministers’ meet was held in 2021, contrary to the media reports in the last 24 hours that such trilateral talks were stalled after the Indian and Chinese troops clashed at Galwan near the Line of Actual Control(LAC) in the disputed Ladakh region in June 2020.
As a matter of fact, “the 18th Meeting of the Foreign Ministers of the Russian Federation, the Republic of India and the People’s Republic of China” was held in the digital video-conference format on 26 November 2021 under India’s chairmanship in the RIC format. The meeting took place against the backdrop of the negative impacts of the global COVID-19 pandemic.
India had taken over the chairmanship of the RIC after the last meeting of RIC Foreign Ministers in Moscow in September 2020. So it was Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, who had organised the meet and chalked out a comprehensive agenda.
That was reflected in a lengthy joint communique under 35 headings, dealing essentially with issues pertaining to fight against Covid-19 pandemic, reforms of the multilateral systems and “international hot-spot Issues” such as threats of terrorism, extremism, drug trafficking, trans-national organized crime, natural and man-made disasters, food security and climate change.
Interestingly, while the joint communique mentioned at length the then prevailing Syrian civil war, conflict in Yemen and the formation of the new transitional Presidency Council and Government of National Unity in Libya, it was scrupulously silent on border clashes between India and China the year before and the continued presence of their large troops near the LAC.
The 35th and the last paragraph of the communique read, “ Foreign Minister of the People’s Republic of China and the Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation thanked the External Affairs Minister of India for the successful organization of the RIC Foreign Ministers Meeting. The External Affairs Minister of India passed on the chairmanship in the RIC format to the Foreign Minister of the People’s Republic of China. The date and venue of the next RIC Foreign Ministers Meeting will be agreed upon through the diplomatic channels”.
Obviously, nothing much has happened since then, although the ball has been in China’s court to proceed further.
It is against this background that Russia now wants to revive the RIC format.
RIC: Russian Idea
It is important to note that it is Russia that has always championed the RIC idea. Since 2000, important Russian leaders have been advocating for what is called a strategic triangle (“trilateral cooperation”, to use the words of former Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov, the first leader to propose the idea during his visit to New Delhi in 1998) involving Russia, India, and China.
Interestingly, the concept of “the Russia-China-India triangle” is usually spoken about whenever a top Russian leader meets his Indian and Chinese counterparts either together or separately, with a short interval.
Thus, it is understandable that Lavrov has discussed it now, before Russian President Vladimir Putin’s scheduled visit to India this year. Putin hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Kremlin on May 8.
For instance, the idea of the Russia-India-China initiative was talked about on the eve of Putin’s visit to India in October 2000, a visit which followed the Russia-China summit (between Putin and the then Chinese President Jiang Zemin) in July that year in Moscow.
In 2002, the idea was again discussed during Putin’s visit to Delhi, which took place immediately after his trip to Beijing; in fact, Putin had combined his visits to China and India, landing in Delhi straight from Beijing.
In fact, it was at Putin’s behest that the first trilateral summit involving India, Russia, and China had taken place in St. Petersburg in July 2006. It was then stated that Beijing and New Delhi accepted Russia’s proposal to hold a trilateral summit because “it was beneficial to boosting the cooperation among the three countries as well as maintaining multipolarity in the world.”
Russian interests in the RIC format appear to have been influenced by three key developments. First, Russia’s inability to impede the eastward expansion of NATO and its frustration over NATO’s unilateral military actions in the last few decades, beginning in Kosovo in 1999. This forced Moscow to seek closer strategic understanding with China and India.
Russia also found common ground with India and China in their perception of the US’s bid for global hegemony, which was in direct conflict with their preference for a “multipolar world.”
The second reason from the Russian point of view is that the three countries have had problems with Islamic militants. India fights border problems every day against radical Islamic fighters infiltrating from Pakistan into Kashmir.
Moscow is concerned about the growth of Islamic fundamentalism in the five Central Asian Republics of the former Soviet Union (which Russia still sees as its sphere of influence). China’s problem with Islamic guerrillas focuses on the Muslim Uighar separatists in Xinjiang, an area of China rich in mineral resources.
The third common interest is the arms trade. Until recently, China and India accounted for nearly 70 percent of Russia’s arms exports. But the problem is that at times, both India and China demand the same weapon systems with similar features.
However, India had always enjoyed a special status as a major importer of Russian arms. Russia sent weapons of greater value and substance, weapons that were not only the latest but also those that had not even been commissioned into the Russian armed forces.
However, things seem to be changing, of late, given China’s emergence as the biggest supporter of Russia after the war in Ukraine. Obviously, India will not like China to get the same features and facilities from the Russians. It is all the more so when there is every chance of some of such weapons finding their way to Pakistan.
In this sense, by suggesting the concept of a Russia-China-India triangle, Moscow aims to somewhat appease Indian sensitivities, with the hope that the idea will alleviate mutual suspicions between Delhi and Beijing.
Will RIC See Success?
It is extremely doubtful that it will, and that, in turn, is the reason why one does not see great virtues in India showing enthusiasm about the “triangle”.
From an Indian point of view, for any triangular relationship, China has to vacate the countervailing strategic space in favor of Pakistan in South Asia by pulling back from first facilitating and then using Pakistan’s nuclear and missile build-up as leverage against India.
In other words, since China is part of the strategic nexus with Pakistan aimed at India, how can India be part of a coalition in which two of its potential antagonists are intertwined?
Secondly, given the anti-American overtone of the “triangle” concept, India may find it difficult to be associated with it, particularly when, over the last few years, Indo-US relations have witnessed unprecedented improvements, despite the Pakistan factor.
In fact, even China will not like any ganging up against the US, notwithstanding the Donald Trump factor.
All in all, the Chinese economy is heavily dependent on the American market. Trump knows it well, and some understanding on trade between the U.S. and China will emerge, sooner rather than later.
In fact, former Indian foreign secretary Kanwal Sibal, who was also Indian ambassador in Moscow, makes a lot of sense when he argues that the RIC dialogue may not have as much promise as originally anticipated because “the validity of most of the premises underlying it has been shaken”.
Now that the United States’ sole superpower status has waned, there is not as much need for Russia, India, and China to come together to balance the global power structure as there was when the RIC was mooted in the late 1990s.
Even otherwise, though Moscow advocates for a durable and long-term framework of shared interests with India and China, unlike the Indo-Russian relationship, the Sino-Russian link is controversial among influential Russian policymaking elites.
As has been pointed out in EurAsian Times on a few occasions, Russia shares a long border with China and a long history of often bitter and complex relations. Besieged with a growing problem of demographic decline, Russian elites fear that Siberia and its far east would soon be overrun by migrant Chinese labor.
This fear is genuine, as anyone familiar with Chinese history will admit that Chinese territorial claims all over Asia often followed its emigrants.
Likewise, the Russians are not comfortable with the growing Chinese activities in Central Asia, which Moscow always considers to be falling under its sphere of vital interests.
Besides, it is also felt in Russian strategic circles that China, with ex-Soviet Union scientists and engineers working in its defense facilities, is producing weapons by reverse-engineering the Russian products and exporting them in international markets, particularly in Pakistan and North Korea.
Viewed thus, the RIC process, though a grand idea, has its obvious limitations. Therefore, for India, further development of relations with Russia bilaterally will always weigh more than a trilateral relationship involving China.
- Author and veteran journalist Prakash Nanda is Chairman of the Editorial Board of the EurAsian Times and has been commenting on politics, foreign policy, and strategic affairs for nearly three decades. He is a former National Fellow of the Indian Council for Historical Research and a recipient of the Seoul Peace Prize Scholarship.
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- CONTACT: prakash.nanda (at) hotmail.com
