Hegemonic stability in the Indo-Pacific: US-India relations and induced balancing
| Published date | 01 June 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00471178211059253 |
| Author | Jan Hornat |
| Date | 01 June 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/00471178211059253
International Relations
2023, Vol. 37(2) 324 –347
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/00471178211059253
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Hegemonic stability in the
Indo-Pacific: US-India relations
and induced balancing
Jan Hornat
Charles University
Abstract
The United States has improved relations with no other country during the Trump administration
as much as it advanced its relationship with India. US-India relations have arguably marked their
historical high points since Trump entered office and India seems to be overcoming its suspicion
of closer cooperation with the US. Given these developments, this article aims to theorize the
relationship through the hegemonic stability theory and explain US strategy toward India. We
first demonstrate why India is accepting the hegemonic standing of the US in the Indo-Pacific
and then – since balance of power politics are still a staple of policymakers’ approach to stability
in the Indo-Pacific – we introduce the notion of induced balancing to show what approach the
United States has adopted to empower India to expand its balancing capacity vis-à-vis China. The
last section of the article empirically maps the various incentives that Washington offers to New
Delhi in order to situate it in the desired position of a proxy China-balancer.
Keywords
balance of power, Donald Trump, hegemonic stability, Indo-Pacific, One Belt One Road,
US-India relations
Introduction
In 1999, reacting to the NATO air strike campaign against Yugoslavia, the prominent
Indian strategist Krishnaswamy Subrahmanyam explained India’s decision to become a
nuclear weapons state with the following words:
‘When in May 1998, India conducted the nuclear tests and justified them on the grounds that
the security environment had deteriorated, many in the world and in India raised the question
Corresponding author:
Jan Hornat, Institute of International Studies, Charles University, Pekarska 10, Prague 5 15800, Czech
Republic.
Email: jan.hornat@fsv.cuni.cz
1059253IRE0010.1177/00471178211059253International RelationsHornat
research-article2021
Article
Hornat 325
as to what precisely had happened to arrive at that conclusion. Now it must be clear to everyone
that the present international security environment is the worst since the end of World War II
[. . .] The UN has been rendered redundant since there is no balance of power in the world and
the entire industrial world, barring a ramshackle Russia, is under U.S. overlordship’.1 (emphasis
added)
Subrahmanyam’s explanation describes the Indian attempt to arrive – along with
other powers, Russia and China – at a more equal distribution of power (a ‘balance of
power’) in the post-Cold War world. Voicing strong protest in the United Nations Security
Council, China, Russia, and India seemed to be moving toward creating some form of an
anti-hegemonic coalition at the time. In June 1999, India and China established a ‘secu-
rity dialogue’ described as a response to NATO’s actions and in July 2001, China and
Russia signed a treaty of friendship and cooperation. According to US observers, such
actions showed that the powers agreed ‘to oppose jointly much of the framework for
international security that the United States is seeking to erect after the Cold War’.2 In
contrast, Russian commentators saw them as ‘an act of friendship against America’.3
Such developments at the turn of the century attested to the theoretical supposition that
weaker states balance against stronger states as they believe that systemic peace is pre-
served through a general equilibrium of power among great powers and blocs of states.
However, Indian distrust and suspicion of US power that spilled over from the Cold
War period began to dissipate as Chinese economic, political, and military clout in the
Indian Ocean Region (IOR) began to increase. As strategist Rajesh Rajagopalan claimed,
‘India needs strong partners who can not only coordinate with India to balance China’s
military power but also counter its political and economic clout in multilateral institu-
tions [. . .] Washington likely recognizes that New Delhi brings substantial capacities to
the table and that balancing China would be easier with India in the mix’.4 In 2008,
prominent Indiana analyst C. Raja Mohan stated that ‘the United States has emerged as
the single-most important external partner of the [Indian] Subcontinent’5 and the Indian
Prime Minister Modi emphasized this publicly in 2016, noting that ‘in every sector of
India’s forward march, I see the U.S. as an indispensable partner’.6 More recently, in his
2017 book, former Indian foreign secretary Shyam Saran concluded that ‘India must
seek to align with other powerful states to countervail the main adversary [China]’ – ‘this
would mean closer relations with the U.S.’7 and in an op-ed for the New York Times,
former Indian ambassador to China and foreign secretary, Vijay Gokhale, claimed that
‘The world needs balance—at the moment, no country other than the United States has
the means to ensure it. At a practical level, its leadership is indispensable’.8 Clearly, in
terms of balancing threats, the Indian foreign policy elite has arrived at the conclusion
that China presents a more imminent threat to its national interests than the United States,
even though Washington, as a not-so-benevolent hegemon, often unilaterally disrespects
the Westphalian sovereignty of weaker states (e.g. bombing of Yugoslavia, intervention
in Iraq).
We thus now see an expanding US-India partnership on many fronts. This expansion
is facilitated by Washington’s willingness to ‘bend all manner of [its domestic] rules to
accommodate India’9 and empower its balancing behavior – an approach labeled by
Ashley Tellis as ‘strategic altruism’10 – while New Delhi remains faithful to its principle
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