Japan and India are holding their 2+2 Dialogue in New Delhi. Japanese Foreign Minister Kamikawa Yoko and Defense Minister Kihara Minoru are meeting with their Indian counterparts Subrahmanyam Jaishankar and Rajanth Singh. The two countries are set to further strengthen their military ties in a contested Indo-Pacific.
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00:00What's the significance of the Japan-India 2 plus 2 dialogue?
00:04The significance of the 2 plus 2 dialogue is that India has this particular mechanism
00:08called the 2 plus 2 with very few countries that it considers very close strategic partners.
00:13So for instance, India has this 2 plus 2, which essentially means that the foreign minister
00:17and the defense minister of one country actually interact with the foreign minister and their
00:22respective counterparts from the other country.
00:24And this mechanism India has with Japan, with the US, with Australia, with Russia, and very
00:30recently with the UK, which means that there are very few countries in the world with whom
00:34India has this kind of a mechanism.
00:37In fact, even if you look at India's ties with France, that happens to be a very important
00:41strategic partner, even there you really do not have a 2 plus 2 mechanism.
00:46So that somewhere tells you the uniqueness and the importance of this particular dialogue.
00:52What outcomes can we expect coming out of this latest 2 plus 2 dialogue?
00:57But looking specifically at the 2 plus 2, I think there are two very distinct verticals.
01:02One is, of course, about the security of the larger Indo-Pacific.
01:05We all know that India and Japan are also together in court, which is the security quadrilateral
01:11with two other partners, which is the US and Australia.
01:14But for all practical purposes, everybody knows that this is about managing, if not
01:18countering, at least managing the rise of China and the asymmetric rise of China in
01:22the Indo-Pacific.
01:23Japan has made its position on Taiwan question very clear, while India remains ambivalent.
01:29What's your view?
01:31But as far as I can say, the ambivalence that you see, you also see that India has been
01:36becoming more substantive in its outreach to Taiwan.
01:39You see that happening, which is a welcome step, of course.
01:42But at the same time, like I said, that country agnosticism remains.
01:47And I don't see that the ambivalence or the ambiguity, let's say the strategic ambiguity
01:52that India maintains on Taiwan, would disappear anytime soon, because that perhaps is a preferred
01:58way for so many partners in the region.