Mr Aaron Magunna1
1University Of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia, 2Second Cold War Observatory, Manchester, UK, 3Perth USAsia Centre, Perth, Australia
Biography:
Aaron Magunna is a PhD candidate at the University of Queensland, a Research Associate at the Second Cold War Observatory, and an Honorary Fellow at the Perth USAsia Centre. His research focuses primarily on how India and Japan respond to China–US competition by adapting their security, trade, and technology policies. His research has been published in outlets such as the Australian Journal of International Affairs, the Third World Quarterly (forthcoming), the Lowy Institute’s Interpreter, the East Asia Forum, and the Australian Outlook. Aaron worked in the think tank sector in Europe before re-entering academia.
Abstract:
As China’s economic and military presence in South Asia has grown, India has raised the provision of unilateral international development financing (IDF) and expanded IDF cooperation with the US. What factors shape the development and implementation of Indian IDF policy in the contemporary geoeconomic competition over connectivity projects in South Asia?
The existing literature predominantly conceptualizes India’s IDF as a form of economic ‘statecraft’ that seeks to balance China's strategic influence in South Asia. This literature conceptualizes the Indian state as a monolithic entity that acts coherently in the context of intensifying geopolitical tensions with China and growing China-US competition.
Conversely, this paper argues that domestic political economy dynamics decisively shape Indian IDF policy. Under Modi, Indian securocrats have established increasingly close relations with cronies that have become key actors in the BJP’s Hindu-nationalist project and support securocrats’ anti-China policy agenda, including in ways that shape India’s broader IDF policy. The paper demonstrates this by focusing on India’s general regional IDF approach before assessing India-US IDF cooperation in a port development project in Sri Lanka. In South Asia more generally, increased Indian IDF specifically facilitates the overseas expansion of cronies. In Sri Lanka, cronies also benefit from enhanced IDF cooperation with the US. This paper ultimately shows that Indian IDF policy rescales domestic state-capital relations on a regional level, demonstrating that political economy dynamics, rather than some clever form of statecraft, define Indian IDF policy in the context of intensifying geopolitical competition.