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US and India: A dangerous
alliance
By Conn Hallinan
(Posted with permission from Foreign
Policy in Focus)
In the wake of the
Iraq War, growing tensions with Iran, and a possible
confrontation with North Korea, it would be easy to miss
the formation of yet another Washington think tank. But
the freshly minted US-India Institute for Strategic
Policy is an organization to watch and one that may help
reveal the next target of American power: containing
China.
The institute, closely aligned with the
ultra-conservative Center for Security Policy, is the
outcome of a series of quiet meetings and low-profile
joint military operations between the US and the
government of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee,
dominated by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata
Party (BJP).
In May of last year, Douglas Feith,
Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, and one of the
most hawkish members of Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld's inner circle, hosted a meeting of the
US-India Defense Policy Group to map out joint defense
strategies for the two countries. These included
planning joint naval patrols of the strategic Malacca
Strait, workshops on ballistic missile defense, and
cooperation in defense technology. While the goal,
according to conference documents, was to build
"stability and security in Asia and beyond", according
to P R Chari of the New Delhi-based Institute of Peace
and Conflict Studies, "stabilization" is a code: "What
they really mean is how to deal with China."
China is certainly on the minds of
administration-linked think tanks. As Lloyd Richardson
of the Hudson Institute told the Financial Times, India
has the "economic and military strength to counter the
adverse effects of China's rise as a regional and world
power. India is the most overlooked of our potential
allies in a strategy to contain China."
That
analysis was paralleled in a recent, classified US
Department of Defense document revealed by Jane's
Foreign Report. The document argues that "China
represents the most significant threat to both
countries' [India and the US] security in the future as
an economic and military competitor." The document also
quoted an unnamed US admiral as saying that both the US
and India view China as a strategic threat "though we do
not discuss this publicly". The document goes on to
observe that US relations with its "traditional" allies
in Asia - South Korea and Japan - have become "fragile"
and concludes that "India should emerge as a vital
component of US strategy".
Military ties between
the two nations have blossomed, culminating in the
recent Malabar IV exercises, which coordinated the
efforts of Indian and US battle groups, including
cruisers, destroyers, frigates, submarines, aircraft and
several thousand personal. The Indian navy has launched
a 30-year program to construct a fleet capable of
projecting power into the South China Sea. According to
the Financial Times, India plans to parlay its military
cooperation with the US into beefing up its arms
industry and supplementing China as a major regional
arms supplier.
Relations between the two nations
have been tense since India lost a 1962 border war with
China, and the Vajpayee government regularly accuses
China of aiding Pakistan's nuclear weapons program.
"Reliable and widespread reports of Chinese nuclear and
missile proliferation to Pakistan cause deep concern,"
Indian Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha said in January,
adding that he was disappointed "over the pace of
improvement in the relationship between India and
China".
That relationship is not likely to
improve if the Chinese think that the Indians are
ganging up with the White House to "contain" China.
Almost as soon as the Bush administration took office,
it altered China's status from "strategic partner" under
Bill Clinton to "strategic competitor". The
administration's US-China Security Review Commission
argued that China is "in direct competition with us for
influence in Asia and beyond" and that in "the worst
case this could lead to war". When President George W
Bush threatened North Korea with nuclear weapons last
year, he leveled the same threat at China in the advent
of a China-Taiwan war.
The administration lifted
sanctions against India for its 1998 violation of the
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and resumed arms sales.
Even the White House's choice for ambassador to India,
Robert Blackwell, must have set off alarm bells in
Beijing. Blackwell was a member of the Vulcans -
candidate George W Bush's team of foreign policy
advisers - most of whom opposed the Anti-Ballistic
Missile Treaty (ABM) and supported deployment of an ABM
system. The Chinese have long felt the ABM system now
being assembled in Alaska is aimed at them.
Joining up with the Bush administration's
strategy to "contain" China may not be a path India
wants to follow. China is indeed a growing power in
Asia, with the sixth-largest economy in the world. But
there is no evidence it is particularly aggressive. It
has certainly played a peacemaker role on the Korean
peninsula.
And military competition with China
will be painful for the average Indian. India spends $14
billion a year on its military, while half of its
children are malnourished, and 350 million people go to
bed hungry. One third of India's one billion people are
illiterate, and the country spends only 1.9 percent of
its Gross Domestic Product on education, about half of
what most East Asian countries spend.
The
burdens of poverty and illiteracy are likely to be far
more destabilizing to India than Chinese influence in
Asia, and India should have no illusions that a military
alliance with the US will open the aid spigots. American
foreign aid has been declining for decades, and US
economic difficulties, coupled with the Iraq War, will
undoubtedly accelerate that trend.
The burdens
of empire eventually outweigh the benefits.
Conn Hallinan
is the provost at the University
of California at Santa Cruz and a political analyst for
Foreign Policy in Focus.
(Posted with
permission from Foreign Policy in Focus)
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