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SPEAKING
FREELY
The emerging Bay of
Bengal
By Donald L Berlin
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
Online feature that allows guest writers to have
their say. Please click here
if you are interested in
contributing.
The Bay of Bengal
basin, the Indian Ocean zone most ravaged by
December's tsunami, is fast becoming a more
integrated and well-defined strategic and economic
arena.
The tsunami contributed to this by
causing India to reach across the bay to help its
neighbors. Operating partly from a Unified Relief
Command in the Andaman Islands, New Delhi sent a
hospital ship and other help to Indonesia in
Operation Gambhir and a larger flotilla and
helicopters to Sri Lanka in Operation Rainbow.
Apart from this humanitarian effort, there
have been several striking economic initiatives of
late that also are knitting the region together
and blurring the boundary between South and
Southeast Asia.
Most recent were
agreements this past month among India, Bangladesh
and Myanmar affirming their intention to cooperate
in natural gas exploration and to build a gas
pipeline, the "Eastern Corridor Pipeline", from
India, through Bangladesh, to Myanmar. A parallel
India-Bangladesh press statement, an Indian quid
pro quo, affirmed New Delhi's willingness to: 1)
Allow the increased transit of commodities between
Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh through India (ie via
the strategic Siliguri Corridor); 2) Allow the
transmission of hydro-electricity from Nepal and
Bhutan through India to Bangladesh; and 3)
Undertake greater efforts to reduce the trade
imbalance (presumably through the removal of trade
barriers) between it and Bangladesh. These
agreements, if implemented, constitute a striking
advance in the normally quite sour relationship
between Dhaka and New Delhi.
These agreements come immediately
after a transportation initiative of another kind:
the first annual India-ASEAN car rally. The event,
which sent a caravan of vehicles in a drive
from Assam through Myanmar and other countries
to Indonesia's Batam island in November and December,
was intended to underscore the growing integration of
the Bay of Bengal region and the importance of
the highway complex that India is building between
Kolkata and Bangkok. So far, New Delhi has built
and maintains about 160 kilometers of road just east of the
India-Myanmar frontier. This will be followed by
Indian construction of other road segments in
Myanmar. India also has extended a US$56 million
line of credit to Myanmar to modernize the
Mandalay-Yangon railroad.
South
Asian nations also have concluded several broad
pacts with their Southeast Asian neighbors, once
again tying together the states of the Bay of
Bengal. Most recent were a number of landmark
agreements concluded between India and the 10
ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations)
countries at the 10th ASEAN summit in Vientiane in
November. Key here was a long-term plan committing
India to creating a free-trade area by 2011 with
five ASEAN members - Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia,
Thailand and Singapore - and by 2016 with the rest
- the Philippines, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and
Vietnam.
This free-trade area
agreement comes in the wake of a February 2004 free-trade
pact achieved by India and five other countries of
a group called the Bay of Bengal Initiative for
Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation
(BIMSTEC). This pact commits the three most
advanced members, India, Sri Lanka and Thailand,
to trade liberalization by 2012, with the others
following within five years.
These
multilateral economic initiatives parallel others
that are bilateral and that increasingly will
connect the South Asian and Southeast Asian
economies of the Bay of Bengal. Of equal or
greater importance, these lands also are becoming
more intertwined, for better or worse, in the
security realm.
Two main factors are
promoting this process. One is the growth of
mainly bilateral security ties. The other is a
recent increase in strategic interest, and power
projection capability, by Bay of Bengal states
near the western mouth of the Malacca Strait.
The deepening bilateral interaction, with
India usually in the lead, has been reflected in a
variety of recent developments.
Closest
to home, India recently expressed an
increased commitment to Sri Lanka's territorial
integrity. New Delhi also will soon sign a
Defense Cooperation Agreement to expand Indian
training programs for Sri Lankan troops,
strengthen intelligence sharing, and provide
defense supplies, including transport helicopters and
the refit of a Sri Lankan warship. These states
also conducted their first combined military
exercise when the Indian Coast Guard and Sri Lankan
navy met for Exercise Eksath last month.
With Myanmar, security ties were
advanced most recently when strongman Khin Nyunt, known
for his pro-China inclinations, was deposed in
October. Less than a week later, Than Shwe, head of
Myanmar's ruling military junta, visited India and
signed three agreements, including a "Memorandum
of Understanding on Cooperation in the Field of
Non-Traditional Security Issues", including
terrorism, arms smuggling, money laundering, drug
trafficking, organized crime, international
economic crime and cyber crime. The general, the
first Myanmar head of state to visit India in
several decades, also assured the Indian
leadership that Myanmar would not permit its
territory to be used by any hostile element for
harming Indian interests. Soon thereafter, India
and Myanmar launched coordinated military
operations against rebels operating along the
India-Myanmar frontier.
With Singapore, India forged a pact in 2003 in
which the two nations extended their
existing program of combined naval exercises to
encompass air- and ground-force maneuvers and to
initiate a high-level security dialogue
and intelligence exchange. Last March, the two
states conducted the first of these regular
conversations on security. They also followed through with
their first combined air exercise this past October,
and will exercise their armies together from
February to April this year in India. New Delhi also has
stated its willingness - in principle - to allow
the Singaporean air force to use Indian ranges on an
extended basis.
India also registered less
dramatic, but also significant, advances in
security ties with Thailand, Malaysia and
Indonesia - with which India initiated regular
patrols of the Six Degree Channel, the strategic
shipping route immediately west of the Malacca
Strait.
This zone is significant in that
it is here, at the western mouth of the Malacca
Strait, that the second factor is at work knitting
the region together strategically. Here, India,
Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and
Indonesia all have been strengthening their
capacities to affect military outcomes, motivated
by concerns about each other - or China - and by
anxieties about terrorism, piracy and other
transnational problems.
Concerns
about Beijing's intentions here recently increased
after Chinese President Hu Jintao said his country faces a
"Malacca dilemma" - the vulnerability of its oil
supply lines from the Middle East and Africa to
disruption - and after the Indian navy and
coastguard seized two alleged Chinese spy ships in
this area in November. China also is considering
funding construction of a $20 billion canal across
the Kra Isthmus that would allow ships to bypass
the Strait of Malacca. The canal project would
give China port facilities, warehouses and other
infrastructure in Thailand aimed at enhancing
Chinese influence in the region.
Based on such concerns, India
created a unified military command here, the
Andamans and Nicobar Command, several years ago. Most
recently, it was planning to station
Su-30 MKI long-range fighter/bomber aircraft on Car Nicobar
beginning this month. The effort likely was intended
to complement a similar deployment of Su-30s,
also undertaken with China in mind, to Bareilly Air
Base near the China-India border. While
the Car Nicobar deployment now has been aborted because
of the December tsunami, India's air force chief says
the deployment will proceed within six months.
The tsunami disaster also forced the cancellation
of the India's biennial MILAN naval exercise,
in which most Bay of Bengal navies would
have exercised together next month.
Malaysia, also concerned about the
Andaman Sea and nearby Malacca Strait, recently built
a series of radar stations along the west
coast of the peninsula to oversee traffic in the
strait. Malaysia is also acquiring a variety of new
naval platforms. Perhaps more importantly, the
Malaysian navy is building new bases to strengthen its
hand in the strait and the Andaman Sea,
including facilities at Langkawi island and
Sitiawan. Langkawi, Kuala Lumpur's only port
directly fronting the Indian Ocean, will house the
navy's Area Three Headquarters and will be a
staging point for the deployment and management of soon
to be acquired submarines. The Sitiawan facility,
on the other hand, is part of a larger plan to
equip Malaysia's naval air component, for the
first time, with fixed-wing aircraft. Key here is Kuala
Lumpur's agreement to buy 18 Russian-made Su-30MKM
fighter jets. With a range of some 2,700
kilometers, they will be armed with supersonic
X-31A missiles designed to strike sea-based
targets.
The rise of India and China is a
powerful phenomenon that is influencing economics
and security globally, but also regionally in
places like the Bay of Bengal. New Delhi, partly
because it is determined to be a powerful regional
actor, and partly because it is acting to contain
China, is proceeding in a manner that constitutes
a powerful prod to the gradual integration of the
Bay of Bengal. Its economic and military
initiatives, and those of its neighbors, will
shorten distances and connect the various lands of
the bay - a process that will be good economically
but worrisome strategically as it will be harder
to buffer relations among these armed powers.
While this is a region with a long way to go
toward regional integration, the interaction among
the lands of the bay now is greater than at any
point since World War II.
Dr Donald
L Berlin is a professor of international
relations at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security
Studies in Honolulu. He focuses on strategic
issues in the Indian Ocean region. The views
expressed here are those of the author and do not
represent official positions of the US government
or any of its agencies.
(Copyright
Donald L Berlin 2005.)
Speaking
Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows
guest writers to have their say. Please click here
if you are interested in
contributing. |
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