US exercising India's military
muscles By Praful Bidwai
NEW DELHI - India's hosting of large-scale
military exercises involving five countries led by
the United States has triggered spirited protests
by left-wing parties that prop up the country's
ruling coalition.
The naval exercises,
which began on Tuesday, are the largest and the
most complex that India has ever participated in
and feature as many as 25 ships from India, the
US, Australia, Japan and
Singapore.
The war
games involve three aircraft carriers, two of them
American and one Indian, and a nuclear-powered
submarine, besides a host of destroyers and
frigates. Warplanes, based on the carriers and on
land, will also play a major role in the
exercises, which include "close air combat".
Code-named "Malabar 07-2", the exercises
are the seventh in a recent series of naval drills
jointly held by the US and India. Most such
exercises were held off peninsular India's west
coast. But the present drill is being held in the
Bay of Bengal off the port city of Visakhapatnam,
where the Indian navy's eastern command is
headquartered.
Leaders of India's
communist parties have begun two protest marches
from Kolkata and Chennai, which will converge at
Visakhapatnam on Saturday after addressing a
series of meetings and rallies en route.
The communists object to the exercises on
the ground that they will further draw India into
the strategic orbit of the US and integrate India
more closely with Washington's global agenda,
which it opposes on security and political
grounds.
The stated purpose of the
exercises is to improve mutual cooperation between
the different navies, share data and communication
linkages, and conduct maneuvers which track ships,
test air defenses, hit onshore and sea-based
targets and hold cross-deck helicopter landings.
"The navies' basic aim is to learn from
each other and move towards inter-operability of
each other's armed services and practices," said
Qamar Agha, a security expert based at the Jamia
Millia Islamia University in Delhi. "This will
facilitate joint operations of the kind that close
military allies undertake."
"Inter-operability" between Indian and US
armed forces means that military personnel of both
sides can use each other's equipment and better
conduct joint operations. But Agha added that the
purpose of the drill is "as much political as
military; it is to send a strong signal that India
is willing to move strategically closer to the US
than ever before".
That message has
certainly got across to China, which sees India's
military collaboration with staunchly pro-US
states like Australia and Japan and Singapore, and
above all, with the US itself, as an attempt to
set up what it calls an "Asian" NATO (North
Atlantic Treaty Organization), and eventually, to
encircle it.
The Indian government has
tried to publicly assure Beijing that it is not
the focus of the war games, and that India does
not intend to set up a new security alliance. But
Beijing is not convinced.
In May, China
protested a meeting of a new "quadrilateral
initiative" held in Manila between the US, Japan,
India and Australia. More generally, Beijing is
suspicious of the growing strategic proximity
between Washington and New Delhi, one reflection
of which is the US-India nuclear cooperation deal,
now at an advanced stage of negotiations and
approval.
Privately, Indian officials say
they are pleased that China is getting "the
message", and hope that the India-US strategic
partnership will impel Beijing to take New Delhi
more seriously.
But Agha called it "a
recipe for greater instability in the Asia-Pacific
region". He added: "It may even mark the beginning
of a new cold war in the region. India's military
collaboration with a hegemonic superpower [goes]
against the spirit of the Nehruvian policy of
non-alignment and is entirely unprecedented. Even
when India signed a treaty of peace and friendship
with the former Soviet Union in 1971, it did not
conduct large-scale military exercises with it."
Military exercises are only one part of
the growing India-US strategic relationship. This
includes other forms of military collaboration
too, such as arms purchases, extensive contacts
between and visits by military officials, and
intelligence sharing.
In June 2005, just
three weeks before the nuclear deal was inked, the
two governments signed the "New Framework for the
India-US Defense Relationship" in Washington, thus
extending the "Next Steps in Strategic
Partnership" signed in 2001 by the right-wing
Bharatiya Janata Party-led government.
This agreement states: "The US-India
defense relationship derives from a common belief
in freedom, democracy and the rule of law, and
seeks to advance shared security interests."
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government
is currently negotiating a Logistics and Services
Agreement with the US. Also known as the
Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement,
Washington has signed similar arrangements with
several other countries, mostly NATO members,
which allow refueling and complete access to all
US ships and aircraft.
The US is set to
emerge as a large exporter of arms to India which
plans to buy about US$30 billion worth of military
equipment between 2007-2012. This figure means
India is the developing world's largest arms
purchaser. Since the 1960s, and until recently,
the Indian market was closed to US defense
contractors, because of Washington's displeasure
with India's friendly ties with the Soviet Union.
The first major sale of US military
hardware was a refurbished warship, the USS
Trenton, renamed INS Jalashwa. It is India's
second largest naval combat vessel and is
participating in the current military exercise.
Another large transaction was the acquisition of
six Hercules C-130J military transport aircraft
worth $1 billion. It was India's largest arms
purchase from the US, so far.
Discussions
are also ongoing between India and US manufacturer
Lockheed Martin to buy eight P3-C Orion maritime
surveillance aircraft at a cost of $650 million,
coupled with 16 multi-mission MH-60R Sikorsky
helicopters costing about $400 million. Raytheon
is negotiating the sale of its Patriot PAC-3
anti-missile systems to India, too.
Last
week, India floated its biggest-ever military
tender, for the purchase of 126 multi-role combat
aircraft worth $10 billion. Lockheed-Martin and
Boeing are lobbying hard to sell their F-16 and
F/A-18 fighter planes to India.
India has
also been approaching the American arms industry
through Israel, since many Israeli systems have
either been jointly developed with US companies or
depend on US components and technologies.
Over the past decade, Israel has emerged
as India's second-largest arms supplier. India is
now Israel's biggest arms export market, and
purchased $1.5 billion worth of military hardware
from it during 2002-06 out of worldwide Israeli
arms sales of $2.76 billion.
"India's
military ties with the US are part of a larger
strategic and political relationship, which is
asymmetrical and one-sided," said Achin Vanaik,
professor of international relations and global
politics at Delhi University. "The US is the
dominant partner, and India the subordinate one.
Rather than balance the US, India is bandwagoning
it."
Added Vanaik: "This has major
implications not just for India's strategic
orientation, but for its foreign policy too. It is
inevitable under this relationship that India's
traditionally broad-horizon, independent and
complex foreign policy agenda will shrink and its
autonomy in making major decisions will erode."
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