The January 2012 Pentagon document
on Strategic Guidance, entitled "Sustaining Global
Leadership: Priorities for Twenty First Century,"
has inaugurated a new cold war in the Asia-Pacific
region between the United States and China. The
document affirms that the United States will of
necessity rebalance, or "pivot," towards the
Asia-Pacific region. The goal of the rebalancing -
American "global leadership" - is a fancy name for
empire, maintained by military superiority.
The document gives a prominent place for
India in the US strategy, which came as a surprise
to many observers. While India is singled out with
specific reference to strategic partnership,
long-standing allies such as Japan, Australia, and
South Korea are clubbed together under "existing
alliances." In his maiden visit to India in the
first week of May, US Secretary of Defense Leon
Panetta piled on, calling
defense cooperation with India "a linchpin in US
strategy" in Asia.
In what may be called
cartographic diplomacy, the United States is keen
to show that there is geostrategic and even
territorial convergence between the United States
and India in the region. The January Strategic
Guidance document, for example, refers
specifically to "the arc extending from the
Western Pacific and East Asia into the Indian
Ocean and South Asia." In a November 2011 article
for Foreign Policy, Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton defined the Asia-Pacific as stretching
"from the Indian subcontinent to the Western
shores of the Americas.
The region spans
two oceans - the Pacific and the Indian - that are
increasingly linked by shipping and strategy." It
is interesting to note the inclusion of South Asia
in the geographic area of the Asia-Pacific pivot.
South Asia has generally been considered a
distinct strategic sub-region of Asia, one the
United States apparently intends to integrate into
its strategy for the broader continent.
The United States has been exhorting India
to move from its "Look East" policy to an "Act
East" policy. Washington expects India to go
beyond forging bilateral relations with countries
in the region and to get involved in their
critical issues. This, the United States believes,
is essential for the integration of the
Asia-Pacific region under a US umbrella.
Towards a military
alliance While India has provided
assistance to the United States in Afghanistan and
continued defense cooperation on other fronts, the
two countries have operated under a formal
framework only since 2005. An agreement signed
that year proclaimed that the two countries were
entering a new era and transforming their
relationship to reflect their "common principles
and shared national interests".
It
underlined that the countries' defense
relationship was the most important component of
the larger strategic partnership, entailing new
joint military exercises, exchanges, and
multinational operations. The major component is
an expansion of "defense transactions, not as ends
in and of themselves but as a means to strengthen
our security, reinforce our strategic partnership,
[and] achieve greater interaction between our
defense establishments".
From the outset
of this new stage, it was evident that what the
United States wanted was a military alliance.
Ambassador Robert D Blackwill, at the end of his
New Delhi assignment in May 2003, said that the
ultimate strategic objective was to have an Indian
military that was capable of operating effectively
alongside its American counterpart in future joint
operations.
This framework was the basis
of the nuclear deal between India and the United
States that gave India de facto recognition as a
nuclear-armed state, which was announced just
weeks afterward. A series of defense-related
agreements followed in 2007.
Although
India remains unwilling at this juncture to sign
pending defense agreements that might be construed
as opening the door for an official military
alliance with the United States, there has been
considerable progress on US-India arms
transactions. The United States has bagged the
largest number of arms contracts - about $8
billion worth in the last five years - despite its
stringent and intrusive end use monitoring
requirements. India has fundamentally reoriented
its defense procurement, moving away from its
traditional reliance on Russia. In fact, nearly
half the value of all Indian defense deals in
recent years has been in US transactions alone.
Naval cooperation In addition to
a booming arms trade, India and the United States
have conducted more than 50 joint military
exercises in the past seven years. Against this,
India's joint exercises with other countries
appear to be mere tokens.
Military-to-military relations have
especially deepened in the realm of naval
cooperation. The US and Indian navies have
cooperated operationally on four separate
occasions: in the Strait of Malacca after 9/11, in
disaster relief efforts after the Indian Ocean
tsunami in 2004-2005, in a non-combative
evacuation operation in Lebanon in 2006, and
counter-piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden
since 2008.
In December 2001, the two
countries reached an agreement on naval
cooperation to secure the maritime routes between
the Suez Canal and the Malacca Straits known as
"chokepoints." During the US invasion of
Afghanistan, naval ships were provided by India to
safeguard US non-combatant and merchant ships
transiting the Straits of Malacca, which freed US
naval ships for service off the coast of Pakistan.
This has been officially acknowledged by
Washington as a contribution by India to the "war
on terror".
India was also one of the very
few countries to join the "core group" set up by
Washington in the wake of the 2004-2005 Indian
Ocean tsunami. The "core group" was actually a
Pentagon plan to assess the geo-strategic
implications of the tsunami and to gain the US
military access to areas where it had not
previously been permitted. It was disbanded
because of sharp criticism from the United Nations
and European nations like France.
But
India is apparently not the only South Asian
nation being courted by the United States. The
Times of India reported in June that Washington is
in the process of stationing a naval base in
Chittagong, Bangladesh. "Worried by the increasing
presence of Chinese naval bases in the South China
Sea," the paper reported, "America now eyes a
counter-strategy as it wants an overall presence
in Asia - right from Japan to the Diego Garcia
base in the Indian Ocean."
The Bangladeshi
government has denied the report, but if it's
true, it could cast a shadow on India's own
security strategy and on US-Indian naval
cooperation. However, such an initiative would be
perfectly in tune with Washington's ongoing quest
for more naval facilities in the region.
Problems in the
neighborhood Although Obama administration
officials have often stated that the so-called
"pivot" is not aimed at any particular country,
the Strategic Guidance document admits that it
concerns at least in part the growing influence of
China. Happy to avail itself of US military
technology but reluctant to raise tensions with
its sometime rival, India is understandably
cautious about aligning too closely with the
United States against China.
That is why,
in response to Panetta's overtures, Indian Defense
Minister A K Antony emphasized "the need to
strengthen multilateral security architecture in
Asia and move to a pace comfortable to all
countries concerned".
It did not go
unnoticed that on exactly the same dates Panetta
was in New Delhi, India's Foreign Minister S M
Krishna was in China affirming the Sino-Indian
bilateral relationship as a priority for India's
foreign policy and expressing India's desire to
expand strategic cooperation with China. Likewise,
several statements have appeared with claims by US
and Chinese leaders that they are committed to
collaborating on security in South Asia.
India has a host of problems with China in
South Asia. These include increasingly strident
Chinese claims on Indian territory, the lack of
any progress in border negotiations, China's
nuclear links with Pakistan, and China's support
for the Pakistani position on Kashmir. The United
States' silence on these matters has given the
impression, albeit indirectly, that it supports
the Chinese positions.
Against this
background, a strong case can be made for India to
remain non-aligned in the new cold war. But there
is perceptible resistance from the establishment
to such an idea. Although India may not want to be
described as the "linchpin" of the US pivot, the
present leadership will nonetheless reassure
Washington that it broadly supports US policies
abroad, including in the Asia-Pacific.
Ninan Koshy is a contributor to
Foreign Policy in Focus.
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