India, China, US, Pakistan in game: ‘Encirclement’
By Rahul Bedi
NEW DELHI: India, Pakistan and China are busy weaving a complex web of treaties, defence alliances and covert agreements with South, Central and East Asian nations to strategically “encircle” one another.
Through concentric, sometimes overlapping military and inter-linked intelligence sharing and economic agreements with these states, India hopes to ‘surround’ Pakistan and to ‘contain’ China ‘its long-term’ security threat.
China and Pakistan, both of which India has gone to war with since independence in 1947 over unresolved territorial disputes, are pursuing similar aims of strategically “ squeezing” Delhi.
China, with which India fought a border war in 1962 and came off worse, looms menacingly in the background for Delhi, despite the improvement in diplomatic and political relations and Defence Minister George Fernandes’s recent week-long Beijing visit.
Before leaving for China, Fernandes, who had referred to China as India’s “number one enemy”, said Delhi would test-fire a longer-range version of its nuclear-capable Agni intermediate-range ballistic missile later this year.
Defence research officials said the proposed ballistic mile, with a range of over 3,000 kms, would place portions of China within striking range. This is in keeping with a recent defence ministry report which declares that India was “fine tuning” its nuclear delivery systems to counter the “asymmetry” with Beijing’s larger nuclear arsenal and the help it provided Pakistan in developing its missile and atomic weapons capability. China and Pakistan deny all such collaboration.
Earlier, India’s Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee cited the fear of China as the principal reason behind the country’s May 1998 nuclear tests and for developing long-range missiles to deliver weapons of mass destruction.
“India is trying to break free of its inward-looking strategic insularity in an attempt to carve out a larger regional role for itself, in keeping with its perceived vision and strength and to deal with the Chinese threat,” a senior army officer said.
Consequently, it had recently grabbed the initiative by firming up arrangements to train the Afghan National Army and opening a military base in Tajikistan — its first outside the country. It also plans on conducting military manoeuvres with the Tajik army in order to register a presence in the rich Caspian region.
India is also forging closer military links with Burma, where China plays a dominant security and military role, and cementing defence and naval ties with Vietnam. It has agreed “in principle” to supply Hanoi its locally developed surface-to-surface Prithvi missile with a 150 km range and to train Vietnamese nuclear scientists. India’s new strategic thrust has also led to the United States and India forging a long-term defence and security alliance aimed at containing China, which both view as an emerging regional and global power.
According to the 130-page report ‘Indo-US Military Relationship: Expectations and Perceptions’, prepared for US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld, China “represents the most significant threat to both countries’ security in the future as an economic and military competitor”.
The analysis quotes an unidentified US admiral as declaring that a positive relationship with India was a “hedge” against future Chinese ambitions. “The US and India both view China as a strategic threat and share an interest in understanding Chinese strategic intent, though we do not discuss this publicly,” he said.
The report revealed that Indian and US views of China were “strikingly similar”, predicated on keeping Beijing out of the Indian Ocean region where, over the past decade, it has been making swift inroads.
US officials consider strategically engaging India as a “future investment”, particularly since Asia could become hostile and dangerous to continuing US military presence in the region.
Meanwhile, a small cog in the US-Indian military alliance aimed at containing China is already in place. For over a year, the Indian and US navies have been jointly patrolling the Malacca Straits, a region over which China’s rapidly modernizing navy exercises considerable control.
The US is keen to police the straits through which over 80 per cent of Japan’s oil supplies from the Middle East are transported and to establish its long-term presence in the region.—Dawn/The InterPress News Service.
