NEW DELHI: India’s hosting of large-scale military exercises involving four 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, underway since Tuesday, are the largest and the most complex that India has ever participated in, and feature as many as 25 ships from India, United States, Australia, Japan and Singapore.

The war games involve three aircraft carriers, two of them American and one Indian, and a nuclear-powered submarine, beside 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.

The communists object to the exercises on the ground that they will draw India into the strategic orbit of the US and integrate India closely with Washington’s global agendas, 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 manoeuvres which track ships, test air defences, 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,” says Qamar Agha, a security expert based at the Jamia Millia Islamia University.

But Agha adds 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”, 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.

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.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s government is currently negotiating a Logistics and Services Agreement with the US. Widely known as the Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement, Washington has signed such an arrangement with several countries, mostly Nato members. This allows refuelling and complete access to all US ships and aircraft.

The US is set to emerge as a large exporter of armaments to India which is in the market for about $30 billion worth of military equipment during 2007-2012 — making it the developing world’s largest arms purchaser.

“India’s military ties with the US are part of a larger strategic and political relationship, which is asymmetrical and one-sided,” says Achin Vanaik, professor of international relations and global politics at Delhi University. “The US is the dominant partner, and India the subordinate one.”

He added, “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.”—Dawn/The IPS News Service