Atlantic Sentinel

Tag: India

  • India Should Prefer a Republican President

    The Indian foreign policy establishment is not very interested in the outcome of this year’s presidential election in the United States. This in contrast to 2004 when it preferred George W. Bush or 2008, when the entire world was caught up in the yearlong election drama.

    The reason is simple. India’s ruling center-left coalition appears to have reached a dead end and the foreign policy class is in the slumber. It should pay attention though. Barack Obama’s reelection could prove an annoyance to Indians if it is accompanied by a return of liberalism in American policy.

    The Democratic president has so far conducted himself largely as a Republican in the mold of George H.W. Bush on the world stage. Indians find comfort in this conservative posture. They are wary of liberals who seek to use America’s position as the preeminent power to change the world.

    They would never take this approach to China. Even the do-gooders recognize that there are limits to what they can accomplish. But with India, there are always issues to raise, ranging from Kashmir to human rights to the environment. This has been a trend among Democratic Party presidents whereas the Republicans tend to stand by India.

    As early as 1919, Woodrow Wilson failed to live up to his promise to support Indian independence. Harry Truman internationalized the Kashmir dispute at India’s expense. John F. Kennedy was reluctant to intervene when China invaded Aksai Chin and Arunachal Pradesh in 1962. Lyndon B. Johnson didn’t support India during the 1965 war with Pakistan. Bill Clinton wouldn’t involve himself in the 1999 Kargil War.

    It was Republican Theodore Roosevelt who endorsed India’s bid for independence. Dwight D. Eisenhowever, another Republican, normalized relations with his 1958 visit to India. Ronald Reagan initiated technology cooperation and it was George W. Bush who signed the hallmark nuclear agreement of 2005.

    There have been two exceptions to the rule. Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt was tempted to condition his support for Great Britain during the Second World War on Indian independence while Republican Richard Nixon menaced India during the Bangladesh Liberation War by dispatching an aircraft carrier to the Bay of Bengal and allying himself with Pakistan.

    Still, given this recent history, it’s important for India to always be skeptical when champions of liberal value such as Barack Obama occupy the White House and when the liberal establishment in the Democratic Party holds sway in the Congress and State Department.

    Indian foreign policymakers need to understand that a Republican president would likely be far more beneficial to them. A Republican would more actively seek to counter China’s rise in Asia through a balance of power. This is what George W. Bush did during his eight years in office.

    India is also preparing for elections. In 2014, if the right-wing nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party comes to power, New Delhi could adopt a more assertive stance on the world stage and expect the United States to do the same. Specifically, the conservatives would like to see a more activist containment of China and the dismantling of Pakistan’s terrorist infrastructure. A conservative administration in the United States would surely be more cooperative.

  • For Afghan Peace, India, Pakistan Must Cooperate

    Since Western powers invaded Afghanistan to weed out Al Qaeda, the level of violence in South Asia has remained high. It’s not just Afghanistan is facing the consequences of more than a decade of war but the entire subcontinent.

    Many of Al Qaeda’s top leaders are dead but the situation in Afghanistan has hardly improved. Rather the fundamentalist forces are extending their reach and continuing to battle NATO troops and undermine liberal elements in their society.

    Afghanistan has been a battlefield for major powers for centuries. Invaders always failed to establish themselves there permanently however.

    Most recently, the Soviet Union tried to convert Afghanistan into its corridor but failed due to the tangible support that was given by America and Pakistan to the anti-communist mujahideen. Now, the Americans have made the same mistake by engaging what may well be the most warmongering ethnic group in South Asia in an enduring, never ending conflict.

    Despite past superpower involvement, the two most relevant external powers in Afghanistan today are India and Pakistan.

    India had a significant presence in Afghanistan into the 1970s but the collapse of communist rule and the emergence of the Taliban enabled Pakistan to establish a greater influence there. The 2001 invasion was an opportunity for India to reassert itself. New Delhi allied with the Northern Alliance and Hamid Karzai to oust the Taliban and frustrate Pakistan’s quest for “strategic depth” in the country.

    The real struggle will begin after the NATO exit in 2014. The Afghan question will be one that is posed to the whole of the subcontinent. India has made economic and political investments in the country that it will surely try to safeguard while Pakistan is likely to try its best to protects its strategic interests.

    Pakistan considers the Indian presence in Afghanistan a direct threat to its security. The Pakistani army, despite its support for the War on Terror, always recognized that it inadvertently helped bring the Northern Alliance to power which it so detested because of their ties with India, Iran and Russia — all Pakistani rivals.

    The army has also been deeply perturbed by the sudden influx of Indians in Kabul. It believes that New Delhi is financing and training exiled Baloch leaders who live in Afghanistan. It would rather have the Taliban back in power than instability and possibly foreigners conspiring against it on its western frontier.

    Instead of vying for influence in Afghanistan, India and Pakistan may be best served by cooperating to reap the economic benefits. It would be better for the region to engage in order to stem an escalation of Indo-Pakistani rivalry in Afghanistan.

    There are few options to face the post-2014 challenges in Afghanistan. After the military pullout, the situation is probably not going to change. The Taliban will surely use violent means to attempt to come back to power. Warlords remain active and await the opportunity to establish themselves over the current power structure. Afghanistan could once again succumb to civil war.

    A regional security force, drawing personnel from all South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation member states, could be stationed in Afghanistan to guard the fragile peace. These nations have previously worked together in peacekeeping missions in Africa under the banner of the United Nations. Their commander should be elected on a rotational basis.

    A second step toward stabilizing Afghanistan would be drawing representatives from all ethnic groups that live in the country into a power-sharing arrangement. It is the only way to neutralize the warring factions which are patiently awaiting the chance to occupy Kabul by force and rule the other groups.

    Thirdly and most crucially, India and Pakistan would have to work together to restore a modicum of normalcy in Afghanistan. They would have to give up their infighting in the interest of Afghanistan and stability in the region. Both recognize that the talibanization of Afghanistan has not been good for South Asia. It has disturbed the peace in their own countries; inspired terrorist activity in India and radicalized segments of Pakistani society which has caused an uptick in militant activity within Pakistan’s borders.

    There is no viable option for the nations of South Asia except to work together if they seek peace in Afghanistan. Unless the SAARC states recognize the gravity of the situation and their shared objective, they too will suffer the aftershocks once foreign troops pull out in 2014.

  • What India’s State Elections Mean for the West

    India’s ruling Congress party was trounced in recent state elections especially in the all-important province of Uttar Pradesh. The trends reinforced by the results portent trouble for both India and the West.

    First, chances of India joining the Iran embargo have ended — the dynamics explained earlier at the Atlantic Sentinel.

    Almost on cue as news of the Congress defeat started filtering in, the Indian embassy in Washington went on an unusually aggressive defense of its Iranian oil imports. It claimed a “distorted picture of New Delhi’s foreign policy objectives and energy security needs” was being projected.”

    India’s relationship with Iran is neither inconsistent with nonproliferation objectives, nor do we seek to contradict the relationships we have with our friends in West Asia or with the United States and Europe.

    But the sting was in the tail. “Given the imperative of meeting the energy needs of millions of Indians, an automatic replacement of all Iranian oil imports, is not a simple matter of selection, or a realistic option.”

    There was some number juggling there to show India’s consumption of Iranian oil had decreased of late. The reality is that the decline was due to the inability to pay Iran electronically (as is the norm) because of international sanctions.

    Now that a rupee trade agreement with Iran has come into force, expect the graph to skyrocket again. No amount of innovative statistical interpretations is going to be able to explain it away. In fact, given the consolidation of Muslim votes (long seen as a captive Congress vote bank) away from the Congress in Uttar Pradesh, any Indian moves against Iran are a nonstarter.

    If this were not bad enough, the policy paralysis that has gripped Delhi since 2009 will continue since the Congress’ bargaining position with its own left-wing allies has reduced dramatically.

    The return of India to the notorious 6 percent “Hindu rate of growth” coincided with a London School of Economics study on “Why India Will Not Become a Superpower.” In short, if the Western alliance was hoping for a demographic, democratic and economic bulwark against China, India will not be it.

    With prolonged policy paralysis and a looming water and food crisis on the horizon, expect the “rise of India” to turn into something of a nightmare.

    Forget also the American-Indian nuclear accord hailed by President George W. Bush as “India’s passport to the world,” which is now not expected to move forward due to opposition to the liability clause.

    Forget also the implementation of the Walmart direct purchase model, that was set to break the baneful influence of middlemen (a prime cause of inflation) and provide a much needed stimulus to agriculture as the Congress is expected to want to keep these middlemen in its good grace. They can, after all, engineer a “strategic” preelection price spike to wreck what little hope the Congress has left. Basically India is in soup and the West bet on the wrong horse.

    To be fair, all these trends existed well before these elections. The problem is that the behavior that produced these trends are expected to be reinforced now rather than producing the predicted corrective reforms a Congress victory was to have heralded.

    Two more important states go to the polls of which Gujarat may be the key. By all predictions Gujarat will stay with the conservative Bharatiya Janata Party under the leadership of Narendra Modi, a no nonsense development man who has maintained the state’s growth rate even under trying circumstances at a stellar 11.6 percent.

    Should the conservatives elect Modi as their leader for the 2014 elections, he will be pitted against the severely underperforming Rahul Gandhi, the Congress’ crown prince.

    The problem is that Modi is weighed down by allegations (nothing yet proven) of his complicity in the 2002 Gujarat riots. Modi, chief minister of Gujarat, the West could snub and name call publicly. But as the possible claimant to the largest democratic mandate on Earth, the West will face a very different problem if he is elected. India will never be Austria and Narendra Modi will never be Kurt Waldheim. Any criticism of him has thus far been painted by his campaign as an insult to all Gujarat and the focus of this demagoguery will presumably shift as he moved to the national stage to focus on external enemies.

    In many ways, if India is repainting itself into geostrategic and economic irrelevance, the wWst has blundered badly. Continuing to pressure India on Iran will only lead to further political paralysis in Delhi with significant long-term strategic consequences.

    At any rate, come 2014, the West will either have created a passively noncooperative left-wing India or a passively hostile right-wing one.

  • Internal Politics Prohibit India from Joining Iran Embargo

    India, despite its growing closeness to the West, will not support further sanctions on Iran or abide by the Western oil embargo. This was made abundantly clear to visiting dignitaries through the last two weeks. Many reasons exists that have been discussed elsewhere including the economics of having a captive supplier with little propensity to negotiate and the realpolitik angle of encircling Pakistan and its Taliban proxies.

    There is also the much more calculated but never stated in public rationale of neutralizing Sunni influence (which Indian policymakers in private see as deeply malignant) with a Shia bomb.

    The overwhelming reason however — as all things are in India (something the West tends to forget) — is domestic electoral politics, both sectarian and economic.

    Given that 2012 marks the start of a string of provincial elections in India’s most important swing states leading up to the general elections of 2014, the stakes are too high to allow flimsy considerations like foreign policy or alliance dynamics to overtake all-important power equations on the home turf.

    As is the case throughout South Asia, the Sunni-Shia spilt in India stands at a 7:3 ratio. But unlike the repressed and economically depressed Shia in other Sunni majority states, in India, Shiites are way ahead economically socially and politically.

    This dominance is very discreet given that the various Shia groupings in India tend to maintain a low profile and avoid issuing a slew of regressive fatwas concerning anything and everything under the sun. Politically however, precisely because they are so progressive, herd voting behavior is virtually nonexistent amongst the Shia.

    In recent years, India’s Shia have started showing a tendency to vote for the opposition conservatives, especially in Kashmir Province. This forms an invaluable vote bank for the Bharatiya Janata Party, desperate to cultivate the minority vote — ergo for the opposition any alienation of Iran would be electoral suicide given that Islamic pan-national concept of ummah encourages Indian Shia to cherish their kinship with their Iranian coreligionists.

    The Indian Sunnis on the other hand are among the most economically and socially depressed sections of Indian society and their voting patterns are controlled by key religious leaders with significant evidence of “loyalty transferability” on demand. These leaders form the key support blocks of the ruling Congress party as well as large segments of the left. The problem comes in because the Shia not having a block voting pattern also constitute a large support base for the Congress and alienating Iran can only be carried thus far and no further.

    Economically, given the dire straits Iran is in, it will be hard for another supplier to match the prices or payment terms that Iran provides. The more disadvantaged Iran’s international position, the more India’s leverage grows.

    The rupee trade agreement with Iran under which Iran will accept barter and/or rupee payment for upto 45 percent of its petroleum exports to India (and provide added economic stimulus in India) stands as the prime candidate for renegotiation as Iran’s bargaining position worsens.

    Moreover, Iranian isolation helps India’s case in urging Iran to decouple oil and gas prices which would then see the now dead submarine Iran-India pipeline return to economic and security viability.

    All this feeds into the fact that in India’s electoral math, the rural voter is king. Much of India’s rampant food inflation has to do with skyrocketing oil prices and consequently the high cost of transport — and the Indian rural voter does tend to vote on bread and butter issues. The loss of Iranian oil and the favorable pricing it offers translates into a price spike that however temporary, no political party would want to have to deal with on election eve.

    In effect therefore while American and European sanctions seem rational and logical to the West, in Delhi, the call to follow suit is simply an invitation to electoral harakiri. Change in India’s Iran policy if at all it comes will have to wait until after the 2014 elections.

  • India Pays a High Price for Its Silence on Terror

    India’s silence on attacks by Islamic terrorist organizations against Israeli citizens on its soil can bring it no benefits. Far from it, it could actively harm Indian diplomacy.

    Monday’s assassination attempt on the wife of an Israeli diplomat not five hundred meters from the prime minister’s house in New Delhi, which injured her and three Indians, prompted muted condemnation from the Indian government. Evidently, the perpetrators felt completely at home carrying out this operation in a country that at least institutionally appears has no hassles with the butchering of Jewish civilians.

    Last year, India’s response was similarly one of deafening silence when the Palestinian ambassador praised the “martyrs” who carried out a terrorist attack in the Israeli city of Eilat, killing six civilians and injuring thirty, as a “quality operation.”

    For some strange reason, the mandarins at the Ministry of External Affairs believe that turning a blind eye to such atrocities bolsters India’s West Asia credentials and prevents attacks at home. It is a short sighted form of appeasement that masquerades as diplomacy.

    The convenience of gaining a vote bank at home by tacitly accepting the unacceptable has put India in a diplomatic bind from which there is little face to be saved. On one hand both the Americans and Israelis will be demanding explanations from the government as to how this could happen in a high security area and why India did not express indignation when the Palestinian ambassador was encouraging more attacks on Jews?

    In the absence of concrete clues, the shadow of suspicion has been cast wide. India now has little option but to investigate the Palestinian mission in light of their ambassador’s past statements. That alone sours the goodwill the Palestinian cause had in New Delhi.

    So what now of India’s support to said cause? Should any Palestinian involvement become clear, their expulsion or imprisonment would by India’s own yardstick of silence cost the country its much valued hypothetical Arab “street cred.”

    Should it turn out that India’s Iranian “friends” and/or their Hezbollah allies colluded in this event, the matter becomes much worse. New Delhi can complain to the high heavens that Pakistan does not give it the right of hot pursuit into their territory. But there are about 850 Indian troops stationed in Lebanon under United Nations mandate. If India receives credible intelligence of Hezbollah planning an attack, does it send its forces in Lebanon on a seek and destroy mission? If not, all its talk of “hot pursuit” into Pakistan turns out to be just hot air. The country loses what little military credibility it has.

    What of India’s hard fought oil and gas concessions from Tehran? After all, it doesn’t want to “subsidize those who engage in terrorism” against it which is the main argument New Delhi raises in objection to the construction of pipelines through Pakistan.

    The pressure that European nations and the United States have exerted on India to give up its trade with Iran will not be harder to resist. If indeed Iran is proven to be responsible for this week’s attack and India does not give up its lucrative trade with the Islamic republic, it encourages the Iranians to go ahead with more such attacks on Indian soil.

    India has been very keen to avoid any pointed criticism of Iran by the international community at large but will now have no option but to directly point fingers at Tehran or lose both credibility and trust with the West by effectively hushing up the incident.

    What India’s diplomats need to realize is that words are cheap and terrorists and regimes who support them are not floppy eared Labrador puppies. A well-timed and eeven-handed condemnation of the Palestinian ambassador, possibly his expulsion, and frequent demarches to the Iranian ambassador every time his president engages in antisemitic rhetoric would have been the cheaper options. Today, thanks to its pusillanimity, India will have to pay a very heavy price, diplomatically, politically and in all probability economically.

  • India Stands Only to Gain from Pakistan Trade Deal

    As India’s commerce minister proceeds to Islamabad to talk trade, it is important to remember that progress on the India-Pakistan free-trade agreement has all but stalled. At first glance it is easy to dismiss this as typical subcontinental petty wrangling. The reality is that it is part of a much larger Indian endgame aimed at accruing maximum advantages post the 2014 NATO drawdown in Afghanistan.

    When one talks of the interests of the “Pakistani business community,” these are three completely diverse streams — in this case working at counter purposes to each other.

    First are the traders and transporters who comprise 90 to 98 percent of what constitute the “business community” — nonproductive middlemen who actively support the deal as increased trade volumes means increased opportunities for them. Then come the nonmilitary industrialists who will be affected by their lack of competitive economies of scale but see this deal as a very important tool to weaken the army. Lastly there is the army industrial complex, the Fauji Foundation, which according to estimates controls about 95 percent of everything including industries and land and which stands to lose the most.

    India has been nudged repeatedly by the West to normalize its ties with Pakistan in order to ease the pressure on NATO in Afghanistan owing to various Pakistani geostrategic imperatives there. The devil lies in the details in exactly which sectors India will accept unilateral disadvantages which could be skewed to support either the military’s or the nonmilitary industrialist’s commercial interests. Of course should both choose to get along (highly unlikely given the current impasse) then it could strike the right balance between the two.

    Engaging the Pakistan military with an active commercial stake in India is seen as the first step in ridding it of its institutionalized paranoia and bellicosity. This is not to negate the fact that India actually sees real benefits in bilateral trade but it certainly helps India gain good “street cred” with the West.

    These considerations are however balanced by the more menacing undertones of this deal. Implied in it is the reality that Pakistan’s civilian government can deliberately “throw” the negotiations to damage the military’s commercial interests and in so doing advance India’s passive-aggressive democracy promotion agenda in Pakistan. Presumably some intelligence inputs would have gone in to tailor this carefully to ensure that the Pakistan civilian and military industrial complexes got equal advantages. Thus rather than being seen as a peace building exercise with India, from the Pakistani point of view, this might as well be an army defanging exercise. Given the current state of things this could actually be an internal conflict exacerbation mechanism — which India is not exactly averse to.

    The sudden resuscitation of court cases against President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani could thus be part of a determined thrust by the on-again-off-again judicial-military tie up. Recall that Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry was reinstated because the army and intelligence chiefs refused to back Pervez Musharraf, unlike was the case during the general’s previous showdown with the Supreme Court. As a result some form of “beholdness” of the chief justice to General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, the chief of Army Staff, cannot be ruled out.

    This also explains why after the initial rush to ratify the deal, its implementation has completely stalled, in action if not in rhetoric. To be noted also is that the initial momentum this deal gained in Pakistan coincided with when President Zardari allegedly initiated the “memogate” scandal.

    Gilani can also use this deal to build bridges with the military by allowing the negotiations to give military businesses their share of Indian unilateral concessions. The structure therefore is that should military-civilian compromise happen with this deal, it is good for Pakistan and India. Should it not happen, India loses nothing but gains in that it destabilizes Pakistan. Additionally a Pakistani rejection of this deal will play out as a Pakistani attempt to scuttle a peace overture.

    Depending on the shape of the 2014 Afghan pullout, Pakistan’s isolation will only increase and it is at that point that the real diplomatic and political potency of this deal as a tool to either ameliorate or exacerbate tensions within Pakistan will be tested.

    The logic seems to be that (just like India’s developmental, as opposed to military, assistance to Afghanistan) that whether this is a win-win situation or a zero-sum game situation — it is entirely up to Pakistan. Either Pakistan can choose to cooperate and make it a win-win or Pakistan can perceive it as a Trojan horse and score another self defeating goal.

    The West cannot be ignorant of the stakes and is sold as a sign of India’s seriousness toward normalization as well as a test of Pakistan’s sincerity. On balance it is an extremely sophisticated feint and one wonders if India’s myopic transactional diplomacy actually envisioned the horns of dilemma built into this.

    Ultimately, like past Indian diplomatic endgames that have been counted as “victories,” this must be seen as a result of sheer luck rather than any concerted grand strategy on India’s part.

  • India Had No Reason to Save Maldives’ Nasheed

    When it comes to foreign policy decisionmaking in a democracy two important quotes come to mind. First is Franklin R. Roosevelt’s conversation in May 1942 with his close advisor, Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau. The American president at the time remarked, “You know I am a juggler and I never let my right hand know what my left hand does. I may have one policy for Europe and one diametrically opposite for North and South America. I may be entirely inconsistent and furthermore, I am perfectly willing to mislead and tell untruths if it will help win the war.”

    Second is the incumbent president’s candid observation when he was running for the highest office in 2008. When Barack Obama was taking the heat from then Senator Hillary Clinton’s campaign about his lack of national-security experience, he said, “Foreign policy is the area where I am probably most confident that I know more and understand the world better than Senator Clinton.” Meeting world leader is not important, he added. “What I know is the people. I traveled to Pakistan when I was in college. I knew what Sunni and Shia was before I joined the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.”

    These two observations are important for any decisionmakers in foreign policy and at least the context of that has been rightly understood by the Indian foreign policy establishment when it comes to dealing with the Maldives.

    There was great pressure on the part of the Indian government to intervene in the archipelago recently as President Mohammed Nasheed was feeling the heat of popular unrest in the streets. Nasheed, with his Western upbringing and Oxbridge accent had been touted as South Asia’s Barack Obama and was considered as a friend of India’s. It may have appeared to make sense to save him from being ousted to preserve India’s hegemony in South Asia. The argument is valid superficially for those who advocate a muscular Indian foreign policy without understanding the situation on the ground.

    When India intervened in the Maldives in 1988 to save then-President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom through Operation Cactus, the island nation’s leader had been a friend of India’s for nearly a decade. The initiators of the invasion were from Sri Lanka and had close links with the rebel organization there which India supported in a struggle for autonomy with Colombo. Therefore, it made sense for India to save President Gayoom and it proved right when he extended his loyalty for nearly two decades to New Delhi.

    The situation at present in the Maldives is an internal occurrence. Nasheed made mistakes which never went well with New Delhi. He invited a “great game” between China and India in Indian Ocean region so that the Maldives could get funding from both great powers. He forgot a basic tenet about foreign policy in South Asia. If you try to be a cut above the rest with your charisma, it won’t wind you any friends in New Delhi.
    Small nations have to play second fiddle to India in South Asia and Nasheed failed to remember it. His insistence that regional summits should do more than promote Indo-Pakistani dialogue and his close friendship with the West were not considered well in India for a long time.

    Despite repeated appeals from New Delhi to control a radical Muslim incursion in the Southern Maldives, Nasheed didn’t care to provide logistics for Indian intelligence to gather information about the suspected perpetrators of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai in 2008.

    As he lost popular support at home, New Delhi had only to watch the scenario unfold and throw its support behind Nasheed’s challenger when the time was right.

    There are people in India who have argued that it was their nation’s “responsibility to protect” Nasheed but they need to understand that India’s best days are ahead. It has to bid for time as Roosevelt did in 1941 and understand the peculiarities of the situation on the ground, as Obama did about the wars in the Middle East, before intervening. In that light, contrary to popular opinion, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh got it right when he allowed Nasheed to be removed from office.

  • China Island Hopping in the Indian Ocean

    The best way to get success in strategy is through success. An historical case study was General Douglas MacArthur’s “island hopping” strategy in the Pacific during World War II. It involved capturing an island, building a base there and moving on toward the prime target.

    China seems to be copying this strategy in the Indian Ocean and the South Pacific. In the former, it is seeking to contain India by forging alliances with island nations including the Maldives, Mauritius and the Seychelles and building a “string of pearls” of military bases from East Africa to Pakistan.

    The strategy is designed to curtail Indian influence in the region so China, with the Americans distracted in the Middle East, can have a free run in other parts of Asia and across the Pacific Ocean but also to encroach upon African countries that welcome its yuan diplomacy — developmental and industrial support with no strings attached.

    China has never announced this strategy publicly. A recent statement from the Chinese military that it’s considering an offer from the Seychelles to host a Chinese naval base confirms that the strategy exists however.

    Furthermore, the Chinese Foreign Ministry has stated that it isn’t interested in building military bases in other places.

    The Chinese “island hopping” strategy defies historical precedent and differs from the strategies of other and past great powers in that they were usually explicit about their intentions. China apparently believes that concealing its motives best serves its interests.

    An increased Chinese presence across the Indian Ocean poses a challenge to India as it is trying to project itself as a great power beyond South Asia. The two Asian giants are vying for economic opportunities and international recognition. Renewed American engagement, which is likely to follow military withdrawals from Afghanistan and Iraq, could prove an obstacle to China’s designs and cause it to intensify its efforts now.

    As the United States court nations ranging from Australia to Indonesia to Vietnam, the Chinese imperative to erect naval bases in the Indian Ocean and South Pacific will only seem more pressing.

  • India Able to Offset Chinese Influence in Africa

    The current geopolitical landscape in Africa represents an unique opportunity for occupying the power vacuum that will be created as Western nations reduce their footprint abroad. China will be best placed to seize this opportunity and has already been aggressively stepping up its involvement in Africa.

    Domestically, there is a sentiment in India that it is not doing enough to compete with China in Africa because the Indian economy is sensitive to oil prices, which notably affect the prices of food. India will have to do more if it wants to pole vault to superpower status by riding on the African wave.

    Forming an alliance with other nations would enable India to compete seriously with China’s spending power, value neutral approach and lack of domestic opposition. India could team up with Brazil and South Africa by expanding the ambit of the India Brazil South Africa Dialogue Forum or with the United States in recognition of India’s democratic credentials. (more…)

  • Indo-Maldives Relations Continue to Blossom

    South Asian leaders convened in the capital of the Maldives earlier this month. It was an appropriate venue for their summit as the island nation’s regional importance is set to increase when the region around the Indian Ocean takes center stage in the twenty-first century.

    Indo-Maldives relations were affirmed in a joint statement. The two countries agreed to deepen existing strategic relations and improve cooperation in combating drug trafficking and terrorism. India also agreed to undertake a feasibility study into developing a port north of Malé in the Haa Dhaalu Atoll which would be a huge boon to the northern Maldives’ economy.

    Before the South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation summit commenced, Maldivian president Mohamed Nasheed vowed that his country would never menace India’s security, clearing apprehension in New Delhi that the atolls might be lured into China’s “yuan diplomacy.”

    India maintains strategic relations with the Maldives for two reasons. Its intelligence services uncovered that a top operative of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the militant Islamist organization that orchestrated the 2008 Mumbai attacks, attempted to set up an Indian Ocean base for the group. The plot would have involved Lashkar-e-Taiba storing weapons on an uninhabited island.

    In 2008, terrorist activity in the Maldives spiked with a bombing in Malé and the settlement of a jihadist community in Himandhoo, a previously uninhabited Maldivian atoll. India seeks to coordinate counterterrorism efforts with the Maldives to stamp out this presence.

    India and the Maldives have also strengthened defense cooperation to counter China’s rise in the Indian Ocean area. Per a 2009 security agreement, India will construct a radar network across the atolls and link it to its coastal command. It also regularly surveys the islands with military flights and plans to erect an air force station in the Maldives.

    The Maldives form a vital cog in India’s naval diplomacy. All great powers that have attempted to dominate the Indian Ocean sought a base in the Maldives, including the Dutch, the Portuguese, the British, the Americans and the Soviets.

    Unlike these past great powers, India has traditionally enjoyed close relations with the island nation. It notably helped the Maldivian government thwart a coup in 1988 which saved Maumoon Abdul Gayoom’s presidency. Although his successor is of a very different political persuasion, Indo-Maldivian relations have continued to blossom under Mohamed Nasheed’s leadership because they serve the interests of both partners.

    As India emerges as a great power, it is important that it appreciates the sensitivities of its neighboring states and not conduct its foreign policy from a Delhi centric point of view. For India to project “soft power” abroad, it has to be perceived as a “big brother” in Asia that doesn’t at all threaten the interests nor sovereignty of its vassals.

  • Singh Asserts Indian Leadership Again

    India’s prime minister Manmohan Singh is something of a paradox. He is not a politician by profession, however he has proved to be a political Houdini especially when it comes to asserting his nation’s position internationally.

    For example, on the sidelines of the East Asia Summit held in Bali, Indonesia, Singh was quick to assert India’s commercial interest in the South China Sea although it doesn’t share a border there. He put China in its place by emphasizing that the spats in the area should be resolved peacefully and in accordance with international sea laws.

    Singh also appreciated the difficult political situation in Pakistan when he extended an olive branch to Prime Minister Yousuf Gilani on the sidelines of a South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation summit in the Maldives this week.

    His assertiveness with regard to China and willingness to engage Pakistan, which is internally ravaged in many ways, demonstrate Singh’s ability to read the situations outside India perfectly.

    China’s revisionist border stance in the South China Sea has invited criticism from countries ranging from Australia and Indonesia to South Korea and Taiwan. Indeed, virtually all nations bordering the Pacific Ocean in East Asia are ready to seek India’s and the United States’ help in containing China’s rise.

    In Pakistan, ongoing counterterrorism efforts and America’s presence in Afghanistan have inspired the people to push their leadership for greater cooperation with New Delhi. The prime minister’s astute diplomatic conduct on the eve of both aforementioned conferences buttresses Indo-Pakistani rapprochement.

    Singh’s ability to improve India’s standing in the world hasn’t always gone well with India’s middle class although it is doing increasingly well both within and outside of India. It’s for his very willingness to improve relations with neighboring Pakistan that Singh is perceived as a weak leader at home whereas he is respected as a statesman abroad. His international performance has won him personal accolades and an increased respect for India on the world stage.

    As President Barack Obama put it during his most recent visit to India, when Manmohan Sigh speaks, the world listens. “India is emerging as a superpower and the world is fully aware of this reality,” he said.

    Some of his critics may have already written his political obituary but India’s very nimble prime minister learned an important lesson from President Theodore Roosevelt. “Speak softly and carry a big stick.”

  • India Must Formulate Middle East Strategy

    As the world is finetuned to the future of the Middle East after the so-called “Arab Spring” toppled decade-old dictatorships in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia this year, the rising power of South Asia is contemplating its Middle East policy.

    The problem with Indian strategic thinking is that it’s embroiled in ideological abstracts like nonalignment and forming rainbow coalitions across the global south with other BRICs.

    An active participation in multilateral organization is useful but it’s also important to focus on geostrategy from the perspective of national self-interest. This has been a lacking in India.

    In this context, India has to both consider the great powers of the West and China to the east. Both had a solid geostrategy before they became international powers. Britain during the nineteenth century and the United States since the end of World War II have conducted foreign policy with a clear geopolitical understanding — especially in the Middle East.

    The very phrase “Middle East” was coined by the American strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan before there were ever dictators to be deposed there or oil supplies to be secured.

    The fact that an American “invented” the Middle East demonstrates how important the region is to the global power game. It provides a perfect buffer region between the land powers of Eurasia and the world’s major sea lanes. If the Middle East assumed significance in a century during which power was concentrated in the Atlantic area, one must recognize the implications for an Asian century in which the Indian Ocean is predicted to take center stage.

    This is why it’s crucial for India to formulate a convincing strategy for the Middle East that’s not confined to abstract principles.

    Moreover, if there is a cold war between China and the United States for spheres of influence in the twenty-first century, the vast oil resources of the Middle East will be more hotly contested. China has not actually started a “great game” there because it would rather the United States remain involved in their costly counterinsurgency campaigns — enabling China to do business in the region once the Americans are weakened.

    India’s position is peculiar in this regard. It has tried to appease the authoritarians of the region with its policy of nonalignment but failed. India, a majority Hindu country ever at odds with Muslims in Pakistan, won’t be perceived as a friend in the Arab world. It is in India’s interest therefore to perpetuate Washington’s paramountcy in the region and prevent Beijing from taking its place. Endorsing notions of a “responsibility to protect” to legitimize interventionism in the Middle East does not serve this interest.

  • India’s Great Power Status Buttressed in Perth

    During the recent meeting of Commonwealth leaders in Perth, Australia, it was clear that when the elephant (India) is in the room, there is no room left for other countries in the world except for the dragon (China) and the eagle (the United Staes).

    Last week, India managed to elbow other countries in the Commonwealth, the loose confederation of once British colonies, including its former master Britain and aspiring great powers in East Asia.

    The Western member states, Australia, Britain and New Zealand, pushed for an institution that would monitor human rights in Commonwealth nations. The move was scuttled by India which stated bluntly that there is a multilateral institution for that purpose already called the United Nations and the Commonwealth should rather focus on developmental challenges.

    India further criticized Western countries for maintaining double standards with regard to pursuing their lofty concepts of democracy and human rights. While they are more than willing to maintain the undemocratic status quo in the Middle East, where European and North American countries are allied with the Arab oil monarchies of the Persian Gulf, they’re critical of Fiji, the Maldives and Sri Lanka which are on the fringes of their geostrategic objectives.

    If its posturing at the recent Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting was any indication, India has graduated from being a regional power in South Asia to the status of great power in the Asia Pacific where it speaks on behalf of smaller nations. It tries to court these countries because it might one day need their support in attaining a permanent United Nations Security Council seat.

    Moreover, India, a huge and fairly tolerant democracy itself, is reluctant to champion human rights abroad because its rival is having a free run in the global south scrambling for resources. It’s just a matter of time before India will join the race with China for neocolonialism or “spheres of influence” in developing countries so the last thing it wants to be seen as is a torchbearer of the declining and decadent West.

    At the same time, there will continue to be a role for the Commonwealth in India’s diplomacy. As the country with the greatest number of English-speaking people in the world, it has lived up to the expectation that it might one day fill the void that was left by the dissolution of the British Empire.

  • India Opens the Afghanistan Gambit

    While internally, India is caught up in civil unrest that could jeopardize the stability of its government, the country’s neighbors increasingly regard a powerful Indian presence in the region as in their own interest.

    Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s state visit to India this month signaled a paradigm shift in Indo-Afghan relations. After nearly a decade of balancing relations with India and Pakistan, traditional rivals in South Asia, Kabul opted for a strategic partnership with New Delhi. The choice and its timing were largely inspired by the imminent withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan.

    The United States are planning to withdraw up to 30,000 soldiers from Afghanistan by the autumn of next year. In December, the first 10,000 are expected home. After the winding down of the Afghan surge, a supportive military presence will remain in Afghanistan up to 2014. But what after that?

    India has shown itself a partner for regional stability by investing $1.2 billion in development projects in Afghanistan and facilitating the necessary nation building in the wartorn country. India paid a price for its help. Diplomats and aid personnel were killed in Afghanistan in attacks for which New Delhi has held Pakistan’s spy agency responsible. Pakistani intelligence is known to entertain relations with Afghan insurgents and wary of an Indian presence on both of its borders.

    Despite the unpredictability and violence, India maintained its presence because it has a stake in a stable, democratic Afghanistan, unlike Islamabad. Pakistan would rather have a divided country, ruled by Islamists, to achieve “strategic depth” there.

    Other regional actors, including Central Asian states and Iran, as well as the United States want to keep the Taliban out of power. This convergence of interests has served India well. Its relationships with Iran and the United States are both stable if not improving. The question now is what role New Delhi sees for itself in a postwar Afghanistan? The answer may be found in its “Look West” policy which aims to improve cooperation with countries across West Asia. Afghanistan could be a launchpad from which to boost India’s diplomatic and commercial relations with the Central Asian republics.

    So far, India’s “Look West” policy hasn’t been as coordinated and successful as its “Look East” policy because New Delhi is restrained from pursuing relations across Central Asia and the Middle East by Pakistan. Similarly, its relations with the United States, though positive, haven’t developed significantly because the Americans need Pakistan’s support in their War on Terror.

    American-Pakistani relations are deteriorating however as Washington is growing tired of the Afghan campaign and as revelations about the intrigues of Pakistan’s spy agency stir anti-Pakistan sentiments in the United States.

    As Pakistan’s influence is eroding, there is a chance for India to jump into the vacuum that is Afghanistan and facilitate a comprehensive reconstruction effort, one that is supported by the neighboring states that have most at stake in the country, including Iran, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

    The longer term aim for India could be to deny other great powers, notably China, a leadership position in Central Asia. Here, again, it finds itself at odds with Pakistan which is a Chinese client state.

    The region north of Afghanistan will prove to be pivotal to the energy security of continental Asian powers soon. India can’t afford to slumber as usual but must design a strategy now.

  • India Needs a Naval Diplomacy

    Five hundred years ago this year, the Portuguese admiral Afonso de Albuquerque captured the Strait of Malacca and established supremacy for his country in the East Indies. Although Portugal couldn’t project power into the Asian hinterland with its limited military resources, it was strong enough to dominate a number of active trading outposts, including Goa in India and Macau in China. From these positions, the Portuguese managed, for a while, to control the European trade with South and East Asia. Today, a great power may aim to do the same.

    In Monsoon (2010), Robert Kaplan characterizes the area between the Gulf of Aden in the west and Malacca in the east as the center stage of the twenty-first century. If India is to graduate from being a regional power in South Asia to a great power in the Asia Pacific, it is this pivotal ocean with its vital waterways that it should seek to control — whether directly, through hard power, or indirectly, with a soft power approach. Whatever its choices, India needs a clear naval diplomacy.

    India is among few nations with the potential of being a continental and a maritime power simultaneously. Its policymakers have long concentrated on their hinterland where Pakistan loomed since independence as a natural rival. But as India’s economy is growing and its place in the world increasingly secure, it has to revive its maritime focus.

    With a distinctive “Look East” policy, India boosted its trade relations with Southeast Asia. Indian naval officers regularly visited Southeast Asian countries as part of its naval diplomacy. Now, it has to extend that aim into the South Pacific if not beyond. (more…)