The Broad Mind  

Rear Admiral Raja Menon (Retd)

The majority of comments in India on the prime minister’s visit to the USA have concluded that nothing much was achieved, at least going by the joint communiqués issued. These statements don’t always give any idea of the subjects that may have been brought up and were left unresolved, either because they couldn’t be resolved or because more work was needed to be done on them, and were left to a later date. There have been many comments that nothing more could have been done under the circumstances, when Obama was struggling to herd Pakistan into a more cooperative direction in fighting the Taliban.

As the prime minister, the buck definitely stops at his desk in Delhi. But when the PM of a country goes to talk to the most powerful man in the world, sitting in the White House, one assumes that his ministers and advisors put up a list that can perhaps only be resolved at the level of the heads of state, because all efforts at lower levels have failed. Is one to understand that things are going so well in this part of the world that nothing more than was quoted in the communiqués were put up for the PM to take to Washington?

For instance, there is a consensus even among the political parties that Afghanistan is India’s strategic frontier. The US surge is perhaps Obama’s last gamble, and 2011 might see the coalition thinning out, leading to an eventual withdrawal. Aren’t we clear that when that happens the only force that stands between Mullah Omar and Kabul is the Afghan army? So what happened to the Indian proposal to train large numbers of the Afghan army outside Afghanistan? Did we chicken out or did the Americans? If the Indian army is the best secular model of an Asian army, why can’t we make a difference in Afghanistan, perhaps the biggest difference between success and failure in creating a viable Afghan state? Were the logistics too frightening, or was Pakistan’s reaction feared so much even though the Indian army wasn’t actually going to be in Afghanistan — or do the Americans feel they can go it alone?

There are even more vexatious issues. Since 2005 when Pakistan test fired the Babur missile, and built it up to become a nuclear tipped cruise missile, far more deadly than our relatively irrelevant Brahmos, there has come into the sub-continent, the danger of Pakistan’s first use doctrine being converted to a first strike. After all a cruise missile with accuracies of less than ten metres are not city destroying weapons. The engine of the Babur, an air breathing turbo-fan is most probably made in China and either will continue to be made there or the factory will be exported to Fatehjung, to join the existing Chinese supplied missile factory. Not since 1992-93 have the Chinese so grossly violated their self imposed MTCR to create a nuclear arms race in the sub-continent. Since this story is now four years old and we haven’t mentioned it anywhere, protested about it, or called the Chinese ambassador to serve him a demarche, we can only assume that the problem is beyond us, and can be tackled only by the Americans. To give President Clinton his due, he did send his top-level advisers to Beijing in 1992 to read the riot act about China’s nuclear proliferation and sale of ballistic missile technologies to Pakistan. Isn’t it time we elicited America’s help in turning up the heat on a possible nuclear arms race in the sub-continent, fuelled by Chinese supplies to Pakistan, or doesn’t it matter anymore?

The PM’s visit to Russia was certainly a success, to the extent of the current state of Indo-Russian relations. The INS Vikramaditya and the Akula will help our maritime forces to remain powerful in the Indian Ocean, but there are huge forces at work here. It is difficult to actually name China as a threat anymore, precisely because it is becoming truly dangerous. For instance, China is present in every littoral state of Africa, from Egypt, down the east coast through Sudan, Kenya, Tanzania and South Africa — along the West Coast (which now supplies the greater part of its oil) through the West African states, onto Algeria, Libya and back to Egypt. The Chinese have also moved south through every littoral state of the Indian Ocean, except Bangladesh to create a coastal presence. It doesn’t take rocket science to tell where all this is headed. A month ago, the Chinese actually suggested dividing the Somalia anti-piracy patrol between nation states, omitting any role for India. The US is the supreme power in the Indian Ocean, but it has few vital interests here. Its new maritime strategy seems to indicate a withdrawal to homeland security — albeit ‘in depth’. It doesn’t take much to create insurmountable obstacles to China in the Indian Ocean but where are the Americans in all this?

What exactly is the Indo-US Defence Agreement, and our strategic partnership all about? If we have a strategic partnership, why are an aircraft carrier and a nuclear submarine coming from Russia? These are huge capabilities that change power equations. Isn’t the US interested is being the arbiter of power in the Indian Ocean anymore? A sale of 126 fighters at market prices is not a strategic relationship. It’s just a commercial sale, and if it wasn’t the US, it would have been another supplier. The aircraft carrier and nuclear submarine are actually US specialisations, so why is its strategic partner getting these platforms from someone else?

There appears to be a nonchalance about each other’s strategic problems that is difficult to explain. This cannot be mutually satisfactory, because the US is a superpower and can manage without India, while the reverse is not true. Even if our foreign policy has been traditionally timorous, we would not have got into trouble by training the Afghan army, if the coalition withdrew after 2012. But by showing our lack of concern for the success of the war in Afghanistan, we have put ourselves into situations where similar US lack of concern can be shown for our strategic anxieties. These include the Chinese arming of Pakistan with first strike weapons and the imminence of a Chinese naval advance into the Indian Ocean. The latter event was expected to occur after 2020, but a Chinese general in charge of IT in the PLA has already suggested the acquisition of a Chinese base in the Indian Ocean.

Perhaps these issues are too big for one visit and establishing a personal relationship is the first step. In that case, further meetings to take place shortly should provide answers.

This article first appeared in the Express Buzz section of The New Indian Express on 21 January 2010.