India’s dalliance with NATO

M K Bhadrakumar

As NATO aggressively pushes its world view, India becomes the latest partner in the game plan. However, India has the daunting challenge of convincing its public opinion which has traditionally resisted such moves and the need to create a balance in its relationship with the China. In this it shares its predicament with Australia and both have to sort out the problem to create a world that is safe for the values that are cherished by the democracies the world over.

Summing up the 10-year ties between Russia and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a Russian military analyst wrote, "Relations between the two are a marriage of convenience, where husband and wife live together, often socialize with others as a couple, and show every sign of respect for each other. "At the same time, they sleep in different rooms, and have separate households and personal expenses. Each side is primarily pursuing its interests, and although the couple is formally married, they cannot be called a real family."

A portrait of arranged marriages wouldn't unduly perturb Indians. But it would be a sobering thought for Delhi how shockingly brief Russia's dalliance with NATO turned out to be when it rubbed against the realities of life.

As NATO steps up its courtship of India, Delhi too will have to think about the kind of relationship it desires. Washington genuinely seeks a NATO-India partnership. As NATO retools for the 21st century for new missions in Africa and South Asia, and as it advances across the Middle East toward the Indian Ocean, looking for global partnerships (numbering 20 at present), India inevitably figures in its agenda. This became starkly evident last month.

There was something very poignant about the NATO naval force making its historic visit to the Indian Ocean last month. The NATO maritime mission involved ships from six member countries, which set sail from Europe on July 30. The 12,500 nautical mile route involved circumnavigating Africa. Though they could have taken a direct route via the Suez Canal, they preferred to come hugging the west coast of Africa and on to the Niger Delta, gingerly rounding the Horn of Africa - just as the first Portuguese and Dutch ships came to India's Malabar Coast in the 15th century.

A NATO announcement said the deployment in the Indian Ocean aimed to "demonstrate the alliance's continuing ability to respond to emerging crisis situations on a global scale and foster close links with regional navies and other maritime organizations". Scheffer said, "Maritime security, ensuring the safe passage of shipping and supporting a coordinated international approach to protect energy supplies are high priorities for NATO."

As the newly appointed US ambassador to NATO, Victoria Nuland, said, the "post-Cold War honeymoon" is over and NATO needs to develop capabilities "wherever and whenever they may arise". "NATO must be the place where we talk about all the issues affecting our future - the Middle East, Iraq, North Korea, China, Iran, just to name a few," she added.

The NATO mission to the Indian Ocean has been undertaken hardly six months ahead of the April 2008 summit meeting of NATO in Bucharest, Romania, where the agenda is expected to be the alliance's further enlargement as well as strengthening its capacity and its reach to undertake missions with partners around the globe.

The so-called global challenges are in one way or the other evident in many of the countries of the Indian Ocean region, which, therefore, becomes a theater of priority for the alliance. But that's not the whole picture.The leitmotif of the renewed scramble for Africa by Western powers is largely to be traced to the growing Chinese challenge to Western dominance over Africa and the requirement to protect oil. Almost 15% of the US's oil imports come from Africa.

NATO's future role in the Indian Ocean forms part of a well-thought Western strategy. NATO's naval mission to the Indian Ocean in September coincided with another major initiative by Washington. The newly created Africa Command (AFRICOM) of the US military, reflecting the long-term strategic value of Africa, is poised to begin its initial operations in October.

The newly appointed AFRICOM commander, General William E "Kip" Ward, has stressed the "need for close coordination" with NATO. Indeed, since July 2005, NATO has provided air transport for peacekeeping forces in Darfur. But Ward anticipates a deeper and vastly expanded NATO involvement in Africa.

Significantly, on September 20, Washington pressed ahead with a resolution in the United Nations Security Council on Afghanistan with a new element - the US-led coalition's Operation Enduring Freedom maritime interception component.

Russia pointed out that such a blanket provision giving the right of maritime interception did not appear in any of the previous Security Council resolutions on Afghanistan or any conflict situation for that matter. Russia sought clarification, and proposed that instead of blanket permission, the resolution should "reflect the imperative observance of international law and national legislation in carrying out any actions involving interception of ships in the Indian Ocean's waters". However, Russian concerns were ignored and the US pressed for a vote.

The new provision effectively gives the US-led coalition in Afghanistan the right to intercept and board vessels suspected of carrying arms or reinforcements for terror groups that operate in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border areas. It serves the purpose of legitimizing NATO's future maritime activities in the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea - an ominous development against the background of the US's standoff with Iran.

At the same time, NATO's Mediterranean Dialogue (1995) and the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative or ICI (2004) have already brought the alliance from the eastern Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf region. The NATO presence in the Persian Gulf took a solid footing when Saudi Arabia became an ICI partner in January. The alliance is now set to consider a formal link-up with the Gulf Cooperation Council comprising Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

In comparison, the Indian Ocean region remains a "vacuum" for NATO, though it has made headway in the Asia-Pacific region. Of course, NATO gives the spin that the issue is not how far it can or should go, but how to enable the alliance to act wherever its collective security interests are at stake. It insists that it is not "pushing into Asia or the Pacific region", but countries such as Japan, Australia, New Zealand and South Korea have displayed an interest in working with NATO, and the alliance has welcomed this.

Unlike with NATO's Gulf and the Middle Eastern partners, which are all authoritarian regimes, the alliance prides itself as sharing "common values" with its partners in the Asia-Pacific. Here, NATO's refrain is "common values and common security threats". It is easy to see that such exclusivity is intended to keep out China.

During a visit to NATO headquarters in Brussels in January, the first by a Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe summed up the paradigm: "Japan and NATO are partners. My government is committed to reinforcing the stability and prosperity of the world based on the fundamental values …. For its part, NATO is widening the circle of freedom through an expansion of membership and partnerships."

Significantly, in the same speech, Abe referred to "some uncertainties surrounding China", such as its defense expenditure and its "continued lack of transparency", and the need for Japan and NATO, therefore, to "pay close attention to the future of this nation". Through its robust partnership with NATO, Tokyo hopes to ensure that a coalition composed of partners who share basic democratic values takes place in the Asia-Pacific. Japan defines it as an active coalition for maintaining global security, comprising countries that subscribe to Euro-Atlantic values. Such an approach would leave NATO to form an association with China, but that would remain an affiliation system, like Russia's, for the limited purpose of engagement and confidence-building.

Japan's partnership with NATO runs parallel to its three-way defense cooperation with the US and Australia. In March, Japan signed a groundbreaking defense pact with Australia. Tokyo and Washington have already begun installing a missile shield in Japan. In April, officials from Japan, the US and Australia agreed to study a plan for a joint missile system. Progress on this front has been rapid.

Alongside, NATO has also veered round to the view that the US's long-range missile defense system doesn't upset strategic balance. More important, NATO is open to the idea of "bolting together" with the US system its own national short- and mid-range missile defense systems. Though the missile shield is projected as a defensive system, China doesn't see it that way. As a Chinese scholar, Jin Linbo of the China Institute of International Studies, put it, "We [China] cannot regard it as a defensive system just because that's what it is called. Since ancient times both spears and shields have been regarded as weapons in Chinese culture - because shields can make spears useless."

For any security system in the Asia-Pacific (US, Japan and Australia), India remains the prize catch. Equally, without India, NATO's partnerships in the Indian Ocean region would remain inherently weak. Abe, during his recent visit to India, invited India to become part of a coalition of Asian democracies.

Thus, India was involved in naval exercises with the US, Japan and Australia last month in the Bay of Bengal. Billed as the "Malabar" exercise, it was similar in scope to the "Talisman Saber" in June between the US and Australia.
Both "Malabar" and "Talisman Saber" maintained the pretence that they were intended against sea piracy, drug trafficking and for coordinating disaster relief and humanitarian efforts. But they were largely seen as templates of a collective security system in the making, under US leadership.

Japan is pressing India to enter into a defense cooperation framework with it - a memorandum of understanding at the very least. The outgoing Japanese ambassador to India said recently, "Military-to-military exchanges [with India] are very much advanced ... It is time to prepare some framework to cover all the ingredients. That is the intention of both governments."

India has taken part in the past year in a strategic dialogue format with the US, Japan and Australia. Another round of this is due soon. Japan is pushing for raising the level of this interaction to ministerial level. Simultaneously, the US is also pressing for the "inter-operability" of its armed forces with India's. Sustained efforts in this direction by both sides are evident. In the past five years, for instance, more than half of the military exercises held by India with foreign armed forces have been with the US. Of course, "inter-operability" with the US armed forces would enable India to partake of the US's plans for missile defense systems.

Thus, a matrix is developing. As far as Delhi is concerned, at the root of it lies the problem that India is unable to come to terms with China's phenomenal rise. The talk in Tokyo and Canberra that they do not want a "uni-polar" situation emerging on Asia's strategic chessboard easily finds resonance in Delhi.

The meeting between the Indian foreign minister and the NATO secretary general in New York last week should be viewed against a huge backdrop rather than the limited canvas of Afghanistan. The NATO-India consultation has so far remained unpublicized at the official level. Delhi has traditionally lacked a "bloc mentality" and Indian public opinion largely militates against the idea.

Any pronounced gravitation toward an "Asian NATO" form of collective security will inevitably affect India's relations with China. (India shares Australia's predicament on this score.) Therefore, India has to perform some very tricky rope acts in the period ahead. In a major speech during a visit to Thailand on September 14, Mukherjee stressed, "The India-China partnership is an important determinant for regional and global peace and development, and for Asia's emergence as the political and economic center of the new international order."

Three days later, addressing the strategic community in Seoul, the minister underlined the importance of a "truly integrated Asian economy that will draw on the economic potential of India and China". Expressing confidence that India's "strategic and cooperative partnership [with China] will mature and steadily develop", he added, "Sensitivity to mutual aspirations is the underpinning for building confidence and trust. There is enough space and opportunity for both of us to grow and develop."

The challenge for Indian diplomacy will be to convincingly interpret the implications of its "strategic partnership" with the US. The perception is growing, and is incrementally gaining credibility, that India is aligning with a US-led security system in Asia. Clearly, the request by the NATO secretary general to call on the Indian foreign minister wouldn't have been made without Washington's nod.

M K Bhadrakumar served as a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service for over 29 years, with postings including India's ambassador to Uzbekistan (1995-1998) and to Turkey (1998-2001).