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India Aligned in New
Cold War
By
Sreeram Chaulia
For the leadership
today energy deals have become such an obsession that the strategic
partnerships are being ignored. As a result it appears to be firmly
aligned with the Americans in the new cold war that has already begun.
In the process it is forgetting that the America of today is fast
skidding with the weakening economy and continued fiascoes in
Afghanistan and Iraq. The truth is that USA has exposed its weakness in
guerrilla warfare thereby making itself vulnerable to modern warfare.
Even as Russo-American
tensions smoulder from Eastern Europe and Central Asia to the Arctic
seabed, the US Secretary of State is denying the onset of a renewed Cold
War. Yet, unmistakable signals of a counter-balancing effort by Russia
and China were sent last month through the largest-ever war games of the
Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), a six-nation anti-US alliance.
Some 6,000 troops from
Russia, China, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan engaged
in complex joint military manoeuvres in Russia's Urals and China's
Sinkiang, solidifying a phalanx that purports to be Eurasia's answer to
the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).
A notable absentee at the exercises was India, which has not applied for
full membership of the SCO despite Russia's entreaties that its entry
would "lead to stability and security in Asia". The post-games summit
meeting of the SCO in Bishkek was attended by heads of states of three
observer countries (Iran, Pakistan and Mongolia), but India, a co-equal,
could not depute anyone higher in rank than a petroleum minister. The
foreign minister was apparently busy allaying Leftist fears of a
sell-out on the India-US nuclear agreement. Such prioritisation
indicates that India sees potential only for energy deals, not strategic
partnership, in the SCO.
New Delhi's no-show at the SCO exercises contrasts sharply with its
active sponsorship of the recent naval 'Operation Malabar' that brought
together more than 20,000 personnel of India, the US, Japan and
Singapore to enhance "inter-operability" in the Bay of Bengal. India's
invitation of three states that have anti-Chinese strategic orientations
into waters that are witnessing Chinese naval encroachment has no
ambiguity in meaning. Setting aside diplomatic niceties, this move was a
strong message to China that its vulnerability in the Straits of Malacca
(transit point adjacent to the Bay of Bengal that carries 80 percent of
its oil imports) was exploitable by its rivals.
Is this enough evidence that India is aligning in the 'new Cold War'
with the US? India's defence minister claims that too much is being read
into Operation Malabar and that the other side of the coin is that New
Delhi and Beijing are conducting their first-ever joint military
exercises in "anti-terrorism tactics" in October. India and Russia too
have a long tradition of combined war games, and one such spectacle is
unfolding right now in Russia's northwestern region. But interestingly,
the India-China exercise in October will showcase barely 100 Indian
participants. The current India-Russia operations feature a contingent
of just 100 Indian soldiers.
Apart from the paucity of numbers, there is a qualitative difference
between bilateral war games conducted on a one-to-one basis and a
multilateral exercise like that of the SCO's. In world politics, a
convergence of armies or navies of multiple countries has a higher
significance than routine exchanges between militaries in dyad
formation. India's act of distancing from the SCO is in no way
compensated by low-key confidence-building measures with the Chinese
armed forces or drills with Russia behind which military hardware sales
lurk.
The theory that India is fence-sitting in the new Cold War being waged
between a Sino-Russian combine and the US through their respective
security alliances, the SCO and NATO, has very little to back up in
empirical facts. If not alignment, a definite tilt in favour of the US
is visible in India's acts of commission and omission. The die seems to
have been cast, and India is turning up at the ringside with what it
considers to be the sole global hegemony.
While not discounting the impact of the pro-Western Indian
intelligentsia and the lobbying power of Indian Americans in the US, the
key to India's US tilt lies in the belief in its strategic circles that
American power is unsurpassable and supreme. In this sense, India
assumes that it is cleverly 'bandwagoning' with the overwhelming force
instead of balancing against it by joining Russia and China. What is
misplaced here is an acute analysis of American weaknesses, both
absolute and relative to its competitors.
The continuing slide of the US dollar vis-a-vis the euro is a barometer
of a secular decline in the American economy, the base upon which
American global prestige rests. The fiascos in Afghanistan and Iraq are
indices of an American military that is unprepared for new-age guerrilla
conflicts. The erosion of political goodwill in world diplomacy that the
Bush administration has achieved shows that the US right to be
recognised as the "king of the hill" is in tatters.
India's National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan avers that New Delhi is
yet to accept the US as a "benign power". But intentions apart, is the
US still the predominant power in capabilities? As long as this myth is
not shattered, India will remain tilted in the smugness that it is being
pragmatic by courting the strongest party.
If India is a "swing state" in the new Cold War, it should not be
tilting so obviously on one side. It should engage more seriously with
the SCO on one hand, and play harder to get and extract more concessions
beyond the civilian nuclear deal from the US on the other. India's
justification during the Cold War for tilting on the side of the Soviet
Union was that Moscow was assisting New Delhi in checkmating Pakistan.
Is the US doing anything of similar magnitude for India in the new Cold
War? Who benefits from this tilt or alignment? |
