India’s new strategic initiatives

Columnist SULTAN AHMED looks at India’s new moves in strategic realignment.

India’s military moves are making headlines. They are not only significant domestic moves like increasing the military budget by a whopping 28 per cent this year and pledging to spend far more as the situation arises but also unexpected moves for strategic ties with Asian countries. Some of them, like the moves to acquire a vast range of new weapons, make major headlines, while others are mentioned in small news items.

President Clinton’s visit to India and the common vision of a future partnership they are developing are encouraging Indian leaders to seek strategic cooperation with key countries in Asia.

India is also encouraged by the support it has received for its quest for a permanent seat in the UN Security Council from the US, Britain and France who hold India as a natural claimant for that distinction.

Since in the modern world the claim of a country for big power status goes with its economic might and military strength and reach, and the support it receives from other countries in advancing such claims. India, is trying to make progress in all these areas.

The visit of the Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer to India after his sharp criticism of India for its nuclear explosions of May, 1998, came as something of surprise to political observers in the region. But then he followed President Clinton to New Delhi to demonstrate what was good for Clinton could not be bad for Australia.

The arrival of the Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit in India after the Clinton visit also came as something of a surprise. Normally he would have visited Pakistan as well, but he said he did not want to dilute the significance of his Indian visit by visiting Pakistan simultaneously. He would here come later, he said, while some interpreted that to mean the leftist Prime Minister’s disapproval of the military regime in Pakistan.

A major hurdle in the way of India securing a permanent new seat in the Security Council is the 52-year old Kashmir dispute with which the UN is seized. India has defiantly violated the UN resolutions in regard to Kashmir and repudiated its own commitment to hold a plebiscite in Kashmir to decide the disputed state’s future.

And India has refused to hold a purposeful dialogue on that issue despite the rebellion there which has been claiming an increasing number of lives there day after day 60,000 so far.

While India recently used helicopter gunships to shoot down the rebelling Mujahideen, who have begun using suicide bombers in a car to escalate their uprising. While on one side India has spurned all offers of mediation, including from President Clinton, it does not want to hold a dialogue with Pakistan despite the Simla Pact that binds both countries to seek a negotiated settlement of the issue.

India now believes that Kashmir could be treated more like a thing of the past, best forgotten and the Western world would be indulgent towards it. American diplomats here have already begun saying that what could not be achieved for the last 52 years in Kashmir should better be side-stepped and new solutions sought. They prefer a solution of the issue by India and Pakistan rather than through a plebiscite.

While three members of the Security Council have voiced their general support for India’s claim for a permanent seat in the Security Council, Russia too will fall in line with them readily, if not take the lead eventually due to the traditional friendship between the two countries.

All that leaves behind China, the fifth permanent member of the Council. And Beijing is aware of how the US is hoping that India would become strong enough militarily to checkmate a stronger China in future.

While China may not want to be the lone permanent member of the Security Council to oppose a permanent seat for India, it can certainly insist that India should seek to solve the Kashmir issue, if not through purposeful bilateral negotiations, by accepting international mediation including through the good offices of the UN Secretary General, who had made such offers in the past. Only to be spurned by India.

Once India is in the Security Council on a permanent basis without solving the Kashmir issue, it could use its veto to block any initiative by the UN on Kashmir and even bar a discussion in the Security Council. Pakistanis and the Kashmiris are well aware of that.

That outcome of such moves could be the Kashmiris stepping up their struggle and taking to greater violence before India joins the Security Council. India would then accuse Pakistan of bolstering the rebellion in Kashmir and threaten military action against it. That means before India becomes a permanent member of the Security Council the two countries in the sub-continent could be in a state of near war or real war itself.

Can the world afford that? Does the world want that in a region which has already more than 600 million of the world’s poorest people living under a dollar a day? The case of Japan and Germany which, too, are claimants for permanent seats in the Security Council is different from that of India which has consistently defied the UN in Kashmir and does not want a negotiated settlement there or international mediation. Like the child which wants to both eat the cake and keep it. India wants both the Security Council seat and Kashmir. It is for the world to decide whether it wants to perpetuate such an inequity, and be a party to the loss of scores of lives in Kashmir everyday.

Western States led by the US argue that while India is a natural claimant for permanent Security Council seat, it is for the countries of the region to decide who should represent them? With East Asia already represented in the Security Council by China, how do we decide who should represent the rest of Asia, particularly the populous South Asia in the Council permanently? May be a country could be chosen to represent the region for a period of five or ten years, and a system of rotation devised. That may be a better and more democratic arrangement than one more country becoming a permanent member of the Security Council foever.

One of the reasons for the weakness or inefficacy of the UN is the five permanent members of the SC with their veto. Now if three more members join the Council with veto powers and they exercise their veto powers as they choose, will not that make the UN system even less effective? This fear is already there, and is very valid. And it should not be brushed aside lightly. That fact is but for the frequently used Russian veto the Kashmir issue would have been settled a long time ago. And now instead of five permanent members eight members exercise that power, will that make the UN or the Security Council stronger or weaker? If the increase in the permanent members of the Security Council will make it weaker and less effective, when the world is already weary of the feeble UN, that will be unfortunate.

Meanwhile India’s Defence Minister George Fernandes has been on official visits to Japan and Vietnam to talk of defence or strategic ties with them. The opportunity to get closer to Japan came following the rescue of a Japanese ship from dare devil pirates by the Indian Navy in the Indian Ocean. He says New Delhi will soon have its annual high level defence consultations with Tokyo, while Japanese coastguard ships and Indian vessels would conduct joint training in tackling piracy.

The issue is not piracy alone, says the Far Eastern Economic Review although piracy has become a significant issue in the region, particularly in the Gulf of Malacca. India wants to make full use of its large navy to assure protection of foreign ships in the region.

Fernandes says: “A strong India economically and militarily well endowed will be a very solid agent to see that the sea lanes are not disturbed and that a conflict situation is contained.”

During his visit to Vietnam Fernandes made a similar offer of joint naval training in combating piracy. And the Vietnamese army who are experts in guerilla warfare is to train Indian military officers in jungle warfare and counter-insurgency so that they could use it in Kashmir and in the north-east of India where the Nagas and others have been rebelling against India.

India is also to repair and overhaul Russian MiG aircraft of the Vietnamese Air Force and train its pilots. India is also to help the Vietnamese to set up its defence industry to manufacture small and medium weapons.

India wants to take advantage of the rather strained relations between Vietnam and China following their border war of 1979. And New Delhi is to take full advantage of the fears of Japan in respect of China that is becoming militarily and economically strong.

India may make similar offers to other countries in the region whose ships are threatened by pirates. India is evenwise keen to emerge as a significant  exporter of small and medium weapons. Its leaders feel that its proven nuclear capability has demonstrated its capacity to export arms to other countries.

Meanwhile as India seeks to increase in strategic cooperation with Israel and buy some of the advanced weapons cheap from it, China is seeking a major military deal with Israel. China is to acquire some Air-borne Warning and Control systems from Israel so as to keep an eye on Taiwan. The US is unhappy with such moves and has been exerting pressure on Israel not to sell the AWACs to China. But Israel would like to sell them if the order is large and it can make a good deal of money.

The latest reports say that India is borrowing an AWAC system from Russia for 40 days for use in Kashmir so that it could track down the movement of Kashmiri Mujahideen easily. Once the system to be positioned over Kashmir proves really helpful India may buy the system from Russia or Israel.

For all that India is yet to sign the CTBT. It has not refused to sign, but says it is mobilising a consensus on it now. And India hopes the world would forget its sin in exploding the nuclear weapons in May, 1998, in the manner it condoned its nuclear explosion of 1974. All that makes the task of Pakistan onerous, and it has to be wide awake. The solution is not an arms race with India; we have to play the game at the political and diplomatic level as well, while strengthening the economy simultaneously.