New Alignments, not non-alignment for Indian foreign policy

New Delhi, September 6: The new alignment in India’s engagement with the World will get an evident twist this month as Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while giving the Non-Alignment Movement (NAM) Summit a miss; will be cementing New Delhi’s ties with the South East Asian countries as he head to second country in the region in a week. 

After making a pit stop at Vietnam enroute to G-20 summit in the Eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou, will be embarking on a visit to Lao PDR on September 7th where he will be attending the 14th ASEAN-India Summit and the 11th East Asia Summit.

“This will be the third ASEAN (The Association of the Southeast Asian Nations) Summit to be attended by Prime Minister Modi. ASEAN is central to India’s Act East policy,” Secretary East Preeti Saran said while elaborating on the importance of the event.

The renewed diplomatic focus on the Mekong sub-region (comprising of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam) stems from the fact that it links the Bay of Bengal with the South China Sea through land. The South China Sea is pivotal to Indian interests as 50 percent of its trade passes through its sea lanes. The Mekong sub-region, thus, has become an area of geopolitical rivalry between India and China. 

The Prime Minister will also attend the East Asia Summit of which it has been one of the co-founders. Connectivity and trade will be high on agenda.

The Laos visit will means that the Prime Minister has traveled to all the countries in the Mekong sub-region, barring Cambodia. The region has taken a centre-stage in India’s foreign policy as evident by the Prime Minister’s whirlwind tours to the countries – he reached Hanoi on night of September 2^nd and left for Hangzhou on September 3rd evening. He returned to India on September 5^th evening and shall be reaching Laos on September 7^th.

The visits have been highlighted as the Prime Minister will not be attending the NAM Summit in a departure from the tradition of Indian Prime Ministers attending the event. Top diplomats have been talking about how G-20 is a better representative of the present day world over without explicitly denouncing the relevance of NAM, founded during the Cold War era.

The South Block mandarins have been trying to downplay the turn of events citing Prime Minister Modi’s chock-o-block itinerary for foreign visits. But the subtle signal does indicate a major shift the way India will be conducting its diplomacy.

China remains intransigent, issues White Paper on South China Sea

New Delhi, July 13: A day after the International Court’s judgment favoured Philippines’ claim in the South China Sea, an intransigent China issued a White Paper contending that its sovereignty over the region has been established in the course of 2000 years of history. Beijing also pointed fingers at the United States for stoking tension in the region.

China also threatened that if pushed to a corner it will set up an air defence zone over the South China Sea. "On whether China will set up an air defense zone over the South China Sea, what we have to make clear first is that China has the right to... But whether we need one in the South China Sea depends on the level of threats we face," Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin told reporters in Beijing, adding that China hoped to return to bilateral talks with Manila.

On Tuesday the International Tribunal at Hague dealt a blow to China’s maritime aspirations as it held Beijing guilty for breaching the archipelago country’s sovereignty; and also of damaging the marine environment by building artificial islands. The International Court’s are legally binding, but China has made it clear that it does not have any intentions of complying with the decision even at the risk of becoming an international outlaw.

"China will take all necessary measures to protect its territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests," the ruling Communist Party's official People's Daily said in a front page commentary on Wednesday.

South China Sea has overlapping territorial claims from Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan. The smaller countries have been afraid that China would turn South China Sea – comprising one of the busiest sea lines of communications (SLOCs) - into “Chinese Lake”. The economic and strategic importance of the region can be gauged from the US’ decision to deploy 60 percent of its forces in the region. It will also remains to be seen what course of action will be taken by the US- itself a non-signatory to the United Nations Conventions on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

The present judgement of the international court is only about the nature of the biological features in the region, it does not resolve the issue of the ownership of the Spratly and Paracel Islands, which face multiple claims from different parties. The island groups remain the main bone of contention in the South China Sea.

Contrary to the Hague-based court’s ruling invalidating Chinese “historic” claims on the region, the White Paper said: “China is the first to have discovered, named, and explored and exploited Nanhai Zhudao (the islands of South China Sea) and relevant waters, and the first to have continuously, peacefully and effectively exercised sovereignty and jurisdiction over them, thus establishing sovereignty over Nanhai Zhudao and the relevant rights and interests in the South China Sea.” The White Paper issued by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was titled, “China adheres to the Position of Settling through Negotiation the Relevant Disputes between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea”.

The Chinese established also accused Philippines of acting in the bad faith and its armed personnel of often using “excessive force against Chinese fishermen in utter disregard of the safety of their lives”.

A ‘Galle-ing’ experience

By Admiral Arun Prakash, former Chief of Indian Navy

"Instead of merely moaning about China’s ‘string of pearls’ and ‘maritime silk route’ strategies, India needs to craft creative, dynamic and long-term maritime alternatives.”

December 26, 2004, Sunday morning, saw the calm in Naval Headquarters (NHQ) being shattered by ominous reports of powerful seismic shocks and giant tidal surges in our Bay of Bengal islands and coastal areas. As the first Indian Navy (IN) warships and aircraft were being despatched on relief missions, appeals for assistance started coming from Sri Lanka and the Maldives. Having assigned resources to cope with the domestic emergency, NHQ considered it equally imperative to rush aid to stricken neighbours.

Galle in the year 2014

Given the languid functioning of our bureaucracy, a proposal of this nature could have taken weeks or months to be processed by the ministries of defence, external affairs and finance. To one’s utter amazement, the national security adviser (NSA) accorded instant approval on the phone, with the words, “We will sort out the paperwork on Monday”. Eighteen hours later, citizens of Galle on the southern tip of Sri Lanka awoke to see Indian warships, laden with relief material, anchored off the devastated harbour.

Fast-forward to December 1, 2014 — a decade. I arrive in this picturesque port town for the Galle Dialogue, to be told by a Sri Lankan admiral, “People in Galle remember the tsunami. If you tell shopkeepers that you are from the IN (Indian Navy), they will not let you pay.”

Initiated by the Sri Lankan ministry of defence in 2010, the annual Galle Dialogue has gained in significance and momentum with 38 nations, spanning the full alphabet from Australia to Zambia, represented at its fifth edition. India was given due prominence and the printed programme showed Dr Ajit Doval, India’s NSA, as guest of honour and keynote speaker, with the first two sessions being chaired by Indians; one of them being the vice chief of naval staff (VCNS).

The NSA’s oration on regional maritime security issues was heard with rapt attention and drew applause as he, tactfully, mentioned the early contributions of Sri Lankan statesmen towards creating an Indian Ocean zone of peace. The anti-climax came when it was discovered that the Indian VCNS (Vice Chief of Naval Staff) had not arrived on the expected flight. The hosts, too polite to pose awkward questions, quietly found a substitute to chair the session. The Galle Dialogue 2014, thus, saw participation by the commander of the Pakistan Fleet, the deputy Chief of Staff of the PLA Navy (PLAN) and a dozen other flag officers, but the IN invitee was absent; leaving many questions hanging in the air.

The whispered explanation, when it came, was on entirely predictable lines; apparently, an MoD (Ministry of Defence) functionary had turned down, at the last minute and for reasons unknown, the participation of the VCNS. One felt a sense of déjà vu because the all-powerful and non-accountable MoD bureaucracy has a known penchant for sitting on files till the 11th hour, and then whimsically approving or, more often, rejecting the proposal. It is in the latter context that a recent Indo-Sri Lankan diplomatic spat assumes significance.

During September-October 2014, Chinese submarines, accompanied by support vessels, docked in Colombo Port on two occasions. This peacetime transit and replenishment of a submarine was described, both by the Chinese and the Sri Lankan governments, as “common practice”. According to media reports, India took umbrage and told Colombo that its actions were of “serious concern to India’s national security.”

However, a look at the past would show that the episode called for quiet diplomacy rather than public display of indignation. While Sri Lanka’s victory over the LTTE owes much to many nations, including India, it was China’s military support that stood out for scale and constancy. China maintained bonded warehouses in Galle which supplied arms and ammunition to Sri Lankan forces on demand. Beijing also provided heavy weaponry and fighters; either directly or through a willing Pakistan. 

In comparison, India’s military aid to Sri Lanka was slow and sporadic. South Block remained hostage, not only to blackmail by Chennai but also to its own timidity, myopic vision and inertia. A saving grace was the camaraderie, at senior levels, of the Indian and Sri Lankan navies, which enabled them to reach out across Palk Strait in times of need. The IN tsunami-relief operation helped strengthen bonds.

Today, China’s role in transforming this island nation, through massive loans and creation of impressive infrastructure is undeniable. India, on the other hand, has been laggard in assisting Sri Lanka’s development on a significant scale.

In the face of China’s advance into the Indian Ocean, all that India has had to offer, so far, is the vapid nostrum of ‘strategic restraint’. Moreover, the dissonance between MEA, MoD and NHQ has often thwarted the navy’s endeavours to create strong bonds with maritime neighbours. A peripatetic PM Modi is, now, giving strong indications that India’s foreign policy may be acquiring a badly needed grand-strategic underpinning. 

A practitioner of realpolitik, Sri Lanka is not above playing one neighbour against the other. But given its client status vis-à-vis China, it may not have had the option of denying entry to PLAN submarines. However, Sri Lanka must not allow itself to become China’s pawn, in total disregard of neighbouring India’s strategic interests. 

The nothern-most tip of Sri Lanka in Jaffna.India is saddled just across the narrow Palk Strait.

Countries in our immediate neighbourhood, many of them island nations, seek maritime security; sometimes through direct naval presence, but more often through urgent requests for material aid, training assistance and advice. In this context, rushing supplies of water to the Maldives was a fine gesture, but setting up a de-salination plant will win us far more goodwill. 

Instead of merely moaning about China’s “string of pearls” and “maritime silk route” strategies, India needs to craft creative, dynamic and long-term maritime alternatives, like employing its Navy as the potent “instrument of state policy” that it is meant to be.
(The writer is a former Chief of Naval Staff)

Aiming without Arming

The Indian defence establishment has been talking about a grown assertiveness in its dealing with its giant neighbor in the East – China. Two separate developments earlier this month marked a sense of maturity in the defence outlook of India – the Special Representatives talks on the boundary issue with China and the largest edition of Milan naval exercise with 16 countries from the Indian Ocean Region and South China Sea.

On the face of it the two events look unrelated, but Indian Mandarins in the South Block seem to have taken a leaf out from the Chinese strategy of seeking a peaceful resolution of disputes while continuing to assert its might. India conducted war games with 16 countries including Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand – which are having disputes with China in the South China Sea region - in the Bay of Bengal from Feb 4-9. And then Indian National Security Advisor (NSA) met China’s State Councillor Yang Jiechi to decide to start dialogue on maritime security, an important aspect of Indo-China relations considering their rivalry vis-à-vis energy security.

File Photo of Exercise Milan

The only difference between the strategic maneuvering of the two countries is that China can actually back them up with firepower. India seems to be aiming virtually with no gun. The gap between the requirements of the Indian Armed Forces and the grant from the government is ever widening – as reflected in the recent budget. On the face of it, the defence budget has got a 10 percent hike. But probe a bit deeper, and it reflects an Indian defence establishment, known to have inertia to change; acquisition process takes decades, any force augmentations come after years, domination of reactive rather proactive approach towards bulwarking its defence and so forth and so on.

The announced Defence Budget for the year 2014-15 is 2.24 trillion rupees. The major reason for the enhanced budget is the increased pay and salaries of the three forces and the hiked revenue expenditure of the Indian Army, which is raising a Mountain Strike Corps along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) along China. However, the other requirements like getting new artillery guns have been hanging fire. And also the IAF had to bear a cut in relation to the current year.

Indian Defence Minister AK Antony dropped the bombshell at the flagship biennial Indian defence exhibition DefExpo-2014, that there was no money for the purchase of the 126 Medium Multi-Role Aircraft (MMRCA) for the Indian Air Force (IAF) – an acquisition that has the force has been awaiting for nearly a decade now and the delay has been keeping it from bidding adieu to all variants of the MiG-21s.

India has been trying to hide behind the comforts of its ‘superior’ navy with a greater experience of projecting force beyond its border. The Indian Navy officials have been boasting about the successful operation of a flat-deck carrier for decades. A claim which has been bolstered by the recent addition of Admiral Gorshkov, rechristened as INS Vikramaditya, in its fleet. The Chinese Navy that recently acquired Soviet-vintage aircraft carrier Varyag is already working towards acquiring second such warship. India presently has two aircraft carriers – one of which will be retiring soon and will be replaced by an indigenous one. And the Indian defence establishment instead of taking honing this indigenous capability further and sanctioning the construction of the second aircraft carrier is bidding time.

Another crunch staring the Indian Navy in face is the rapidly dwindling numbers of its submarines. The force has been left with only 14 conventional submarines in its flotilla and it is only after considerable delay that the government has decided to give its nod to the construction of six submarines under Project-75 I.

Another major project in limbo has been the construction of six strategic rail links along the LAC. The Indian Army had initially proposed construction of 14 strategic lines in Ladakh and North Eastern Regions. Out of this six lines were accorded top priority by the MoD. These lines will entail an estimated cost of Rs. 80,000 crore.

The rail lines are as such important to link the two regions with the country, however, the inaction on the part of the Indian government becomes more glaring as China has already laid down 10,000 km long rail network in Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR). This has given China the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) the capability to mobilize 4,50,000 soldiers to the border in 30 days.  Some of the important railway projects in North East are Missamari (Assam) to Tawang (Arunachal Pradesh), North Lakhimpur (Assam) to Along (Arunachal Pradesh) and Murkongselek (Assam)-Pasighat (Arunachal Pradesh). Tawang is strategically important to India and is one region in the North east claimed by the Chinese. Inclement weather in the region makes it difficult to maintain supply routes. 

While the Defence Minister has received a pat on his back for managing to spend every penny of the defence budget during his tenure, the last year 2013-14 has been very lackluster on his resume.

China's Brothers in Arms

The stellar entry of Chinese Defence firms in the global arms market has been creating ripples among the Czars of the arms bazaar. But the slow reacting Indian defence establishment has not taken the note that China besides investing in Ports around India, has now moved to directly arming its neighbouring countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka to the teeth.

According to the latest report of Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), China’s defence companies produced and sold 40 per cent of the world’s arms, ammunition and weaponry in 2012. The total global sales of arms and military services across the world valued 395 billion dollars sans the figure of 268 billion dollars for the Chinese firms. This makes Chinese share to be at a staggering 40.2 per cent of the total global arms production and sales.

File Photo

The increasing value addition and sophistication of the Chinese defence industry came to the world’s attention in 2013 as Turkey – a NATO member - opted for a Long Range Missile Defence System made by a little known China Precision Machinery Export-Import Corporation to supply the long-range missile defence system. While making the selection, Turkey rejected the product of established American firms even though it would have been compatible to existent defence systems. The military-industrial establishment was shocked as the country is facing US sanctions for ‘selling technologies to help Iran, Syria and North Korea to develop unconventional weapons’.

The China’s rise as an armament giant is threatening to tip the balance in the South Asian region fast. The countries in India’s neighbourhood have played a key role Beijing’s rise as a major arm supplier – a reality which the Indian defence establishment has been trying to resolve with its classic Ostrich approach. Exports make the niche indigenous defence market economically viable for a country, especially one seeking a transformation to a major power and seeking self-reliance in the area. This has been a major problem for the Indian private sector seeking to proliferate in the defence sector but refrains from doing so as the limited market does not commensurate with the high costs involved in the Research and Development of Defence Technology. Pakistan is Beijing’s leading customer with 55 per cent of its arms imports supplied by China. From 250 JF-17 fighter jets to four Jiangwei-class frigates Pakistan is boosting its conventional capability armed with Chinese conventional weaponry. Other key Chinese weapons exports to Pakistan include the K-8 lightweight trainer/attack jets since 2000. China has supplied over a 100 of the export version of the PLA Air Force’s F-7E, called the F-7MG fighter jet an upgraded adaptation of the MiG-21. China has been selling surface-to-surface DF-11 missiles to Pakistan.

According to SIPRI, Bangladesh has got seven per cent of China’s arms sale, this translates that 80 per cent of Bangladesh’s military hardware is ‘Made in China’. Dhaka has purchased 44 Chinese Main Battle Tanks MBT 2000s in 2011 – a first time purchase for the country for brand new battle tanks. Bangladesh has also been lobbying for JF-17s and J-10 fighter jets that China has supplied to Pakistan.

Myanmar has purchased its weapons ‘evenly and exclusively’ from Russia and China. The Myanmar armed forces are now equipped with MiG-29s fighter jets, ground attack helicopters, battle tanks and artillery guns.

China’s inroads into the defence market in India’s backyard have been based on the strategy of beating its competitors by cutting down price. The established US companies like Lockheed Martin and others were edged out as the Chinese firm quoted a price of three billion dollar. It is a big achievement for the Chinese defence industry once notorious for its ‘reverse engineering’ of the Russian military hardware including fighter jets.

Till now Indian South Block corridors only reverberated with the concerns over the Chinese investment in various ports strategically located around India in the Indian Ocean Region – Gwadar in Pakistan, Hambantota and Colombo Port in Sri Lanka, one port in Bangladesh and another one in Myanmar - under the famously termed ‘Strings of Pearls’.

India and China jostling for the same space and resources in the international arena have been trying to edge each other out. The Indian strategic posture against China has been based on choking Chinese energy supplies by denying it the use of the Sea Lines of Communication passing through the Indian Ocean Region. To avoid this, China has been seeking alternative access to sea provided by Pakistan’s Gwadar port and then linking it to mainland China through the

all-weather Karakoram Highway.

The growth of Chinese defence industry is also fuelled by India’s stagnant arm production and the refusal of the South Block mandarins to take the fast-changing geo-strategic equations into consideration.

Even as India kick-started its biennial 8th Land, Naval and Internal, Homeland Security Systems Exhibition, the Indian defence production industry has not significant achievement to showcase. Its faltering attempts to stitch together a potent Defence Production Policy to give impetus to the indigenous defence industry have not bear fruits yet. But for a successful missile programme, the other Indian defence production have experience modest success. The long-awaited ambitious project of Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) has been in limbo for over 25 years now and would take another couple of years – conservatively speaking – before entering service.

The Indian defence establishment seems to be satisfied with few HAL-manufactured Dornier units being exported or its shipyards supplying Offshore Patrolling Vessel (OPVs) to Indian Ocean Littoral countries.

The Indian footprint in the international market is not even close to China and the defence establishment is still to evolve a standard procedure to allow defence export. So far the Indian policy is to supply equipment to ‘friendly’ countries but there is no clarity on which are those countries. The government is also working on simplifying the NoC (No Objection Certificate) granting procedure.

With Indian Economy slowing down, the Indian Defence Ministry has been expressed inability to have funds for purchasing the long over-due 126 Medium Multi-Role Fighter Aircraft for the Indian Air Force (IAF) facing shortage of fighting squadrons. In such a scenario it is highly unlikely that the Indian defence production will scale some feats in the coming years.

But for the shipbuilding – owing to the farsightedness of the Indian Navy, the home-grown defence industry has not made any significant headway in terms of indigenous technology development.

(The article was published in The Millenium Post)