BE BOLD, NOT JUST A BALANCER

India needs a credible response for China, especially for the Indian Ocean region, where it must remain the big power. American support can help significantly in this regard. India just needs to be confident enough to leverage that in its favour

Earlier this month, when Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar and US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter agreed in principle to sign a logistics support agreement intended to enhance military ties, many in India wondered if the pact would push the country into an unnecessarily tight embrace with the United States.

More importantly, they worried that an increasingly assertive China would not tolerate such alliances. In this context, many presumed that the high-level interactions between Indian and Chinese officials, incidentally scheduled for right after Carter’s visit, would be designed to make nice with Beijing. However, this was far from the case.

Soon after Secretary Carter’s visit to India, Parrikar went on his maiden trip to China while External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj met with her Chinese counterpart in Moscow. National Security Advisor Ajit Doval was also in Beijing for the 19th round of India-China boundary talks. With none of them did the Chinese harp on about the logistics agreement.

Only the state-run Global Times ran an opinion piece to coincide with Parrikar’s visit. It noted that while “traditional distrust” between India and the United States was one of the reasons why the LSA was yet to be signed, India, in the game of superpowers, “would like to continue to be the most beautiful woman wooed by all men.” This was only a tad bit stronger than the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson’s anodyne comments after the LSA was announced the week before.

Beijing’s decision to underplay the pact is interesting, because, even if in a limited sense, the LSA does have a bearing on Chinese strategic calculations. Officially known as the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement, the pact will institutionalise India-US military activities, particularly between the navies. It won’t add much to the existing range of activities (such as berthing, re-fueling, and servicing at each other’s bases), but will serve to put these on auto-pilot instead. It will also put in place a system to settle payments collectively instead of individually. This will certainly help the US Navy, which plans to deploy 60 per cent of its surface ship in the Indo-Pacific in the near future.

For India, the big benefits, almost entirely in the form of technology, will come more from the other ‘foundational agreements’ — Communications and Information Security Memorandum of Agreement and Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement for Geospatial Intelligence — as and when (and if) they are signed. This technology will be especially key, experts argue, for the Indian Navy to maintain an asymmetric advantage over the Chinese, at least in the Indian Ocean.

So, why isn’t China raising a hue and cry over this? For two reasons: First, it’s still early days. CISMOA is still being discussed while BECA is yet to jump the sovereignty hoop and make it to the negotiating table. More importantly, LEMOA has been finalised but not signed. Second, the very expectation that China will go ballistic (and perhaps retaliate with aggressive posturing along the Line of Actual Control, much of which is disputed) is overblown. Consider this: A tiny nation like Sri Lanka, where China has made multi-million dollar investments, has signed the LSA with the United States without so much as a pipsqueak from Beijing. Meanwhile, India has gained nothing by pussyfooting around an increasingly belligerent Beijing in recent years. China has only upped the ante with repeated transgressions along the border.

The regime in New Delhi understands this, and thus the Modi Government is trying to face China with a more confident and self-assured avatar (though it does falter often). This explains why one of the biggest issues on the Indian agenda in Beijing (and Moscow) this past week was Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar. In order to shield its all-weather friend Pakistan, China blocked India’s efforts at the United Nations to tag Azhar (who is one of the ISI’s posterboys for its anti-India project ) as a terrorist, and India is rightly raising a stink over it. The issue was highlighted repeatedly by all three Indian officials — Parrikar, Doval, and Swaraj.

At the same time, India also gave a visa to a prominent Uighur activist who China considers a terrorist, to attend a conference in Dharamsala. However, after this was widely reported in the media, and China expressed its displeasure on the issue, the visa was cancelled. It is not clear if this was directly due to Chinese pressure or if it was a bureacratic bungle or even a pre-planned move designed to put China on the spot. Either way, cancelling the visa after it had been issued made the Government look bad — and was a reminder that this is going to be a bumpy ride.

Still, those worrying that such measures would derail the India-China bilateral should note that both countries have now agreed to set up a hotline at the level of Director-General Military Operations and establish at least one more border meeting point. Sure, these are small confidence-building measures, but the border question was not going to be resolved overnight anyway.

That said, a note of caution for India is in order as well. If New Delhi wants to play the great game, it needs to look at the larger picture and think big. Did it make sense to invest so much precious diplomatic bandwidth in China on Masood Azhar, important as it may be to pursue the case against him? After all, in India’s larger fight against terrorism emanating out of Pakistan, UN sanctions will be more symbolic than substantial. 26/11 mastermind Hafiz Saeed’s case is proof.

Instead, India needs to focus on the large-scale military reforms underway in China. President and now Commander-in-Chief Xi Jinping is preparing his men not only for the next war but also to bolster the country’s aggressive economic forays abroad, through its ambitious One Belt, One Road project. Notably, an addendum of sorts to this project, the China Pakistan Economic Corridor which will connect Gwadar with Xinjiang, is planned to cut through parts of Kashmir that Pakistan currently occupies.

India needs a credible response for China (and no, this isn’t a polite way of pushing for a confrontational approach), especially for the Indian Ocean region where it must remain the big power. American support can help significantly in this regard. India just needs to be confident enough to leverage that in its favour.

(A shorter version of this article was previously published on the Stimson Centre’s South Asian Voices platform)

INDIA-US: A WIN-WIN PARTNERSHIP

A strong defence relationship with the US is in India’s interest especially as it seeks to reiterate its position in the Indian Ocean region. Ideologically-motivated opposition mostly from the Left must be countered with a dose of realpolitik

US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter’s three-day trip to India ended on Wednesday with both countries announcing progress in some technology-sharing programmes but falling short on some key issues such as the joint development of a Indian aircraft carrier and the signing of at least one of the three so-called ‘foundational documents’ necessary to enhance bilateral defence cooperation. This, in a sense, encapsulates the state of the India-US defence relationship: While huge strides have been made, particularly in this decade, a lot more needs to be done to realise its full potential. In some cases, the bottlenecks are technical or bureaucratic and need time to be resolved. But in most others, the hold-up stems from political or ideological reasons. This is particularly the case for the three foundational documents, which the US says will help strengthen bilateral defence cooperation but which India has resisted for more than a decade.

After 10 years of debate and discussion, only one of these, the Logistics Supply Agreement, has now been finalised, according to Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar. And even that agreement is yet to be signed and no firm commitments have been made, although it has been reported that the officials may sign on the dotted line any time within a few weeks to a few months. This has already generated a colourful array of headlines on how the US military will now use Indian bases, not to mention the slew of think pieces that came out in the run up to Carter’s visit, chiding the Modi Government for falling into America’s embrace, discarding Delhi’s long held principles of non-alignment, and putting India on a dangerous collision course with old friends like Russia and powerful adversaries like China. One may even be forgiven for assuming that the agreement is some sort of a path-breaking initiative that will change the India-US dynamic. Yet, the agreement is actually a standard document that the US has signed with some 80 countries including its Nato partners as well as Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

Basically, it allows both parties to easily berth and re-fuel at each other’s bases without having to pay for these services every time. Such an arrangement is particularly convenient during joint military exercises (which the US and India have quite often), large multi-national operations such as the search for MH370, and also during multi-national humanitarian relief operations.

The last one, in fact, is a big consideration. In recent years, Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief has become an important element for the Indian military and is a wonderful tool for this country’s power projection in the Indian Ocean region. The 2004 tsunami relief operation  during which India deployed 32 naval ships, seven aircraft and 20 helicopters over five rescue, relief and reconstruction missions that extended not only to its own affected States but also to Maldives (Operation Castor), Sri Lanka (Operation Rainbow), and Indonesia (Operation Gambhir) was the turning point. After the tsunami, India bolstered its HADR capabilities by acquiring a landing platform dock, INS Jalashwa, from the US in 2007. 

In between, in 2006, the Indian Navy launched Operation Sukoon to evacuate Indian, Sri Lankan and Nepalese citizens from Lebanon. In 2008, INS Rana and INS Kirpan were sent with aid to Myanmar after the devastating Cyclone Nargis. This was followed by Operation Safe Homecoming in Libya in 2011. INS Mysore, INS Aditya and INS Jalashwa brought thousands of Indians from Benghazi and Tripoli to Alexandria in Egypt from where they were flow back home by Air India. In 2013, when Typhoon Haiyan flattened large parts of the Philippines, the Indian Navy sent out a war ship with relief material. And then, of course, when Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 disappeared, both the Indian Navy and the Air Force participated in the global hunt. Last year, both were also involved in the evacuation of Indian nationals from Yemen (Operation Rahat), not to mention Indian assistance to the Maldives during the Male water crisis.

Now, some media reports have portrayed the LSA as a first of its kind arrangement, while the Opposition is already whipping up images of American soldiers overrunning Indian bases. The Left’s criticism doesn’t even deserve to be entertained because it is a template response to all things America. From the Congress, former Defence Minister AK Antony, who did precious little to ensure the military’s war preparedness, has now labeled the agreement as “anti-national”. This is absurd. American sailors and airmen already dock at Indian ports and access Indian resources. The agreement will only institutionalise such cooperation and put most of it on auto-pilot.

This also has raised concerns in some quarters: If America goes to war (especially against a country that is friendly with India), then India will be obligated to support its war-time efforts. In response, Defence Minister Parrikar has assured that the LSA has been tweaked the new pact is called the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement  so that Indian autonomy is not comprised. Also, it is worthwhile to recall that during the 1991 Gulf War, India had allowed US planes on their way to Iraq to refuel at Bombay’s Safar airport and others. And this was a generation before India and the US were to forge the defining partnership of the 21st century.

Coming back to the agreements, the second in line is the Communication and Information Security Memorandum of Agreement which will essentially improve interoperability between the two militaries. This will be a big plus during joint military operations which, again, is not necessarily a reference to war but includes anti-piracy efforts as well. Moreover, CISMOA will pave the way for Indian access to US defence high-tech. For example, had India signed the CISMOA earlier, its Boeing P-8I Poseidon multi-mission maritime aircraft (which was used to hunt for MH370) would have come equipped with the most advanced communication equipment. Now, it is true that India has been able to make the platform work well with indigenously developed hardware, but that’s hardly a reason to be deprived of the best technology in the market. CISMOA critics argue that agreement would expose sensitive Indian communications to the Americans. This is both defeatist, as clauses are built into the agreement to protect such information, as well somewhat silly: If the US, back in 1998, could hack into the Israeli Air Force system, one of the most advanced defence systems in the world, then it doesn’t need a bilateral agreement to get inside Indian systems.

The third agreement is the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement which will improve ease of access to geospatial data such as satellite images, maps and charts. This is possibly the most contentious as it supposedly involves ‘sovereignty issues’ (for example, ground sensors). Yet, the benefits of this agreement are manifold especially in multi-nation operations as well as in civilian operations. Now, India is also developing its own geo-satellite system called the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System. However, this isn’t fully operational yet and will only have limited coverage. 

In the final tally, India needn’t sign America’s template documents; instead, as it has done with the LSA, it should work with the US (which is also open to addressing Indian concerns) and find the middle path that best suits its interests. But as mentioned earlier, the problem isn’t technical but political  Will China be upset? Will Russia complain? Maybe they will but if Sri Lanka can sign the LSA and still be wooed by Beijing, and Russia sell helicopters to Pakistan because India has been buying hardware from the US and Israel, then there is no reason why India can’t sign an agreement that strengthens its military ties with the US while still maintaining its ties with other powers. Ultimately, all nations work in their own self-interest. India should too.

(This article was published in The Pioneer on April 14, 2016)