By C. Raja Mohan
As he heads out to Singapore this week to participate in the so-called “Shangri La Dialogue” on Asian security, Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee carries a double burden. On the one hand, Asian expectations from India to contribute to regional security have dramatically increased after the Indian Navy’s performance in the wake of the tsunami disaster. On the other hand, the ingrained tentativeness of Delhi’s defence establishment casts a shadow over India’s political will to play a role in the region.
When he surveys the rapidly changing Asian strategic environment and explains India’s own attitude to the development of new security structures in the Indian Ocean, Mukherjee will have an attentive audience. Defence ministers and senior officials from countries in the region as well as the US will be in the audience.
The annual Shangri La Dialogue in Singapore, sponsored by the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London, has emerged as one of the important vehicles for an international discussion of the evolving Asian security dynamics. This year there is a special focus on India’s role in regional security, besides discussion on changing American military strategy towards the region, the role of Asian armed forces in counter-terrorism, and enhancing regional maritime security. Underlying this discussion will be the broader theme of the rapid rise of China as a military power and its implications for stability in Asia-Pacific and the Indian Ocean.
Following the tsunami, India surprised the region and the world with its rapid naval and diplomatic response. It is not often that India scores over China on the diplomatic front. But that exactly is what India did in the wake of the Boxing Day disaster in southern Asia.
India quickly formed a four-nation relief coalition with the US, Japan and Australia and sent its ships and troops to assist the Maldives, Sri Lanka and Indonesia. The Chinese Navy stayed home. The slow response of the Chinese must not be seen as a precedent. India may have scored over China in tsunami diplomacy, but it is China that is making waves in the Indian Ocean.
While the Indian defence establishment remains obsessed with individual weapons systems and political controversies over weapons procurement, China has unveiled an impressive strategy of military modernisation. Beijing has placed special emphasis on expanding naval power, even as India’s defence vision remains land-locked. China’s naval presence is increasingly assertive in the South and East China seas and the Indian Ocean.
The rapid growth of China’s interests abroad, particularly energy needs, has broadened Beijing’s military’s missions. China’s navy and air force have begun to project power in the South China Sea, where several islands are under dispute and vital oil supplies pass through, and in the East China Sea, where China and Japan are locked in a fight over sea-bed mineral rights and several contested islands. With China-Taiwan tensions on the rise, preventing Taipei from declaring independence has become a national objective and Chinese naval power in the region has acquired a new edge.
As part of its effort to secure its energy interests, China is elevating its military profile from the Persian Gulf to the South China seas. Chinese assistance to the construction of a high profile port in Gwadar on Pakistan’s Makran coast, overlooking the world’s energy supplies from the Persian Gulf, has become emblematic of the new Chinese maritime strategy. According to a report prepared for the Pentagon by Booz Allen Hamilton, the consulting firm, China has developed a “string of pearls” strategy, seeking military-related agreements with Bangladesh, Cambodia and Thailand in addition to those with Burma and Pakistan. Reports in the South Asian media also point to growing Chinese naval interests in Sri Lanka and the Maldives.
At the same time, Beijing has stepped up political and diplomatic efforts to convince its neighbours that China’s rise is not threatening to the region. It has unveiled a focused military diplomacy to reach out to neighbours and major powers.
Last September, China invited military officers from 16 neighbouring countries to observe an army exercise “Iron Fist 2004”. In 2004 alone, there were a hundred high-level defence exchanges, besides naval exercises with Britain, France and Australia, a counter-terrorism exercise with Pakistan and a mountaineering exercise with India.
Last year Beijing conducted 19 rounds of strategic dialogue with 13 countries including the US, Russia, France, Britain, Germany and Canada. It sends hundreds of military officers to foreign institutions and trains nearly a 1000 foreign offers in its own.
As a new Chinese naval diplomacy unfolds in the region, India has not been sitting on its hands. Much like Beijing, New Delhi has increased its military engagement in the region. India now conducts naval and military exercises with great powers, including the US, Japan, and China, as well as neighbours in Asia. It has signed a defence agreement with Singapore and has cooperative arrangements with many nations stretching from Seychelles to Vietnam. It has participated in mechanisms to protect maritime traffic passing through the strategic Malacca Straits. More recently, India has signed agreements with Indonesia and Thailand to jointly patrol the Andaman seas to prevent piracy, arms trafficking and counter maritime terrorism.
While India has certainly woken up to greater naval and military activism in the region, its effort lacks coherence. Even after signing a defence agreement, India continues to reject the many opportunities for increased cooperation with Singapore. The parochial politics of Tamil Nadu have prevented the implementation of India’s defence agreement with Sri Lanka.
The great powers as well as the regional actors recognise India’s potential contribution to a stable balance of power in Asia. No one is pressing India to choose between the US and China.
Pranab Mukherjee’s interlocutors in Singapore would want to know whether India has any big ideas about peace and stability in Asia amid unprecedented geopolitical fluidity. They want to be persuaded by Mukherjee that India has really shed its old isolationist impulses and is ready for a multilateral security framework in the Indian Ocean region.
