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editor-in-chief

T h e c o u n t r y c o m e s f i r s t a l w a y s a n d e v e r y t i m e .

wing state dynamics. India is regarded as the key Swing state of the 21st century. Which way it swings could shape the geopolitical map of the earth. Will it swing towards the Russia and China combine of continental powers to balance a Unipolar America? Or will it swing away towards the USA and its allies in the Asia Pacific to balance the power of a rising and increasingly aggressive China? There is a school of thought that feels that India can maximise its gains and potential energy, by delaying its decision to swing either way till as late as possible. In the George Bush era, India had signed the civilian nuclear deal with the US and given all indications of a swing towards America. The prospect of an Indo-US alliance directed at the containment of China, deeply disturbed Beijing. China bared its fangs in an unmistakable snarl designed to make India back off. Chinese military engineers came into Baltistan to construct roads to link the Gwadar Port at the mouth of the Persian Gulf. It gave Fourth Generation Fighters and Frigates to Pakistan and announced plans to build its third nuclear plant. It questioned the status of Jammu and Kashmir by stapling visas, increased provocations on the border and began to supply arms to the Maoists via Myanmar. Visibly shaken, the Indian Foreign policy establishment soon produced the Non Alignment 2.0 document that pledged neutrality between US and China, largely to placate the latter. China seemed to thaw a little. The US meanwhile was intent on extricating its forces from Afghanistan and was trying to please Pakistan by providing F-16 fighters and hectoring India to hand over Jammu and Kashmir on a platter to Pakistan and sign a peace deal at any cost. We also had our tail twisted on Iran from where 12 per cent of our oil supplies came. Pakistani terror attacks continued unabated and nothing was done to bring the perpetrators to justice. With friends like these we hardly need enemies. This was when the limp signals on Non Alignment 2.0 were sent out. India would be neutral between the new Big Two.

Potential vs kinetic energy. The option of delaying Indias final swing till as late as possible does make strategic sense. It was thought that this would maximise the potential energy of the Swing State as also our gains and pay-offs from both sides. We could trade with China to our mutual benefit, as also acquire cutting edge technology from the US. It would increase ambiguity and uncertainity for our foes and friends, as also our adversaries. Attractive in theory, it hasnt quite worked that way in practice. In trying to please and appease all (including Pakistan), we have ended up pleasing no one. The Asian half swing. As a major power we are not obliged to please others. We have our own vital interests to safeguard. China does not want us to swing at the global level and join the USA in containing China. Yet at the regional level it has cemented a strong anti-India alliance with Pakistan of surprising virulence. It gave to that country blueprints and enriched Uranium for its first few bombs. Then it tested Pakistans first bomb at Lop Nor. It then gave Pakistan M-9 and M-11 missiles. When the Americans imposed sanctions on the Chinese entities, it paid for Pakistans purchase of North Korean Nodong and Taipodong missiles. 70 per cent of Pakistani Jet fighters and virtually its entire Tank fleet is of Chinese origin. The Chinese Navy now has a dangerous foothold at Gwadar, from where it can block Indias entire energy flow from the Persian Gulf. Chinas relationship with Pakistan is higher than the mountains and deeper than the seas. It is specifically designed to HURT India and it has. Pakistan has attacked India four times and is presently engaged in an asymmetric offensive against Jammu and Kashmir and all major Indian cities. This is in addition to the serious Chinese inroads into Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Nepal. The India-Japan-Vietnam trilateral. To start with, we need to pay China back in its very own coin. We urgently need to fashion a relationship higher than the mountains and deeper than the seas with Japan and Vietnam (and also with South Korea, Philippines and Indonesia). India needs to execute this Asian half swing right away. China has deliberately tried to hurt India greviously via its alliance with Pakistan. It has no right to complain if India pays back the compliment by forging equally effective alliances with Japan and Vietnam. India must urgently provide Prithvi and BrahMos missiles to Vietnam. If we can speed up our indegenisation act, we must strengthen the Vietnamese Air Force and Submarine arm. Why cant India give to Vietnam LCA jet fighters, LCH and Dhruv helicopters at friendship prices? Why cant India supply Scorpene submarines jointly manufactured with France, to the Vietnamese Navy? The potential for Indo-Japanese cooperation is immense. Japan should divert its vast FDI flows from China to India and help India set up a defense industrial base in its private sector as also help build its infrastructure. Why cant India-Japan-Vietnam jointly manufacture Jet fighters, Tanks and ICVs as also Destroyers and Submarines in bulk? India and Japan must maximise their naval cooperation to police their SLOCs. China has little reason to protest considering the level of aid and abetment it has given to Pakistan. If it reacts in a hostile fashion, it will only push india to complete the swing towards the USA, as a corollary. Above all India must forge strong people to people ties with the Buddhist countries of East and South East Asia and promote Buddhist pilgrimage tourism on a Haj scale. The India of the 21st century has tremendous hard and soft power. It must learn to use both.

Maj Gen (Dr) GD Bakshi SM, VSM (retd)


April 2013 Defence AND security alert

strategic partnership
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chairman shyam sunder publisher and ceo pawan agrawal founding editor manvendra singh editor-in-chief maj gen (dr) gd bakshi SM, VSM (retd) director shishir bhushan corporate consultant kj singh art consultant divya gupta central saint martins college of art & design, university of arts, london business development shaifali sachdeva pr and communications arpita dutta creative vivek anand pant representative (J and K) salil sharma correspondent (Europe) dominika cosic production dilshad and dabeer webmaster sundar rawat system administrator mehar dogra photographer subhash circulation and distribution rahul gupta and anup kumar e-mail: (first name)@dsalert.org info: info@dsalert.org articles: articles@dsalert.org subscription: subscription@dsalert.org online edition: online@dsalert.org advertisement: advt@dsalert.org editorial and corporate office 4/19 asaf ali road new delhi-110002 (India) t: +91-011-23243999, 23287999, 9958382999 e: info@dsalert.org www.dsalert.org

lobal geopolitics has changed dramatically over the past two decades. There have been leadership and regime changes through external interventions in Europe as seen in the Balkanisation of Yugoslavia into its constituent ethnic and religious groups and the attempt to give the Shias of oil rich Iraq an ascendant role is a work still in progress. There have been revolutions sweeping across the Mediterranean coast of Africa and east Asia has the potential of becoming a political hotbed with conflicting maritime boundary claims that threaten to disrupt the very concept of sea lanes being international freeways. What we see today is that there is a paradigm shift in the power game on the globe which I think is because of two major reasons: One is the imperative to control or manipulate and ensure unhampered access to sources of hydrocarbons both gas and crude; and the second is to dominate the manufacturing and sale of arms and ammunition. The states that are small in size and resources are looking for new resourceful friends who could be their political props at the time of any crisis. The powerful states are adding more power to their muscles by associating with the other powerful states to make a total shift in the entire geopolitics of the globe. In their single-minded pursuit of global dominance we have witnessed big nation-states exploit local schisms to attain their own politico-strategic goals. We see what is happening in Iraq the displaced Sunnis are wreaking havoc on the Shias with a reenactment of gory scenes on the tenth anniversary of the Coalitions military intervention based on the falsehood that Iraq was trying to acquire a nuclear bomb. The similar dismantling of the former Yugoslavia has left the new nations in suspended animation, unable to reintegrate with neighbours who just cannot be wished away. In our part of the world China has been very aggressive in developing its defence industrial base and what it has been doing in the South China Sea makes it quite clear that its long-term designs and machinations converge on its intentions to control the areas which are rich in oil resources. On the other side are the states who have been quite peace-loving and neutral and are developing gradually to capitalise their resources like Japan, South Korea, India, Indonesia, Vietnam and the other ASEAN nations. As the environment of bilateral relations is changing such states have to look for options so as to safeguard their larger interests. Thus the time has come where all the developed and developing states have to look for a wider spectrum of strategic partnerships. India, Japan and Vietnam are the states that have many common factors to develop a strategic partnership, contours of which can be seen in the recent change in the leadership in Japan. India Japan bilateral relationship has been declared as Strategic Global Partnership since 2007. The evolving geopolitical and geostrategic scenario offers a once in a generation opportunity to India and Japan to forge strong, vibrant and wide-ranging partnership in areas of mutual interest strengthening the security environment in the region. Fortuitously the new Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe summed up his thinking on Indo-Japan partnership so succintly when he said: Strong India is in the best interest of Japan and strong Japan is in the best interest of India and This will be the most important bilateral relationship in the world. In his book Towards a Beautiful Country, Abe surmises It will not be a surprise if in another decade Japan-India relations overtake Japan-US and Japan-China ties. How India seizes this opportunity and reciprocates remains to be seen. We have no doubt that India-Japan-Vietnam strategic partnership will play a critical and defining role in the coming years and decades in the game plan unfolding on the Asia Pacific chessboard. Jai Hind!

Defining alignments

ndia has an announced 'look east' policy. It was first enunciated in the 1990s when the country was being buffeted by western winds that sought to trap it in the diplomatic quagmire caused by Jammu and Kashmir. Late Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao, the much underrated practitioner of statecraft, began the use of this term. He used it in terms of the need for a few constant pegs to Indian diplomatic and security interests. At that time nothing seemed to show a direction. The world had recently witnessed the end of the cold war and the emergence of new countries from the debris of the disintegrating Soviet Union was a very real reality. It was a world quite unlike anything seen in at least a couple of human generations.

In this world India was seeking to find its place under the sun. There was as much confusion within the country as there was globally. Little that was happening made much sense to most practitioners of the diplomatic craft. India was treading new grounds as it had only recently opened up its economy, gingerly. Diplomatic winds were not so favourable, as Pakistan and China teamed up to tie India down by the wrists. Even as China proliferated nuclear weapons technology to Pakistan, the diplomatic campaign on Jammu and Kashmir pinned down India as a matter of routine. In the search for an alternative India seemed to find East Asia as receptive as it was concerned by China's rising stock. There was finally some commonality of interests with someone sharing India's concerns and vision.

Japan and Vietnam have had a historically fractured relationship with China, whether in the imperial, nationalist or the communist phases. Even as there have been territorial problems between China and these countries, the relationship seems to boil at the slightest instigation. India, on the other hand, has always had good relations with these countries. Historically India has always had good relations with China, making it the only conflict free neighbourly relationship in the world. But that was to change in the middle of the 20th century when the Communist Party of China came to power under Mao Zedong. A certain unease now remains between the two countries. Which makes for a 'look east' policy coloured by a certain prism.

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defence and security alert is printed, published and owned by pawan agrawal and printed at graphic world, 1686, kucha dakhini rai, darya ganj, new delhi-110002 and published at 4/19 asaf ali road, new delhi (india). editor: maj gen (dr) gd bakshi (retd).

It is not in India's national interest to be drawn into a military alliance that has a singular motivation checking China. India's interests are far too complex to be reduced to a single agenda. At the same time it is not in Indian economic interests that there be a tense or conflictual situation in East Asia. The future of economic growth, global and regional, depends to a large extent on free and fair trade between East Asia and the rest of the world. A military complication precludes that in one stroke. Even as India and some East Asian countries are drawn together by the power of common fears, there are national security and economic interests that override single agenda concerns. It would be an insult to India, its history and its civilisational ethos, if it were to be drawn into a hyped alliance, only because some friends said so.

manvendra singh

April 2013 Defence AND security alert

pawan agrawal

April 2013 Defence AND security alert

contents

Strategic Partnership: India-Japan-Vietnam


A R T I C L E S web of maritime security coalition: bilateral, trilateral and multilateral Vice Adm Hideaki Kaneda JMSDF (retd) 6

Special Issue April 2013

TM

An ISO 9001:2008 Certified Magazine

c o n t e n t s

Vo l u m e 4 I s s u e 7 A P R I L 2 0 1 3

Japan-India nuclear cooperation Takako Hirose and Takeshi Yokoo emerging security environment in the Indian ocean region and its implications for India Lt Gen OP Kaushik PVSM, AVSM, VSM, M-in-D (retd) air war in Vietnam: lessons Air Marshal Anil Chopra PVSM, AVSM, VM, VSM (retd) assessing the strategic importance of Vietnam: current security dynamics for Japan and India Dr Satoru Nagao maritime contours: India-Vietnam and India-Japan relationships Rear Admiral (Dr) S Kulshrestha (retd) India-Japan-Vietnam relationship Capt Bonji Ohara (retd) security competition in Asia Pacific and imperatives for India, Japan and Vietnam Brig (Dr) Anil Sharma (retd) and Ms Anshu Paliwal Japan and India: collaborating for the common good Cmde Sujeet Samaddar NM (retd) a new phase in Delhi-Tokyo ties Dr Harsh V Pant counter-insurgency: opsec and operational art paint a different picture Dr Rupali Jeswal and Damien Martin

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48 52 54 E X C L U S I V E I N T E R V I E W 10

Dr VK Saraswat, Director General, DRDO F E A T U R E Honeywell's SmartPath GBAS

Indo-Vietnam strategic partnership in the Asia Pacific region 59 Maj Gen PK Chakravorty VSM (retd) political dynamics in the Asia Pacific region India-Vietnam-Japan triangle Chintamani Mahapatra India-Japan security collaboration Dr Monika Chansoria India-Vietnam: a lasting partnership Dr Rahul Mishra developing geostrategic linkages in the Indo-Pacific: an imperative to the Asian century Nayantara Shaunik Indian ocean and Asia Pacific: seamless imperatives RSN Singh a new strategy for India: a classic geopolitics revision Michalis Diakantonis 62

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