Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s nationalistic government is taking a more proactive role in regional military cooperation than its predecessors – and the reason, according to Jeff M Smith of the Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Centre, is that China has emerged as a regular actor in the Indian Ocean.
That also means, Smith argues in a May 8 interview with the National Bureau of Asian Research, that Modi is less inhibited by India’s history of non-alignment and less suspicious of strategic collaboration with the United States and its security partners than previous administrations.
The past decade has seen a gradual deterioration of relations between China and India, which has manifested itself in a border dispute in the Himalayas, the Tibet question and China’s patronage toward India’s arch-enemy Pakistan. But mainly, as Smith says, it is a reaction to “the substantial growth of China’s military strength, economic footprint and political influence in both South Asia and the Indian Ocean.”
China has established its first overseas military base in Djibouti on the Horn of Africa and has become closely involved with political developments in Nepal, Sri Lanka and the Maldives. Chinese president Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative, which includes a US$60 billion investment in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and rumors of a planned Chinese naval base at Gwadar on the coast of Pakistan, is seen in New Delhi as part of a strategic encirclement of India.
As a consequence, India is showing interest in renewing formal quadrilateral cooperation with Australia, Japan and the United States, a multilateral partnership that’s called the Quadrilateral Security Dialog, or Quad, which has been dormant for nearly a decade. India has also entered into several defense-related agreements with France, a major Indian Ocean power.
Naval cooperation between India, Japan and the United States is especially noteworthy. According to Smith: “India’s voice on the maritime disputes in the South China Sea has gradually grown louder. Since 2011, New Delhi has become an increasingly outspoken advocate for freedom of navigation, the rule of law and the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.
Importantly, the Indian government was also supportive of the Permanent Court of Arbitration ruling delivered in July 2016, which invalidated China’s nine-dash line claim to nearly the entire South China Sea. At the same time, China-India bilateral trade reached US$84.44 billion in 2017, an historic high, making China India’s largest foreign trading partner. So war is hardly on the horizon, but tensions will remain – and India’s traditional policy of non-alignment is definitely a thing of the past.
Funny, your leaders are not as foolish as you.
Indian should not treat it’s neighbor Pakistan as permanent ARCH ENEMY just because some western commentator say so. Learn to agree to disagree and work on what is agreeable, leave the disagreeable aside for future generation to tackle. Life is short.
The Chinese military is vastly over rated and relies on stealing others technology. Most of it’s conscripts leave and do not follow up with training. The PLA is has to swear loyalty to the venal communist party and not to the people of China.China spends more on policing it’s own people because it knows eventually, if the economy tanks, it will have to suppress the will of the people that will want more than the corrupt communist party and dictator Xi
There are three factors that make India think of itself as an equal to China. Both of them have over 1 billion population, both are geographically vast and both started out on development journey just about the same time, in late Forties. But there ends the similarities. Today, China is a super power in her own right and the most dreaded rival to America, whereas India remains an impovrihed country with a GDP that is less than one-fifth of China with the gap steadily widening. So, pretending to be China’s rival at this point is going to be unaffordable for India economically as well as due to the sheeer difference in the capabilities in science and technology. As things stand, before India can be a rival to China, she first have to spent a lot of years becoming her friend and partner in the same way that China followed vis-a-vis USA before she was able to stand up to the latter as at present. This rethink of policy is absolutely essential for India’s rise and survival as a power to reckon with.