By Design or Accident: Reflections on Asian Security

24. India Has a Key Role in Asia’s Power Balance

24 India Has a Key Role in Asia’s Power Balance In the game ofAsian power politics, India has been receiving increased attention of late, being wooed in turn by America, China and Japan. India was geopolitically boxed in South Asia for four decades, in part as a consequence of the Cold War when its alignment with the Soviet Union caused the US and China, with the help of Pakistan, to contain it within the sub-continent, and in part because of its own economic and political mindset. Economic and strategic challenges of the post-Cold War world have been changing India’s old mindset and helping it to break out of its SouthAsian confinement. The opening up of the economy since the early 1990s has led to growth rates averaging around 6 per cent per year. A dynamic economy will provide the resources to pursue wider geostrategic interests. And the sea change in India-US security relations, especially since 9/11, has also made it easier for India to enter into closer political and security cooperation with America’s friends and allies in the Asia-Pacific. India still has many problems, but there is a new confidence that the country matters in the world and can achieve greater things.Aricher India that is even partly freed 100 By Design or Accident from its preoccupation with SouthAsia, would be in a better position to pursue its oft stated security interests outside the land mass of the subcontinent. It has defined these, following in the footsteps of the British Raj, as stretching from Aden to Singapore, or as then Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh said in Singapore in June 2000, from the Persian Gulf to Southeast Asia including “an uninterrupted access to the Malacca Straits and the South China Sea”. India has a modest size navy with 38 principal combatants (destroyers, frigates, submarines and an aircraft carrier). According to present plans, their numbers will not increase significantly over the next decade, but their capability and reach will be expanding. For instance the navy is headed towards a force of two, and larger, aircraft carriers deploying MiG-29 aircraft. The first of these larger carriers, the refurbished Admiral Gorshkov of the Russian navy, is expected to enter service in 2008–2009 while a second carrier of similar tonnage will probably be deployed around 2015. There are indications that India also wants to develop a sea-based second strike nuclear capability. The Indian navy has been cooperating with a number of Southeast Asian navies in training and exercises and has also carried out coordinated patrols with the Indonesian navy in the vicinity of the maritime border between the two countries. Many people may not know that the Indian navy has a Far Eastern Subcommand with its Headquarters in Port Blair in the Andaman Islands, which is near the northern entrance of the Straits of Malacca. Of the three major suitors — America, China and Japan — whom will India favour? It is clearly to India’s advantage to advance its relations with all three and it is doing precisely Asia’s Power Balance 101 that. However, at the same time, it cannot be denied that the underlying quality of India’s relations with each of these three powers remains different. It is only natural for India to seek good relations with its giant neighbour China with which it shares a long land border. There are the business opportunities to exploit by expanding trade and commerce. There are also potent reasons for maintaining cordial political ties, not least because, from New Delhi’s perspective, China retains the ability to be a spoiler in India’s backyard, not just with Pakistan, but also in countries like Bangladesh and Nepal with whom India has problems. Despite the significant improvement in bilateral relations, suspicions of Beijing remain in the Indian political establishment while the attitude of the broader masses towards China is characterized by ignorance, laced with suspicion. The attitude towards the US is clearly more favourable but still marked by some caution. The Indian political elite is well aware that the US has far more to offer to India, but is irked by what it regards as US indulgence towards Pakistan. The younger generation of Indians are much more fascinated by the West, especiallyAmerica, notwithstanding their admiration for Japan’s and China’s achievements. The English language, the political and cultural pluralism, and the institutions inherited from...