The threat within?
Was what happened on the night of January 16 really a ?C? attempt? Was it a routine exercise or was the army chief playing mind games with the civilian administration?


by Ajai Shukla / New Delhi Apr 07, 2012, 00:51 IST

It is a question to which we might never know the answer. Did the army chief arrange for two military units to “practise mobilisation” on the outskirts of New Delhi as a warning to his boss, Defence Minister A K Antony, on January 16? That was the day that General V K Singh took the unprecedented step of challenging the government in the Supreme Court on the controversy over his age.

It broke as a news storm on Wednesday. The Indian Express reported that political alarm bells had gone off in New Delhi on the foggy night of January 16 when intelligence agencies detected an army battalion from the Hisar-based 33 Armoured Division and a Special Forces unit from the Agra-based 50 (Independent) Parachute Brigade moving unexpectedly towards the capital. According to the report, the government reacted to this “unexpected” and “non-notified” military move by recalling Defence Secretary Shashi Kant Sharma from Malaysia. Sharma arrived in Delhi and summoned the army’s Director General of Military Operations, Lt Gen A K Choudhary, to a late-night meeting in his office to “explain what was going on”. The general “was told to send the units back immediately”. The report did not feature the word “coup”, but instead highlighted “confusion and unease” within the top echelons of government at a time of a “strained… political-military relationship.”

The army’s outraged denials have been immediately challenged. Breaking ranks on Thursday, one of the army’s most upright and cerebral recent generals, Lt General Harcharanjit Singh Panag, who was an army commander till he retired in 2009, suggested on Twitter that General Singh had engineered the move to spook the government into believing that a coup was possible if the government tried to sack him. Since the move of the two units was a legitimate training activity, malevolent intent could credibly be denied, suggested Panag. And with the units being given only innocuous training orders, just a handful of people need know the real intent of the move.

In five linked tweets, Panag termed the move a “demonstration”, an action designed to “alter enemy decision-making”. Deniability was created through a “Cover Plan” which Panag explained as “a credible cover to operations undertaken to deceive the enemy”. The troops that participate in a military demonstration “do not know the real aim”, but senior commanders do. Overall, said Panag, the move of the military units to New Delhi was “A Pre-emptive demonstration with a Cover Plan (sic),” which “implies acting before the enemy does to upstage him from implementing his strategy, plan or operations”.

The government, the military, and even the media are treading carefully around what, if Panag is correct, could be termed a near-coup experience. Public discourse has referred coyly to “the C-word” with even Shekhar Gupta, The Indian Express’s chief editor who co-authored the article, telling a probing TV anchor, “I used the C-word but I call it curious, not coup.” Much of India’s reluctance to intellectually confront and discuss the phenomenon of military coups appears to stem from the apprehension that public discussion might have a self-fulfilling effect, indirectly legitimising military interventionism and fuelling praetorian behaviour (the ancient Roman praetorian guard was an elite corps that eventually grabbed a political role).

* * * * *

Is this really a watershed event in the relationship between the government and the military? Will historians look back on January 16 as a key moment when General Singh challenged the government’s processes in court, and simultaneously (if Panag is right) its steeliness and resolve on the highways to Delhi? For now it would appear that General Singh’s confrontation with the government is working well for the military. With sections of Parliament baying for blood, defence ministry officials are in a flurry of activity, clearing policies, procurements and promotions that had needlessly languished, in some cases for years.

On March 20, the ministry cleared the results of a promotion board for major generals which it had obdurately blocked for the preceding six months. On April 2, it cleared the long-delayed revision of the Defence Offset Policy. The same day, Antony reviewed equipment procurements, calling for quicker trials. Although finance has been a key instrument of civilian control over the armed forces, Antony suggested delegating greater financial powers to the services to catalyse speedier acquisition of equipment, platforms and systems. The military’s 15-year Long Term Integrated Perspective Plan, a crucial document that establishes a roadmap for indigenous development and procurement, could be cleared soon, say sources. And, with the Naresh Chandra Committee finalising its recommendations on defence preparedness and the restructuring of the higher defence organisation, insiders have begun betting that the government might soon accept the long-standing suggestion, offered by multiple committees and even a group of ministers, to install a chief of defence staff, a five-star general who will sit atop the tri-service pyramid.

For now, the army is flatly rejecting any link between the ongoing confrontation and the defence ministry’s new sensitivity. Serving generals are even more emphatic in dismissing accusations emerging from The Indian Express article that General Singh exerted illegitimate pressure on the government.

* * * * *

Officers currently serving in army headquarters emphasise that it is wrong to say that there are protocols and regulations that require army movement, at any time, in the National Capital Region to be pre-notified to the defence ministry. “Army units move every day of the week towards Delhi, into Delhi and within Delhi. These include vehicle convoys of units going on firing or training exercises as well as vehicle convoys of units that are moving on transfer from one station to another, a journey that every combat unit makes in two or three years. These unit convoys often make administrative halts in Delhi,” says a brigadier who coordinates army movements.

Serving officers also question how the move of two units (physically, just 500-odd men) to Delhi could possibly be seen as a threat, when two frontline infantry brigades and an artillery brigade (over 10,000 combat soldiers) are permanently located in the capital. This permanent garrison in Delhi was supplemented during that period in January by thousands of additional troops that had come to participate in the Army Day and Republic Day parades.

“Let’s assume for a moment that some crazy army chief was bent on a coup, and wanted even more troops than were already in Delhi. Why would he move troops from Hisar (165 km away) and Agra (204 km away) when there is a full infantry division sitting in Meerut just 70 kilometers away,” asks an officer.

A recently-retired lieutenant general, who wishes to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of discussing even a hypothetical coup, points out that “any successful military coup would require the active support of all six geographical army commanders and also the air force chief. If even one army commander were not on board — and we would be foolish to assume that the incoming chief, Eastern Army Commander Lt Gen Bikram Singh, would associate himself with a military coup — any attempt could quickly degenerate into a fratricidal civil war between loyalists and rebels.”

While a successful military coup may be hard to imagine in India, the issue that has sparked the current furore is not an actual coup attempt, but — as Panag implies — the suggestion of a putative attempt to armtwist a weakened government by the subtle application of military pressure. “It would be difficult, if not impossible, to determine conclusively the intention behind the move of these two units from Hisar and Agra. All that the paper trail will reveal is a chain of legitimate orders for a practice exercise. It is the intention behind this move that counts, and intentions lie in the mind,” says a former army chief.

Just as cerebral are the government’s perceptions that determine how it reacts at a particular moment. “I moved 3-4 complete divisions through Delhi at the time when we were pumping troops into Punjab to combat the insurgency,” says the former chief. “That did not create even a moment of tension with the civil administration. But relations between the army and the government were on even keel then, and there was no suspicion between us.”

* * * * *

It is for this reason that a country’s civil-military relations must be based on well-established structures, procedures and spheres of influence, rather than on the mood of the moment that could shift on circumstances and events. In India, there is little understanding or public discussion of the demarcation between the government and the military, and the responsibility and connections between the two.

Samuel Huntington’s masterpiece, his seminal 1957 book, The Soldier and the State, spells out the concept of “objective control” of the military. This model of civilian control, which is implemented in all successful modern democracies, allows the services full autonomy in their professional realm. A military that has ownership of its professional bailiwick, or so the “objective control” thesis postulates, does not involve itself in the political sphere. Civilian control, therefore, is asserted on broader political issues, rather than on day-to-day military functioning. In contrast, “subjective control” neutralises the military’s influence through restrictive civilian controls, extending civilian oversight into spheres within the military’s internal domain. Subjective control is predicated on “civilianising the military”, while objective control aims at “militarising the military”, encouraging professionalism and responsibility within its realm.

Students and observers of the Indian military and the structure of its relationship with the defence ministry and the government of India unanimously agree that, over time, the boundaries of “objective control” have been breached. From long-term planning, to equipment procurement, promotions and dates of birth of army officers, the influence of the civil bureaucracy is pervasive. Ask any military officer his key resentment and there is near-certainty that he will name “the babu”. While a military coup in India is hardly impending and the structures of parliamentary democracy seem likely to endure, grievance and resentment have been simmering within the officer corps. Eric Nordlinger argues in another must-read masterpiece, Soldiers in Politics, Military Coups and Governments, that government failure is seldom more than a triggering condition for a coup. The actual causes of military intervention are civilian encroachment into what the military regards as its legitimate, four-fold sphere of corporate interests: adequate budgetary support, autonomy in managing internal affairs, preservation of its responsibilities in the face of encroachments from rival institutions, and the continuity of the military itself.

Is it time for a broader debate?

Menchuka: visit to Shangri La

A view of the Menchuka valley, with the Yar Gyaphu river dividing mid-stream into what looks very much like a map of India... of course, with the northeast missing!!

by Ajai Shukla

Business Standard, 31st Mar 12

My first glimpse of Shangri-La blows away the fatigue. After eight gruelling hours of bumping along the mountain road from Along (itself a full day’s drive from the Assam plains), the Bolero rounds a corner and the thickly-forested gorge opens into a wide valley. Here is Menchuka, the remote, mystical valley through which meanders the medicinal Yar Gyap Chu river. (In Tibetan, men is “medicinal”, chu is “water”, and ka is “alongside”.) It is a crystal-clear day, rare on the rainy, 17,000 ft-high Himalayan watershed which is the McMahon Line, the disputed border between India and Tibet in Arunachal Pradesh. Steep mountain walls enclose the valley on either side with snow-clad ramparts.

Such is the geography of Arunachal Pradesh, our north-eastern version of the Land of the Five Rivers. Five major rivers flow from the eastern Himalayas to the Brahmaputra in Assam, their valleys separated by 16,000 ft-high ridges. These are not rivulets but mighty torrents — the Lohit, Dibang, Siang, Subansiri and Kameng — which meet to form the Brahmaputra, the soul of Assam. A mere handful of roads connects these river valleys to one another. For the most part, the only way to travel from one valley to the next is to drive down the valley for a day or more to Assam, then drive along the Brahmaputra on National Highway 52, and then do the long drive upriver to one’s destination in the other valley. This downriver-upriver layout sometimes requires a three-day road journey to a destination that is just 70 km away on the map.

Near the river, at the entrance to Menchuka, a town of 10,000 people, is a spot marked by a sea of Buddhist prayer flags. This commemorates what used to be the rock seal of Guru Rimpoche, which marked Menchuka as one of the “hidden valleys” of Tibetan lore. According to legend, the 8th-century Guru Padmasambhava — since he carried Buddhism from India to Tibet and founded the Nyingma sect, Tibetans regard Guru Rimpoche as second only to the Buddha himself — guarded against the inevitable moral degeneration of his followers by secreting a number of hidden sanctuaries, each a remote, beautiful, unpopulated paradise, to which the faithful could migrate when life became unbearable.

Guru Rimpoche hid the keys to these sanctuaries. It required an exceptional person, known as a terton, endowed with high moral qualities, to decode the location of a hidden valley through a set of clues called a terma. In Guru Rimpoche’s great plan, the terton would then guide his followers to one of these Shangri-Las which would be marked by a sign, such as a rock shaped in a certain way or stamped with a seal. Legend has it that Sikkim was the first of these hidden treasures to which paradise-seekers migrated in the 14th century. That initial foothold was followed by full-scale Tibetan colonisation in the 17th century and the establishment of a dynasty by the Choegyals, who ruled Sikkim until India annexed it in 1974.

In the early 18th century, a terton from Kongpo, the rugged yet beautiful area around the Tsangpo bend in Tibet, led his paradise-seeking followers away from the depredations of the invading Mongols into what is today Menchuka. Paradise, however, was short-lived. By the 19th century, Menchuka became a lucrative addition to the Gachak estate in Kongpo and its wealth of agricultural produce, livestock and medicinal plants was heavily taxed. Even after India’s independence, the local Buddhist Memba people continued to pay tribute to the masters in Tibet. That relationship ended with the arrival of India, when a platoon of 2nd Assam Rifles marched into Menchuka in 1948.

* * * * *

The Indians brought in strange ideas, recounts 70-year-old Pema Phelye, including the abolition of slavery, a tradition by which Tagin tribesmen from Subansiri were purchased by Membas for domestic and agricultural work. A cadre of competent and sensitive administrators from the pioneering Indian Frontier Administrative Service ended slavery and the rule of the local Tibetan chieftains, one of whom was Deb Pema. But what made India unquestionably welcome in Menchuka was an end to the punishing tax payments to the overlords in Kongpo.

Menchuka today, like Tawang, and the neighbouring valley of Manigong, remains a Buddhist enclave in an area that was historically home to the tribal Lhobas, or “savages”, as the Tibetans saw them. The people of the Brahmaputra valley saw these remote hill tribes the same way; the Assamese called them Abors or “uncontrolled”. These masters of the forest are today the Adi tribe, as cultured and sophisticated as any people in the country, who have long played a dominant role in the politics of Arunachal Pradesh.

The old links with Tibet made Menchuka a key Chinese objective in the 1962 war, along with Tawang and Walong. A handful of Indian defenders from the 2 Madras and 2/8 Gorkha Rifles were ordered to withdraw in the face of a Chinese advance and join a larger force at Taliha in the neighbouring Subansiri valley. Harried by fast-moving patrols from the People’s Liberation Army, most of them perished in the retreat. An entire Gurkha platoon (36 soldiers), led by four officers, disappeared without trace in the thickly forested mountains while attempting a suicidal cross-country move to Taliha. Locals still recount tales about the month that they spent under PLA occupation, after Beijing’s unilateral ceasefire of November 21, 1962. Chinese soldiers did everything they could to win local loyalty, but the Membas, with memories of the Tibet revolt of 1959 fresh in their minds, saw through the opportunism in their overtures.

Today, the Chinese would face an immeasurably more difficult task if they attacked Menchuka. It is strongly defended by the army’s Red Devils. The army presence can hardly be missed, whether in the form of heavy vehicles growling along the roads, a very visible army encampment, military signposts everywhere (sample: “After a hard day’s work and sweat we, the Red Devils, love to have Chinese for supper”), or the AN-32 transport aircraft that roar in and out of the airfield in the middle of Menchuka town, bringing in the supplies that keep the army going. On their way back to Assam, the AN-32s give lifts to locals who need to move out in a hurry.

The actual border with China is at the Lola Pass, some 45 km from Menchuka. The Line of Actual Control (as the border is called) is not disputed here, as it is in other sectors like Longju. But Tibetan civilians have been apprehended in Indian territory while gathering the medicinal plants that this valley has always been famous for. Locals tell us that the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), which physically guards the border, arrested a large group of Tibetans some six years ago when they intruded into India.

Intrigued, I go to the sub-division headquarters, where I meet Additional Deputy Commissioner Gepak Poyum, an Adi from Along. A small-framed man in a tiny office, with a photograph of Subhas Chandra Bose hanging on the wall, Poyum is kept warm by a wood-burning bukhari that crackles comfortingly. With not a file on his desk, he is happy to chat with a visitor from Delhi. Yes, the Tibetans did come, and were kept by ITBP for about a month, he tells us. They must have been collecting yartsa gunbu, the magical plant that grows in high mountain pastures, transforming into a caterpillar in winter and a fungus in summer. China loves yartsa gunbu, I learn; it is reputedly a potent aphrodisiac. It is sent to Tibet for the equivalent of Rs 80,000 per kg; the street value in Menchuka of 1 kg of yartsa gunbu is Rs 30,000.

What happened to the Tibetans, I ask? Poyum tells me that release orders came from New Delhi because they had strayed across by accident. In early 2007, they were repatriated across Lola. Clearly things on the ground between India and China are not as bad as many imagine!

* * * * *

Menchuka’s long tradition of medicinal herbs, which formed a sizeable component of the tax payments to Kongpo, is now being commercialised. Pasang Sona, the MLA from Menchuka, has leased a large tract of land to Pronaali Agro-Tech, a company run by former tea planter Giri Sodhi. Perched on a hillside with a spectacular view of Menchuka, Sodhi has converted this into a plantation for Taxus bacata, an evergreen conifer long known as the yew. The toxic component of Taxus Bacata, known as taxol, is a powerful chemotherapeutic drug for treating breast and cervical cancer.

Sodhi has tied up with German pharmaceutical company Fresenius Kabi Oncology (it acquired Dabur Pharma some years ago) which will process Menchuka’s Taxus bacata in its laboratories in Sahibabad and Kalyani into anti-cancer medicines. Fresenius Kabi currently imports Taxus bacata from Europe and South America; it hopes to cut costs to one third by sourcing it from Menchuka.

For Sodhi, this is a high-stakes, high-risk game, with a strong element of adventure. He says, “My expenditure on 70 hectares of Taxus bacata, over 20 years, on field development, planting, irrigation and labour will work out to about Rs 25 crore. And my income flow will only begin after six or seven years. But Fresenius Kabi is supporting this strongly.” He adds: “This is hard work, 20 hours’ driving time from Assam in a very remote area. But it is very enjoyable, and I take satisfaction in being able to cut treatment costs for cancer patients in the future.”

The Arunachal Government is watching and waiting. Poyum says, “We are watching to see how this works. If it is a success, other locals will also start growing. And definitely, we will support [it] because the tradition in Menchuka of growing medicinal herbs stopped due to medicines coming from Kolkata and Mumbai.” We look out at Menchuka from Sodhi’s fields, where lovely Memba women tend to the plants. The Yar Gyap Chu flows placidly, an island in midstream shaped exactly like India. An army patrol climbs the hill slowly, familiarising itself with the area they are tasked to defend.

A few years ago, when the road to Menchuka was being completed, the Border Roads Organisation was blasting Guru Rimpoche’s rock seal which was in the way. But nobody from Menchuka protested. In traditional Tibetan Buddhist belief, paradise had already been desecrated when armed forces entered it and a war was fought there in 1962. Menchuka has moved on from its legendary past.

INS CHAKRA INDUCTED INTO INDIAN NAVY

The INS Chakra, minutes before it was inducted into the eastern fleet at Vishakhapatnam on 4th April 12

by Ajai Shukla

Business Standard, 5th Apr 12

A thin trumpet call wafted over the warm, humid air of the dock, heralding the arrival of defence minister A K Antony to induct into the Indian Navy its most recent and most potent submarine, the nuclear-powered INS Chakra. In late February, the Chakra, leased from Russia for 10 years at an estimated cost of $900 million, set off from snowy Vladivostok. After a 40-day underwater odyssey past Japan and through the disputed South China Sea, undetected by anyone, the Chakra reached sweltering Visakhapatnam on Saturday.

Key functionaries of the Chakra’s all-Indian crew lined up on its deck to welcome Antony. The 12,000-tonne Akula II class vessel is a shockingly large cigar-shaped cylinder, painted a drab black. The only splash of colour came from the gold braid on the officers’ shoulders and the fluttering tricolour. Like so many Russian weapon platforms, the Chakra conveys an understated menace — functionality without the frills.

There were brief speeches by the Russian ambassador to India, Alexander Kadakin, naval chief Admiral Nirmal Verma and Antony. Then, a band struck up the national anthem and the Chakra joined the navy’s Eastern Fleet. Kadakin termed this “a shining example of the very confidential strategic cooperation between India and Russia.” Antony took a crack at Kadakin, reminding him of the Russian promise to deliver the Russian aircraft carrier, INS Vikramaditya (formerly the Gorshkov) “on time”. The Vikramaditya is already three years late.

Beyond the banter, military planners are thrilled at this massive boost to India’s power and reach in the Indian Ocean region. While China enjoys military advantages on the land frontier, India’s ability to choke Chinese shipping at straits like Malacca and Hormuz constitutes a powerful strategic lever. And, nothing performs such “sea denial” missions as effectively as a nuclear attack submarine, known by its acronym, the SSN.

Making the SSN a game-changer is its ability to remain submerged indefinitely. Stealth is a key attribute in a ‘sea denial’ mission to shut down, for example, the Strait of Malacca. A submarine must slip undetected (which means underwater) into the patrol area and lurk in ambush for days on end, listening through its sonar for propeller sounds that give away the presence of a ship. Then, it must launch torpedoes to destroy the target and escape at high speed before the enemy can come and destroy her.

One great drawback of the conventional submarine is lack of endurance. Since its diesel engines cannot run underwater for lack of air, it can remain submerged for only as long as its on-board electric batteries provide power. When the batteries are drained, typically in eight-72 hours, depending on how fast it must move, the submarine must surface to run its diesel generators and recharge its batteries. A surfaced submarine with generators running is a sitting duck, inviting an attack by enemy aircraft, surface ships or submarines.

But a nuclear reactor can run underwater, allowing an SSN to remain submerged for as long as its food supplies last. While a conventional submarine moves slowly underwater, to conserve batteries, the Chakra can sprint for long durations at speeds of up to 33 knots (61 kilometres per hour), faster than most surface vessels.

The Chakra’s capabilities are provided by a 190-Mw nuclear reactor, powerful enough to light up a medium-sized city. It is armed with the versatile Russian Klub anti-surface missiles that can strike a ship almost 300 kilometres away. It also has four 533-mm and four 650-mm torpedo tubes.

Says P Asokan, INS Chakra’s first skipper, “I commanded a conventional submarine before this and we were restricted by battery power. But now, I have no restrictions. I can chase a vessel anywhere, overtake her, play games with her, and the nuclear plant never runs out of power.”

Across the water from INS Chakra is the Ship Building Centre, a gigantic hangar where the indigenous nuclear submarine, the INS Arihant, is being constructed. The Arihant is not an SSN like the Chakra; it does not engage in naval warfare. It is an SSBN, a nuclear powered underwater platform from which nuclear-tipped missiles can be launched. The Arihant and its successor vessels would form the third leg of India’s ‘nuclear triad’.

The INS Chakra could be followed by a second SSN from Russia, a proposal the navy has already raised. Questioned on the issue, Antony responded, “There is a proposal (about a second submarine), but we have not taken a decision about that.”

The Indian Navy has 14 conventional submarines in service. Also under construction are six Scorpene conventional submarines at Mazagon Dock, Mumbai, scheduled to enter service by 2018.

According to Antony, seven new warships, including submarines, would enter service with the Navy this year, while an average of five warships would be inducted each succeeding year.

America's Pacific Logic

The Obama administration "pivot" to the Pacific, formally announced by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last November and reiterated more recently by the president himself, might appear like a reassertion of America's imperial tendencies just at the time when Washington should be concentrating on the domestic economy. But in fact, the pivot was almost inevitable.

When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, signaling communism's defeat in Europe, security experts talked about a shift in diplomatic and military energies to the Pacific. But Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait in 1990 led to a decade-long preoccupation with the Middle East, with the U.S. Army leading a land war against Iraq in 1991 and the Navy and Air Force operating no-fly zones for years thereafter. Then came 9/11, and the Bush administration's initiation of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as a response. Finally, the ending of both those conflicts is in sight, and the United States, rather than return to quasi-isolationism as it has done with deleterious effect after other ground wars in its history, is attempting to pivot its focus to the geographical heart of the global economy: the Indian and Pacific oceans.

The Indian Ocean is the world's energy interstate, across which passes crude oil and natural gas from the Arabian Peninsula and Iranian Plateau to the burgeoning, middle-class urban networks of East Asia. Though we live in a jet and information age, 90 percent of all commercial goods that travel from one continent to another do so by container ship, and half of those goods in terms of global tonnage -- and one-third in terms of monetary value -- traverse the South China Sea, which connects the Indian Ocean with the Western Pacific. Moreover, the supposedly energy-rich South China Sea is the economic hub of world commerce, where international sea routes coalesce. And it is the U.S. Navy and Air Force, more than any other institutions, that have kept those sea lines of communication secure, thus allowing for post-Cold War globalization in the first place. This is the real public good that the United States provides the world.

But now a new challenge looms for the United States: a rising China as demonstrated by the totality of its power -- its geographical proximity to the South China Sea and environs; its economic heft, making it the largest trading partner of most if not all of the littoral nations (despite economic troubles in China itself); and its expanding submarine fleet. Beijing has been buying smart, investing in subs, ballistic missiles, and space and cyber warfare as part of a general defense build-up. China has no intention of going to war with the United States, but it does seek to impede in time of crisis U.S. military access to the South China Sea and the rest of maritime Asia. From my travels I have seen that this has led to the use of the term "Finlandization" throughout Southeast Asia, whereby China, through the combination of its economic and military power, will undermine the sovereignty of countries such as Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore, all of which are de facto or de jure U.S. allies.

The country that is the biggest target for China is Vietnam, whose seaboard forms the western edge of the South China Sea and whose economically dynamic population of 87 million makes it a future maritime Turkey, a midlevel power in its own right. If China can "Finlandize" Vietnam, Beijing will in practical terms capture the South China Sea. This explains Washington's increasing military and interest in Hanoi. Whereas Vietnam and other littoral countries claim parts of the South China Sea, China cites a "historic" nine-dashed line that encompasses almost the entire sea itself.

Governmental and policy elites in Beijing recognize the need to compromise on the "cow's tongue," as the nine-dashed line is called, but nationalistic elements in China won't let them, at least not yet. The Chinese are simply unable to psychologically divorce their claims on the nearby South China Sea from the territorial depredations directed against China by the West in the 19th and early 20th centuries. To Chinese officials, the South China Sea representsblue national soil.

Of course, American diplomacy has been active on these matters for years, but U.S. diplomats would lack credibility if they were not backed by a robust military presence in the future. This is what the pivot is all about: The United States does not intend to desert maritime Asia in its hour of need. As one high-ranking diplomat of a South China Sea country told me, if the United States were to withdraw an aircraft carrier strike group from the region it would be a "game-changer," ushering the region toward Finlandization.

Additionally, China is helping to build state-of-the-art port facilities all along the Indian Ocean, on the other side of the Malacca Strait from the South China Sea, in Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Kenya. These projects all have specific commercial motives promoted by individual Chinese companies, and in some cases, such as Gwadar in Pakistan, are in the middle of politically unstable areas, making their use problematic. But this is how most empires begin -- as speculative-commercial and policing ventures. The Venetian empire in the Mediterranean began as an attempt to suppress piracy along the Adriatic coast, something Chinese warships are doing near the Horn of Africa. Then there were the purely commercial ventures of the British and Dutch East India companies in their early days, which led to full-fledged imperial domains.

A profound socio-economic crisis in China itself -- something that by no means can be ruled out -- might have the effect of slowing this quasi-imperial rise. But that hasn't happened quite yet, and in the meantime, the United States is forced to react to China's growing military and commercial capabilities.

But the change in U.S. policy focus is not literally about containing China. "Containment" is a word of Cold War vintage related to holding ground against the Soviet Union, a country with which the United States had a one-dimensional, hostile relationship. The tens of thousands of American students and corporate executives in Beijing attest to the rich, multi-dimensional relationship the United States enjoys with China. China is so much freer than the former Soviet Union that to glibly state that China is "not a democracy" is to miss the point of China's rise entirely.

China is an altogether dynamic society that is naturally expanding its military and economic reach in the Indo-Pacific region much as the United States expanded in the Atlantic and Greater Caribbean following the Civil War. But the rise of any new great power needs to be managed, especially as it is accompanied by the rise of Indian, Vietnamese, Malaysian, Singaporean and Australian sea power, even as Japan and South Korea modernize their sea and air fleets with the latest combat systems. Make no mistake, the Indo-Pacific is in the midst of an arms race that complicates the security of the region's sea lanes.

Were the United States not now to turn to the Indo-Pacific, it would risk a multipolar military order arising up alongside an already existent multipolar economic and political order. Multipolar military systems are more unstable than unipolar and bipolar ones because there are more points of interactions and thus more opportunities for miscalculations, as each country seeks to readjust the balance of power in its own favor. U.S. military power in the Indo-Pacific is needed not only to manage the peaceful rise of China but also to stabilize a region witnessing the growth of indigenous civil-military post-industrial complexes.

If American power was diminished, China, India and other powers would be far more aggressive toward each other than they are now, for they all benefit from the secure sea lines of communication provided by the U. S. Navy and Air Force.

Clinton's diplomatic overture to Myanmar and President Barack Obama's plan to rotate 2,500 Marines through Australia are symbolic of the political and military effort to distribute U.S. power throughout the Indo-Pacific. Myanmar could simply continue as a satellite of Beijing were Clinton not to do as she has. Australia, a country of only 23 million inhabitants, will spend $279 billion over the next two decades on submarines, fighter jets and other hardware. This is not militarism, but the reasonable response of a nation at the confluence of the Indian and Pacific oceans in order to account for its own defense in the face of rapidly changing power dynamics. Australia might even become the premier alliance partner for the United States in the Anglosphere in the 21st century, much as Britain, whose defense budget is plummeting, was in the 20th century.

The pivot is as yet an aspiration, not a declaration, since it assumes that events in the Middle East will permit U.S. officials the luxury of shifting assets elsewhere. But events in the Middle East never permit as such. Still, if the United States can at least avoid further land engagements in the Middle East, expect the pivot to set the tone for America's Asia policy for years to come, much as President Richard Nixon's trip to China did for Asia policy in decades past.

Source:Strafore

April 4, 2012, 8:03 am
Delays, Corruption Mar India’s Weapons Procurement
By HARI KUMAR ( source: India Ink)

Anindito Mukherjee/European Pressphoto Agency
Indian army personnel look at a Hungarian-type Sero GM6 Lynx anti-material rifle, during the 7th International Land and Naval Defense Systems exhibition in New Delhi,  March 31, 2012.

India’s armed forces are woefully short of arms and ammunition, thanks to a cumbersome and unrealistic weapons-buying process, experts say.

The Indian Army is the world’s biggest arms importer and third-largest by manpower, with 1.3 million men in uniform. While self-reliance has been India’s long stated goal for defense purchases, the country still imports about 70 percent of its weapons and domestic production facilities are still very basic.

Government officials say India’s weapon’s procurement system is marred by bureaucratic delays, corruption and poor long-term planning. In a recent report, India’s comptroller and auditor general found that the army had failed to decide on what features it wanted in its artillery for four years. In another report from 2007, the auditor found that the army had created a set of unrealistic and inconsistent requirements that could not be met by the technology available at the time.

Last month, none other than the chief of Indian army, Gen. Vijay Kumar Singh, decried the shortage of arms and ammunition in a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

The letter, which was leaked to the Indian newspaper DNA, said that the army did not have sufficient ammunition for its tanks; that 97 percent of the country’s air defense systems were obsolete; and that the infantry was riddled with deficiencies including an inability to fight at night. The letter also said that special forces were woefully short of essential weapons and there were gaping holes in the army’s ability to conduct surveillance. General Singh blamed the country’s complex defense procurement system for the problems.

But there is plenty of blame to go around. “I am of the opinion that the army is also responsible for this situation,” said Laxman Kumar Behera, a researcher with the Institute of Defense Studies and Analysis, a research organization funded by India’s Defense Ministry.

In a recent interview Mr. Behera highlighted the case of 155-millimeter ammunition that was supposed to be produced at an Indian facility. The project was delayed by more than a decade because the Ministry of Defense banned the two international firms that were supposed to provide equipment and technology for the project, Denel of South Africa and later the Israel Military Industries, from supplying arms to India because of allegations of bribery.

“Suspending procurement cases pending the investigation, or blacklisting of firms, does more harm to the country’s defense preparedness than the economic woes it inflicts upon the concerned firms” Mr. Behera said.

He estimates that during the past decade, the Indian armed forces have surrendered about $5.5 billion allocated to it by the government because it did not or could not spend the money.

Another report, by IHS Jane’s, also blamed bureaucracy and corruption for the situation. “Allegations of corruption have long been endemic in India and have derailed many defense programs in the past,” the report said.

“For potential defense exporters to India there are still a number of challenges,” Guy Anderson, chief analyst for IHS Jane’s Defense Industry and editor of the report said in a statement. “There are concerns about economy, the notorious project delays and almost habitual cancellations-not to mention the corruption.”

India’s defense minister, A. K. Antony, held a meeting, earlier this week, with General Singh and top bureaucrats to speed up the acquisition process. He asked officials to examine if they could shorten the time for field trials and delegate more financial authority to service headquarters, according to a statement from the ministry.

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India, China begin new border mechanism

Beijing, March 6, 2012, PTI:

India and China on Tuesday operationalised the recent agreement on border coordination mechanism by framing mutually agreed rules to avert conflict at the disputed frontier.

The Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination on India-China Border Affairs, which was formed during the 15th round of border talks in New Delhi in January, has now been operationalised, an Indian official who attended the first meeting told PTI here.
The border mechanism was formed to avoid any untoward incidents between the troops on ground while patrolling the various points.

The two-day talks, which concluded on Tuesday, were held between an Indian delegation led by Gautam Bambawale, Joint Secretary (East Asia) of the External Affairs Ministry and Deng Zhonghua, Director-General, Department of Boundary and Oceanic Affairs of China.

The two sides also discussed the possibility of an alternate route for the Kailash Manasarovar Yatra and additional items for border trade at Nathu La Pass in Sikkim.

The seven-member Indian delegation included senior officials of the Home and Defence ministries as well as members of the Indian Army and the Indo-Tibetan Border Police.
The Chinese delegation included representatives from Foreign Ministry and Ministry of National Defence.

India and China have held 15 rounds of talks by special representatives to resolve differences over demarcation of the borders.

“The talks were held in a constructive and forward looking atmosphere with the common objective of continuing to maintain peace and tranquility in the India-China border areas,” a statement issued by the Indian side.

The Indian statement said the two delegations “agreed on the rules governing the functioning of the mechanism, which include convening one or two meetings a year, and if required, holding of emergency consultations either through meetings or by telephone/video conferencing”.

The meeting also reviewed the situation prevailing in the India-China border areas and noted the adherence by both sides to the various agreements for maintenance of peace and tranquility.

“At the same time, they stressed the need for continuing efforts towards this objective and discussed additional confidence building measures between the two sides,” it said. The next meeting will be held in India at a mutually agreed dates.

March 13, 2012, 7:14 AM

In India’s Northeast, Peace and Foreign Ties Quietly Spread

By SAMRAT

Rupak De Chowdhuri/ReutersA man rides his two-wheeler across the Indo-Myanmar border bridge at Moreh in the northeastern state of Manipur, Jan. 25, 2012.

In this three part series, the author, a journalist from the Northeast, looks at the quiet transformation happening in once strife-torn region, which could affect trade and geopolitics throughout Asia.

Suddenly, there’s a flurry of activity between Northeast India and Myanmar, as barriers have started to lift.

On Feb. 22, largely unnoticed by the news media, India’s foreign minister met with Myanmar’s construction minister in Delhi.

The two spoke about starting a bus service between Imphal, in India, and Mandalay, in Myanmar, increasing the number of flights, and opening a highway between Moreh, in India, and the Myanmar-Thai border near Mae Sot, according to Vishnu Vardhan Reddy, an under secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs. A new route from Kaladan, Myanmar, to Northeast India by water and land was also discussed, he said. Officials from India’s Civil Aviation Ministry are expected to visit Myanmar this month. And the first India-Myanmar car rally flagged off from Guwahati on March 11.

Since 1991, India’s central government has had a ‘‘Look East Policy’’ that envisages closer ties with the country’s eastern neighbors. It’s a policy that has made only halting progress, but now the government is clearly looking to ramp up the pace.

Work on the Trans-Asian Railway, which aims to connect Asia from Istanbul to Hanoi, is now under way in Manipur. For months, the United Naga Council, an organization of the tribal Naga people in India’s Northeast, had blockaded this. It was an action imposed to push for autonomous administration of Manipur’s hill districts. These districts remain part of Manipur, but the council said that work on the rail link, a project India joined in 2007, could resume. The crucial section that passes through the Naga-inhabited areas in the hill district of Tamenglong in Manipur will link India with Southeast Asia through Myanmar. Northeast Frontier Railways spokesman S. Hajong confirmed that work on the section of railways from Jiribam to Tupul near Imphal is proceeding.

At a time when connections are being renewed between Myanmar and the rest of the world, peace is threatening to break out in the historically fractious and insurgency-plagued states of Northeast India. These states, which share a 1,640-kilometer (1,019-mile) border with Myanmar, may be quietly transforming themselves from roadblock to bridge, a shift that could ultimately impact the economies and geopolitics of India, China and Southeast Asia.

Several old routes cross the border between Northeast India and Myanmar. Some, like the World War II Stilwell Road, built under the U.S. Gen. Joseph W. Stilwell, had become “ghost roads,” used mainly by Naga and Kachin insurgents to transport weapons and drugs. For the past few years this road has gradually returned to relatively peaceful and legal uses.

The notion that the Northeast could serve as a foundation for regional stability would have been ridiculous until last year. Myriad insurgent groups in the region have battled for ethnic homelands independent of India since the end of British colonial rule 64 years ago. The seven states in the region contain a veritable alphabet soup of insurgent groups at war with India and, often, with each other.

But the insurgencies that have dotted the area since the country’s independence from Britain are suddenly at their lowest ebb in decades.

The reasons for this in the Indian territories are three-fold: A rise in the amount of government and private money flowing into the region, Bangladesh’s crackdown on insurgency and terrorism in recent years, and a young local population that hungers more for the fruits of a strong economy than for independence from India.

The most powerful insurgent group in the region, the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Isak-Muivah), entered a cease-fire with the Indian government in 1997, and has been in peace talks since.

Then, in 2008, Bangladesh, where many of the leaders of Northeastern insurgent groups were based, got a new government, led by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, which started a crackdown on Indian insurgents on its territory.

The first major sign of this crackdown came in December 2009. Arabinda Rajkhowa, the chairman of the United Liberation Front of Asom, the biggest insurgent group from the state of Assam, was caught after 17 years in foreign countries. The official version initially said that he had been found wandering near Dawki in Meghalaya on that state’s border with Bangladesh, and surrendered to the Indian Border Security Force on being challenged.

The real story, though, had already leaked out. Rajkhowa had been detained by the Bangladesh authorities near Dhaka and handed over to India.

Then, in December 2010, Rajkumar Meghen, the chief of the United National Liberation Front, one of the most powerful insurgent groups in Northeast India, was reportedly arrested in Motihari, in Bihar, while waiting for a bus to Nepal. The police in Bihar told reporters that Meghen was on his way from a hideout in Bangladesh to one in Nepal when he was caught.

That would have been like finding Mullah Omar waiting for a bus. Meghen, who had been wanted in India for 35 years, had been picked up by the Bangladeshi authorities in Dhaka in September and handed over to India.

Bangladesh and India still don’t have an extradition treaty, though one is expected soon, according to official statements by the two countries. The problem of extradition without a treaty has been addressed in the recent past by presenting the arrests of Meghen and others as if they’d taken place in India, according to a source familiar with these developments who requested anonymity because he is not authorized to speak with reporters.

With the capture of their top leaders, the main Assamese and Manipuri groups were now down, if not out. The main Naga group has had a cease-fire with Indian forces since 1997. Most of the other smaller groups had already entered cease-fires and peace talks after the loss of their sanctuaries in Bangladesh in 2008 and 2009.

Now only a few splinter groups remain active in the region. Most of the smaller ones are considered by Northeast residents, and by those from the region like myself, as essentially criminal gangs that profit from extortion and kidnapping.

If borders soften, and roads as ancient as the Silk Road return to life, India and China could link up with the ASEAN bloc here. Mandalay in Myanmar would then become the hub of trade among these three.

The Asian Highway and Trans-Asian Railway are efforts in that direction. In 2014, Myanmar assumes chairmanship of ASEAN, the Association of South East Asian Nations. A reopening of links with India by then would enable the free flow of goods – and, with a tweaking of rules, of services – all the way from Amritsar, near India’s border with Pakistan, to Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam. India has had a Free Trade Agreement in goods with ASEAN since August 2009, and is working towards extending it to services.

There are reasons for optimism at the moment, experts say. “I think it’s very possible that connections between Burma and Northeast India will greatly intensify in the years and decades to come, not just in terms of trade, but also people and ideas,” said U Thant Myint-U, the historian and author of “Where China Meets India,’’ in a Facebook message.

“To some extent, this is a return to the past, and the reawakening of centuries-old ties, especially between places like Manipur, Assam, and Burma,” he said. But it is also a deepening of existing contacts.

“It once took weeks if not months to travel from Assam to Burma,” he added. “Today it takes days. Soon it may take hours.”

Next: The Northeast’s people, once considered “ungovernable,” embrace modernity.

The writer is editor of the Mumbai edition of The Asian Age and author of The Urban Jungle (Penguin, 2011). He can be found on Twitter asmrsamratx.