On Friday, August 29, a few hours before Indian prime minister Narendra Modi was to land in Kyoto, the Japanese defence ministry followed through on the July amendment by asking for a record defence budget. The $48 bln budget for the year beginning April 2015 will be used to buy radar-evading F-35 stealth aircraft, Aegis radar-equipped destroyers, surveillance aircraft and global hawk drones. Abe’s Japan is putting money where its mouth is.
Now, all this has a lot of implications for India. A stronger, assertive and well-equipped Japan is needed to maintain regional stability and bolster US efforts at keeping China at bay. India, like Japan, has an ongoing territorial dispute with China, one which shows no signs of resolution despite more than three decades of debates, discussion and ministerial meetings. The Manmohan Singh-led UPA government handled China with kid gloves with a prominent minister comparing Chinese PLA incursions to acne. The UPA government often gave the impression of preferring endless talks without any tangible outcomes and one hopes that the Modi government’s approach will be different. This Japan trip is actually a golden opportunity for prime minister Modi to cement a closer defence and military cooperation with India’s best Asian friend.
Media reports and opinion about the visit have centred exclusively on economic issues with civil nuclear deals, infrastructure investment dominating the discussion, but there is no reason to downplay the role of military and defence cooperation especially in the context of China. Japan’s ongoing dispute over the East China Sea island (called Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China) could well determine geopolitics in that part of the world, while resolution of India’s dispute over the Himalayan frontier with its giant northerly neighbour is crucial to south Asian regional security.
China has used divide and division among the Asian bloc and the US’ increasing domestic problems to try and settle the issues on its own terms. It has needled all the countries with which it has disputes with aggressive and often intrusive patrolling. The Chinese strategy appears to be to get its rivals to the negotiating table by putting them on the defensive and then getting them to agree to its terms by often highlighting the high cost of non-cooperation.
Such a strategy cannot be defeated through military means but only through deft diplomacy. War is often not a solution to tackle aggressive countries and China’s psychological warfare can be blunted through regional cooperation and solidarity between the affected countries.
Modi has an excellent chance to use this trip to discuss a military alliance with Abe. This will not be aimed at grabbing territory or invading any country. Its purpose is not to start a second Indo-China war. But by getting countries affected by Chinese aggression into one camp, this alliance will send a strong message to Beijing that its territorial aggression will not be tolerated. By selling arms to each other, it will attempt to deter Chinese aggression and blunt its diplomatic edge through close cooperation in international forums.
A few days before Mr Modi’s visit to Japan, Sushma Swaraj, the external affairs minister visited Vietnam and the two countries agreed to deepen existing defence cooperation. Vietnam also agreed to renew leases on two oil blocks given to ONGC Videsh, a move widely expected to annoy China. Japan is also considering supplying patrol boats to the Philippines, one of the countries affected by Chinese claims on the South China Sea now that its constitution has been amended.
In a limited way, some kind of cooperation is already happening between countries affected by Chinese claims and demands. Abe has shown that he is no pushover and is willing to stand upto China. Modi is made of similar stuff. It is time for these leaders to send a message to Beijing that they will not be rolled over and that geopolitics in Asia will not be dominated Chinese imperialism.
No comments:
Post a Comment