Sino-Indian Competition in Myanmar in the Spotlight With Indian Navy Chief Visit - The Diplomat, February 24, 2020

I have been lagging with my blog posts but I am trying to get it back on track. Here's a short essay on the Sino-Indian competition in Myanmar, I did for The Diplomat in February. The Indian Navy Chief who was on a visit to Myanmar a couple of weeks ago again focused attention on the role of India and China in the Southeast Asian state, even though New Delhi’s weakness lies more in non-security realms.

Last week, India’s Chief of Naval Staff Admiral Karambir Singh visited Myanmar in a trip lasting from February 17 to 20. The trip, which came just weeks after Chinese President Xi Jinping’s trip to the country, spotlighted the tussle between China and India for influence in the Southeast Asian state.

Myanmar has long factored into India’s strategic calculations: Delhi considers relations with Myanmar to be very important, particularly in the context of evolving Indo-Pacific strategic dynamics, and Myanmar is also a key link in furthering India’s ‘Act East’ Policy. For China, which has a bigger political and economic footprint in Myanmar, its inroads into Myanmar have geostrategic implications because it gives Beijing proximity to the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea, maritime space that is crucial to Indian security.

For the full essay, click here.



But India nonetheless continues to compete and consolidate its ties with Myanmar for its own interests. As the statement from the Indian Ministry of Defense said, Admiral Singh’s “visit is intended to consolidate and enhance the bilateral maritime relations between India and Myanmar.”

That was seen in aspects of the visit itself as well. During his visit, Admiral Singh called on a range of top officials, including Admiral Tin Aung San, commander in chief of the Myanmar Navy, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, the Commander in Chief of Defense Services, and other senior government officials, including Aung San Suu Kyi, the State Counselor and Minister of Foreign Affairs.

During his meeting with Admiral Tin Aung San, Adm. Singh offered increased training assistance for the Myanmar Navy. The Indian Navy chief is reported to have briefed the officials on the state of cooperation between the two navies. The navy chief also held interactions with trainees of the National Defense College in Naypyidaw and visited the Naval Dockyard and Training Command of the Myanmar Navy in Yangon.

These gains were notable but not necessarily surprising. The defense aspect of the relationship has been built on by both sides over the past few years, including not just regular exercises, visits, and training, but also defense equipment, with a case in point being when India handed over a diesel-electric Kilo-class submarine, INS Sindhuvir, which India refurbished after procuring from Russia in the 1980s.

Furthermore, the challenge for India in competing with China in Myanmar lies less in the naval domain and more in other aspects. In the economic domain, for instance, India’s lack of capacity to reach out and address many of Myanmar’s requirements is stark, especially when pitted against China and its Belt and Road initiative. Key projects, such as the trilateral India-Myanmar-Thailand highway project and the multi-modal Kaladhan Transit Transport project, are behind schedule.

Myanmar’s importance to India cannot emphasized enough. Given India’s push for the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC), Myanmar remains a critical pillar for closer engagement with the southeast Asian region. But New Delhi is still to resolve its problem with delivering on its promises.

Sri Lanka: A Center for Sino-Indian Strategic Competition - The Diplomat, July 11, 2019

In last week's column for The Diplomat, I wrote on the Sino-Indian strategic competition in the Indian neighbourhood, specifically focusing on Sri Lanka. The delivery of a Chinese frigate to the South Asian nation reinforces its role within competition between the two Asian giants.

Last week, China donated a frigate to the Sri Lankan Navy. While the development itself was hardly surprising, it nonetheless highlighted the continuing contest between India and China in India’s neighborhood in spite of ongoing efforts by both sides to manage their wider relationship.

For the full essay, click here.



The frigate arrived in Colombo Port earlier this week. The Commander of the Sri Lankan Navy, Vice Admiral Piyal De Silva, thanked China for the gift and said that this reflected the “good friendship between the two countries.” Commander De Silva went on to add that Sri Lanka faces many maritime challenges and that the frigate, now designated ‘P 625’, will be mainly used for offshore patrol, environment monitoring and anti-piracy efforts.

The vessel reportedly comes with a main turret holding dual Type 79 100 mm cannons and two Type 76A dual-37 mm Anti-Aircraft Guns at the aft. It also has a helipad and hangar to store and operate a medium-size helicopter. A statement from the Chinese Embassy in Sri Lanka said that in addition to the donation, the PLA Navy had also conducted a two-month professional training for more than 110 Sri Lankan naval officers and sailors in Shanghai, China.

The donation of the frigate comes against the backdrop of a major Chinese aid to Sri Lanka to fight terrorism. In May, China decided to provide Sri Lanka with aid to the tune of $14 million for Colombo to procure China-made counterinsurgency equipment. The decision was taken during President Maithripala Sirisena’s visit to Beijing in mid-May, and the president’s office stated that this will be important in enhancing the wherewithal of the Sri Lankan security forces. Reports suggest that China will also be providing the Sri Lankan police with 150 vehicles.

Much like Beijing’s interest in other Indian neighbors, including the Maldives, China’s interests in Sri Lanka are more strategic than economic. Developments such as the visit of a Chinese nuclear submarine to Colombo during the Rajapaksa tenure were a wake up call as well as a reminder to India of the extent of China’s strategic in roads in Sri Lanka. The China-Sri Lanka relationship reached a peak during the final phase of the Sri Lankan war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The political and defense support extended by China to Colombo, in the face of international condemnation on account of the extensive human rights abuses, was significant.

New Delhi has not been sitting still, however. Indeed, the fact that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi began his second tenure in office with a stop in Sri Lanka on his way back from a visit to the Maldives was no coincidence. New Delhi has no doubt been aware that domestic political shifts in Sri Lanka have continued to put it in the balance, with Colombo perceived to have moved toward China under former President Mahinda Rajapaksa, and, after the election of Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe, shifting back toward India. New Delhi has also been aware of the risks of Sri Lanka getting entangled in the risks of Chinese engagement, including the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) with the example of the Hambantota port.

This continues to play out even today. Even though the Sirisena-Wickremasinghe political dispensation has been quite favorable to India, the internal squabble between the two leaders has cast a shadow in its dealings with India. This has affected the manner in which even terrorism issues were dealt with by the two leaders. Despite the fact that India had provided intelligence on the Easter terror attacks in Sri Lanka, it was not given adequate credit due to the continuing row between Sirisena and Wickremasinghe.

The India-China competition in Sri Lanka is quite evident more broadly. India had earlier given Sri Lanka advanced off-shore patrol vessels (AOPVs) – SLNS Sayurala (P623) and SLNS Sindurala (P624) in 2017 and 2018 respectively. But India’s overall capacity to deliver what Sri Lanka needs is questionable. This has been the case even during the war against the LTTE (though that was at least partly because New Delhi was hobbled by the needs of domestic politics) to the extent where China emerged as one of the key trading partners, even setting up a NORINCO small arms factory in Kandy.

The delivery of a Chinese frigate to Sri Lanka is nonetheless evidence that strategic competition in India’s neighborhood will only continue to intensify. Unless India does more for its neighbors and enlists other partners as well, China will continue to present a significant strategic challenge for New Delhi in this regard in the coming years.

my Shangri-La Dialogue Remarks

This was my second time at the IISS Shangri-La Dialogue which is Asia's premier defence summit, a unique meeting of ministers and delegates from over 50 countries. 2017 was my first appearance at this premier Dialogue and I had contributed an essay on India's evolving strategic response to China which appeared in the IISS' Regional Security Assessment 2017.

This year, the keynote address was delivered by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. This was a much-awaited one, particularly because of the general low-key and irregular participation from the Indian establishment.

This time around, the IISS organised an inaugural female leaders panel to talk about the strategic implications of new technology on the security dynamics in the Indo-Pacific. It was a terrific panel featuring Australian Minister of Defence Ms. Marise Payne, Canadian Deputy Minister of Defence Ms. Jody Thomas and CEO of Boeing Defence, Space and Security Ms. Leanne Caret and ably chaired by the IISS’ Deputy Director General Dr. Kori Schake. My brief was to look at the nuclear and space advancements and competition in the Asia Pacific, and also the strategic competition between India and China in the Asia Pacific as it relates to these two domains.

Here is the synopsis of my remarks.

Asia is already rife with mistrust, rivalry, competition and both nuclear and space domains are beginning to see a fresh phase of competition. This is a reflection of the larger geopolitical competition in the Asia Pacific and beyond. While there are several factors that have driven this competition, China’s rise has been most consequential. The rise of China and the strategic uncertainties it has created has necessitated countries like India, US, Japan, Australia and other like-minded countries to come together, though this is still at a nascent stage. The augmentation of nuclear and space capabilities will only accentuate the already existing tensions.

I outlined two sets of concerns each with regard to nuclear and space technologies. On the nuclear front, the key concern is potentially the inability of the nuclear non-proliferation regime to deal with the many challenges which present with serious problems for strategic stability. One is the development of hypersonic weapons. A key problem here is that such weapons can increase the potential for surprise attacks, because of the difficulty of detecting and countering them. This could lead to a destabilizing arms race spiral between key great powers in the region, all of whom are working on developing these weapons. An additional problem is that hypersonic weapons potentially erode the line between conventional and nuclear weapons, which will also increase instability. Another evolving technology is BMD, which also has similar problems.

Coming to outer space issues, two issues stand out. There is a growing intensity of competition which is partially due to the increasing number of commercial players and partially due to underlying geopolitical tensions. Outer space has become one more area of the strategic competition on Earth, as seen during the Cold War. This means that the race to return to the moon, as well as to explore the moon and asteroids for mining and resource extraction, are likely to intensify in the coming years. Two, the number of countries using space assets to step up their military capabilities and national security functions has gone up. Also, the fact that states are looking at space utilization for conventional military operations as against the use for strategic operations in the earlier decades, has added a new dimension.

Over and above, automation, machine learning and AI bring in new dynamics to security in the Asia-Pacific.

Finally, I took a couple of minutes to speak about the strategic competition primarily between India and China in the nuclear and space arenas. India’s nuclear weapons programme has been evolving at a slow but steady pace, and it can be expected to continue expanding in both quantity and quality. Like in space and other areas, much of this expansion is driven by the need to build adequate deterrent capacity against China. It is estimated that India currently has around 100 nuclear warheads, of which only half are strategic missiles. But most of India’s long-range missiles are not sufficiently long enough to cover all of China unless they are deployed in northern India. This is true of both the land-based and submarine-based missiles. This means that India will continue developing its capabilities for the near- to long-term but this could trigger negative reactions from China on the one side, and from Pakistan from the other.

However, it must be noted that India is at least a couple of generations behind China and India is not in competition with China in numerical terms but the need to develop certain capabilities and capacities as a deterrent against China will continue. In the space sector, demonstration of China’s military space capabilities, including ASATs, is driving the militarization of India’s space program. This will propel further competition between these two powers.


Type rest of the post here