Why the US Needs India's Air Force ... my take on US-India military ties ... in today's The Diplomat

Here's an article of mine on US-India military ties, arguing for greater engagement between the Indian Air Force and the US Air Force. This has been published today as the lead article in The Diplomat.

Until now, the flag-bearers of U.S.-Indian military cooperation have been the two countries’ navies, a point that was highlighted during the response to the 2005 tsunami and subsequent reconstruction operations. In contrast, while there have been some joint exercises between their two air forces, the rationale for air force-to-air force cooperation appears to be neither understood nor appreciated in either capital.



During his visit to India last November, U.S. President Barack Obama characterized relations with India as “one of the defining and indispensable partnerships of the 21st century.” Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, in turn, stated that India had “decided to accelerate the deepening of our ties and to work as equal partners in a strategic relationship that will positively and decisively influence world peace, stability and progress.” Arguing that cooperation extended to India’s immediate neighborhood, Singh said the two countries “have a shared vision of security, stability and prosperity in Asia based on an open and inclusive regional architecture.”

But if the bilateral relationship really as is important as the two leaders suggest, then there’s undoubtedly a need for greater strategic synergy. In particular, the two countries’ militaries need to understand each other better if they are to work together for regional and global peace.

Until now, the flag-bearers of U.S.-Indian military cooperation have been the two countries’ navies, a point that was highlighted during the response to the 2005 tsunami and subsequent reconstruction operations. In contrast, while there have been some joint exercises between their two air forces, the rationale for air force-to-air force cooperation appears to be neither understood nor appreciated in either capital.

Indian strategic planners seem to be in broad agreement with their U.S. counterparts in identifying the big strategic challenges in the Asia-Pacific region, yet New Delhi has been reluctant to develop joint approaches in addressing many of these challenges.

The hope is, of course, that even if India is hesitant now, that it may change its mind over the next decade. After all, India’s interests, and its incapacity to address the challenges it faces on its own, seem bound to drive it towards the United States and Asian partners such as Japan and Australia.

Certainly, former U.S. President George W. Bush saw India as a significant pole in Asia, and close ties with India as being in U.S. interests – something that the Obama administration also seems to have recognized. Such views have prompted the United States to develop more formal defense cooperation and to talk about India in terms reserved for U.S. allies (something that causes some discomfort in New Delhi).

The most frequently cited reason for Washington’s interest in India is as a balancer to China, but this view is more complicated than many assume. For a start, the United States has a stake in the ongoing Sino-Indian border dispute. Although the U.S. is yet to take a position on the broader boundary and territorial dispute between the two countries, it certainly wouldn’t be in the interests of the United States to see a conflict break out – and especially to see India lose face in a military confrontation. China decided to teach India a lesson in their brief war in 1962. If this were repeated today, though, the U.S. would also be adversely affected as India’s perceived value as a regional ally would be diminished. A Chinese victory would also raise the question in the minds of smaller states over what hope they have in standing up to China if the United States stood by and watched as a major ally such as India was picked on. Such worries would undoubtedly undermine the United States’ position in Asia, and make China’s neighbors more susceptible to coercion.

But it’s not just about the negatives – India’s airpower can help underpin U.S. Pacific forces indirectly. For a start, a strong Indian Air Force would likely prompt China to focus at least part of its air power away from the Pacific and on the Tibet region. In addition, the Indian Air Force could also tip the scales in the Indo-Pacific by reducing the burden on the U.S. Air Force and providing security in the global commons. For instance, with a single air refueling, India’s SU-30MKI’s combat radius can include either the Straits of Malacca or the Persian Gulf.

Of course, it’s an open question whether India is willing to take such proactive steps. But co-operating more with the United States will help India feel more comfortable with future joint operations.

The reality is that both countries’ air forces face common threats, meaning it would benefit both to share data on a more regular basis and plan joint responses to any problems. The Indian Air Force, for instance, faces threats in its Northeastern sector similar to those facing the United States in the Western Pacific, namely ballistic missiles, advanced integrated air defense systems (IADS), 4th and 5th generation fighters, and increasingly sophisticated Chinese air-to-air missile and electronic warfare capabilities. All these developments increasingly impinge on both India and the United States, and it makes sense for the two to boost co-operation and learn lessons from each other’s experiences in the region.

Similarly, given the growing trend of India procuring U.S. weapons and equipment, greater engagement between their air forces would be particularly beneficial. Joint operations on democracy promotion, humanitarian missions, post disaster management and reconstruction are all ideal areas for joint operations.

But for any of this to occur, India must first recognize the potential for it to become a net provider of constructive airpower in the Indian Ocean Region. If India’s procurement plans go as planned, it could have a modern air force that will be highly capable of anything from disaster relief and humanitarian assistance to providing lethal combat air support.

At the end of the day, if India wants to sit at the high table of international diplomacy, it should be prepared to shoulder greater responsibilities and shed its risk averse foreign policy. Ramping up its air force co-operation seems a good place to start.

Post-Japan, the hunt for the safest option

Here's the link to an article of mine that appeared in today's Pioneer about the space based solar power option.

The nuclear meltdown in northern Japan has confirmed our worst fears about nuclear energy. Tragically, India continues to blindly follow the discarded notions of yesterday, ignoring viable possibilities like solar power

With the nuclear crisis still unfolding in Japan, there is fresh thinking around the world about the safety of the nuclear energy option. While India has examined several alternative energy options, no single option is likely to be a magic bullet. It will probably be wise to look at other options including ones that have not yet been seriously considered as yet.

Under such a scenario, it may be a good time for India to explore the option of space-based solar power (SBSP) — a possibility that has not caught the popular or government attention very much, for a variety of reasons. Unlike the ground-based solar power option, SBSP does not have problems like cloud cover or availability of sunlight and so on.



The SBSP option is likely to be costly. While cost may have been the most serious impediment in making the SBSP option a reality so far, there has been lack of direction and commitment from the political leadership that has also contributed to this. Exploiting space for solar power is not a new idea although it has remained a theoretical exercise for a number of reasons, including because of the lobbying by other alternate energy groups.

SBSP involves using extremely large satellites made up of a large number of solar cells to collect the sun’s energy, convert it to radio waves to be beamed to antenna farms on the ground where it is reconverted to energy.

The scale of such a project will be large but the SBSP is comparable to several mega projects undertaken in the past by both India and the US — the US National Highway project or the Indian rural electrification programme are two cases in point. On cost, experts opine that developing a prototype or putting a 10 MW demonstrator in GEO (geosynchronous Earth orbit), using exiting launch vehicles, will be to the tune of around $10 billion over 10 years. Collaboration with other space-faring nations will bring down the cost to make it a cheaper, safer and cleaner option. More important is the need to calculate the cost on the basis of both direct and indirect cost of climate change and environmental issues. Also, this will be a huge effort in strengthening international hi-tech cooperation, creating several spin-off benefits, including job creation and gaining access to advanced technology.

In the recent past, former President APJ Abdul Kalam promoted the idea of SBSP at the Aeronautical Society of India (AeSI) and later at a NSS (US-based National Space Society) press conference in Washington DC last year. This initiative as of now remains an India-US initiative although it needs to be broadened, may be at a later stage, to set up a larger consortium to make SBSP into a viable proposition.

Why SBSP? Speaking in November last year, Dr Kalam highlighted the huge energy shortage that India and the world would be facing in the next few decades. Kalam estimated that by 2050, even if one were to use all possible sources of energy, there will be a global shortage to the tune of 66 per cent. On the other hand, if one were to use the SBSP option, the world would move from an energy deficit to an energy surplus situation. Additionally, the clean and safe energy option will go a long way in solving the world’s climate change woes.

At the India-US level, this initiative is associated with some key technocrats such as Dr Kalam, Mark Hopkins, CEO of the NSS, John Mankins from the Space Power Association and a veteran of NASA and also Dr TK Alex from the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Satellite Centre, Bangalore who is also heading the Chandrayaan Project. Participation of TK Alex in a sense gives an official colour to the project.

On the Indian side, some preliminary studies were done in 1987 on advanced space transportation system at a conceptual level to make SBSP a cheaper option, but there has been no follow up. In the recent past, the ISRO has been engaged in getting some additional technical studies on the feasibility of this option, looking at three specific configurations. While continuing with the technical feasibility studies, ISRO has also made it clear that it can proceed only if they get suitable proposals/funding from foreign governments. While the technical studies are one aspect of it, more important is the need for a clear directive from the government. A clear political mandate calling upon the technocrats and scientific community to develop the necessary technologies is one way to take this option forward. The government can thereafter be a facilitator if it seeks foreign collaboration, for instance. But the initiative has to come from the political leadership.

What are India’s options to make SBSP a real viable option given the cost factor and technology? Can the governments and the private sectors of both India and the US make serious commitments to take the first step towards R&D investment on SBSP? It might be worth the effort to place the SBSP initiative within the US-India S&T Endowment and Board. The Indo-US S&T Fund finances projects on an entire range of issues from biotechnology, advanced materials and nanotechnology science to clean energy technologies, basic space and atmospheric and earth science. Other countries making significant investment in this area include Japan that has made an investment of $21 bn for the next few years. India and the US can take the lead to establish an international consortium based on cost sharing and more importantly on international technology cooperation.

Countries like India and the US need to take up initiatives to do major technological demonstrations and milestone projects, which will have far reaching consequences across political, strategic and technological spheres. Cooperation on SBSP will convey a major strategic message.

Navigating the Near: Non-Traditional Security Threats to India, 2022 -- the book is out and am one of the authors ...

A study titled, Navigating the Near: Non-Traditional Security Threats to India, 2022, done for the Ministry of Defence, is now published as a book, for wider dissemination. The study was authored by me and four other colleagues of mine from ORF.

National Security is most often thought of in terms of political and military threats to the State-either from other States or geo-strategic alliances. Given such a framework, both the challenges as well as the responses have for long been viewed in terms of military force or coercive ability of the adversary.

Events unfolding in today's highly networked and globalised economies show the futility, and danger, of relying on such a simplistic template. Threats to national security are today multi-dimensional and call for a deeper study and understanding of a wide variety of factors to create a credible and deterrent response mechanism.

Navigating the Near seeks to bridge this paradigm shift by studying non-traditional threats facing contemporary India. The study, with its sight on the next decade, evaluates how traditional threats confronting India are likely to be influenced in large measure by a range of factors and trends, both external and internal, that have, till now, remained on the fringes of security studies.



Type rest of the post here

ISA Annual Convention in New Orleans

I recently attended the International Studies Association (ISA) Annual Convention at New Orleans, USA (February 17-20, 2010). I had put up a panel on India and the Major Powers, where I had Prof. Vincent Wang presenting paper on India-China relations titled, The Rise of India and / versus the Rise of China:
“Chindia” or Rivalry?; Dr. Katsuhisa Furukawa on Japan’s Evolving Perspectives toward India; Dr. Rudra Chaudhuri on Re-assessing India’s Emerging Foreign Policy of Strategic Engagement: An Inside Look at India’s Response to the Iraq War (2003); and I had a paper on US Strategy and Indo-US Relations.

For a panel abstract and brief synopsis of the papers, continue reading.



Asia is widely expected to be at the center of global politics in the 21st century. All the major powers today are Asian powers, either because they are on the continent, or, as in the case of the United States, they have vital interests and direct impact on the politics of this region. Whether they will cooperate with each other or compete will at least partly be determined by the kind of bilateral and multilateral interactions that each of these countries have with each other. India has been touted as the next major power that cannot be ignored by the international community. This panel on India and the Major Powers looked at India’s relations with the US, China, and Japan. Each of the papers looked at the important variables determining the state of bilateral relations as also make some prognosis about the future.

The Rise of India and / versus the Rise of China: “Chindia” or Rivalry? How and whether India and China can continue their respective rises will critically shape international relations of the young twenty-first century; they will also provide key answers to the debate on whether an “Asian century” has finally arrived, eclipsing five centuries of Western dominance.

Yet these two Asian great powers demonstrate sharp contrasts in terms of their political systems, economic models, and social structures, despite their common aspirations for greater stature on the world stage. They have also maintained a very complex relationship that is weighed down by history but also offers promising opportunities in an era of globalization.

While the implications for the rise of China have been debated in the global or systemic contexts, as well as regional or bilateral contexts, thin scholarly attention has been devoted to the rise of India, and how these two Asian great powers perceive the ascendancy of each other. Yet how they view each other and consequently negotiate their paths in substantially changed international milieus will be important for scholarly interest and policy making.

This paper examines the key factors influencing India-China relations, including history, geography, territorial disputes, mutual threat perception and alignment patterns, economic partnership and competition. It categorizes Indian elites’ perspectives on the rise of China into three paradigms: geopolitical, geoeconomic, and geocivilizational. It ends with a discussion of the possible scenarios of future India-China relations.

Japan’s Evolving Perspectives toward India
The bilateral relationship between Japan and India has been evolving rapidly over the past decade. Japanese Prime Minister Mori’s visit to India in August 2000 provided the momentum to strengthen this relationship. Similarly, the "Joint Statement on the Advancement of the Strategic and Global Partnership between Japan and India” and the "Joint Declaration on Security Cooperation between Japan and India" signed during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Japan in 2008, have sought to promote bilateral cooperation on a range of areas, including security. While this paper examines factors that have determined the new direction in Japan-India ties, it will also examine the future trends and conceivable scenarios for the future.

From the Japanese perspective, various factors -- the rising China and its expanding influence on the sea-lanes of commerce -- have affected Japan’s interests in deepening bilateral cooperation with India. This is a motivation driven both by realist strategic calculations and liberal perspective, emphasizing the importance of promoting democracy and human rights which an increasing number of Japanese expect India to share with Japan. Japan also aspires to play a more leading role in global affairs partly in response to expanding Chinese influence on global politics, and partly as a reflection of the reality in Japan where new generations who are accustomed to the Western idea to respect rule of laws, governance, human rights, and democracy, takes responsible positions in Japan. Lastly, as globalization has blurred the regional boundaries for new security threats, such as infectious diseases, climate change, WMD proliferation, Japan needs to address challenges in other regions, including South Asia which was regarded as a far region for Japan traditionally.

Re-assessing India’s Emerging Foreign Policy of Strategic Engagement: An Inside Look at India’s Response to the Iraq War (2003)
The conventional wisdom regards India’s contemporary approach to foreign policy is underpinned on the central theme of change. Strategic engagement is a mantra that has come to replace the traditional moorings of non-alignment. Scholars and practitioners alike argue that since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led Government came to power in 1998, a normative shift took place. ‘Pragmatism’ opposed to ‘age-old ideals’ came to inform policy. Yet, a detailed assessment of India’s response to the US request to contribute troops in 2003, an under-studied case, and the negotiations of the US-India Nuclear Deal in 2008, demonstrates that in fact, the political leadership were far more restrained in there interactions with US officials than commentators make out. This paper, based on extensive interviews with key bureaucrats, politicians, and negotiators both in India and the US, attempts to re-assess what now seems to be understood as the conventional wisdom in both countries. It makes the case that rather than change per se; India is undergoing a process of cultural change. Embedded are tensions that both these case studies make clear have not yet been unraveled by India’s policy/political elite across political parties.

US Strategy and Indo-US Relations
While it is difficult to predict the future of any bilateral ties, this would be particularly the case in US-India relations given the new administration in both New Delhi and Washington. It will be more useful to look at US grand strategy in Asia, and then analyze where India fits in the US scheme in Asia. Ever since the end of the Cold War, there has been an extensive debate about what kind of grand strategy the US should adopt. Although not conclusive, these debates provide a way of looking at American concerns and their impact on important bilateral relations.

US Grand Strategy has faced a couple of internal problems, problems inherent in the logic of the American approach. First, the US has swung between policies of confrontation and engagement, between a strategy based on ensuring American primacy and one based on American leadership. Second, the US has several strategic goals and they do not always complement each other. These problems are visible in all of the areas that are described below. The main components of the US grand strategy are changing conceptions of how Washington would deal with emerging great powers; manage the spread of weapons of mass destruction; prosecute the war on terrorism; and finally handle the complexities of the economic dynamism of the Pacific rim.

In addition to these grand strategic factors, there are three other factors that could potentially affect the US-India bilateral relationship. These include: the rise of China, nuclear-related issues including bilateral civil nuclear cooperation, concerns about nuclear proliferation in India’s neighbourhood and bilateral defence ties.

Chinese Military Modernisation and Stability in the Western Pacific

Here's the link to an article on Chinese military modernisation and its impact on the stbility of the Western Pacific.

The study has been done by Marcus Hellyer of the Centre for Defence and Strategic Studies, Australian Defence College. The study cites my article on Chinese military strategy to say that beijing will use anti-access strategies to deter or defeat the US in case of a Taiwan Straits crisis. The conclusions are interesting and might come back to bite them (Austrlia) in the future.



The study concludes to suggest that the growing Chinese military might "is not a cause for concern for a number of reasons. On balance, the conclusions it draws are that China is modernising its armed forces, developing peacefully, and behaving in the manner of a responsible global citizen. Further, it finds that China’s immediate neighbours in this region, with the exception of Taiwan, do not
regard China as a military threat. They have not, for example, undertaken balancing or containment activities, or significantly increased their own military spending."

I am not sure if the conclusions are valid entirely. I disagree on the point that there has been no balancing or containment activities in Asia. Have we forgotten about the "Quad" and the military exercises that followed among India, US, Austrlia and Japan? I also don't believe that India-US nuclear agreement had no strategic undercurrents, to say. Besides improving India-US relationship to a qualitatively higher level, the nuclear agreement had a clear strategic imperative.

So, let us not dilute the importance of these initiatives altogether and say all is well in Asia. In fact, while much of the Chinese neighbourhood has adopted a "wait-and-awatch" approach to China's rise, there is increasing apprehension whether the rise of China will lead to a period of Chinese hegemony. The most recent outburst has been in the Australian defence white paper that said that the "pace, scope and structure” of such modernisation can trigger concern among the Asian neighbours unless China undertakes some serious confidence building measures among these neighbours." If the region and the rest of the world are to believe that China seeks a harmonious environment for its development and that its rise is peaceful, it has to do lot more in its actions than just verbal statements. Its attitude towards sveral of its neighbours, including Russia, India and Japan, are not particularly reassuring.

INDIA/CHINA: Hopes for Early Border Settlement Recede

Here's a story by Ranjit Devraj on the recent India-China border controversies that has quoted me and it has appeared today on the Inter Press Service (Rome, Italy) website.



INDIA/CHINA:
Hopes for Early Border Settlement Recede

Analysis by Ranjit Devraj
NEW DELHI, Oct 16 (IPS) - Hopes for an early settlement of the ‘world’s oldest standing border dispute’ receded last week after Asian neighbours China and India engaged in a tit-for-tat spat that ran counter to the spirit of a formal dialogue they are engaged in.
On Wednesday India's external affairs ministry called on Beijing to cease work on development projects, including highways and hydro-electric dams, in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir.

That request was made apparently in retaliation for China’s objections to an electioneering visit made by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to the north-eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, which Beijing considers to be disputed territory and part of the Tibetan Autonomous Region.

A day earlier, a Chinese spokesman had sent shockwaves through the Indian establishment by saying at a press briefing in Beijing: ‘’China expresses its strong dissatisfaction on the visit by the Indian leader to the disputed area in disregard of China’s grave concerns.’’

"By trying to tell the Indian prime minister where he can go within his own country, all limits of diplomacy have been crossed," said Sujit Dutta, one of India’s foremost China experts. "In fact, this is the worst of a series of provocations emanating over the last six months from Beijing, to which the Indian government responded in a muted fashion."

Dutta, who is currently a professor at the Nelson Mandela Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the Jamia Milia Islamia University, listed among those provocations the issuance of ‘stapled visas’ to Indian students from Indian Kashmir and Arunachal Pradesh "as if to question their citizenship status".

China became a party to the territorial dispute over the former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir state by occupying the Aksai Chin area following the 1962 Sino-Indian border war and was ceded the Trans-Karakorum tract (or Shaksam valley) by Pakistan in the following year. Currently, India administers 43 percent of Jammu and Kashmir. Pakistan controls 37 percent and China holds 20 percent.

During the 1962 war China invaded and briefly occupied large parts of Arunachal Pradesh, which it officially refers to as ‘southern Tibet’, but withdrew its troops across the mountains for logistical reasons.

Currently, the effective border between China and India is the Line-of-Actual Control, which extends over 4,057 kilometres, with Kashmir on the west end and Arunachal Pradesh on the east. In between fall the Indian states of Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, the republic of Nepal, Sikkim state and the kingdom of Bhutan.

Dutta also counted among the provocations the objections raised by China at the Asian Development Bank to a loan being provided for a hydro-electric project in Arunachal Pradesh, which caused the bank’s operations in the territory to cease. "Such actions are not conducive to an easy settlement of the border issue," he said.

Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan, a senior fellow at the independent Organiser Research Foundation (ORF), told IPS that she believed China’s provocations were primarily calculated to put pressure on India to "soften its positions at the negotiating table" for a series of border talks that have been conducted between the two countries over three decades.

At the 13th round of talks, which took place Aug. 7-8 in Beijing it was decided to set up a ‘hotline’ between Beijing and New Delhi as part of confidence-building measures. "But there has been little real progress at these talks," observed Rajagopalan, who is currently working on a project to study the military strategies of the major Asian powers.

Ahead of the talks, on Aug. 4, the ‘People's Daily’ carried an interview with Zhang Yan, China’s ambassador in New Delhi, in which he said: "China and India should settle the existing border disputes properly, calling into play the greatest possible political wisdom.

It added: "Despite the twists and turns in China-India ties and border disputes, the two countries share the same historical responsibilities of developing economies, improving people's lives and safeguarding world peace and development, which requires them to properly handle existing problems with the utmost political wisdom."

Zhang observed that "China is now India's top trading partner, while India has become China's largest overseas project contracting market and an important investment destination. Bilateral trade volume between the two hit 51.7 billion U.S. dollars in 2008, up 35 percent over the same period a year ago. The two countries have also set a target of bilateral trade volume of 60 billion dollars by 2010."

But as the talks began, the Daily carried an article by Chinese military expert, Long Tao, who warned that though the two countries wished to develop bilateral ties, "China won't sacrifice its sovereignty in exchange for friendship. Therefore, India should not have any illusions with regard to this issue."

"This blow hot, blow cold approach is typical of Chinese diplomacy," said Rajagopalan. "But there could be real issues worrying Beijing, starting with vastly improved relations between India and the United States that led to the signing of a civilian nuclear pact between the two countries last year."

An editorial in ‘People’s Daily Online’ on Thursday accused India of attempts at "hegemony" and of following a policy of "befriend the far and attack the near".

The Daily issued the following admonishment: "India, which vows to be superpower, needs to have its eyes on relations with neighbours and abandon the recklessness and arrogance as the world is undergoing earthshaking changes."

According to the state-controlled paper, "the pursuit of being a superpower is justifiable, the dream of being a superpower held by Indians appears impetuous". It goes on to say: "For India, the ease of tension with China and Pakistan is the only way to become a superpower. At present, China is proactively engaging in negotiations with India for the early settlement of border dispute and India should give positive response."

But, said Rajagopalan, relations between the two countries were complex and there were many factors that needed to be addressed before anything like a permanent settlement of the border could be effected. ‘’One factor is the Dalai Lama who fled to India 1959 to set up a ‘government -in-exile’ in Himachal Pradesh.’’

The Dalai Lama plans to visit Arunachal Pradesh in November and this has not gone down well with Beijing, which regards the Tibetan leader as a ‘splitist’ and accuses him of being behind the protests that erupted in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa and elsewhere in March 2008.

Dutta commented that instead of accusing India of attempted hegemony, Beijing should look at its own record in Tibet, which, he said, is autonomous only in name. "The simple fact is that Tibetan refugees have continued to stream across the border into India after 1959 and they are now at least 250,000 of them resident in India. China has done nothing to encourage them to go back home."