Themes > Current Issues

31.05.2003

The Dubious New Alliance

Jayati Ghosh

There was a time when India was seen, internationally, as an originator and major force in the non-aligned movement, a leader of the developing world, and generally a bulwark against imperialism. Much has changed since then. Imperialism is probably stronger than ever, but the world is muddier and more confused, and the Indian government has clearly abandoned the effort to project itself as anti-imperialist in any way.

This has been evident for some time in the economic policy, with the right-wing BJP-led government accelerating the process of liberalization which is based on the hope of attracting more foreign capital into the country. But the shift in terms of strategy and foreign policy has possibly been even sharper. In the past few years, the NDA government has systematically dismantled the entire edifice of independent foreign policy based on non-alignment, which was created in the post-Independence period.

Instead of an independent international stance, the current Indian government has moved closer to both the right-wing Bush administration in the United States government and the hawkish Sharon regime in Israel, especially since September 2001. This closeness has hardly been affected by the latest evidence of the aggressive militaristic expansion of the Bush administration in the Iraq war. Indeed, the intention of the Indian Union Cabinet (albeit temporarily delayed) to send Indian troops to Iraq to participate in the US-dominated colonial control over that nation, exemplifies this trend.

Already, India is the largest market for high-tech Israeli weapons, accounting for almost one half of Israel's arms exports. Israel has become the second largest supplier of arms to India, after Russia. Israel has already provided India with sea-to-sea missile radar and other similar systems, border monitoring equipment, and night-vision devices. This new exchange of arms has the approval of the Bush administration, which has recently cleared the sale and delivery of Israel's new Phalcon reconnaissance aircraft to India.

This sale had been stayed when the border tension with Pakistan was at its height last year, and a similar sale to China had been disallowed, but now apparently the US government thinks that such Indo-Israeli military cooperation is all to the good. In addition, recently there have been reports of Indo-Israeli plans to collaborate on the development of a missile defence system, using the technology of Israel's Arrow anti-missile system, developed jointly with the US.

Such hardware exchange is supported by other forms of military cooperation as well, between India and Israel, all under the benevolent gaze of Washington. Several thousand Indian soldiers are being given specialized 'anti-insurgency training' in Israel. Within Israel, strategic thinking looks upon the Indian Ocean as a useful and desirable location for military infrastructure, using the cooperation of the Indian navy. Apparently Israel has already conducted tests on the possibility of launching nuclear warheads in the Indian Ocean off the Sri Lankan coast.

All this has been encouraged and abetted within India and in the United States, by playing up to the anti-Muslim sentiment implicit within the ruling BJP. Recently the Prime Minister's National Security Adviser (whose very designation is unabashedly copied from the US administration's nomenclature) Brajesh Mishra visited the US. It was the first time that a representative of the Indian government actually attended and addressed a gathering of the American Jewish Committee, a right-wing Zionist lobby.

Even more than his presence at that function, what he said was enough to confirm the common attitude of the current Indian government with such rightwing anti-Islamic groups. Mishra is reported to have argued that only a core of 'true democracies' such as the United States, Israel and India can effectively fight terrorism, because they are the prime targets and therefore must form an alliance. This alliance according to him, should not dither in this war by trying to define terrorism or discussing its causes.

Rather, the implicit argument would be that it is apparently enough to decide that all terrorists come from a particular religious source. This appalling conclusion was actually confirmed by Home Minister L.K. Advani in an interview with Fox News, where he said, 'Terrorism in so far we have seen it on September 11 or December 13 has a common source and that common source has described the US, Israel and India as its three main enemies.’

Brajesh Mishra at the meeting with the American Jewish Conference, apparently ridiculed the distinction sought to be made between terrorists and freedom fighters (what, then of our own Bhagat Singh, to quote one example?). He is also quoted as saying that 'another fallacy propagated is that terrorism can only be eradicated by addressing the root causes.'  In other words, political solutions are a waste of time, whether in Kashmir or in Palestine.

Surely, this unqualified aggressive stance would have made even hardened Zionist hawks sit up in surprise. Not surprisingly, the American Jewish Committee has announced that it will soon set up an office in New Delhi.

But this alliance of the junior partners should not distract us from the potentially even more lethal cosiness of the Indian military and strategic establishment with the US administration itself. This entails no less than the complete subordination of Indian interests to those of Big Brother, and associated complicity in the growing number of misdeeds that US imperialism is engaging in around the world.

India holds a very prominent place in the September 2002 National Security Strategy of the USA, which is apparently a policy document that bears the personal stamp of President Bush. The long-term strategic purpose of the US in building up its alliance with India, is really to contain, and possibly eventually destroy, the growing power of China in the Asian region and in the world.

This has been explicitly recognized by many within the Bush administration.  A recent 130-page report from the Pentagon, Indo-U.S. Military Relationship: Expectations and Perceptions, a classified version of which was first disclosed in Jane's Foreign Report, makes this quite clear.

The document argues that 'China represents the most significant threat to both countries' security in the future as an economic and military competitor.’ It quotes an unnamed US admiral as saying that both the US and India view China as a strategic threat, 'though we do not discuss this publicly’. The document goes on to observe that US relations with its 'traditional' allies in Asia-South Korea and Japan-have become 'fragile', and concludes that 'India should emerge as a vital component of US strategy.’ According to this report, China's rapid military modernization, its impressive economic growth, and even its relatively independent foreign policy, are all seen as threats by both the American and Indian establishments.

In any case, there has been a significant increase in military cooperation between the two countries, which has been inadequately discussed within the Indian media or in civil society generally. After the lull immediately following the nuclear tests at Pokhran, military ties between the two have expanded greatly in the last few years. There has been a resumption in sales of US defence hardware and also of joint military exercises.

These exercises have included Indian paratroopers working with their US counterparts in Alaska, joint military airlift operations in India that included a US Air Force C-130 cargo aircraft, and American and Indian military personnel taking part in the Shanti Path 03 peace-keeping exercises in India. The US and Indian militaries are also planning to conduct their first joint exercise with fighter aircraft.

Indian and US navies have been jointly conducting a number of exercises that included anti-submarine training, and combating piracy. For more than a year now, they have been jointly patrolling the heavily traversed Straits of Malacca, a region where China's navy is also vying for control. Encouraged by the US, the Indian navy has launched a thirty-year-programme to construct a fleet capable of projecting power into the South China Sea. All this military intimacy was expressed in the recent Malabar IV exercises, which coordinated the efforts of Indian and US battle groups, including cruisers, destroyers, frigates, submarines, aircraft, and several thousand personnel.

The pathetically anxious attempt of the government to send Indian troops to help shore up the colonizing occupation by the American and British forces in Iraq, would only be an extension of this general trend. But so much of this occurs without the knowledge of the Indian public, that we may one day wake up to find that the Indian government has even allowed US military bases in the country. And we will then have our government trying to persuade us that it is in our own interests.

Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. The people of India have little to gain-and much to lose-from an increase in levels of military tension with China, and from a potentially debilitating competitive militarization. Not only will there be massive diversion of badly needed public resources, but the increased instability of the region would also lead, ironically, to less security and less democracy for ordinary people.

That is why our policy makers are already thinking ahead to find ways of justifying this entire new strategy. When there is such a shift in military strategy, there has to be some attempt to find intellectual justification for it. And what better instrument for such rationalization, than through a 'think tank' specially set up for the purpose? The right wing in the United States has actually made a fine art of the exploitation of these 'think tanks' for pushing through ideas and policies that would have been completely rejected in the more liberal conditions that prevailed earlier.

According to Disinfopedia, the 'encyclopedia of propaganda’, 'a think tank is an organization that claims to serve as a center for research and analysis of important public issues. In reality, many think tanks are little more than public relations fronts, usually headquartered in state or national seats of government and generating self-serving scholarship that serves the advocacy goals of their industry sponsors.'  In the United States, there are twice as many conservative think tanks as liberal ones, and the conservative ones tend to have much  more money.

The one that is relevant for our purposes is the recently created US-India Institute for Strategic Policy, based in Washington. It is the outcome of a series of quiet meetings between the US and Indian governments, which have also pushed all the military cooperation. The Institute is closely aligned with the ultra-conservative Centre for Security Policy, which has strong ties with the Republican Party. Many of its members have served or are serving in senior posts in the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George Bush Jr.

The Centre has not been shy about touting its close links with the US government, and the new Insititute is not likely to be either. But the potentially greater significance of this Insitute is not in the involvment of US hawks, but in the drawing in of Indian 'experts' to justify this new Indian association with US militarism. Tragically, we now have to be prepared for Indian 'strategic analyst' apologists to be even more closely involved in the intellectual exercise of justifying the Indian government's open and enthusiastic subordination to the long-terms goals of US imperialism.