AMERICA'S ALLIANCE FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

In the midst of the financial bailout by Congress little attention was paid to the fact that Congress ratified a nuclear pact with India, the world’s largest democracy, creating what could turn out to be an important alliance for decades to come. India, like its neighbor, China, is on track to become a superpower and in the eyes of Pentagon planners it will provide a counterweight to Chinese domination in South East Asia.
The nuclear deal will not only allow India to buy fuel from the West for its nuclear power plants but it will end India’s international isolation, which began in 1974 when it shocked the world by testing a nuclear bomb. In the decades since, while the US built close relations with Pakistan, especially after the events of 9/11, it maintained a hands-off policy towards India.
All of that will now change, not just in the field of diplomatic relations but in terms of commerce, military cooperation, the fight against terrorism and the cementing of better relations between India and other US allies in the region, especially Afghanistan and Pakistan. In regards to Pakistan, which has been a bitter enemy of India, particularly over the disputed Kashmir region, the U.S. would like to see a lessening of tensions between the two nations given the fact they have nuclear missiles pointed at each other. From a U.S. perspective, India is about to become an important ally with sufficient economic power to exert greater influence beyond its own borders. It can also help stabilize that part of the world. In addition, Washington would like to see an economic alliance embracing India, Japan and Australia as a counter balance to China’s Pan Asian forum.
America is already India’s largest trading partner but the hope would be that India could quickly increase its 1% share of the huge US market to reduce China’s 10%. The coming together of the U.S. and India could benefit American arms dealers since India is the biggest arms buyer in the developing world. In recent years, it has spent on average $15 billion annually and has the world’s second largest army, amounting to almost 4.3 million personnel with 1.5 million on active duty. Until now, U.S. arms manufacturers had to watch from the sidelines while their competitors in Russia and Israel sold India everything from submarines to aircraft, artillery and surface-to-air missiles. In January, 2007, Israel inked a $300 million deal to manufacture ship-mounted missiles for the Indian navy. That is all about to change. This latest pact will mean US arms suppliers will no longer be hampered by red tape and the requirement of special export licenses, which in the past were always denied.
America’s engineering and nuclear power corporations are thrilled by the Congressional decision because India intends to build at least another 21 nuclear power plants over the next two decades. Companies like General Electric are gearing up to pitch their services to the Indian government in the hope of getting a slice of the approximately $200 billion India will use to construct those nuclear plants.
Military cooperation with India will also be speeded up, thereby creating a new partnership with larger naval exercises larger than the one that took place in 2002 and was codenamed the “Malabar” joint exercises. They were organized at the behest of then Admiral Mike Mullen, Pacific Fleet Commander and his Indian opposite number, Arun Prakash. The two men had formed a close relationship after they met at an Indian Defense Institute in 1979 and with a few years they were telling their respective political bosses that the US and India were capable of forming a powerful military alliance with a1,000 ship fleet to protect the world’s oceans. Adm. Mullen pointed out that Australia and Japan would be happy to be partners in such an endeavor. He stressed, however, that for India to be an integral part of such a force, its weapons’ systems would have to be upgraded and linked to those of the other nations, especially the US. The developing ties between the U.S. and India will now enable that to happen since both nations are conscious that China has expanded its presence in the Indian Ocean, the Pacific Ocean and the South China Sea. Japan has warned Washington and New Delhi that China appears determined to make the South China Sea exclusive to China and that is something, which cannot be allowed to happen. However, the place that most concerns the U.S. and India is the Straits of Malacca, which is one of the world’s busiest and most vital shipping lanes. Like the Suez Canal, it narrows to 1.5 miles in parts, has 5,000 ships a day passing through it and it is the passageway for a quarter of the world’s oil shipments. It links the Indian and Pacific oceans and is vital to China’s developing infrastructure, which needs constant supplies of oil and raw materials that arrive by sea. The Straits waterway is particularly vulnerable to a terrorist attack like the one that crippled the USS Cole while it was moored offshore in the Yemeni port of Aden on October 12, 2000.
India has expressed its hope that the U.S. will replace its fleet of ageing Russian submarines and help modernize its air power and its counter terrorism forces. In the sphere of terrorism, India knows its proximity to Afghanistan and Pakistan makes its teeming masses susceptible to penetration by terrorist groups, including Al Qaeda. The U.S. has warned Indian authorities that they must not only modernize their armed forces components, which deal exclusively with terrorism, but also their internal security apparatus that has shown in the past year that it lacks the hi-tech tools needed to combat home grown terrorists and others are slipping into the country from Pakistan and Afghanistan.
In the wake of the ratification of the pact with India, Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, heralded the move as the beginning of a “regional integration strategy,” pointing out that it would not only forge closer ties between India and Pakistan through their closeness to the U.S. but also generate important relations with countries in the region like Kazakhstan. It is the ninth largest nation on earth and is rich in oil and gas. It is bordered by Russia and China, with China anxious to get its hands on Kazakhstan’s energy supplies. When Sec. Rice visited the Kazak capital on October 5, Moscow responded with a blistering attack on Washington, accusing it of trying to undermine Russian influence in Central Asia.
Russia and China have closely followed the U.S. moves to cement an alliance with India. Russia in particular is upset because it has had unfettered access to India’s arms and nuclear markets since the U.S. embargo of 1974. But, from now on Russian companies will have to compete with American, British, Japanese and French arms and nuclear engineering outfits that are more technologically advanced. In effect, Russia’s special Cold War relationship with India has been melted with this latest move by the U.S. Congress. As for China, it will have to face the fact that India, which has always favored closer links to the West and an alliance with the U.S., will speed up its march towards superpower status, enabling it to erode Chinese hegemony in that part of the globe.