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Although destined to remain in fine print, an Indian "discovery" as to what prompted the United States last week to offer it futuristic, radar-evading fighters has laid bare the countries' "defining partnership" for the 21st century.
Put simply, a miniscule group of avant-garde truth diggers among India's well-heeled and smug community of defense analysts came up with a startling find last week involving the deal. It seems the US was making virtue out of dire necessity.
Robert Scher, US deputy assistant secretary of defense for South and Southeast Asia, announced on November 3 that while India had not requested information on its fifth-generation fighter, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), the US was making a unilateral invitation for sales as an "example of the high regard that we hold for India's military modernization".
In good measure, the Pentagon drafted an extraordinary nine-page report to the US Congress and swiftly publicized it, which offered, "Should India indicate interest in the JSF, the United States would be prepared to provide information on the JSF and its requirements "¦ to support India's future planning."
The initial speculation was that the US was making a last-minute effort to gatecrash India's mega tender for the purchase of 126 multi-role combat aircraft, from which Delhi has "disqualified" the original American bids of F-16 aircraft. However, the analysts' "discovery" is that the US has desperately sought Indian participation in the JSF's development as the program faces unaffordable rising costs, with a price tag estimated at $150 million per aircraft. In sum, the JSF has become a white elephant and, hopefully, cross breeding it with the Indian black elephant might just about make its uncertain progeny probably airworthy as a beast of burden.
The tragi-comic episode exposes an aspect of the US-India "partnership" hardly glimpsed by Indian pundits, namely, the desperate need for the US to conjure up an ideology-driven relationship that enables it in real terms to boost its exports to the Indian markets - the latter being one of the few world markets today enjoying growth prospects of around 7-8% in its gross domestic product (GDP).
Getting the head examined
Indian think takers are talking through their hat by structuring new security architectures for India with Australia or Japan, riveted around these countries' traditional Cold-War alliance with the US in a strategy to "contain" China. The hard reality is that the US is "flirting with national solvency", as a noted American scholar Robert Kelly recently put it, "which will dramatically impact all its alliances" in Asia. Kelly wrote:
In sum, except in the highly unlikely eventuality of the "Wall" protestors in America accepting a still lower standard of living with deep cuts in social welfare programs, the US cannot fix its finances without applying a scalpel to its defense spending. Former US defense secretary Robert Gates summed it up brilliantly when he said, "any future defense secretary who recommends sending a big US army into Asia or Africa again should have his head examined".
Yet, the relative decline of the US is an untold story, locked up in the attic by Indian think-tankers.
Of course, India's plight is not as grave as that of South Korea or Australia, which are swimming in shark-infested waters in a geopolitical context. Both are being called upon to realize the probability of US military (and political) power receding from Asia in the budgetary environment. Kelly concluded: "America's political and financial dysfunction will soon force a painful re-prioritization of US foreign policy. Commitments like Germany, Iraq, Afghanistan, South Korea and others will be scrutinized, and no amount of Korean-American friendship will undo a US$ 10 trillion debt.
Measure of balance
How does it add up for the alchemy of the US-India partnership? The former US ambassador to India and a strategic guru on the circuit, Frank Wisner, handed down a checklist at a speech on his current tour of India. The list combines with great sophistication solid business with airy geopolitics. Wisner identified Pakistan, China and the US-India bilateral economic approach as the three key "difficulties" that will shape the US-India partnership ahead.
He made the astounding remark that there is no issue more important to the US-India relationship than the "question of Pakistan" - that is, jointly devising a "winning strategy" that makes Pakistan an obliging partner. He proposed a division of labor: the US would have to focus on building up ties with the Pakistani military in the fight against terrorism, while India should press Pakistan to have transparency with regard to cross-border terrorism and at the same time persisting with the normalization dialogue, including on Kashmir.
However, with regard to China, Wisner was plain-speaking, telling the Indian audience precisely what it would like to hear: "The US and China want good relations with China, but the problem is not as much with China's economic expansion as it is with China's assertions that we have to be careful about."
Wisner cautioned India about developments on the Sino-Indian border and in the South China Sea. He added, "We [US and India] have to reach out to nations like Japan, [South] Korea, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia, among others, to build relations and give a measure of balance."
Wisner all but echoed what the US deputy secretary of state William Burns said in a major policy speech in Washington last Friday, where he described the Asia-Pacific as the "strategic pivot" of the US foreign policy and said the US and Indian strategies "reinforce each other" in that region.
Think twice
The US is vociferously exhorting India to switch its "Look East" policy to an assertive mode of "Act East". Burns, in fact, expressed satisfaction that this transformation was already happening. Clearly, Washington has taken note of the Indian elephant bestirring itself to scale up economic, energy and strategic ties with the Asia-Pacific region (which Delhi-based pundits now unequivocally assume to be India's "extended neighborhood") - with Japan and Vietnam, in particular.
But bluster is an integral part of the US public diplomacy, and separating the chaff from the grain isn't always easy. Two relevant aspects must be noted. One, it serves Washington's purpose to create some angst in the Chinese mind about an emergent US-Indian strategic axis in the Asia-Pacific, which may have useful fall-outs for the broader canvas of Sino-American interdependency, as Washington keeps switching between the two tracks of "containment" and "engagement" depending on current exigencies.
On the other hand, Delhi also may hope to gain something if Beijing's angst translates as conciliatory gestures toward India on a host of other geopolitical templates, especially the dynamics of the Sino-Pakistan relationship or the peace and tranquility along the disputed Sino-Indian border. Over and above, Delhi most certainly seeks a helpful stance by China vis-a-vis India's search for a place at the "high table" - the United Nations Security Council and Nuclear Suppliers Group, in particular.
The big question is whether China is taking note of an "assertive" India in the Asia-Pacific. If a Xinhua commentary on Tuesday is any indication, it does. The commentary did a neat cataloguing of Delhi's moves in the past six to eight weeks alone suggestive of an "Act East" policy. It appreciated the authenticity of India's desire to seek a "secure" external environment for its "peaceful development as an emerging power." However, Beijing seems to be still reading the tea leaves.
Xinhua's catalogue is impressive:
Nonetheless, interestingly, Xinhua concluded on a mixed note partly conciliatory, partly challenging:
But the mandarins in Delhi left tantalizingly open as to what India proposes to do with regard to two other Vietnamese requests - submarine training and transferring the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile. Vietnam uses Russian-made kilo class submarines and BrahMos is an India-Russia joint venture - which actually makes it a double hedging on futures and options.
Asia Times Online :: Hindu art of double hedging against China
Put simply, a miniscule group of avant-garde truth diggers among India's well-heeled and smug community of defense analysts came up with a startling find last week involving the deal. It seems the US was making virtue out of dire necessity.
Robert Scher, US deputy assistant secretary of defense for South and Southeast Asia, announced on November 3 that while India had not requested information on its fifth-generation fighter, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), the US was making a unilateral invitation for sales as an "example of the high regard that we hold for India's military modernization".
In good measure, the Pentagon drafted an extraordinary nine-page report to the US Congress and swiftly publicized it, which offered, "Should India indicate interest in the JSF, the United States would be prepared to provide information on the JSF and its requirements "¦ to support India's future planning."
The initial speculation was that the US was making a last-minute effort to gatecrash India's mega tender for the purchase of 126 multi-role combat aircraft, from which Delhi has "disqualified" the original American bids of F-16 aircraft. However, the analysts' "discovery" is that the US has desperately sought Indian participation in the JSF's development as the program faces unaffordable rising costs, with a price tag estimated at $150 million per aircraft. In sum, the JSF has become a white elephant and, hopefully, cross breeding it with the Indian black elephant might just about make its uncertain progeny probably airworthy as a beast of burden.
The tragi-comic episode exposes an aspect of the US-India "partnership" hardly glimpsed by Indian pundits, namely, the desperate need for the US to conjure up an ideology-driven relationship that enables it in real terms to boost its exports to the Indian markets - the latter being one of the few world markets today enjoying growth prospects of around 7-8% in its gross domestic product (GDP).
Getting the head examined
Indian think takers are talking through their hat by structuring new security architectures for India with Australia or Japan, riveted around these countries' traditional Cold-War alliance with the US in a strategy to "contain" China. The hard reality is that the US is "flirting with national solvency", as a noted American scholar Robert Kelly recently put it, "which will dramatically impact all its alliances" in Asia. Kelly wrote:
In sum, except in the highly unlikely eventuality of the "Wall" protestors in America accepting a still lower standard of living with deep cuts in social welfare programs, the US cannot fix its finances without applying a scalpel to its defense spending. Former US defense secretary Robert Gates summed it up brilliantly when he said, "any future defense secretary who recommends sending a big US army into Asia or Africa again should have his head examined".
Yet, the relative decline of the US is an untold story, locked up in the attic by Indian think-tankers.
Of course, India's plight is not as grave as that of South Korea or Australia, which are swimming in shark-infested waters in a geopolitical context. Both are being called upon to realize the probability of US military (and political) power receding from Asia in the budgetary environment. Kelly concluded: "America's political and financial dysfunction will soon force a painful re-prioritization of US foreign policy. Commitments like Germany, Iraq, Afghanistan, South Korea and others will be scrutinized, and no amount of Korean-American friendship will undo a US$ 10 trillion debt.
Measure of balance
How does it add up for the alchemy of the US-India partnership? The former US ambassador to India and a strategic guru on the circuit, Frank Wisner, handed down a checklist at a speech on his current tour of India. The list combines with great sophistication solid business with airy geopolitics. Wisner identified Pakistan, China and the US-India bilateral economic approach as the three key "difficulties" that will shape the US-India partnership ahead.
He made the astounding remark that there is no issue more important to the US-India relationship than the "question of Pakistan" - that is, jointly devising a "winning strategy" that makes Pakistan an obliging partner. He proposed a division of labor: the US would have to focus on building up ties with the Pakistani military in the fight against terrorism, while India should press Pakistan to have transparency with regard to cross-border terrorism and at the same time persisting with the normalization dialogue, including on Kashmir.
However, with regard to China, Wisner was plain-speaking, telling the Indian audience precisely what it would like to hear: "The US and China want good relations with China, but the problem is not as much with China's economic expansion as it is with China's assertions that we have to be careful about."
Wisner cautioned India about developments on the Sino-Indian border and in the South China Sea. He added, "We [US and India] have to reach out to nations like Japan, [South] Korea, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia, among others, to build relations and give a measure of balance."
Wisner all but echoed what the US deputy secretary of state William Burns said in a major policy speech in Washington last Friday, where he described the Asia-Pacific as the "strategic pivot" of the US foreign policy and said the US and Indian strategies "reinforce each other" in that region.
Think twice
The US is vociferously exhorting India to switch its "Look East" policy to an assertive mode of "Act East". Burns, in fact, expressed satisfaction that this transformation was already happening. Clearly, Washington has taken note of the Indian elephant bestirring itself to scale up economic, energy and strategic ties with the Asia-Pacific region (which Delhi-based pundits now unequivocally assume to be India's "extended neighborhood") - with Japan and Vietnam, in particular.
But bluster is an integral part of the US public diplomacy, and separating the chaff from the grain isn't always easy. Two relevant aspects must be noted. One, it serves Washington's purpose to create some angst in the Chinese mind about an emergent US-Indian strategic axis in the Asia-Pacific, which may have useful fall-outs for the broader canvas of Sino-American interdependency, as Washington keeps switching between the two tracks of "containment" and "engagement" depending on current exigencies.
On the other hand, Delhi also may hope to gain something if Beijing's angst translates as conciliatory gestures toward India on a host of other geopolitical templates, especially the dynamics of the Sino-Pakistan relationship or the peace and tranquility along the disputed Sino-Indian border. Over and above, Delhi most certainly seeks a helpful stance by China vis-a-vis India's search for a place at the "high table" - the United Nations Security Council and Nuclear Suppliers Group, in particular.
The big question is whether China is taking note of an "assertive" India in the Asia-Pacific. If a Xinhua commentary on Tuesday is any indication, it does. The commentary did a neat cataloguing of Delhi's moves in the past six to eight weeks alone suggestive of an "Act East" policy. It appreciated the authenticity of India's desire to seek a "secure" external environment for its "peaceful development as an emerging power." However, Beijing seems to be still reading the tea leaves.
Xinhua's catalogue is impressive:
- An agreement between India and Vietnam to jointly explore oil resources in the South China Sea "despite China's indisposition and amid strains in their ties with China";
- India signing a strategic agreement with Afghanistan;
- Signing defense agreements with "China's neighboring" Vietnam and Myanmar;
- Delhi's "interest" in selling BrahMos supersonic cruise missiles to Vietnam;
- Assisting Hanoi in "bolstering its naval and air force capabilities";
- India accessing Vietnam's Nha Trang Port, "which is situated close to the strategic Cam Ranh Bay";
- "More significantly, scared by China's 'muscle-flexing' ", India's plans to recruit and deploy another 10,000 soldiers "along the disputed borders with China and the Chinese southwestern Tibet";
- The Indian army's biggest-ever $13 billion modernization program; >
- India's deployment of BrahMos supersonic cruise missiles on the border with Tibet in "India's first tactical missile deployment targeting China ... awfully disrupting the volatile tranquility along the China-India border";
- India exploring "potentials to enter a glowing partnership" with Japan, based on shared concerns and wariness about a rising China
Nonetheless, interestingly, Xinhua concluded on a mixed note partly conciliatory, partly challenging:
Delhi lost no time reacting positively to Xinhua's advice. Indian government sources "leaked" to the media that contrary to general impressions, India is yet to respond to two sensitive demarches from Vietnam in defense cooperation - namely, to transfer to Vietnam medium-sized warships and to upgrade the strategic port of Nha Trang.
But the mandarins in Delhi left tantalizingly open as to what India proposes to do with regard to two other Vietnamese requests - submarine training and transferring the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile. Vietnam uses Russian-made kilo class submarines and BrahMos is an India-Russia joint venture - which actually makes it a double hedging on futures and options.
Asia Times Online :: Hindu art of double hedging against China
