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This article should be an eye opener for Chinese posters, especially the one who claims to be an Australian (I forget the moniker) that strategy is not a concern with Australia and it is all about Trade and Money!!!* OPINION INDIA
* MARCH 10, 2011
Leading in the Indian Ocean
Australia and the U.S. need to organize allies to maintain freedom of navigation as regional rivalries heat up.
By THOMAS G. MAHNKEN AND ANDREW SHEARER
Suddenly the Indian Ocean is hot for the first time since a growing Soviet naval presence spooked Washington, Canberra and other states in the region back in the 1970s. Now the Australian government predicts that over the next two decades the Indian Ocean will become as central to the country's maritime strategy and defense plans as the Pacific, according to its 2009 Defense White Paper.
The United States, traditionally an Atlantic and Pacific power, seems to be rediscovering the Indian Ocean too. Growing threats from terrorism and piracy have required an increased U.S. military presence. Notably, the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review argued that the United States has an interest in the stability of the region as a whole and called for an assessment that includes U.S. national interests, objectives and posture implications.
The initial impetus was the war on terror. Bases from Bahrain in the Gulf to Diego Garcia deep in the Indian Ocean provide critical support for U.S. operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Fragile littoral states including Somalia, Yemen and Pakistan are at the forefront of international concern about extremism.
Iran's drive to acquire a nuclear weapons capability could yet plunge the Middle East into a major conflict. And U.S. naval forces operating in the Indian Ocean have played a vital leadership role in disaster relief, including after the tragic 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, and in protecting commercial shipping from pirates.
Now U.S. and Australian interest in the Indian Ocean is taking on a new dimension. As Robert Kaplan recently highlighted in his book "Monsoon," economic ties are burgeoning across and around the Indian Ocean region. China and India, Asia's rising economic giants, both depend on its sea lanes for vital energy supplies and to carry their goods to market; and today China is India's biggest trade partner. This trade is also driving Australia's mining boom, shifting the country's economic center of gravity west and north.
So far this has been a good news story, with commerce lifting tens of millions of people in Asia out of poverty and providing a much-needed fillip to an ailing global economy. It may yet turn out well. But there are worrying signs.
China and India remain at loggerheads over their disputed land border and other irritants, such as India's support for Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama. In return, Beijing's support for a nuclear-armed Pakistan that sponsors terrorism against India deeply galls New Delhi.
China's current military focus may be on what its strategists label the "near sea"—the waters of the Western Pacific, including the disputed South and East China Seas—where its increasingly muscular naval and diplomatic presence have been alarming Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, Vietnam and other Southeast Asian littoral states. There are already signs, however, that the Asian maritime competition triggered by China's rapid military modernization is spilling over into the Indian Ocean.
China's deployment of a task force to conduct anti-piracy operations off the Horn of Africa may have been intended at least in part to bolster China's lackluster credentials as a responsible international stakeholder. But it pricked concerns in New Delhi, which was already sensitive to reports China is seeking to develop ports in Burma, Sri Lanka and Pakistan—the so-called "string of pearls." In time, China's development of a blue-water navy could jeopardize India's longstanding preeminence within its eponymous ocean.
Australia and the U.S., both maritime democracies with a huge stake in Asia's stability and an open international trading system, cannot regard these events with equanimity. China's restrictive interpretation of the Law of the Sea and development of weapons intended to deny much of the Western Pacific to U.S. and allied forces pose a major threat to freedom of navigation in waters that are vital to both nations.
China's growing military reach and assertiveness are fuelling neighbors' uncertainty about its strategic intentions. As a result, a web of informal bilateral security arrangements is springing up between the U.S., Australia, India and Japan. When a more formal quadrilateral grouping was proposed in 2007, China was quick to cry "containment."
But Beijing's challenge to freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific means these countries should be thinking about bringing together their proliferating bilateral maritime security links in a collective arrangement, one that could pool resources to mount rapid responses to natural disasters and other contingencies and work together to keep Asia's vital sea lanes open. Given its crucial geography and history as the keystone of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Indonesia could be a key player in such a grouping.
The U.S. and Australia should rally regional countries in defense of keeping the world's crucial sea lanes open, as U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did at last year's meeting of the Asean Regional Forum. A vital first step would be to link these partners, and any others who would like to participate, in a seamless intelligence and surveillance network to monitor maritime security developments.
Australia and America should also encourage Asian partners to develop compatible capabilities in key areas such as undersea warfare and exercise those capabilities collectively. Australia should ensure that its new submarines are interoperable with counterparts from the U.S. and Japan and can operate from forward bases such as Guam. And it would be foolish to take off the table the option of acquiring U.S.-built nuclear-powered submarines if they offer the best fit with Australia's future needs.
Australia can support the United States in the vital task of ensuring that Sino-Indian rivalry does not escalate over time into something worse. Providing greater access for major U.S. naval and air assets—perhaps on Australia's Indian Ocean coast—would be a good place to start.
Mr. Mahnken is the Jerome Levy chair of economic geography and national security at the U.S. Naval War College. Mr. Shearer is director of studies at Australia's Lowy Institute for International Policy.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100...2669099280.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopBucket
What is money when there is no country?
This article makes a strong statement that China is overreaching herself with her aggressive intent, attempting to project her hegemonic plans and that it should be contained by the US and the peripheral countries.
There is good reason for the peripheral countries to be wary of China, notwithstanding her new trick of marrying Vietnamese girls so as to soften the Vietnamese distrust of China.
It is time to act and close the difference and provide a bulwark against the expansionism of China and tell her to remain in her rightful place and not replicate Hitler's policy of Lebensraum!
