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| Volume 57, Number 10 |
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John Bellamy Foster |
| March 2006 |
Why the United States Promotes India’s Great-Power
Ambitions |
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The Research Unit for Political Economy, based in Mumbai, India, publishes the journal, Aspects of India’s Economy, and a range of research publications in English and Hindi. This essay is adapted from Aspects of India’s Economy, no. 41 (December 2005). |
2 OF 2 | << PREVIOUS | 1 | 2 | Missile ‘Defense’: An OffensiveAlliance with Grave Consequences The “New Framework” agreement says that the two countries’ militaries shall “expand collaboration relating to missile defense.” This harbors profound peril for the Indian people. In May 2001, George Bush announced a “new strategic framework” for the United States, including that the United States would proceed with its plans for “national missile defense” (NMD), that is, a system aimed at defending the United States from incoming missiles by knocking them out before they descend toward their targets. Bush announced his intention to “move beyond the constraints” of the thirty-year-old Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. The logic of the ABM Treaty was that if a nuclear-armed country were to achieve an effective defense against other countries’ nuclear weapons, it might feel freer to use its own nuclear weapons on others, without fear of retaliation. Other powers would multiply their missiles to ensure that the sheer number of missiles pierced the shield; and thus a dangerous new arms race would begin. Bush’s declaration met with widespread criticism. The official China Daily said Bush’s plans appeared aimed at establishing “absolute military supremacy” in the world. Pursuit of that aim would “break the present fragile global security equilibrium” and “trigger a new arms race in the international arena and destroy what has been achieved so far with international disarmament efforts.” A Russian foreign ministry spokesman said “The US has been unable to give us arguments to convince us that they see clearly how to solve the problems of international security without damaging disarmament agreements which have stood for 30 years.” Germany remained unconvinced and raised “very, very serious questions” over the project. Public opinion around the world was even more hostile. The Vajpayee government was one of the few countries in the world openly to welcome Bush’s announcement, justifying it strangely as a step toward nuclear disarmament. Talks began with the United States on how India could join the system. On January 1, 2004, Bush announced the “Next Steps in Strategic Partnership” (NSSP) with India, including cooperation in missile defense; the Indian official response was ecstatic: the NSSP was “unique...completely out of the ordinary.” However, the Vajpayee government fell five months later, and the new Congress Party-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government was guarded at first in its statements regarding missile defense. After all, the “Common Minimum Programme” of the UPA included a few general statements about maintaining an independent foreign policy. The Indo-U.S. Defense Policy Group, the forum through which U.S.-India strategic ties are being implemented, nevertheless met at the end of May, shortly after the new regime assumed office. The U.S. delegation made a presentation regarding missile defense, but the response of the Indian side was not made public. Over the next year, several more exchanges took place on this issue, including a visit by an Indian team to the missile defense exercises in California during April 2005. In an address to a meeting of the Delhi Policy Group in August 2004, Satish Chandra, deputy to India’s national security adviser, laid bare the real import of missile defense. Missile defense, he said, was part of the “paradigm shift [in the United States] whereby it could consider the use of nuclear weapons in a pre-emptive mode.” In his address Chandra lamented the fact that instead of striving for a nuclear weapon free world, the United States had been “advocating new rationales for the retention of nuclear weapons and developing new types of nuclear weapons.” “The annulment of the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty and the US moves to develop ballistic missile defenses are clear indicators that the strategic thinking in the US is undergoing a paradigm shift whereby it could consider resorting to the use of nuclear weapons in a pre-emptive mode. Thus, while the nuclear weapon build-up of the 1970s and 1980s was justified mainly on grounds of deterrence, the Nuclear Use Theorists (NUTS) envisage the actual utilisation of these weapons in situations short of nuclear war...” (emphasis in original). Chandra’s dissent was irrelevant; the decision had already been taken. In October 2004, U.S. ambassador Mulford told Force magazine that the United States and India had already gone beyond merely talking about missile defense: “There has already been a discussion about technology and systems....The only problem that I see is that it is a technically complicated subject and there are different generations of systems available. So the issue is to figure out which system is needed where. This is a complicated process.” The systems being set up for Japan’s missile defense give us an idea of what may be planned for India: ground-based interceptor missiles deployed in Japan itself, and sea-based interceptor missiles deployed on U.S. Aegis destroyers around Japan. The third element is still being developed, namely, laser beams mounted on the nose of converted Boeing 747 jets, which would fly round-the-clock around China’s coast, and would fire at any missile launched by China or North Korea. (The airborne laser program, however, has huge technological development problems.) Even assuming the missile defense system works, it is obvious that Japan is much smaller than India; the latter would be more difficult and expensive to defend. It is possible that in India’s case the system is not intended to defend the whole country, but only select locations—military sites and metropolises. At any rate, China will most probably respond by building more missiles in order to overwhelm the system, as it is doing with Taiwan already; and India would probably respond by building more Agni-3 missiles and arming them with nuclear weapons, in order to retain the ability to retaliate against China. The Indian public needs to be made aware of the insanity of such a path, its huge costs, the grave peril it invites, and whose interests it serves. India as the linchpin of a proposed ‘Asian NATO’ Meanwhile, the Indian public is unaware that their country may be made the linchpin of a broader U.S.-sponsored military alliance for Asia: during 2003, if not since then, American and Indian officials discussed a possible ‘Asian NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation)’ although the content of these discussions and of India’s significance for them has not been made public. An alliance is meaningless unless it is against something. NATO was originally fashioned as an alliance against the Soviet Union; the principal target of an Asian version would be China. Toward that end the Indian armed forces, particularly its navy, have been active. According to the new Maritime Doctrine, the Indian Navy is to dominate the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) “choke points, important islands, and vital trade routes.” By late 2004, it was to have started policing the IOR together with the Singaporean, Thai, and Philippine navies. Accordingly, the Indian Navy has embarked on a “Look East” program, sending goodwill missions to Southeast Asia (during which Indian vessels took part in naval maneuvers with Japan and Vietnam); making port calls in Vietnam, the Philippines, South Korea, and Japan; and conducting joint patrols with Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia. The purpose is to build links with countries near China, to familiarize the navy with the South China Sea as a potential theater of operations, and to develop the navy’s ability to operate far from home. The Indian government’s stepped-up plans for the Indian Navy and its massive expansion of the Andaman and Nicobar bases should be seen in this light. According to one report, The plan to set up the Far Eastern Naval Command (FENC) was set in concrete in 1995 following a closed-door meeting in Washington between then Indian prime minister, P. V. Narasimha Rao, and [then] US president, Bill Clinton.... The US is expected to partly fund FENC because it is considered part of a US-led security arrangement for Asia in which India plays a key role. US funding was cleared in 2000 when Clinton visited India. India has built a particularly close relationship with Vietnam. Once a heroic fighter against U.S. imperialism, Vietnam has now been made, tragically, an indirect U.S. ally: India is increasing military sales to Vietnam, providing spares for overhauling its...aircraft...sending its officers to Vietnam for training in counter-insurgency and jungle warfare operations, while India’s coast guard and Vietnam’s sea police would cooperate to fight piracy. India is also providing help to build up the Vietnamese Navy....India has also agreed “in principle” to sell Vietnam the...Prithvi missile, train Vietnamese scientists in Indian nuclear establishments, and help Vietnam establish its own arms industry for small arms....The Indian Navy has also conducted combined exercises with the Vietnamese Navy. It is reported that, in exchange for transfer of missile technology, India may ask for an option to use Vietnam’s Cam Ranh Bay, the finest natural deep-water harbor in Asia. India’s ties with the close U.S. ally Japan are growing. Japan’s navy, known as the Maritime Self-Defense Force, is now operating in the Indian Ocean region in support of the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan. The special significance of this operation (which was extended in April 2005 by a special act of legislation) is that it marks an important precedent: Japan’s first participation in an overseas military operation since 1945. The term “Self-Defense Force” for the Japanese military is clearly outdated. Japanese naval ships have used Indian port facilities during this period. In May 2004 Japan made a public offer to establish a “global partnership” with India to balance China’s rising power. In April 2005 the Indian and Japanese prime ministers met, reaffirmed their “global partnership,” and pledged to work as partners “against proliferation” of weapons of mass destruction. They announced that the Indian Coast Guard and the Japanese Coast Guard would establish a framework for effective cooperation, as would the two countries’ navies. In 2000, then Indian defense minister George Fernandes declared that Vietnam and Japan were emerging as India’s strategic partners for countering piracy from the Indian Ocean to the South China Sea. “By doing so,” said the U.S. War College study, “they also serve notice on China that they will contest its efforts to dominate that sea.” Further, “India might find possibilities for enhanced defence cooperation with Thailand, Australia, Singapore, and the United States....” Indonesia may join the list. In a speech to the Confederation of Indian Industry–World Economic Forum conference in New Delhi, India’s foreign secretary Shyam Saran made a fairly explicit statement of the plans for an “Asian NATO.” “In the context of Asia, there is no doubt that a major realignment of forces is taking place,” he said. China was emerging as a “global economic power” with significant military capabilities. The United States and India could “contribute to creating a greater balance in Asia.” In managing the security situation of the region, he said, there is a need for bringing “more and more countries within the discipline of a security paradigm for this region.” The U.S. War College study spells out the benefits of an “Asian NATO”: What’s in it for the United States? For one, the proposed security system is principally an in-region solution for dealing with two of the biggest international security threats—an over-ambitious China and the spread of Talibanised Islam. Second, this scheme being entirely indigenous, there is none of the odium that attends on US troops deployed locally as in South Korea and Japan....And, finally, it in no way precludes the presence in the extended region of the US armed forces or limits US military initiatives. However—and this is crucial—the entire scheme will fall apart if India does not nurse great power ambitions. Only if India sees itself as a great power, a “counterpoise to China in the region,” will it want to promote a broad anti-China alliance. And so the United States must push India to pursue its “manifest destiny”: But crucial to making this system work is India’s being convinced of its ‘manifest destiny’ and for it to act forcefully. It will require in the main that New Delhi think geostrategically and give up its diffidence when it comes to advancing the country’s vital national interests and its almost knee-jerk bias to appease friends and foes alike. The corrective lies in the Indian government expressly defining its strategic interests and focus and, at a minimum, proceeding expeditiously towards obtaining a nuclear force with a proven and tested thermonuclear and an ICBM reach. Nothing less will persuade the putative Asian allies that India can be an effective counterpoise to China in the region, or compel respect for India in Washington. India’s great-power ambitions, then, are crucial to the success of U.S. plans for Asia. Indeed, the further Indian foreign policy is subordinated to U.S. strategic designs, the better India’s chances of winning U.S. backing at last for its single-minded drive to become a permanent member of the UN Security Council. While admitting that the United States had not supported India’s claim to UNSC membership, Manmohan Singh told Parliament that “when the time comes, I have reason to believe that we will not be ignored.” In Conclusion The prospects for a U.S.-India alliance seem attractive to the Indian rulers. First, because the United States evidently enjoys military superiority without precedent in world history, and therefore it seems in a good position to guarantee India a new global status. Secondly, perhaps more than ever before, the Indian upper classes, and even considerable sections of the urban middle class, by now identify with the United States’ world hegemony: Many have relatives in the United States; growing numbers of them work for U.S. firms or firms serving the United States (e.g., in the IT sector); and the explosion of foreign and domestic media during the last fifteen years has heightened this sense of identification. Official U.S. backing to India’s “great power” project will no doubt further consolidate support among these sections for a U.S.-India strategic alliance. Though a small minority, these sections play an important role in shaping “public opinion,” that is, in influencing broader sections. However, there are several reasons why all will not go smoothly for the U.S.-India alliance now unfolding. First, U.S. military superiority is overrated. It is by no means unchallenged. Even now it has been unable to suppress the resistance forces of just one country, Iraq. And it is overstretched globally and showing signs of strain. More significantly, the economic base of U.S. hegemony worldwide is fragile. Given this, its guarantees of “making India a global power” are even more fragile. Secondly, the internal political difficulties of the Indian ruling classes are unlikely to be solved by India being deemed a “global power.” This is for the simple reason that while the upper sections of the class hierarchy have prospered from the changes that have taken place in the last two decades, the large majority have seen their conditions worsen. It is the latter sections, at the bottom of the pile, that are behind the turbulence in the domestic political scene. These sections live in such grinding misery that they are by and large not susceptible to propaganda about India’s “global status.” The current trajectory of the Indian economy is not likely to change that fact. The growth of what is called “national income,” when accompanied by even faster growth of inequality, is of dubious benefit to the working sections. Had employment genuinely grown, the working sections would have benefited, but there has been negligible employment growth and thus (given the growing numbers seeking work) there has been rapid growth of unemployment. Further, major changes are in the offing that, in the process of creating opportunities for the foreign and domestic corporate sector, will wreak havoc with India’s small-peasant agriculture. With these changes, unemployment in the country is likely to become even more acute, and the political scene even more turbulent. Thirdly, the United States today is set on a course of extraordinary military adventurism to shore up its declining imperialist power. We do not have space here to discuss this topic in the detail it deserves. Suffice it to mention a few examples. The invasion and occupation of Iraq, as it is now well known, is part of a broader U.S. scheme to grab physical control of as much as possible of the world’s oil. The well-known American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh writes that the U.S. government has been conducting secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran since summer 2004 in order to prepare for bombing strikes and commando raids “to destroy as much of the [Iranian] military infrastructure as possible” (“The Coming Wars,” New Yorker, January 24, 2005). Perhaps the main obstacle to the execution of this plan has been the continuing resistance in Iraq tying down the U.S. military. Military plans to check China are longer-term, but no less adventurist. The Pentagon’s thinkers envision a new Cold War, writes Robert Kaplan approvingly in a piece titled “How We Would Fight China” (Atlantic, June 2005). Russia too is to be checked. The United States (with European help) has recently sponsored “revolutions” in Georgia and the Ukraine in order to construct a network of U.S. allies ringing Russia; in fact, the United States is pushing a specific proposal for a “security organization” in the region of the oil-rich Caspian Sea excluding Russia and China. The National Security Strategy of the United States of America (September 2002) declared that the United States would not tolerate the emergence of a competitor, not only for global hegemony, but even for regional hegemony in any part of the world. Because it needs support in this task, the United States must encourage elements among its allies to entertain dreams of great-power status under U.S. aegis. Japan, with which the United States has concluded a broad-ranging strategic agreement in October 2005, is a striking example. The United States has been systematically encouraging Japan in recent years to abandon constitutional restraints on its armed forces and to dispatch them abroad. It has supported a prime minister (Koizumi) who has repeatedly paid homage to Japanese war criminals at the Yasukuni shrine, in a blatant appeal to reactionary sentiments in Japan and in deliberate provocation of China. It has made Japan the key partner of its program to militarize space. The United States went so far as to adopt a “Nuclear Posture Review” in March 2002, directing the military to prepare for use of nuclear weapons against at least seven countries (China, Russia, pre-occupation Iraq, North Korea, Iran, Libya, and Syria). Further, it directed that the military should build smaller nuclear weapons for use in certain battlefield situations: against targets able to withstand non-nuclear attack; in retaliation for attacks with nuclear, biological or chemical weapons; or “in the event of surprising military developments.” The document said the United States would be prepared to use nuclear weapons in an Arab-Israeli conflict, in a war between China and Taiwan, or in an attack from North Korea on the south. In a nutshell, nuclear weapons would no longer be considered merely a “deterrent,” but could be used pre-emptively against a wide range of countries—even those without nuclear arms. The very announcement of this policy is intended to put potential adversaries on notice. Thus it is no exaggeration to say that the United States is on a course of belligerence and terrorism against the people of the world. Various forces, of diverse character, have recognized this and are gearing up for the confrontation. At the level of important military powers, China and Russia are moving closer. They have issued a joint “Declaration on the World Order” opposing unilateralism and the use of force and calling for multilateralism and reliance on the United Nations, peaceful use of outer space, and a world order “free from any claims to monopoly or dominance in international affairs.” They have formed a military alliance (the Shanghai Co-operation Organization) with four Central Asian countries. Most significantly, they have recently carried out their first joint military exercises, involving 10,000 troops in all. However, Chinese and Russian opposition to the U.S. designs is confined to areas of their direct strategic interest. It is at the level of the world’s people that the opposition to U.S. designs is sharpest and broadest—a fact confirmed not only by several public opinion surveys, but, more importantly, in popular struggle the world over. In Latin America, which the United States considers its backyard, the United States faces unprecedented isolation, as George Bush discovered during a recent visit there. Similar is the case among the people (as distinct from the rulers) of West Asia and North Africa, Europe, and parts of East and Southeast Asia as well. Therefore as the Indian rulers sign on to the U.S. military alliance, they tie India to the world’s most reactionary power and place it at the receiving end of the response of diverse anti-U.S. forces the world over. The negative consequences of that tying will be felt by the Indian people, in one form or the other: for example, through bloated military expenditures and increased danger of war and other retaliatory acts. So the Indian people must come to register their opposition to this subordination to U.S. designs and to the bogus “great-power” status, which can neither feed, nor clothe, nor house them. | Top | |
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