AT THE 18-country East Asia Summit
this week in Phnom Penh, Manmohan Singh, India’s prime minister, found time to
update his Twitter feed. He posted a picture of a Cambodian dance troupe
performing “Samudra Manthan”, or “the churning of the oceans”—an episode from
Hindu mythology. Perhaps he liked the reminder of India’s deep “civilisational”
links with countries to its east. Or perhaps he was struck by the analogy to
the present-day tussle for dominance in the Indian Ocean and western Pacific,
and in particular, India’s emerging naval rivalry with China.
As it happens, “Samudra Manthan” is
the title of a new book on this topic by C. Raja Mohan, an Indian writer on
strategic affairs, for whom the myth is a metaphor for the two countries’
competition at sea. This contest remains far more tentative and low-key than
the 50-year stand-off over their disputed Himalayan border, where China
humiliated India in a brief, bloody war in 1962. But the book raises alarming
questions about the risks of future maritime confrontation.
Although both China and India have
long, adventurous maritime traditions, neither has been a sea power for most of
its history. Both have been preoccupied with the risks over their land
frontiers. China had a brief outgoing flurry under Admiral Zheng He
(1371-1433). But it built a great wall, not a great navy. From Alexander the Great
on, India’s north-western frontier was the route of choice for invaders. But
after suffering from Western imperial expansion at sea, both China and India
learned the importance of naval might. Both have globalised rapidly in recent
years, encouraging maritime ambitions. Both, in Mr Raja Mohan’s words, are
transforming their navies “from forces conceived for coastal defence and
denying their neighbouring waters to hostile powers to instruments that can
project force far beyond their shores”.
China’s naval plans receive more
attention. By 2020 its navy is expected to have 73 “principal combatants” (big
warships) and 78 submarines, 12 of them nuclear-powered. Last year its first
aircraft-carrier, bought from Ukraine, began sea trials; indigenous carriers are
under construction. Proving it can now operate far from its own shores, China’s
navy has joined anti-piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden. Of course this
evolution is not aimed at India, so much as at building a force commensurate
with China’s new economic might, securing its sea lines of communication and,
eventually perhaps, challenging American dominance in the western Pacific, with
a view to enforcing China’s view of its national sovereignty in Taiwan and
elsewhere.
Indian strategists, however, tend towards
paranoia where China is concerned. China’s close strategic relations with
India’s neighbours, notably Pakistan, have given rise to the perception that
China is intent on throttling India with a “string of pearls”—naval facilities
around the Indian Ocean. These include ports China has built at Gwadar in
Pakistan; at Hambantota in Sri Lanka; at Kyaukphyu in Myanmar; and at
Chittagong in Bangladesh.
None of these, however, is as yet a
military facility. And the Pakistani and Burmese projects can be explained in
part by two Chinese obsessions only peripherally related to India. One is the
drive to develop China’s relatively backward western interior. Just as India
sees Sittwe in Myanmar and the Kaladan river as a route to its own
north-eastern provinces, Myanmar offers the south-western Chinese province of
Yunnan access to the sea. Pakistan does the same for the western region of
Xinjiang. And in theory India’s Kolkata might become the port for Lhasa in
Tibet. Second is the so-called “Malacca dilemma”—the vulnerability China feels
because so much of its imported energy passes through the narrow chokepoint of
the Malacca Strait. Gwadar and, especially, Kyaukphyu provide an alternative
route.
India’s naval advances are less
dramatic. But it has operated two aircraft-carriers since the 1960s, and aims
to have three carrier groups operational by 2020, as part of a fleet that by
2022 would have around 160 ships and 400 aircraft, making it one of the world’s
five biggest navies. Like China, it also hopes to acquire a full “nuclear
triad”—by adding sea-based missiles to its nuclear deterrent. While China has
been testing the waters to its south and south-west, India’s navy has been
looking east, partly to follow India’s trade links. India fears Chinese
“strategic encirclement”. Similarly, China looks askance at India’s expanding
defence ties with America, South-East Asia, Japan and South Korea.
China suspects India of complicity
in efforts to undermine its sweeping claim to sovereignty over almost all of
the South China Sea. It saw evidence of this in India’s involvement in
oil-and-gas exploration in waters disputed by China and Vietnam. The underlying
fear is of an American-led plot to contain China. Even were such a plot
hatched, India would be a reluctant conspirator. But it and China are in a
“security dilemma”, where one country’s “essential steps” to safeguard its
interests are taken by the other as threats that demand a response.
A trilemma, really
This is further complicated by the
role of the United States, which remains the dominant naval power in both the
western Pacific and the Indian Ocean. India knows that it cannot match China’s
military muscle, but does not want to rely too heavily on America. China does
not want India to emerge as a true rival for regional power, but does not want
to push it into an American alliance.
The risk, as Chinese and Indian
warships venture farther afield, is akin to that in China’s maritime disputes
with Japan and its South-East Asian neighbours: of an accidental conflict that
escalates. This is exacerbated by an absence of codes of conduct and forums to
thrash out disputes. The East Asian Summit, which includes America, might one
day become such a gathering. But for the time being it aims only at
“confidence-building”. Marred this year again by squabbles about how to discuss
disputes in the South China Sea, the summit finds even that elusive. By Banyan
for The Economist
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