Ashok K Mehta
Dressed in his flying suit and accompanied by half a dozen personal staff, Admiral Harry B Harris Jr, Commander United States Pacific Command, the largest military command on earth, marched into Taj Palace hotel before turning up in Naval uniform to deliver his keynote address at the recent Raisina Dialogue – focussed on Asian connectivity and integration which is partly predicated on India’s vital role in the Indian Ocean region.
Invoking the Obama-Modi Joint Strategic Vision Statement of 2015 which identified Asia Pacific (including South China Sea and IOR) as key lifelines requiring freedom of navigation and open skies, Admiral Harris called the region as “Indo-Asia-Pacific” and said referring to India, “we are ready for you…we need you, your leadership” and added: “Let’s be ambitious together”. He raised two key issues: Initiating a quadrilateral strategic dialogue between US, India, Japan and Australia; and “joint patrolling…anywhere in the Indian Ocean, the Pacific, even South China Sea…wherever our leaders decide…in the not too distant future”. Both these ideas set the cat among the pigeons.
The JSVS had reflected a sharp strategic congruence and was interpreted in Delhi as India’s tilt towards the US and readiness to even balancecontain China. The synergisation of India’s Act East policy and US re-balancing to Asia is to ensure that China conformed to the existing rule-based order especially in its adherence to a code of conduct in SCS and IOR. China’s development of seven new artificial islands and deployment of missile batteries to reinforce its historical claims to Spratly and Paracel chain of islands is the strategic game-changer reflecting Beijing’s determination to be calling the shots in South and East China Seas in pursuance of its two oceans strategy buttressed by its looking beyond the first and second island chains. For China’s economic outreach, a blue water Navy and power projection are essential. And this has begun to worry the US.
China’s strategic message to India to lay off SCS was first delivered in 2011 when it targeted New Delhi’s five billion dollar investment in oil blocks in Vietnam as “fishing in troubled waters”. This was followed the same year by ragging of INS Airavat, an amphibious ship in SCS. Chief of Naval Staff, Admiral DK Joshi’s advocacy of defending national interest in SCS was watered down by National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon, then in Beijing. The JSVS drew typical Chinese comments like “India’s entrapment by the US”. Beijing’s strong reaction to any attempt by New Delhi to balance or contain China, coupled with the ground realities of the significant military capability gap that will require decades to make up, has put some realism into the ambitious JSVS. Conventional wisdom suggests caution at a time when China-Pakistan relations are at an all-time high and Uncle Sam gifting F-16s to Islamabad.
Admiral Harris’s joint patrol balloon has been discussed quietly earlier at appropriate forums. Reports in the US media that the idea was being actively considered by New Delhi were leaked just before the Admiral’s invitation to joint patrolling was promptly shot down by the Ministry of External Affairs. The Chinese media and strategic commentators equated joint patrolling to India joining US pivot to Asia: Betraying its hostility to China and needing to develop more friends than enemies. Minister for Defence Manohar Parrikar ruled out any joint maritime patrolling in the Asia Pacific region. He said India will participate in joint military exercises but no joint patrolling “at this stage”. This leaves the door open to the US and India being ambitious together. This year’s naval Malabar exercise between India, US and Japan will be off the coast of Japan likely in the north Philippine Sea, close to SCS.
The Admiral’s pitch for a quadrilateral security dialogue is a repackaged idea relating to freedom of navigation in international waters. It had upset Beijing in 2007 when the Malabar series traditionally between India and the US was expanded to include Japan, Australia and Singapore. This became a one-time exercise and was dropped due to China’s objections. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is believed to have endorsed the revival of the Quad even as China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hong Lei said: “we have no objection to relevant countries’ normal cooperation but we believe that cooperation should not be targeted against a third party”. The Quad like joint patrolling will remain mothballed for now.
