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Shared concerns over China driving closer US-India security relationship

India Report by John E. Carbaugh, Jr.
April 17, 2003

Shared concerns over a rising China appear be becoming increasingly important to the evolving U.S.-India strategic relationship.

Common unease over China is viewed as an essential ingredient in deeper ties between Washington and New Delhi, say a growing number of U.S. advocates of making India a critical U.S. ally.

PENTAGON REPORT NOTES SIMILAR VIEWS ON CHINA

This is evident in a new Pentagon report, which concludes that the U.S. and India should forge a long-term security alliance partly aimed at containing China, which is seen as an emerging regional and global powerhouse.

"China represents the most significant threat to both countries’ security in the future as an economic and military competitor," said the Pentagon report, a classified version of which was first disclosed in Jane’s Foreign Report.

U.S. and Indian views of China are "strikingly similar," according to the 130-page report, Indo-U.S. Military Relationship: Expectations and Perceptions, which was based on interviews with scores of senior American and Indian officials, including military personnel.

The last decade has seen growing concerns in U.S. policy circles over the threat from China, fueled by China’s rapid military modernization. Similarly, China’s military improvement and more expansive diplomatic outlook have increased concerns over the danger to India from "encirclement."

U.S. SEES INDIA AS COUNTERWEIGHT TO CHINA

U.S. foreign policy players -- both inside and outside the Bush Administration -- see India as a counterweight to China’s growing regional power. A more productive relationship with India is a "hedge" against future Chinese ambitions, the Pentagon report argued.

India would also like to see China’s power checked, given the traditional Indo-China competition and animosity. Indeed, an internal paper currently being circulated in the Indian Defense Ministry warns that the military capability of China is being strengthened and modernized. In the long run China will be a threat, rival or competitor, contingent upon India’s comparative strength and capability along with global strategic equations, the Defense Ministry paper cautions.

"The USA and India both view China as a strategic threat and share an interest in understanding Chinese strategic intent, though we do not discuss this publicly," according to an unidentified U.S. admiral quoted in the Pentagon report.

Certainly, such joint concerns are helping promote the idea of the U.S. forming a deeper alliance with India.

"Strategic engagement" with India could become a "future investment" of growing value if Asia becomes a more hostile environment, according to Pentagon thinking. India "should emerge as a vital component of U.S. strategy," the report continued.

"If China emerges as a major power, the USA needs to have friends -- preferably friends who share the same values," the Pentagon report said. "As the U.S. military engages India, as much as we say we do, we cannot separate our thinking on India from our thinking on China."

Added one U.S. officer: "We want a friend in 2020 that will be capable of assisting the US militarily to deal with a Chinese threat."

PENTAGON THINKING SHARED ELSEWHERE

Similar views are also being aired on Capitol Hill. Rep. Frank Pallone, a New Jersey Democrat and a founder of the Congressional Caucus on India, contends that the joint concern over China is a major basis for a strategic U.S.-India partnership.

"I would like to see India and the U.S. form a stable defense alliance," Pallone said. "Such an alliance would help secure our national security and those of our allies while isolating nations such as China, which pose a threat to India and other Asian democracies. In fact, India and the United States have many similar democratic interests, and as a result, both countries could work together and work together well against the threat from a military buildup in China or from rogue nations in Asia that threaten American interests."

CHINA SEEN AS ENCIRCLING INDIA

China’s strategy in Asia is partly designed to "surround" India, according to informed U.S. sources.

Long-time China watcher William C. Triplett, II, agrees that China has a long-term plan "of military, political and economic domination of South Asia," which involves helping smaller neighboring states surround India.

Late last year China and Bangladesh signed a Defense Cooperation Agreement which covers military training, weapons sales and defense production.

China has a close relationship with Burma, with the latter granting the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) basing rights at its islands in the Andaman Sea, where it can spy on Indian space launch activities, while China is also helping build a 12,000 feet runway near Mandalay.

Sri Lanka also has a good relationship with China, with its military force partially equipped by Beijing. China additionally has boosted military cooperation with various island nations in the Indian Ocean and African nations having coastlines on the Indian Ocean.

Further evidence of China’s intensions toward India is seen by Beijing’s effort to build the final leg of a military railroad across the Tibet Plateau, according to Triplett, a former senior staffer on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "The railroad will open previously unrealized strategic, tactical and conventional possibilities for the PLA to direct military firepower toward South Asia and beyond," he speculated. "With this railroad in place the PLA will have excellent hiding places for its new rail-mobile ICBM, the DF-31A. The Tibet Plateau Railroad will give the PLA the opportunity to threaten India with theater ballistic missiles in the same way it now threatens Taiwan. From a military logistics standpoint, rail has an enormous advantage over roads in moving heavy equipment, supplies and manpower. In effect, this means the permanent militarization of the entire plateau into a staging ground for aggression into South Asia. With even a single line, the PLA could move about 12 infantry divisions to Central Tibet in 30 days to meet up with their pre-positioned equipment. In short, Beijing’s new rail line into Tibet represents an enormous political and military challenge to India."

Indian intelligence officials also believe that China has resumed the supply of weapons to various insurgent groups fighting for independence in northeastern India.

BEIJING’S TROUBLESOME TIES WITH ISLAMABAD

Of course, Beijing’s support for Islamabad poses a major problem for India. "India continues to regard China-Pakistan relations as a major security problem," said Satu Limaye of the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies.

Husain Haqqani of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace noted that China, which supplies one-third of Pakistan’s weapons, "finds it useful to help Pakistan in keeping India bogged down in South Asia."

China allegedly continues to support Pakistan’s nuclear weapons and missile programs. China’s help in the 1980s and 1990s was thought critical to be Pakistan’s emergence as a nuclear weapons state. However, it is believed that China is still using third-party conduits to provide further help to Pakistan, notably via North Korea. The Bush Administration late year also expressed worry that Pakistan was providing uranium enrichment technology to North Korea in exchange for support on Islamabad’s ballistic missile program.

"China is actively involved in the arming of Pakistan with nuclear ballistic missiles, just as China is working very hard to surround India with its military power and military influence," said Richard Fisher of the Jamestown Foundation. "India’s concern over China’s growing military power is completely justified. Pakistan’s nuclear ballistic missiles are Chinese. Their technology is entirely Chinese. They have agreed to arm Pakistan and that is a threat not to just India, it is a threat to the whole world. Now, Pakistan has participated in secondary proliferation of Chinese nuclear technology to North Korea. In turn North Korea has exported missile technology which is also based on Chinese technology."

Beijing is also investing heavily in a deep-water port at Gwadar on the Arabian Sea (near Karachi), which, some observers warn, could become another nuclear submarine or even aircraft carrier homeport within a decade.

MILITARY COOPERATION LEADS DEEPER U.S.-INDIA TIES

As the Pentagon report on the shared concerns over China illustrates, the U.S. Defense Department is at the forefront of promoting deeper U.S.-India ties.

Military ties have taken off in the couple of years, including a resumption of U.S. defense sales and joint exercises. The latter have included Indian paratroopers working with their U.S. counterparts in Alaska, joint military airlift operations in India that included a U.S. Air Force C-130 cargo aircraft, and American and Indian military personnel taking part in the Shanti Path 03 peace-keeping exercises in India along with a host of other nations. The U.S. and Indian militaries are also planning to conduct their first joint exercise with fighter aircraft.

PROMISING NAVAL COOPERATION

Perhaps the most promising area of military cooperation has been in the naval area, with the Indian and U.S. navies conducting a number of exercises that included anti-submarine training, and combating piracy. The U.S. and Indian navies are actually due to hold another joint exercise next month off the western city of Bombay.

Indeed, the Pentagon report acknowledged that this naval cooperation has been partly aimed at containing China. For over a year the U.S. and Indian navies have been jointly patrolling the heavily-traversed Straits of Malacca, a region where China’s rapidly modernizing navy is vying for control.

STRATEGIC IMPLICATIONS OF CHINA’S ECONOMIC GROWTH

China’s economic growth has, of course, enabled it to invest to improve its military capabilities, as the Pentagon report acknowledged. Washington insiders have actually cautioned that India’s sluggish economic growth in comparison to China’s has adverse strategic implications for both India and the U.S.

China’s GDP has increased at about 10 percent a year, compared with India’s 6 percent growth rate in the last decade or so. A decade ago, India and China had close to the same per-capita income. Today China’s per-capita income is about $900, roughly twice that of India. This contrasting performance is certainly reflected in foreign investment figures. Since 1980, China has welcomed over $336 billion in foreign investment; India, in contrast, has received only $18 billion. Last year alone, China attracted $47 billion in direct foreign investment (FDI) -- capturing 21 percent of the world’s foreign investment going to developing countries. India’s FDI figure, however, was a lowly $4 billion -- less than 2 percent.

U.S.-INDIA FOREIGN POLICY GOALS ILL-SERVED

"Of particular concern to me, as an American policymaker, is the fact that the rate of U.S. foreign investment in China is several times that of U.S. investment in India," said Sen. Sam Brownback, a Kansas Republican, and a longtime friend of India in the U.S. Congress. "It makes little sense for long-term U.S. national security to see U.S. foreign investment go so unevenly divided in the region."

Brownback recently stressed that U.S. foreign policy goals would be much better served if more U.S. trade and investment went to India instead of China. "We cannot forget that while China is opening up -- and should be encouraged to continue -- they are still a nation that does not share many of the values and principles of a free and democratic society," he said. "India is a much better ideological fit."

It is also in India’s security interest to undergo economic reform, according to Brownback. "American businesses will invest in the countries where such reforms are made. Without these steps, American businesses will not invest in India," Brownback said. "If China continues its pace of reforms and keeps on opening up its economy, American business will move in there. This in turn will only help building up the Chinese military -- a danger to both U.S. and India. It is a matter of not only money but also regional insecurity. It is India who will lose the benefit of a stronger economy, more jobs and increased trade -- not American businesses who can just easily locate other parts of the world.

"If American investment and trade ties do not improve, there will be more repercussions for India, than for the U.S. American strategic interests may be damaged by a stronger China," he added. "However, U.S. will always be able to defend itself against a potentially aggressive China."