Ấn Độ và Mẽo sẽ trở thành đồng minh quân sự ??

Ấn Độ và Mẽo sẽ trở thành đồng minh quân sự ??

Analysis: U.S: India may shift geostrategy


By DERK KINNANE ROELOFSMA


WASHINGTON, June 9 (UPI) -- India's Deputy Prime Minister, Lal Krishna Advani, begins three days of talks in Washington with the Bush administration that will touch on a project, which if realized, would shift the geostrategic tectonic plates of Asia.

The importance the administration has given to Advani's visit, which begins on Monday, is indicated by whom he will see. They are Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who he has already met, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice. When Advani sees Rice, President Bush is expected to drop by.

The dispute between India and Pakistan over Kashmir, and its attendant Islamist terrorism, will certainly figure in the talks. The administration wants to see an end to this source of instability in South Asia, the cause of two wars between India and Pakistan and that has come close more than once to starting a third.

Important as Kashmir is, Advani and his American interlocutors will also be talking about something much grander.

Rice gave a vague hint of what was in the air when she told the media early this month the talks would reflect the fact that India is the world's biggest democracy "and we share a lot in value."

As well as sharing a lot in value, the United States and India share a lot in interests. These include instability in Pakistan where, in Indian eyes at least, President Pervez Musharraf is a spent force and Islamist violence is threatening the country. But more important still is a shared uneasiness, if not downright fear, of China, seen as aspiring to become the regional hegemon.

India lost territory to China in a war in 1962 and since then each side has built up its military capabilities in their common border regions.

Earlier this month, India's chief of Naval Staff, Adm. Madhavendra Singh, said he was troubled by the Chinese navy's close interaction with other Indian Ocean countries. The Indian Navy, he said, was closely monitoring Chinese naval movement off the Pakistan coast.

India fears naval facilities China is building on both sides of the subcontinent. In Myanmar (formerly Burma) it is modernizing naval bases on the Bay of Bengal. In Pakistan, it is developing the port of Gwadar, seen by Delhi as a potential threat to India's sea communications.

These common U.S.-Indian interests were discussed last month in Washington by senior advisers to the Indian government and the Pentagon. More precisely, as disclosed on May 29 by United Press International, the discussions were about setting up a formal defense alliance between the United States and India that would be open to other Western-aligned East Asian countries such as Singapore, South Korea and perhaps Japan.

That such talks are under way was confirmed to this writer by American and Indian sources close to their respective intelligence communities.

To the advantage of the United States and India, such an alliance would augment the enormous shift in the correlation of forces already under way in Asia.

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz may be expected to have brought up the idea during his visit to those Asian countries at the beginning of June.

There are those in Washington and Delhi who believe the pact could be broadened to take in Israel and Turkey and possibly some of the more forward looking Arab states, such as Oman, Bahrain, and Qatar. If that were to happen, the United States would benefit from a defensive perimeter stretching from one side of the Asian continent to the other.

While India wants the pact, some in Washington do not believe it is likely to come about. Teresita Shaffer at the Center for Strategic and International Studies is one. Formerly a foreign service officer and ambassador to Sri Lanka, Shaffer considers that the Bush administration is not very interested in that kind of 1950s, NATO-like arrangement. The administration, she says, would be interested in an alliance with a small 'a,' but not with a big 'A.'

In any case, bringing such a pact into being is not the work of a weeks or months. In 1947, President Harry S. Truman announced the doctrine that bore his name and that committed the United States to opposing Soviet expansionism. But it was not until two years later that the American commitment was institutionalized in the treaty establishing NATO.

Whether Shaffer is right or not, that such an arrangement is mooted shows how great the changes have been following first the implosion of the Soviet Union, then the terrorist attacks on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001.

Until 2-1/2 years ago, such a Washington-Delhi axis would have been unimaginable. In Cold War days, India was a member of the Non-Aligned Movement and not so much non-aligned as aligned with Soviet contestation of American power.

U.S. support for Israel did not find favor among India's large Muslim minority and the Congress Party of Jawaharlal Nehru and, later, Indira Gandhi depended on Muslim votes to win elections. At the same time, the remittances sent home by Indian workers in Arab countries was an important economic asset.

Now the ruling coalition, headed by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, can attract enough Hindu voters to win elections without Muslim support and a burgeoning industry based on sophisticated technology are helping to lift up the economy.

Then Sept. 11 catalyzed a profound change in U.S.-Indian relations. So on the Iraq war, New Delhi adopted a studied neutral pose, rather like its position on the Israeli-Palestine conflict: what goes on in Israel and the Palestinian territories are domestic concerns, not India's. It is a view that fits nicely with India's robust dealing with the Muslim militants in Kashmir.

Military to military there has been a meshing with, for example, U.S. Air Force personnel training on Indian equipment and Indians on U.S. planes.

In May, the Bush administration told Israel it could go ahead and sell India three Phalcon Airborne Warning and Control Systems aircraft. In 1998, the administration stopped Israel from selling this advanced technology to China.

The administration is also thought likely to approve Israel selling India the Arrow-2 anti-missile system, jointly developed by Israel and the United States.

An India possessing both systems would have gone a long way to protecting itself from missile attacks by its nuclear neighbors, Pakistan and China. That, too, would add to the shift in the correlation of forces over a big part of the globe where American interest and military presence has soared since the Afghan war with the implantation of U.S. military facilities not only in Afghanistan but also in neighboring republics of Central Asia.

It very much looks as if an alliance with a little 'a' now exists with India. Elsewhere in Asia, the United States is already well placed. In the west of the continent there is the U.S. presence in Iraq and the alliance with Israel. In eastern Asia, it is well positioned in Japan and South Korea. And if the big 'A' comes about, it will be in a commanding strategic position in south and central Asia and on its way to being capable of reaching into the Chinese and Siberian north of the continent.

Geostrategic shifts don't get much bigger than that.