About Chellaney

Professor, strategic thinker, author and commentator

Reengage Burma

Posted on August 29, 2009 by Chellaney

U.S. should engage Burma

By BRAHMA CHELLANEY

The Japan Times August 29, 2009

Driven by their legendary pioneering spirit, Americans have a penchant to do dangerous things and then create an international crisis if they get arrested. Just consider the events of recent months: Two female journalists stray into North Korea; three students trekking in Iraq lose their way into Iran; and a military veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder enters Burma illegally and then swims three kilometers across a lake to sneak into opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s heavily guarded home. He spends two days at Suu Kyi’s home — even though she is supposed to be under house arrest — to warn her that he had had a vision in which she was killed by terrorists.

What is more bizarre is that such adventures were directed at the three countries that currently face the most-severe U.S. sanctions. These nations thus had no reason to be amused by the exploits, let alone to pardon the individuals.

In fact, by rendering its sanctions instrument blunt through overuse, Washington has dissipated its leverage against Burma, North Korea and Iran and run out of viable options. The new U.S. administration, therefore, has wisely sought to open lines of communication with these countries and review policy options.

The humanitarian imperative to help free jailed Americans provided the impetus to this political undertaking. The individuals’ dangerous exploits thus came as a blessing in disguise for U.S. diplomacy, presenting an opportunity to try and open the door to engagement while providing the humanitarian shield to deflect attacks by hard-line critics at home.

Just this month, even as the White House kept up the pretence that these were “private, humanitarian missions unlinked to U.S. policies,” the United States was able to reopen lines of communication with North Korea and Burma, with ex-President Bill Clinton’s trip to Pyongyang winning the release of the two women and Senator James Webb’s lower-profile mission to Rangoon and Naypyidaw, the new Burmese capital, actually yielding more tangible political results. Webb also secured the release of the ex-military man who was recently convicted and sentenced to seven years in hard labor.

A formal U.S. opening to Iran, however, would have to await the outcome of the current intense struggle for supremacy there among those empowered by the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Let’s be clear: U.S. policy increasingly has pushed Burma into China’s strategic lap through an uncompromisingly penal approach since the mid-1990s — to the extent that the Bush administration began turning to Beijing as a channel of communication with the junta, even though the U.S. has maintained non-ambassadorial diplomatic relations with Burma, unlike with Iran and North Korea. A policy that has the perverse effect of weakening America’s hand while strengthening China’s, clearly, demands a reappraisal.

The weight of the U.S.-led sanctions has fallen squarely on the ordinary Burmese, while the military remains largely unaffected. The sanctions-only approach indeed has made it less likely that the seeds of democracy will sprout in a stunted economy.

The U.S. also cannot forget that democratization of an autocratic state is a challenge that extends beyond Burma. Democracy promotion thus should not become a geopolitical tool wielded only against the weak and the marginalized.

Can one principle be applied to the world’s largest autocracy, China — that engagement is the way to bring about political change — but an opposite principle centered on sanctions remain in force against impoverished Burma? Going after the small kids on the global bloc but courting the most-powerful autocrats is hardly the way to build international norms.

Against this background, the Obama administration is doing the right thing by exploring the prospect of a gradual U.S. reengagement with Burma, with American diplomats holding two separate meetings with the Burmese foreign minister in recent months. Webb’s Burma mission was a big boost in that direction.

Webb, who heads the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on East Asia and Pacific Affairs, held separate face-to-face discussions with the junta’s top leader, Gen. Than Shwe, and Prime Minister Gen. Thein Sein. He also was allowed to meet Suu Kyi, just weeks after UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had been denied such a meeting.

In fact, after Suu Kyi was convicted of violating the terms of her house detention by sheltering the American intruder, the junta instantly commuted her sentence to allow her to return to her villa and not spend time in a jail. If Suu Kyi were to reverse her decision to boycott next year’s national elections, the generals might even be willing to lift her house detention. In any case, Suu Kyi remains free to leave the country, but on a one-way ticket.

The elections are unlikely to be free and fair. But make no mistake: By agreeing to hold the polls, the military is implicitly creating a feeling of empowerment among the people. However unintended, the message citizens will draw is that the next government’s legitimacy depends on them. Which other entrenched autocracy in the world is offering to empower its citizens to vote on a new government?

The electoral process creates space for the Burmese democracy movement. The regime will have to allow political parties to campaign and take their message to the people. That, in turn, will allow the parties to galvanize support for democratic transition. Getting a foot in is necessary before the door to political change can be forced open.

That is why many parties representing the large ethnic minorities have decided to participate in the elections, even though the polls will be fought on the skewed terms set by the military. If Suu Kyi stays out, she and the aging leadership of her party, the National League for Democracy, will miss an important opportunity for the democracy movement to assert itself under the military’s own rules.

Just the way Washington today is reassessing its hard line toward Burma, India was compelled to shift course after a decade of foreign-policy activism from the late 1980s — but not before paying dearly. In the period New Delhi broke off all contact with the junta and became a hub of Burmese dissident activity, China strategically penetrated Burma, opening a new flank against India. That period’s sobering lessons have helped instill greater geopolitical realism in Indian policy. While still seeking political reconciliation and democratic transition in Burma, New Delhi now espouses constructive engagement with the junta.

After all, years of sanctions have left Burma bereft of an entrepreneurial class but saddled with the military as the only functioning institution. That means a “color revolution” is unlikely and that democratic transition will be a painfully incremental process.

Brahma Chellaney, a professor of strategic studies at the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research, is a regular contributor to The Japan Times.

The Japan Times: Saturday, Aug. 29, 2009

Renewed controversy: India’s thermonuclear test

Posted on August 27, 2009 by Chellaney

Make nuclear programme accountable

By Brahma Chellaney
The Economic Times, August 28, 2009

India’s cosseted nuclear programme has been shielded from parliamentary scrutiny and CAG audit. So, it is hard to reliably determine whether India’s sole thermonuclear test fizzled out quickly or was a success, however modest. But some facts speak for themselves.

One telling fact is that more than 11 years later, India has still not weaponized the thermonuclear technology, even though the test in 1998 was supposed to have catapulted the country into the big-power league. The thermonuclear test, obviously, was not intended merely as a technology demonstrator. Therefore, it is legitimate to ask: What has been the security benefit for the country from that test?

Even more glaring is another fact: More than 35 years after Pokharan I, India stands out as a reluctant and tentative nuclear power, still lacking even a barely minimal deterrent capability against China. Given the growing military asymmetry with China, a proven and weaponized Indian thermonuclear capability, backed by long-range missiles, is critical to deter the assertive and ambitious northern neighbour. But today, India does not have a single Beijing-reachable missile in deployment.

Had India developed and deployed a minimal but credible nuclear-weapons capability, China would not have dared to mess with it. But the increasing Chinese bellicosity, reflected in rising border incursions and the hardening of Beijing’s stance on territorial disputes, suggests China is only getting emboldened against a weaker India.

Consider yet another unpalatable fact: No country has struggled longer to build a minimal deterrent or paid heavier international costs for its nuclear programme than India. The history of India’s nuclear-weapons programme is actually a record of how it helped establish multilateral technology controls. Pokharan I, for example, impelled the secret formation of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). India’s space programme helped give birth to the Missile Technology Control Regime.

Yet, before it has built a credible minimal deterrent, India came full circle when it entered into a civilian nuclear deal with the US and secured an exemption from the NSG last year to import high-priced commercial nuclear power reactors and fuel. In doing so, it had to accept nonproliferation conditions that aim to stunt its nuclear-deterrent development.

Through this deal, India is seeking to replicate in the energy sector the very mistake it has made on armaments. Now the world’s largest arms importer, India spends more than $6 billion every year on importing conventional weapons, some of dubious value, while it neglects to build its own armament-production base.

Conventional weapons simply cannot deter a nuclear adversary. Deterrence against a nuclear foe can only be built on nuclear capability, especially a second-strike capability that can survive the enemy’s first strike to inflict massive retaliation.

More broadly, Indian policymakers have yet to recognize that no nation can be a major power without three attributes: A high level of autonomous and innovative technological capability; a capacity to meet basic defence needs indigenously; and a capability to project power far beyond its borders, especially through intercontinental-range weaponry. India is deficient in all the three areas.

It is not an accident that all the countries armed with intercontinental-range ballistic missiles (ICBMs) are permanent members of the UN Security Council. But rather than aim for a technological leap through a crash ICBM programme, India remains interminably stuck in the Intermediate-Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM) stage.

Against this background, the latest claim that the 1998 thermonuclear test performed well under par can only further damage the credibility of India’s nuclear posture. The controversy over the thermonuclear test, however, is nothing new. No sooner had the test been conducted than a former head of the Indian nuclear programme, P.K. Iyengar, questioned official claims of success.

In such a setting — with critics within and outside the country questioning the success of the test — India must be ready to convincingly re-demonstrate its thermonuclear capability, should a propitious international opportunity arise from a nuclear test conducted by another power. Nuclear deterrence, after all, is like beauty: It lies in the eyes of the beholder. It is not what India’s nuclear establishment claims but what outsiders, especially regional adversaries, believe that constitutes deterrence (or the lack of it).

Brahma Chellaney is a nuclear and strategic affairs expert.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/News/Politics/Nation/Make-nuclear-programme-accountable/articleshow/4943134.cms

The right path on Burma: Constructive engagement

Posted on August 21, 2009 by Chellaney

Open new doors

Brahma Chellaney

DNA newspaper, August 21, 2009

Burma, or Myanmar as its military junta calls it, is a country of critical importance to next-door India. The West can afford to pursue a punitive approach towards a Burma located far away because it has little at stake there.

That explains why the West applies one principle to the world’s largest autocracy, China — that engagement is the best way to bring about political change — but an opposite principle centred on sanctions to an impoverished Burma. In doing so, it unfortunately exposes democracy promotion as a geopolitical tool usually wielded against the weak and the marginalised.

Going after the small kids on the global block but courting the most-powerful autocrats is hardly the way to build international norms. India simply cannot afford to shut itself out of Burma, or else — with an increasingly bellicose China to the north, a China-allied Pakistan on the west, a Chinese-influenced Burma to the east and growing Chinese naval interest in the Indian Ocean — it will get fully encircled.

In that light, India must be pleased with the Obama administration’s tentative process of re-engagement with Burma, a strategically located country that US policy has increasingly pushed into China’s lap through an uncompromisingly penal approach since the mid-1990s.

The Obama team, reviewing US policy, has been exploring the prospect of gradual re-engagement with Burma, with American diplomats holding two separate meetings with the Burmese foreign minister.

A big step towards re-engagement came last weekend when senator James Webb visited Rangoon and Naypyidaw, the new Burmese capital. Webb, who heads the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on East Asia and Pacific Affairs, secured the release of an American military veteran who was recently convicted and sentenced to seven years of hard labour for illegally entering Burma and then swimming 3km across a lake to sneak into opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s heavily guarded home.

Driven by their legendary pioneering spirit, Americans do dangerous things and then create international crises over their arrests: Two female journalists strayed into North Korea; three students lost their way into Iran; and an ex-military man suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder swam a lake and spent two days at Suu Kyi’s home to supposedly warn her that he had had a vision in which she was killed by terrorists.

Their adventures, significantly, were directed at the three countries that face the most-severe US sanctions. But having over-employed the sanctions tool, Washington has dissipated its leverage against Burma, North Korea and Iran and run out of viable options.

Little surprise the new US administration has sought to open lines of communication with these countries. The humanitarian imperative to help free jailed Americans has provided the impetus to this political endeavour. The individuals’ dangerous exploits thus were a blessing in disguise for the US diplomacy, presenting an opportunity to try and open the door to engagement and providing the humanitarian shield to deflect attacks by those opposed to compromise.

Just this month, the US was able to reopen lines of communication with North Korea and Burma, with Bill Clinton’s trip to Pyongyang winning the release of the two women and Webb’s lower-profile mission actually yielding more tangible political results. A formal US opening to Iran, however, would have to await the outcome of the current intense power struggle there.

Webb held face-to-face discussions with the junta’s top leader, general Than Shwe. He also was allowed to meet Suu Kyi, just weeks after the UN secretary-general had been denied such a meeting. In fact, after Suu Kyi was convicted of violating the terms of her house detention by sheltering the American intruder, the junta instantly commuted her sentence to allow her to return to her villa and not spend time in a jail.

If Suu Kyi were to reverse her decision to boycott next year’s national elections, the generals might even be willing to lift her house detention. In any case, Suu Kyi is free to leave the country, but on a one-way ticket.

Just the way Washington today is reassessing its hardline towards Burma, India was compelled to shift course after a decade of foreign-policy activism from the late 1980s — but not before paying dearly. In the period New Delhi broke off all contact with the junta and became a hub of Burmese dissident activity, China strategically penetrated Burma, opening a new flank against India. That period’s sobering lessons have helped instill greater geopolitical realism in Indian policy.

While still seeking political reconciliation and democratic transition in Burma, New Delhi now espouses constructive engagement with the junta. Years of sanctions have left Burma bereft of an entrepreneurial class but saddled with the military as the only functioning institution.

Brahma Chellaney is professor of strategic studies at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi.

http://www.dnaindia.com/opinion/main-article_open-new-doors_1284074

The myth of a homogeneous China

Posted on August 17, 2009 by Chellaney

El falso multiculturalismo chino

Brahma Chellaney – 16/08/2009 LA VANGUARDIA

A menos que China deje de imponer la homogeneidad cultural y la asfixia étnica, sufrirá problemas internos

Tras envolver militarmente la región de Xinjiang, rica en petróleo, es posible que las autoridades chinas hayan sofocado la revuelta uigur. Sin embargo, este episodio, el más mortífero de las manifestaciones de minorías étnicas registradas a lo largo de decenios – junto con el levantamiento que tuvo lugar en la meseta tibetana-muestra los costes políticos de la absorción étnica forzosa y hace trizas el espejismo de una China monolítica. Las políticas de absorción forzosa en Tíbet y Xinjiang, ricos en petróleo, dieron comienzo después de que el hombre fuerte del país, Mao Tse Tung, creara un corredor de enlace entre las dos regiones rebeldes engullendo la zona india de Aksai Chin, de 38.000 km2,parte del Estado de Jammu y Cachemira. En la actualidad, alrededor de un 60% del territorio de la República Popular China comprende territorios que no habían estado bajo el gobierno directo de la dinastía Han. El tamaño de China, de hecho, es el triple del que poseía bajo la última dinastía Han, la dinastía Ming, que cayó a mediados del siglo XVII. En el sentido territorial el poder Han se halla en su cenit, circunstancia simbolizada por el hecho de que la Gran Muralla se construyó a modo de perímetro de seguridad del imperio Han.

La absorción manchú en el seno de la sociedad Han y la dilución de la población autóctona en la Mongolia interior significa que los tibetanos y los grupos étnicos musulmanes de lenguas túrquicas de Xinjiang sean los únicos grupos que quedan como núcleos resistentes.

Sin embargo, los acontecimientos sucedidos desde el año pasado se alzan como penoso recuerdo ante los ojos de las autoridades chinas en el sentido de que su estrategia de colonización étnica y económica de la tierra tibetana y uigur está atizando un notable malestar. Mientras por una parte los esfuerzos gubernamentales para extender el uso de la lengua, cultura y poderío comercial Han han alimentado el resentimiento local, por otra el desarrollo económico en esas regiones – orientado a la explotación de sus ricos recursos-ha contribuido a marginar a la población autóctona. Mientras se deja a la población local el empleo en trabajos serviles, los colonos Han se reservan los empleos bien pagados y directivos, símbolo de la ecuación entre colonizados y colonizadores.

Factor aún más importante, la misma supervivencia de las principales culturas de etnia no Han se ve amenazada. Desde el adoctrinamiento en la escuela y la reeducación política forzosa a la reducción drástica del suelo cultivable y de la vida monástica, el hecho es que las políticas chinas han contribuido a infundir sentimientos de sojuzgamiento y resentimiento en la población de Tíbet y Xinjiang.

Afin de sinologizar los territorios poblados por minorías, la multifacética estrategia de Pekín comprende seis factores: alterar cartográficamente las fronteras del suelo patrio de ciertas etnias; inundar demográficamente culturas no Han, al modo como la expansión del gobierno Han sobre Manchuria, Mongolia interior y Taiwán se logró ampliamente mediante la migración durante un prolongado periodo de tiempo; reescritura de la historia para justificar el control chino; colonización económica; puesta en práctica de una hegemonía cultural susceptible de difuminar las identidades locales, y mantenimiento de la represión política.

En el plano demográfico, Pekín no intenta un exterminio étnico en estas regiones, sino una asfixia étnica. Esta estrategia, consistente en asfixiar a la población autóctona mediante la campaña migratoria, equivale a la aniquilación cultural.

Un primer paso en esta dirección fue la reorganización cartográfica de las regiones de residencia de minorías. Mediante una división electoral de Tíbet de acuerdo con sus propios intereses, Pekín situó la mitad de la meseta de Tíbet y casi el 60% de la población tibetana bajo jurisdicción Han en las provincias de Qinghai, Sicuani, Gansu y Yunan. El desmembramiento cartográfico de Tíbet creó el marco destinado a diluir étnicamente a los tibetanos, tanto en las áreas separadas como en el resto del Tíbet, rebautizado como "región autónoma de Tíbet".

En el caso de la Mongolia interior, se hizo lo contrario: se amplió para incluir áreas Han como la región de Henao a fin de reducir a los mongoles a una minoría e impedir cualquier demanda o aspiración (inspirándose en el deseo de China de unificación con Taiwán) en el sentido de la unificación de las dos Mongolias.

En la actualidad, las lenguas tibetana y uigur están desapareciendo ya de las escuelas locales a medida que las autoridades las retiran del currículo académico. Y, como parte integrante de la estrategia de absorción forzosa, las familias de las minorías étnicas son obligadas a enviar al menos a un miembro de la familia a trabajar en fábricas situadas en distantes provincias Han o a enfrentarse de lo contrario a una multa de dos mil yuanes, alrededor de doscientos euros. Se anima sobre todo a las jóvenes de minorías a trasladarse a provincias Han y casarse con un Han como parte del programa de absorción patrocinado por el Estado. La rápida sinologización, sin embargo, no ha hecho más que agudizar el sentido de identidad y ansia de libertad tibetana y uigur.

La principal idea directriz del sistema chino sigue siendo la uniformidad, como señala el eslogan del presidente Hu Jintao relativo a una "sociedad armoniosa" concebida para reforzar la cuestión de la adhesión social. Apenas es de extrañar que la respuesta pública de Hu al malestar uigur consistiera en pedir a las autoridades locales que "aislaran y asestaran un golpe" a los agitadores, en lugar de ir a las causas del descontento.

Mientras India aplaude la diversidad, China rinde tributo a un monoculturalismo artificialmente impuesto, aunque incluye oficialmente 56 nacionalidades, la nacionalidad Han (que, según el último censo del 2000, representaba el 91% de la población total) y 55 grupos étnicos minoritarios. China intenta no sólo restar importancia a su diversidad étnica, sino ocultar las brechas culturales y lingüísticas existentes en el seno de la mayoría Han, no sea que las divergencias históricas norte-sur afloren nuevamente.

Los Han (divididos en siete o más grupos distintos desde el punto de vista lingüístico y cultural) serán cualquier cosa salvo un grupo homogéneo. Las principales lenguas de China aparte de las empleadas en territorios de minorías, incluyen el mandarín, el hakka (hablado en varias áreas del sur), el gan (provincia de Jiangxi), el wu (provincia de Zhejiang), el xiang (provincia de Hunan), el yue (sobre todo en la provincia de Guangdong), el pinghua (vástago yue), el min del sur (hokkien/ del taiwanés) y el min del norte.

No obstante, los comunistas se han valido del mito de la homogeneidad para atizar el nacionalismo Han. Este mito, concebido en un principio para unificar a los no manchúes en contra de la dinastía manchú Qing, fue ideado por Sun Yat-Sen, un cantonés que encabezó el movimiento republicano que tomó el poder en 1911. La posterior imposición de la lengua del norte, el mandarín, contribuyó a instaurar una lingua franca en una sociedad diversa, pero casi un siglo después no es el mandarín sino las lenguas locales las que se siguen hablando comúnmente.

Actualmente, gracias a la mayor conciencia de la realidad derivada de los avances en las tecnologías de la información y la comunicación, los hakka, los sichuaneses, los cantoneses, los shanghaineses, los fujianeses, los swatoweses, los hunaneses y otras comunidades clasificadas oficialmente como Han reafirman sus identidades distintivas y su patrimonio cultural.

Los problemas internos de China no desaparecerán a menos que sus gobernantes dejen de imponer la homogeneidad cultural y renuncien a la asfixia étnica como estrategia del Estado llevada a la práctica en áreas de minorías. Tras el levantamiento tibetano en el 2008, el año 2009 será recordado como el de la revuelta uigur. Si se considera que el año próximo se cumplirá el LX aniversario de la ocupación china de Tíbet, el centro de atención se situará en los desafíos internos de China. Mientras el crecimiento económico aminora su ritmo y el malestar interno aumenta a una cadencia similar a la del PIB chino, tales desafíos se extienden de hecho al corazón de la propia China.

BRAHMA CHELLANEY, profesor de Estudios Estratégicosdel Centro de Investigación en Ciencia Política de Nueva Delhi. Autor de ´El monstruo asiático: el auge de China, India y Japón´

Traducción: JoséMaría Puig de la Bellacasa

China-India Border Talks

Posted on August 17, 2009 by Chellaney

A Fruitless Dialogue

Brahma Chellaney

The New Indian Express, August 17, 2009

The broadening of the Sino-Indian border talks into an all-encompassing
strategic dialogue is an unmistakable reminder that the negotiations stand
deadlocked. Yet neither side wants to abandon the fruitless process.

In the period since the border negotiations began
nearly three decades ago, the world has changed fundamentally. Indeed, with its
rapidly accumulating military and economic power, China itself has emerged as a great
power in the making. The longer the negotiating process continues without
yielding results, the greater the space Beijing
will have to mount strategic pressure on India and leverage its position. After
all, China
already holds the military advantage on the ground. Its forces control the
heights along the long 4.057-kilometer Himalayan frontier. Furthermore, by
building new railroads, airports and highways in Tibet,
China is now in a position
to rapidly move additional forces to the border to potentially strike at India at a time
of its choosing.

Diplomatically, China
is a contented party, having occupied what it wanted — the Aksai Chin plateau,
which is almost the size of Switzerland
and provides the only accessible Tibet-Xinjiang route through the Karakoram passes of the Kunlun Mountains.
Yet it
chooses to press claims on additional Indian territories as part of a grand
strategy to gain leverage in bilateral relations and, more importantly, to keep
India
under military and diplomatic pressure.

At the core of its strategy is an apparent resolve to indefinitely hold off
on a border settlement with India
through an overt refusal to accept the territorial status quo. In not hiding
its intent to further redraw the Himalayan frontiers, Beijing only helps highlight the futility of
the ongoing process of political negotiations. After all, the territorial
status quo can be changed not through political talks but by further military
conquest. Yet, paradoxically, the political process remains important for Beijing to provide the façade of engagement behind which
to seek India’s
containment.

Keeping India
engaged in endless talks is a key Chinese objective so that Beijing can continue its work on changing the
Himalayan balance decisively in its favor through a greater build-up of
military power and logistical capabilities. That is why China has sought to shield the negotiating
process from the perceptible hardening of its stance towards New Delhi.

Let’s be clear: Chinese negotiating tactics have shifted markedly over
the decades. Beijing originally floated the swap idea — giving up its claims in
India’s northeast in return for Indian acceptance of the Chinese control over a
part of Ladakh — to legalize its occupation of Aksai Chin. It then sang the
mantra of putting the territorial disputes on the backburner so that the two
countries could concentrate on building close, mutually beneficial relations. But
in more recent years, in keeping with its rising strength, China has escalated border tensions
and military incursions while assertively laying claim to Arunachal Pradesh.
According to a recent report in Ming Pao, a Hong Kong paper with close ties to the
establishment in Beijing, China is seeking “just” 28 percent
of Arunachal. That means an area nearly the size of Taiwan.

In that light, can the border talks be kept going
indefinitely? Consider two important facts.

First, the present border negotiations have been going on continuously
since 1981, making them already the longest and the most-barren process between
any two countries in modern history. It seems
the only progress in this process is that India’s
choice of words in public is now the same as China’s. “Both countries
have agreed to seek a fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable settlement of
this issue,” Indian External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna told Parliament on
July 31. “The matter, of course, is complex and requires time and lots of
patience.” It was as if the Chinese foreign minister was speaking. Isn’t it odd
for India
to plead for more time and patience after nearly three decades of negotiations?

Second, the authoritative People’s Daily — the
Communist Party mouthpiece that reflects official thinking — made it clear in a
June 11, 2009 editorial: “China
won’t make any compromises in its border disputes with India.” That reflects the Chinese
position in the negotiations. But when Beijing
is advertising its uncompromising stance, doesn’t New Delhi get the message?

So the key question is: What does India
gain by staying put in an interminably barren negotiating process with China? By
persisting with this process, isn’t India
aiding the Chinese engagement-with-containment strategy by providing Beijing the cover it
needs? While Beijing’s strategy and tactics are
apparent, India
has had difficulty to define a game-plan and resolutely pursue clearly laid-out
objectives. Still, staying put in a barren process cannot be an end in itself
for India.

India indeed has retreated to an
increasingly defensive position territorially, with the spotlight now on China’s Tibet-linked claim to Arunachal Pradesh than
on Tibet’s
status itself. Now you know why Beijing invested so much
political capital over the years in getting India
to gradually accept Tibet
as part of the territory of the People’s Republic. Its success on that score
has helped narrow the dispute to what it claims. That neatly meshes with China’s
long-standing negotiating stance: What it occupies is Chinese territory, and
what it claims must be on the table to be settled on the basis of give-and-take
— or as it puts it in reasonably sounding terms, on the basis of “mutual
accommodation and mutual understanding.”

As a result, India
has been left in the unenviable position of having to fend off Chinese territorial
demands. In fact, history is in danger of repeating itself as India gets sucked into a
1950s-style trap. The issue then was Aksai Chin; the issue now
is Arunachal. But rather than put the focus on the source of China’s claim —
Tibet — and Beijing’s attempt to territorially enlarge its Tibet annexation to
what it calls “southern Tibet,” India is willing to be taken ad infinitum
around the mulberry bush.

Take the period since the border talks were “elevated” to
the level of special representatives in 2003. India
first got into an extended exercise with Beijing
to define general principles to govern a border settlement, despite China’s
egregious record of flouting the Panchsheel principles and committing naked
aggression in 1962. But no sooner had the border-related principles been
unveiled in 2005 with fanfare than Beijing
jettisoned the do-not-disturb-the-settled-populations principle to buttress its
claim to Arunachal.

Yet, as the most-recent round of talks highlighted this
month, India has agreed to
let the negotiations go off at a tangent by broadening them into a diffused strategic
dialogue — to the delight of Beijing.
This not only opens yet another chapter in an increasingly directionless
process, but also lets China
condition a border settlement to the achievement of greater Sino-Indian strategic
congruence. Worse still, New Delhi is to observe
2010 — the 60th anniversary of China
becoming India’s neighbor by
gobbling up Tibet — as the
“Year of Friendship with China”
in India.

About the author: Brahma Chellaney is
professor of strategic studies at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi.

http://bit.ly/1n3vYW

China’s Hydra-Headed Hydropolitics

Posted on August 5, 2009 by Chellaney

The
Sino-Indian Divide Over Water

Brahma
Chellaney

A globally syndicated column. Copyright: Project Syndicate

As China and India gain economic heft, they are drawing
ever more international attention at the time of an ongoing global shift of
power to Asia. Their underlying strategic
dissonance and rivalry, however, usually attracts less notice.

As its power grows, China seems
determined to choke off Asian competitors, a tendency reflected in its
hardening stance toward India.
This includes aggressive patrolling of the disputed Himalayan frontier by the
People’s Liberation Army, many violations of the line of control separating the
two giants, new assertiveness concerning India’s northeastern Arunachal Pradesh
state — which China claims as its own — and vituperative attacks on India in
the state-controlled Chinese media.

The issues that divide India and China, however,
extend beyond territorial disputes. Water is becoming a key security issue in
Sino-Indian relations and a potential source of enduring discord.

China and India already are
water-stressed economies. The spread of irrigated farming and water-intensive
industries, together with the demands of a rising middle class, have led to a
severe struggle for more water. Indeed, both countries have entered an era of
perennial water scarcity, which before long is likely to equal, in terms of per
capita availability, the water shortages found in the Middle
East.

Rapid economic growth could slow in the face of acute
scarcity if demand for water continues to grow at its current frantic pace,
turning China and India — both food-exporting countries — into major importers,
a development that would accentuate the global food crisis.

Even though India has
more arable land than China —
160.5 million hectares compared to 137.1 million hectares — Tibet is
the source of most major Indian rivers. The Tibetan plateau’s vast glaciers,
huge underground springs and high altitude make Tibet the world’s largest
freshwater repository after the polar icecaps. Indeed, all of Asia’s major
rivers, except the Ganges, originate in
the Tibetan plateau. Even the Ganges’ two main tributaries flow in from Tibet.

But China is
now pursuing major inter-basin and inter-river water transfer projects on the
Tibetan plateau, which threatens to diminish international-river flows into India and
other co-riparian states. Before such hydro-engineering projects sow the seeds
of water conflict, China ought
to build institutionalized, cooperative river-basin arrangements with
downstream states.

Upstream dams, barrages, canals, and irrigation systems
can help fashion water into a political weapon that can be wielded overtly in a
war, or subtly in peacetime to signal dissatisfaction with a co-riparian state.
Even denial of hydrological data in a critically important season can amount to
the use of water as a political tool. Flash floods in recent years in two
Indian frontier states — Himachal Pradesh and Arunachal Pradesh — served as an
ugly reminder of China’s
lack of information-sharing on its upstream projects. Such leverage could in
turn prompt a downstream state to build up its military capacity to help
counterbalance this disadvantage.

In fact, China has
been damming most international rivers flowing out of Tibet, whose
fragile ecosystem is already threatened by global warming. The only rivers on
which no hydro-engineering works have been undertaken so far are the Indus,
whose basin falls mostly in India and Pakistan, and the Salween, which flows into Burma and Thailand. Local authorities
in Yunnan province, however, are
considering damming the Salween in
the quake-prone upstream region.

India’s government has been pressing China for
transparency, greater hydrological data-sharing, and a commitment not to
redirect the natural flow of any river or diminish cross-border water flows.
But even a joint expert-level mechanism — set up in 2007 merely for "interaction
and cooperation" on hydrological data — has proven of little value.

The most-dangerous idea China is
contemplating is the northward rerouting of the Brahmaputra river, known as
Yarlung Tsangpo to Tibetans, but which China has renamed Yaluzangbu.
It is the world’s highest river, and also one of the fastest-flowing. Diversion
of the Brahmaputra’s water to the parched Yellow river is an idea that China does not discuss in public, because
the project implies environmental devastation of India‘s northeastern plains and eastern Bangladesh, and would thus be akin to a
declaration of water war on India and Bangladesh.

Nevertheless, an officially blessed book published in
2005, Tibet’s Waters
Will Save China, openly championed the northward rerouting of the Brahmaputra. Moreover, the Chinese desire to divert the
Brahmaputra by employing "peaceful nuclear explosions" to build an
underground tunnel through the Himalayas found expression in the international
negotiations in Geneva in
the mid-1990s on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). China sought
unsuccessfully to exempt PNEs from the CTBT, a pact still not in force.

The issue now is not whether China will reroute the Brahmaputra, but when. Once authorities complete their
feasibility studies and the diversion scheme begins, the project will be
presented as a fait accompli. China already
has identified the bend where the Brahmaputra forms the world’s longest and
deepest canyon — just before entering India — as the diversion
point.

China’s ambitions to channel Tibetan waters northward
have been whetted by two factors: the completion of the Three Gorges Dam,
which, despite the project’s glaring environmental pitfalls, China trumpets as
the greatest engineering feat since the construction of the Great Wall; and the
power of President Hu Jintao, whose background fuses two key elements — water
and Tibet. Hu, a hydrologist by training, owes his swift rise in the Communist
Party hierarchy to the brutal martial-law crackdown he carried out in Tibet in
1989.

China’s hydro-engineering projects and plans are a reminder
that Tibet is
at the heart of the India-China divide. Tibet ceased
to be a political buffer when China annexed it nearly six decades
ago. But Tibet can
still become a political bridge between China and India. For that
to happen, water has to become a source of cooperation, not conflict.

Brahma
Chellaney is Professor of Strategic Studies at the Center for Policy Research
in New Delhi.

Copyright: Project
Syndicate, 2009.

http://www.project-syndicate.org/contributor/1629

India’s wishful thinking on Pakistan

Posted on August 5, 2009 by Chellaney

Dangerous fallacies

Brahma Chellaney

DNA newspaper, August 5, 2009

By appreciatively citing the example set by his sphinx-like
predecessor, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who reversed India’s
Pakistan policy at least
half a dozen times during his six years in office, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh
is seeking to take India
on a similar roller-coaster ride. In fact, Singh’s latest statements in
Parliament reveal eight dangerous misconceptions on Pakistan.

One, political geography is unalterable. “We
cannot wish away the fact that Pakistan
is our neighbor,” Singh says. But political maps
are not carved in stone. Didn’t Indira Gandhi change political geography in
1971? The most-profound global events in recent history have been the
fragmentation of several states, including the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. When
Pakistan looks increasingly decrepit, Singh
says “a stable, peaceful and prosperous Pakistan”
is in India’s
“own interest.”

Two, India and Pakistan are locked by a shared
destiny. Therefore, “our objective must be a permanent peace with Pakistan,
where we are bound together by a shared future and a common prosperity.” How can
a plural, inclusive and democratic India share a common future with a theocratic,
militarized and radicalized Pakistan?
In fact, Pakistan, with its
“war of a thousand cuts,” poses an existential threat to the very principles
and values on which India
is founded.

Three, the alternative
to a policy seeking to placate a terror-exporting adversary is war. “There
is no other way unless we go to war.” That draws on the classic argument of
appeasers that the only alternative to appeasement is provocation or conflict.
The simple truth is that between bending backwards and waging aggression lie a
hundred different options.

Four, India
cannot emerge as a great power without making peace with Pakistan. “It is in our vital interest, therefore, to try again to
make peace with Pakistan.”
By linking India’s global
rise to the placation of Pakistan,
Singh has hyphenated India
with that country even more strikingly than any international actor. Actually,
to say that the country cannot emerge as a major power without making peace
with an adversary wedded to waging war by terror is to go against the grain of
world history and to encourage the foe to hold India’s progress hostage. Does
Singh wish to egg on Pakistan
to have its cake and eat it too — wage unconventional war while enjoying the
comfort offered by Indian-initiated conciliation and peace talks? While India should
make efforts to build better relations with its regional foes on the basis of
“verify and trust” (not “trust and verify,” as Singh wants), its own global
rise is not dependent on adversarial goodwill.

Five, as India has nothing to hide and indeed “our
conduct is an open book,” it can let Pakistan include any issue in the bilateral
agenda. It was such logic that encouraged Pakistan
to turn its terror target, India,
into an accused on Baluchistan. Singh’s
attempt to rationalize that blunder, though, threatens to exacerbate matters.
Not “afraid of discussing any issue”
extends an invitation to Pakistan
to place on the bilateral agenda any subject it wants, including a matter
internal to India.

Six, if Pakistan merely acknowledges what is
incontrovertible, that is enough for India to change policy course. The
policy change at Sharm-el-Sheikh, according to Singh, was prompted by Pakistan’s submission of a dossier in response
to India’s
dossier. That Pakistan has
yet to begin dismantling its state-run terror complex against India was
overlooked. Indeed, an enthusiastic Singh even agreed that India will “share real-time, credible and
actionable” intelligence with Pakistan
on future terrorist threats. In other words, India
is to alert Pakistan
in time to the terror actions being planned by its state institutions and their
front organizations, given that the Pakistani Army, the ISI, the
Lashkar-ei-Taiba and the Jaish-e-Muhammad constitute a seamless jihad web.

Seven, high-level
dialogue and “meaningful” dialogue can be delinked. “We can have a meaningful dialogue with Pakistan
only if they fulfill their commitment, in letter and spirit.” However, at the
level of prime minister, foreign minister and foreign secretary, India will
continue its dialogue with Pakistan on “all outstanding issues,” irrespective
of whether Pakistan demonstrates its anti-terror bona fides or not.

Eight, diplomacy of
hope and prayer makes sense. “I hope and pray that the leadership in Pakistan will have the strength and the courage
to defeat those who want to destroy, not just peace between India and Pakistan,
but the future of South Asia.” Wishful
thinking has long hobbled Indian foreign policy. Now, in the glaring absence of
holistic, institutionalized decision-making, prayers are being added to the
wishes.

The writer is
professor of strategic studies at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi.

http://www.dnaindia.com/opinion/main-article_dangerous-fallacies_1279726

Are India’s defence acquisitions in a mess?

Posted on July 31, 2009 by Chellaney

India needs a major cleanup

Brahma
Chellaney

The Economic Times, July 31, 2009

From
castigating the government for frenetically importing weapons without any
long-term vision to pointing out that gaps in India’s
defences remain unplugged, the reports of the Comptroller and Auditor General
(CAG) of India
have helped highlight the rot that has set in. India is the only large country
that relies on imports to meet basic defence needs, to the extent that it has
become the world’s biggest arms buyer. But despite the ever-growing arms
imports — a money-spinning business for many Indian politicians, civil servants
and defence officers — India pursues an increasingly feckless policy towards
China and has seen its military edge against quasi-failed Pakistan erode to the
point that recurring cross-border terror strikes are met with terror-emboldening
inaction.

Instead of remaining
incorrigibly dependent on imports and serving as a dumping ground for
obsolescent weapons, shouldn’t India
build a military with the strategic reach and combat edge to deter regional
adversaries? Consider some disturbing examples.

No sooner
had the first batch of the British Hawk jet trainers been inducted — an
antiquated system in which India
invested $1.7 billion ostensibly to help minimize crashes — than a Hawk
crashes. The 2007 induction of a 1971-vintage amphibious transport ship junked
by the US navy and sold to India for $50
million kills an Indian officer and five sailors due to a gas leak on board. The
CAG says the 2005 contract for six Scorpenes saddled India with a questionable
submarine-design system and resulted in $72 million in “undue financial
advantage” to the French vendor, plus “other unquantifiable benefits”. Now, at
a price “60% more expensive than for a new one”, according to the CAG, India is buying from Moscow a refurbished Soviet-era aircraft
carrier that had been rusting since a mid-1990s boiler-room explosion.

The defence of India is becoming an unremitting scandal.
Clearly, India
needs a major cleanup. To facilitate that, a three-year import moratorium is a
must. In the process, without compromising India’s defence, some $20 billion
will be saved in that period.

The fallacies behind India’s Pakistan policy

Posted on July 30, 2009 by Chellaney

Dangerous misconceptions

Brahma Chellaney

India Abroad, August 14, 2009

Even though India’s extended hand has been slapped again and again by Pakistan, right-minded Indians still desire peace and stability on the subcontinent — but with dignity. Instead
of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s one-sided commitment to “go more than half
the way” to make peace with Pakistan, India’s correct position should be that it is ever ready to walk more than half the distance on cooperation or confrontation, depending on whether Pakistan wants peace or war.

Singh’s recent statements in Parliament point to the fallacies on which he has been reconstructing his Pakistan policy. His personal imprint on that policy bears at least eight perilous misconceptions.

One, political geography is unalterable. “We cannot wish away the fact that Pakistan is our neighbor,” Singh says. So, “a stable, peaceful and prosperous Pakistan” is in India’s “own interest.” But political maps are never carved in stone, as the breaking away of Bangladesh, Eritrea and East Timor showed. In fact, the most-profound global events in recent history have been the fragmentation of several states, including the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. Pakistan — the world’s Terroristan rolled into an Anarchistan — looks increasingly decrepit and combustible.

The redrawing of the “Afpak” political frontiers indeed may be essential for regional and international security. The British-drawn Durand Line, in any case, has ceased to exist in effect, making a Pashtunistan no longer look implausible. The “moth-eaten” Pakistan, as its founder called it, now resembles a Molotov cocktail waiting for a match.

Two, India and Pakistan are locked by a shared destiny. Therefore, “our objective must be a permanent peace with Pakistan, where we are bound together by a shared future and a common prosperity.” Despite Singh’s constant harping on a “shared destiny,” how can a plural, inclusive and democratic India share a common future with a theocratic, militarized and radicalized Pakistan? In fact, Pakistan, with its “war of a thousand cuts,” poses an existential threat to the very principles and values on which India is founded.

Three, the alternative to a policy seeking to placate a terror-exporting adversary is war. “It is in our vital interest to make sincere efforts to live in peace with Pakistan … There
is no other way unless we go to war.” Lest his message not be clearly
understood, Singh repeated: “Unless we want to go to war with Pakistan,
dialogue is the only way out.” This draws on the classic argument of appeasers
that the only alternative to appeasement is provocation or conflict. The simple
truth is that between bending backwards and waging aggression lie a hundred
different options.

Yet, by greeting each major cross-border terror strike in recent years with complete inaction, Singh has speciously suggested to the nation that the only alternative to such abysmal pusillanimity is war. After 26/11, for example, Singh exercised not one of the multiple political, economic and diplomatic options he had —from recalling the high commissioner from Islamabad and
disbanding the farcical Joint Anti-Terror Mechanism to designating Pakistan’s Inter-Services
Intelligence as a terrorist organization and invoking trade sanctions. As a result, India ended up not taking the smallest of small steps even as a token expression of outrage over Pakistan’s role.

Four, India cannot emerge as a world power without making peace with Pakistan. “I sincerely believe India cannot realize its development ambition or its ambition of being a great power
if our neighborhood remains disturbed … it is in our vital interest, therefore, to try again to make peace with Pakistan.” To say that the country cannot emerge as a major power without making peace with an adversary wedded to waging war by terror is to go against the grain of world history and to encourage the foe to hold India’s progress hostage. Does Singh wish to egg on Pakistan to have its cake and eat it too — wage unconventional war while enjoying the comfort offered by Indian-initiated conciliation and peace talks?

Next-door China has emerged as a global player by building comprehensive national power, not by
coming to terms with Taiwan, which it has kept under a threat of military invasion. Beijing
also has pursued a consistently assertive approach toward India for long.

Singh does not understand that the irredentist Pakistan is locked in mortal combat with the
status quoist India, seeking its salvation in India’s unravelling.Even if India
handed Kashmir Valley on a platter, Pakistan’s war by terror would not end.

Five, as India has nothing to hide and indeed “our conduct is an open book,” it can let Pakistan include any issue in the bilateral agenda. “We are not afraid of discussing any issue of concern between the two countries. If there are any misgivings, we are willing to
discuss them and remove them.” It was such logic that permitted Pakistan to turn its terror target, India, into an accused on Baluchistan.

Singh’s attempt to rationalize that blunder, though, threatens to exacerbate matters. Not “afraid of discussing any issue” extends an invitation to Pakistan to place on the bilateral agenda any subject it wants, including a matter internal to India.

Six, if Pakistan merely acknowledges what is incontrovertible, that is enough for India to change policy course. “This is the first time that Pakistan has … admitted that their nationals and a terrorist organization based in Pakistan carried out a ghastly terrorist act in India.” That prompted the policy change at Sharm-el-Sheikh, Singh divulged.

That it took Pakistan more six months even to submit a detailed response to India’s dossier of evidence, that its response states upfront that the state-sponsored group involved in the Mumbai attacks — the Lashkar-e-Taiba — is a “defunct” organization against which no action thus is possible, that Islamabad has publicly discredited Indian evidence against the No. 1 mastermind, Hafiz Saeed, as “propaganda” and freed him, that the Pakistani
terrorist-training camps along the India border remain operational, and that
Pakistan has rubbished India’s demand to hand over 42 fugitives like Dawood
Ibrahim, Tiger Memon, Chota Shakeel and Lakhbir Singh — all that doesn’t
matter. What matters is an admission of what no longer is deniable.

Seven, high-level dialogue and “meaningful” dialogue can be optically delinked. Those not paying attention to Singh’s word play would have missed the distinction he drew
in his July 29 speech: “We can have a meaningful dialogue with Pakistan only if they fulfill their commitment, in letter and spirit, not to allow their territory to be used in any manner for terrorist activities against India.” However, at the level of prime minister, foreign minister and foreign
secretary, India will continue its dialogue with Pakistan on “all outstanding
issues,” irrespective of whether Pakistan demonstrates its anti-terror bona fides
or not. Such casuistry is designed to carve space for the misbegotten
approach.

Eight, diplomacy of hope and prayer makes sense. “I hope and pray that the leadership in Pakistan will have the strength and the courage to defeat those who want to destroy, not just peace between India and Pakistan, but the future of South Asia.” Wishful thinking has long hobbled Indian foreign policy. Now, in the glaring absence of holistic, institutionalized decision-making, prayers are being added to the wishes.

Yet, even God cannot help those praying for Pakistan to kick its terrorism habit. A state that has employed armed proxies against India virtually from its inception cannot do without them. A de-terrorized Pakistan will become an extinct Pakistan.

Brahma Chellaney, a professor of strategic studies at the privately funded Center for Policy
Research in New Delhi, is the author, most recently, of “Asian Juggernaut: The
Rise of China, India and Japan” (HarperCollins).

Boastful India

Posted on July 28, 2009 by Chellaney

Substandard Capabilities

Brahma Chellaney

The Times of India, July 29, 2009

In India, no technological advance is too small to be celebrated nationally. The launch of a nuclear-powered submarine for underwater trials is an important step forward in India’s quest for a minimal but credible nuclear deterrent. But India still has a long way to go. After all, it will be some years before India can deploy its first nuclear sub armed with sea-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs). Yet the mere flooding of the dry dock to begin the harbour trials of INS Arihant became an occasion for national jubilation, with the prime minister present at the event to hail it as “a historic milestone in the country’s defence preparedness.” It is as if India already has joined the club of nations with nuclear subs.

To be sure, nuclear-powered, ballistic missile-carrying submarines (known in American argot as SSBNs) can help India bridge the yawning gap in its deterrent against China. Moreover, only such subs can underpin India’s no-first use (NFU) posture. For an NFU to be credible, the country needs a second-strike capability. If a country does not have the capability to retaliate after surviving an enemy’s first strike on its nuclear assets, a NFU would make no sense. Nuclear-propelled subs, with their high endurance, serve as a stealthy, least-vulnerable and cost-effective launch-pad for nuclear weapons. Deterrence can be achieved with a lesser number of missiles at sea than if they are land-based.

Still, some harsh facts stick out. India has paid a tremendous international price for its nuclear programme without reaping the kind of security benefits it should have. And the gaps in its deterrent posture remain glaring. Indeed, among nuclear-armed states, India stands out as the country with the slowest-rate of progress in deterrent development. Can it be forgotten that India’s nuclear programme is the oldest in Asia and that its first nuclear test happened more than 35 years ago? Yet, India’s “credible minimal deterrent,” far from being credible, has yet to deliver minimalist capabilities against China. India still does not have a single deployed missile of any type that can reach Beijing.

Let’s face it: No country in history has struggled longer to build a minimal deterrent than India. There are multiple reasons for that, including the absence of a resolute political leadership, the country’s accountability-at-a-discount culture, Western technology sanctions, the non-existence of independent oversight or audit, creeping politicization of topmost scientists and the bureaucratization of strategic establishments. Also, unlike Britain, China, Israel and Pakistan, India received no assistance from another nuclear power and has had to develop everything indigenously while facing a rising tide of technology controls.

In the absence of a reliable nuclear deterrent, India remains irredeemably dependent on imports of conventional weapons, spending more than $5 billion annually on such purchases, some of questionable utility. Among important states, India is the only one that relies on imports to meet basic-defence needs, to the extent that it has become the world’s top arms buyer.

Yet that record has not stopped India from being boastful. The start of Arihant’s underwater trials ought to have been a quiet affair, not a national event. After all, 11 years after a thermonuclear test, that technology is yet to be weaponized. Take another example. The Agni 3 has still to be deployed, yet the DRDO chief held a news conference earlier this year to brag about the likely first test next year of the Agni 5, which is still at the design stage. The press then went totally gaga, portraying the Agni 5, with a maximum range of 5,000 kilometres, as an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) when, in reality, it is just another intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) in India’s agonizingly incremental missile-development path.

Which other country in the world advertises every technological move or brags about a missile still on the drawing board? To the contrary, the long-standing tradition in the nuclear world is to quietly develop and deploy capabilities. India is the lone exception to that tradition.

Instead of launching a crash ICBM project drawing on the intercontinental-range capabilities of the space programme, India remains stuck in the IRBM arena, where its frog-like paces have taken it — two decades after the first Agni test — to Agni-3, a non-strategic system. In fact, if everything goes well, India’s first SSBN will be deployed with a non-strategic weapon — a 700-kilometer SLBM under development. That would further underpin the regional and stunted character of India’s deterrent.

Of the three technologies — nuclear propulsion, SLBM and ICBM — the most complex are the first two. Developing a nuclear-weapon-strike capability from under water is far more difficult than firing missiles from the ground. Yet, while seeking to develop an SLBM-armed nuclear sub, India still does not have an ICBM project, even on the drawing board. India wants to go down in world history as the first nation to deploy an SSBN without having developed an ICBM. “Incredible India” indeed.

The writer is professor, Centre for Policy Research.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/OPINION/Edit-Page/Top-Article-Substandard-Capabilities/articleshow/4830783.cms