AMBIVALENT POWER

Brahma Chellaney

(c) Asian Age  

The emerging US-India global strategic partnership foreshadows a geopolitical realignment in Asia. Such realignment will have an important bearing on global power relations. In an Asia characterized by a growing imbalance of power, a US-India partnership can help build long-term stability, order and equilibrium.

A strategic partnership with the US will be in India’s interest. But that does not mean India entrust its national security to America. The US is in search of dependable new allies, and a partnership with India holds valuable benefits for its continued prosperity and security. It will use such a partnership to assertively advance its interests, even at India’s expense.

For New Delhi, it is imperative that the partnership help underpin its power potential, rather than lopsidedly allow America to unduly influence Indian policies, to India’s long-term detriment. History testifies that a smaller power’s partnership with a globally dominant power has never been easy, given the inherent asymmetry. What is more, such a partnership has rarely helped the smaller power secure a reliable friend. 

That is why the current elation among some sections in India seems so premature and out of place. The nuclear deal has even been viewed as a defining moment paving the way to a US-India axis. The narrow focus on the deal loses the forest for the trees: the deal, far from being a turning point by itself, is actually embedded in a larger strategic framework whose more fundamental elements have become decipherable, one by one, over a year.

The deal is a product of, not a precursor to, an Indian strategic shift. Before America agreed to consider relaxing civilian nuclear export controls against India, New Delhi had already consented to team up with Washington on matters vital to US interests — from participating in US-led “multinational operations” and assenting to “conclude defence transactions” and share intelligence (see the June 28, 2005, defence-framework accord) to joining the US-directed non-proliferation regime (the first step of which was the May 2005 enactment by India of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Act).

When the nuclear deal was unveiled on July 18, 2005, it constituted just four paragraphs in a long “Joint Statement” which roped in India as America’s collaborator on yet more fronts — from a “Global Democracy Initiative” to an enduring, military-to-military “Disaster Response Initiative” designed, in the White House’s words, for “operations in the Indian Ocean region and beyond.” The July 18 statement also buttresses US economic interests through a far-reaching “Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture” that embraces research and outreach in India, as well as through new bilateral dialogues on commerce, finance and energy.

The nuclear deal still remains a four-paragraph affair. The March 2, 2006, oral announcement during President George W. Bush’s visit merely put the US stamp of approval on India’s civil-military “separation plan” — a sanitized version of which was presented to Parliament five days later. As Undersecretary of State Nick Burns put it on March 2, the US is now able to certify India’s “very complex” separation plan as “credible” and “transparent”.

Given the commitments New Delhi has already made, it is likely that in the coming months India will agree to provide logistical support to US forces, “conclude defence transactions” worth billions of dollars with US arms makers, and begin the process to join the controversial, US-controlled Proliferation Security Initiative, or PSI, which the “neoconservatives” in Washington have pugnaciously promoted. Such actions will leave little doubt about India’s movement into America’s strategic sphere.

Yet despite a fundamental reorientation of Indian foreign policy in full swing, there has been little debate. Other than the nuclear deal, the varied, broad policy moves by India have drawn little public scrutiny.

The direction of India’s relationship with America is set clearly — towards closer strategic collaboration. At issue, however, is not the direction but the content that is being added to the relationship largely at the pace and urging of the Bush administration. The content is in the form of firm, difficult-to-retract commitments or actions by India in return for US promises.

Unfortunately for India, the promises are by a president who is becoming increasingly unpopular at home and abroad. As the ruinous US occupation of Iraq entered its fourth year this week, an unabashed Bush vigorously defended his commitment to the war there while ruling out a troop pullout during his presidency. If Bush is still well-liked anywhere, it is in India, despite his rebuff to its claim to a UN Security Council permanent seat. Indeed, India embraced him like an “American maharajah,” as the New York Times said under the headline, "Bush Finds More Respect in India Than At Home."

Having hitched its fortunes to a beleaguered president who has been damaging US interests even as his approval ratings sink, India needs to face up to the risk that Bush has been too weakened to satisfactorily deliver on his promises. Even the nuclear deal is unlikely to be passed by US Congress without the attachment of grating, India-specific riders. India rushed into several far-reaching strategic initiatives (or “coalitions of the willing,” in Bush’s parlance) intended to subserve Bush’s misbegotten global agenda.

US and Indian interests now converge on several issues but they don’t come together on all matters, especially on Bush’s messianic missions. This is brought out by Bush’s just-released National Security Strategy Report­ — the first since 2002 — which tacitly expands his “axis of evil” by targeting seven “despotic” states, including two of India’s neighbours, Burma and Iran.

The report lays out US interests on most issues that form the basis of the “global-partnership” initiatives with India. It includes five of the eight areas of the July 18, 2005, US-India statement (three separate “coalitions of the willing” on disaster response, democracy advocacy and HIV/AIDS, plus stable energy markets and structural economic reforms), as well as the cooperation spheres defined earlier by the June 28, 2005, accord — counterterrorism, counter-proliferation, counter-narcotics and intelligence sharing. What the report brings out is the striking divergence of interests in the areas where America has brought in India as an international partner.

Take the issue of combating global terror. Not only have India’s concerns over Islamabad-directed terrorism been written off, the report actually portrays Pakistan as a victim of terror. India is not even among the 12 identified countries where “terrorists have struck.” In fact, India — with the world’s highest incidence of terrorist attacks, according to the CIA’s Office of Terrorism Analysis — finds no mention in the report’s extensive chapter titled, “Strengthen alliances to defeat global terrorism and work to prevent attacks against us and our friends.”

Democracy is India’s greatest asset, and the global promotion of liberty may sound an innocuous exercise until one reads Bush’s statements and his national-security report. For a president who maintains increasingly close ties with tyrannical regimes in every corner of the world, “the promotion of freedom” is just war by other means against target states.

Bush slights Indian democracy by propping up a Janus-faced dictatorship in Pakistan and arming it with lethal, India-specific weapons. He then seeks New Delhi’s partnership to effect a regime change in Burma — a state that has never acted against India — and in Iran, a lynchpin in India’s energy-import policy and geopolitical strategy vis-à-vis Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia. Indeed, the sole superpower claims that today it “may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran,” and that it reserves the right to take “anticipatory action.”

Why should India subordinate its regional interests to America’s intent to play an active strategic role even in states that traditionally have been within the Indian sphere of influence, such as Nepal? Yet Bush designed his stagecraft on Indian soil to publicly demand democracy in Burma and Nepal, vilify Iran and acclaim Pakistan as “another important partner and friend of the US”. The White House even paints international disaster response in southern Asia in geopolitical colours in its report — as part of US efforts in “reconciling long-standing regional conflicts in Aceh and the Kashmir.”

If India followed Bush, it would be left with no independent strategic options in its own neighbourhood other those backed by the US. What kind of a regional power would India be if it played second fiddle to the US in its own neighbourhood and traditional pockets of influence? After making New Delhi cede some strategic space in its backyard, the White House states patronizingly through its report that, “India now is poised to shoulder global obligations in cooperation with the United States in a way befitting a major power.”

Long after Bush becomes history, America will still be paying for its follies. An open question is whether India, with its pell-mell embrace of the Bush initiatives, would also end up paying costs.

Fundamentally, India has yet to decide if it wishes to become a true economic and military power, or a power “shouldering global obligations” assigned by the White House. The Indian ambivalence is manifest from the prime minister’s continued denial of permission to scientists to carry out the inaugural test-launch of the Agni 3 missile, which became ready some time ago.

If a mutually beneficial US-India global strategic partnership is to be built, without New Delhi reduced to a subaltern status or passively aiding Bush’s warped, hawkish agenda, sobriety, statecraft and close scrutiny are indispensable. In believing that America is courting it as part of a hedging strategy against a ruthlessly ambitious China, India should hedge against the risk that entanglement with the global hegemon could stunt its strategic potential and influence.  (c) The Asian Age, March 25, 2006

Will Nepal’s Peace Last?

By BRAHMA CHELLANEY
Wall Street Journal

After a decade of killings and human-rights abuses, the rebel guns in Nepal have finally fallen silent. The peace agreement reached last week between the government and Maoists, followed by the arms accord signed on Tuesday, constitutes the first real progress towards consolidating a seven-month-old ceasefire. But achieving lasting peace will be more difficult. That will depend on whether the Maoists are truly committed to democracy — and not simply another grab for power.

Political crises have been endemic in Nepal, where a series of shaky governments have stunted the growth of democracy since its introduction in 1990. The latest lurch into political chaos was triggered when King Gyanendra suspended the country’s democratic institutions in February 2005, seeking to return Nepal to an absolute monarchy. The mass protests that erupted — with Maoist support — forced the king to cede many of his powers, including military control. As parliament was restored, the new government that emerged quickly opened peace talks with the rebels.

Previous peace agreements between the government and Maoists foundered because of poor implementation. As a result, Nepal has suffered gradual state atrophy. Widespread lawlessness and corruption helped vault the rebels into a pivotal role of power, enabling them to run a de facto parallel state in some areas of the country. In barely a decade, the Maoists morphed from a ragtag band of armed revolutionaries, inspired by Mao Zedong’s Little Red Book, into the potent force now standing center stage in Nepalese politics.

Having waged a prolonged "people’s war" to overturn state institutions, the Maoists finally agreed on Nov. 21 to join the political mainstream. Their first order of business will be to help draft a new constitution. On the eve of the signing of the peace agreement last week, the rebels’ chairman, known by his nom de guerre, Prachanda, was publicly celebrated as a hero in New Delhi. He now hopes to become the first president of a republican Nepal.

India’s interest in Nepal goes back many years. The open, 1,600-kilometer-long border shared by the two countries allows for passport-free passage. After Mao’s annexation of Tibet brought Chinese troops to India’s frontiers, India linked Nepal to its security system through a 1950 treaty, creating a buffer with communist China. In recent years, India has watched with unease as China used Nepal’s political turmoil to increase its influence there. By brokering this peace accord, India hopes to stem the Chinese tide.

The agreement puts the Maoists on the same footing as the government, giving them joint responsibility for enforcing law and order. Under United Nations supervision, the Maoist and Nepalese armies are to lock up an equal quantity of weapons. And as the Maoist fighters are sequestered in special U.N.-supervised camps, Nepalese troops will be ordered to return to barracks. The Maoists expect their fighters to be merged with the official army.

India similarly hopes that the Maoists will be absorbed and tempered by Nepal’s governing institutions, but it would certainly not like to see the Maoists call the political shots, given their ideological leanings and cross-border links with Indian Maoists.

The deal’s implementation poses major challenges, with the success of establishing an enduring peace hinging on several questions: Will the Maoists abide by the rules of democracy, or try and usher in a proletariat dictatorship? Will they honor the deal by disbanding the parallel administration they run in many rural districts, or continue to levy taxes and mete out savage punishment upon those who fall foul of them? Will they lock up their guns in good faith, or continue to keep secret caches? Most importantly, will they run a fair campaign in next year’s Constitutional Assembly elections, or seek to win the vote by riding on their reputation of violence in the impoverished countryside?

The Communist influence will be strong in the new 330-member interim Nepalese parliament, with the Maoists and Nepal’s main communist party holding 73 seats each under the deal. The Maoists have set their sights on winning as many seats as possible in the Constitutional Assembly elections so that the new constitution will bear their permanent imprint. Until then, even as Prachanda has declined to forswear violence, the Maoists intend to exercise power without responsibility, with their top leaders declining to join the planned interim government, lest holding office dull their revolutionary sheen or erode their grassroots base.

The ascent of the Maoists carries the possibility of fashioning a "people’s revolution" through constitutional means. But if they don’t succeed in gaining elected power, they may return to their armed revolutionary ways, rather than sit on Parliament’s opposition benches. If that’s the case, then, once again, the peace will be short lived.

Mr. Chellaney is professor of strategic studies at the privately funded Center for Policy Research in New Delhi and most recently the author of "Asian Juggernaut" (HarperCollins, 2006).

(c) Wall Street Journal

December 1, 2006

Narrowing the Asymmetry

Brahma Chellaney  

© Asian Age March 24, 2007

India and China are not just nation-states but large, ancient civilizations that together represent one-third of humanity today. How their relationship evolves will have an important bearing on Asian geopolitics, international security and globalization. India-China ties thus constitute one of the most important bilateral relationships in the world.

            While both are ascendant powers, enjoying high GDP growth rates, the basis of their rise is different and a pointer to their relative strengths and weaknesses.

            India’s white-collar, services-led economic growth contrasts sharply with China’s blue-collar, manufacturing-driven expansion. More striking is the fact that in India the private sector continues to lead the growth while in China it is a state-driven boom. India does poorly wherever the state is involved, while the strength of the Chinese state as the prime driver of accumulating power carries significant strategic ramifications. In fact, owing to its dynamic centralized economy, China is able to practise a mix of crony capitalism and widespread, state-dispensed patronage.  

            Most startling is the fact that although both states have some similar competitive advantages, such as a large pool of skilled manpower and low wages, China’s ascension has been on the back of an increasing export surge while India’s imports-dependent economy relies primarily on domestic consumption for growth. Indian imports currently exceed exports by as much as 60 per cent. Such dependency on imports sets India apart from the Asian “tiger” economies, which are all export-oriented.

            In contrast to India’s yawning trade deficit, China tripled its trade surplus with the rest of the world just between 2002 and 2005. Given its trade surplus of $201.6 billion with the United States alone in 2005, it is hardly a surprise that Beijing is today sitting on a foreign-exchange hoard of $1 trillion — the world’s largest. It has ploughed more than two-thirds of its foreign-currency reserves into US dollar-denominated investments.

Washington now relies on Chinese surpluses and savings to finance its huge budget and trade deficits, hold down US interest rates and prop up the value of the dollar. Beijing, by financing the US deficits through its purchase of US government bonds, not only buys political clout in Washington but also keeps its currency undervalued so that Chinese exports stay cheap and imports dear. In the face of a rising Sino-US trade imbalance, it sustains the peg it has artificially set between the US dollar and the Chinese yuan by simply recycling its surplus dollars back into the American bond market. 

Beijing shields its currency manipulation through the potential threat to halt financing US deficits and unload its greenbacks. This month’s decision by the Chinese legislature, the National People’s Congress, to set up a new cabinet-led agency for active investment overseas can only help boost China’s international financial clout at a time when its foreign-currency reserves are continuing to soar.

            The India-China contrast is also stark in terms of military capabilities. India’s weaponry remains subcontinental in range, while China’s is intercontinental. Not surprisingly, India has found it difficult to break out of its subcontinental straitjacket. Indeed, far from developing a military reach to underpin its world-power ambitions, India even lags behind its regional-defence needs. Nearly a decade after declaring itself a nuclear-weapons state, India still does not have the retaliatory capability to strike deep into the Chinese heartland.  

            Even when China was poor and backward, it consciously put the accent on building comprehensive national power. It developed its first intercontinental ballistic missile, the 12,000-kilometre DF-5, in the 1970s. New Delhi, in contrast, has yet to start developing its first ICBM, although ICBMs are potent symbols of power and coercion in international relations.

            Today China’s military spending is drawing a lot of international attention for two reasons. Beijing has sustained double-digit increases in such spending for two continuous decades. In that same period, India’s defence expenditure has declined appreciably as a percentage of its GDP. Moreover, China’s military spending has risen the fastest in the world in percentage terms. Its recently unveiled budget, for example, boosted defence outlays by 17.8 per cent even as India announced a modest increase of 7.8 per cent — just above its current inflation rate — in its defence appropriations.

            In absolute terms, however, US military spending has now risen to a level not seen since the Reagan-era buildup. President George W. Bush’s new $622 billion Pentagon budget slips in $40 billion in spending increases. Even without the $142-billion budget component for fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and for countering terrorism, America alone accounts for 50 per cent of the global military spending.

            Even though the official Chinese military budget (which few believe because it hides more than it reveals) is double the Indian defence-spending level, it is not the size but how defence funds are utilized that makes the India-China contrast attention-grabbing.

           China’s priority for decades has been twofold: boosting its indigenous capabilities, especially its conventional and nuclear deterrence, and working to shift the balance of power in Asia in its favour. Today its increasingly sophisticated missile force is at the heart of its military modernization. And even as it imports high-tech conventional weaponry from Russia, it has emerged as one of the biggest arms exporters in the world, with its three biggest arms clients being India’s immediate neighbours — Pakistan, Burma and Bangladesh, in that order. Pakistan’s series of missile tests in recent weeks, including the March 22 test of an extended-range cruise missile, shows that China continues to covertly assist Islamabad in breach of its non-proliferation commitments.

          India, pitiably, relies on arms imports for meeting its basic defence needs. Such is its addiction to the import of major weapons and even small arms that it has kept its domestic armament-production base weak and underdeveloped. While China apportions 28 per cent of its military budget for defence-related research and development, India’s share is less than 6 per cent.

Prevention is always preferable (and cheaper) than cure. India’s defence planning, however, is still geared toward fighting the next conventional war when the country’s interests would be better served through a concerted focus on deterring aggression.

Preventing war demands major investments in and political commitment to systems of deterrence, which have to be developed indigenously. India, however, remains more committed to the soft and spendthrift option — buying weapons off-the-shelf overseas to fight the next conventional war, although such a full-fledged war remains remote 35 years after the last one. The threats India confronts are increasingly unconventional in nature, whether it is trans-border terrorism from Pakistan or China’s new anti-satellite (ASAT) prowess. Yet Indian defence planners remain frozen in a conventional mindset. 

India’s addiction to foreign arms — many of questionable value — has become so acute that it has emerged as the world’s largest weapon importer since 2004. Defence Minister A. K. Antony’s comment last month about $8 billion to 10 billion in potential offsets from arms imports during the 11th Five-Year Plan (which begins April 1) indicates that India intends to buy foreign weapons worth between $27 billion and $33 billion in this period. Such arms imports will not make the nation strong but only eat up its meagre defence resources.

The key difference between India and China is that the latter uses its defence funds wisely and intelligently. Had the situation been the converse, with China spending on the military only what India does today but India’s defence expenditure matching the current Chinese level, it would still have been a matter of concern in the regional context for this very reason — the prudent use of funds by Beijing. A China-level Indian defence budget would have been a delectable bonanza for the major military-industrial complexes overseas.

India, lamentably, has yet to grasp the simple truth that the capacity to defend oneself with one’s own resources is the first test a nation has to pass on the way to becoming a great power. Indeed no state can aspire to be a great power if it allows asymmetry with a regional rival to widen to a point where not only its battlefield vulnerability is exposed but also its strategic space and room for manoeuvre come under growing pressure.

What India needs to do is to declare a moratorium on all arms imports for three years or so. That would help save billions of dollars without compromising its defence. Such action is necessary for it not only to kick its addiction but also to clean up the Augean stables.

          More broadly, given China’s deep-rooted authoritarianism, vibrant state-driven economy, accumulating military might and unconcealed aim to dominate Asia, India needs to narrow the power disparity with Beijing through a steadfast focus on developing and exploiting hard power — economic and military.

It is true that India tends to do well in areas where the state is little involved and that China’s development of hard power, in contrast, is a planned, state-driven exercise. But can India emerge as a great power without the state playing its due role in building comprehensive national power? The Indian state continues to be characterized by ad hoc policymaking. Furthermore, without its emergence as a major international manufacturing hub, India will continue to import more goods than it exports while being unable to alleviate unemployment and income disparities. India also should make increasing use of soft power to underpin its diplomacy and image.

India and China, admittedly, have built a mutual stake in maintaining the peaceful diplomatic environment on which their continued economic modernization and security depend. Both also seek to emphasize cooperation, for different reasons. Yet given their size, ambitions and proximity, competition is inevitable. This is more so because unlike Europe, where the most-powerful state, Germany, is content with being one among equals, Asia has yet to banish the threat of hegemony by a state within.  

Hindustan Times, February 6, 2007

China’s anti-satellite weapon test should spur India to plug gaps in its defences

It’s not only rocket science

By BRAHMA CHELLANEY

Three issues stand out on China’s January 11 anti-satellite (ASAT) weapon test. First, such is Beijing’s ingrained opacity that it did not own up to the test until diplomatic pressure intensified. Two, a lot of unsafe space debris likely to last years has been left in low orbit by China’s conversion of a rocket to kill one of its aging satellites. And three, the test sets a treacherous precedent by marking the first ASAT kill by any power in more than two decades.

            Whatever its motivation, the test will have lasting global impact like no other military event in recent years. While China’s message, in line with its growing geopolitical ambitions, may have been directed at America, it is its immediate neighbours that are likely to be more rattled by its precision in timing a high-speed rocket carrying a ‘kinetic’ weapon to kill a circling satellite. Although the rocket probably was the KT-1, similar to India’s PSLV, it is the overall sophistication displayed that brings down wishful thinking about averting militarization of space.

To India, the test is not just a reminder of the glaring gaps in its defences but also a wakeup call to start addressing them. That India has lagged behind its minimal-deterrent requirements is conspicuous. But instead of accelerating its space-launch and missile programmes, New Delhi has allowed the asymmetry to widen to a point where China has now laid bare India’s battlefield vulnerability.

Indeed, of all the major countries, the Chinese ASAT lethality arguably holds the greatest import for India The only counter to ASAT weapons is a capability to pay back in kind. The US and Russia, armed to their teeth, can cripple China’s communications and expose its ground assets if it dared strike their space assets. Japan, also concerned over the test, is ensconced under a US security umbrella.

India, by contrast, stands out for a binary lack of deterrent capabilities: it neither has the missile reach for a counter-offensive in the Chinese heartland nor seeks ASAT power to deter the destruction of its space assets. Fighting a 21st-century war with one’s key space assets disabled will be worse than facing an adversary with one hand tied behind. Such assets are critical not just for communications but also for imagery, navigation, interception, missile guidance and delivery of precision munitions.

To be sure, an ASAT scenario can arise only in a conflict situation. But deterrence is required precisely to avert war. India’s commitment was to building a “credible minimal deterrent”. Before long, the ‘credible’ element fell by the wayside. Now, as underscored by India’s increasing vulnerability against China, even the ‘minimal’ part is slipping.

To sustain peace with China, India needs to be able to defend peace. Can it be forgotten that India was caught napping in 1962 because the invasion was totally unexpected? Or that in 1986-87 war clouds emerged out of a clear blue sky on the Sino-Indian horizon? The key lesson of 1962 was that what matters is adversarial capability, not intent, which can change suddenly.

In today’s world, one side can impose its demands not necessarily by employing force but by building such asymmetric capabilities that a credible threat constricts the other side’s room for manoeuvre and ability to withstand pressure. Yet, curiously, the more India has fallen behind minimum deterrence, the more it has sheltered behind calcinatory and delusional rhetoric.

It is not lack of resources but a reluctance to get its priorities right that has left India far short of meeting its minimal-deterrent needs. The way India squanders resources is unspeakable. Embarrassed neither by its emergence as the world’s largest arms importer nor by its continued lack of priority to building an armament-production base at home, India intends to spend at least $20 billion over the next five years to import weapons. Such imports ostensibly will seek to equip India for the next conventional war, when what it faces increasingly are unconventional threats, the latest being ASATs.

Rather than prepare to fight war, shouldn’t India give greater priority to preventing aggression? A full-fledged war remains remote 35 years after the last one India fought. Preventing war demands systems of deterrence. Such systems have to be developed indigenously because no power will sell them. But as they come with no kickbacks, incentives to speedily develop them have been weak. India can easily cut its proposed arms imports by half and invest the savings to build deterrence.

Take another egregious case: India plans to spend $3.4 billion to land a man on the moon by 2020, with its first lunar orbiter scheduled for 2008, first unmanned lunar landing for 2010 and first manned space flight for 2014. Such an ambitious mission can be a priority for a country like China that has met its basic national-security needs and amassed $1 trillion in the world’s largest foreign-exchange hoard. But for India this is an extravagance when it still cannot launch its own telecommunications satellites. Shouldn’t India’s interests on planet earth and its outer space take precedence over a lunar dream?

If it truly aspires to be a great power, India has to meet the first test of greatness — the capacity to defend oneself independently. It is past time it calibrated its priorities to fix defence-related weaknesses. Before it can think of developing a counter-capability to shield itself from an ASAT menace, it will have to deal with two obtrusive mismatches that hobble its deterrence promise.

The first mismatch is between its satellite and launch capabilities. Greater operational capability necessitates large satellites. While India has first-rate satellite-manufacturing expertise, it still needs a foreign commercial launcher like EADS’s Ariane 5 to place its INSAT-4 series satellites in geostationary orbit. Even when the vaunted GSLV becomes operational with indigenous cryogenic technology, its 2,000-kilogram payload limit will fall short of what India’s needs even today.

The second mismatch is in the military realm — between the technical sophistication to build nuclear warheads and the extent to which they can be delivered reliably by missiles. Nearly a decade after it went overtly nuclear and almost a quarter-century after the missile programme launch, India still lacks the full reach against China. The thermonuclear warhead India tested with a controlled yield still awaits a delivery vehicle of the right payload range.

Why should a country with one-sixth of humanity to defend still seek incremental progress in the intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) field rather than aim to technologically leapfrog to an intercontinental ballistic missile? Without ICBM capability, India can be neither in the global league nor able to deter ASAT threats. If it were to marshal unwavering political will, India could, with its latent capabilities, build an ICBM in a crash programme with half the lunar-project budget and well before an Indian spacecraft lands an astronaut on the moon.

Just as several Indian companies are emerging as global players in their own right, the Indian state will be a behemoth on the world stage if it remedied its vulnerability problem. It has a lot to learn from China on how to take care of its security. Indeed it owes a thank-you to Beijing for delivering another reminder of its shortcomings. The ASAT test, at a minimum, ought to help clear the policy cobwebs arising from India’s defence indolence.

                                                                                                            b@vsnl.net