United States, Japan and India: An Axis of the East

Tokyo: Japan, the United States and India are likely to carry out a joint military drill in the Pacific, off Japan's coast in a move that would be a first-of-its-kind. According to a Japanese report, the Pentagon will call on Japan and India to participate in the military exercise off the US naval base at Yokosuka in Japan on 16 April. The report did not cite sources. However, the development would appear to have been confirmed by the Japanese ambassador to India in an interview with Indian daily The Asian Age.

The Asian Age report cites Ambassador Yasukuni Enoki as having said that it would be a large exercise. To date, India and Japan have cooperated at the coast guard level, with joint exercises in the areas of maritime search and rescue and anti-piracy, ever since 2000. They have yet to engage each other in naval exercises, however.

If confirmed by the respective governments, the move will come amid heightened concerns about China's military build-up as well as escalating tensions in the Straits of Taiwan. It may be stressed here though that a formal announcement in this regard has yet to be made by the three governments.

The Straits of Taiwan
The communist regime in Beijing announced a massive hike in defence spending for 2007 only yesterday (March 5). In this regard it may be mentioned that China has seen double-digit increases in its military spending nearly every year, for more than 15 years. The hike in defence spending also comes a month or so after Beijing carried out an anti-satellite test, which succeeded in re-igniting fears about the militarization of space.

The US had, at the beginning of the month, also announced sales of a fresh batch of air-to-air and air-to-ground missiles for Taiwan, which led to a fresh barrage of fire and brimstone rhetoric being issued from the Chinese mainland. Countering mainland rhetoric with some of their own, the Taiwan Chinese also protested the fact that large amounts of flotsam were washing up on its shores, all of it apparently emanating from the mainland.

From flotsam, matters have progressed further with reports (March 6) now suggesting that Taiwan has tested a 1,000 km (620 mile) range missile capable of targeting mainland China's financial centres, Shanghai and Hong Kong. If true, the world's IRBM club has just got itself a new member.

A Shinto legacy
Japan and the US are both long-time allies, with the US maintaining military bases in the land of the rising sun ever since it capitulated at the end of WWII. Though India has held exercises with Japanese and US maritime units separately, it would be the first time that it would participate in such a trilateral event.

If true, the move would certainly be a startling one for international observers, who would now be looking for some precedence or rationale, at least as far as India is concerned. On the face of it, the move pitchforks India directly into the kind of big-power game playing that it has assiduously avoided ever since it won independence in 1947.

A straw in the wind would be the talks that prime minister Manmohan Singh had with his Japanese counterpart, Shinzo Abe, in Tokyo last December, where they also agreed to enhance defence-related cooperation, amongst other niceties of a bilateral engagement. These included an agreement for an early start to talks on a free trade deal between the two countries.

Abe, reportedly an old-time India admirer, has stated in no uncertain terms that he considers building an enhanced relationship with India as one of the cornerstones of a new policy for his country. An upgraded military muscle for his island nation is also one of Abe's policy cornerstones. He sees no reason why Japan should continue with a low military profile that is not in keeping with its large economic clout around the world.

Abe has also consistently refused to heed China's sensitivities on a number of emotive WWII related issues. His refusal to do so is an attempt on his part to shed some post-war legacies that he finds unpalatable. An enhanced strategic relationship with India, which serves to disconcert China, would do his new policy initiatives no harm.

The waters of Makran
The Indian Navy, along with its sister services, has already been involved in a series of familiarization exercises with the US and Western armed forces for some time now. The Navy has its own compulsions, in terms of newly evolved doctrines, that need to be put into effect. An enhanced 'blue-water' (international waters) presence is one such and it would only be too eager to display its own blue-water ambitions to match those of the Chinese Navy.

More than blue water doctrinism, there is another message that the Indian government, and the Indian Navy in particular, may be interested in conveying to Beijing. The obtrusive presence of Beijing in the affairs of the Indian sub-continent has been a long time irritant for New Delhi. In the last two decades more than the US and its Western allies, the usual suspects, it has been China that has been shoring up Pakistani policies, as well as its conventional and strategic defence capabilities.

A case in point is the new deep-sea port at Gwadar on the coast of Makran in the Baluchistan province of Pakistan. A pact in 2002 between the two countries, China and Pakistan, saw China committing itself to investing in and constructing the port. Four years later the port is ready and due for inauguration between March 22 and 24 this year.

Located in the Arabian Sea on the mouth of the Persian Gulf, Gwadar is slated to facilitate the movement of goods from China and Central Asian Republics (CARs) to the countries of the Persian Gulf, West Asia, East Africa and the Indian Ocean and beyond.

Given the traditional lack of any central control over this tribal region all such talk of trade and connectivity remains an academic issue. Chinese engineers and workers have lost their lives trying to get the port constructed, even as the entire Baluchistan province remains a vast military garrison. It has remained one for as long as any Baluchi, old or young, can remember.

Gen Musharraf in a visit to the province at the beginning of this month devoted half his speech promising prosperity to the populace and the other half threatening it with dire consequences if it continued to indulge in acts of hostility against the central government. Talk of trade and access to the CARs may well fructify and become real at some point of time. However, given the latent and overt volatilities that the region displays, it is very unlikely that much trade or prosperity is likely to flow into the region in the foreseeable future.

Strategic straits
So what does Gwadar achieve? At a practical level it allows the Pakistani Navy a safer harbour, from the unwelcome attentions of the Indian Navy, than Karachi. The vulnerability of Karachi, a traditional base of the Pakistani Navy, got exposed during hostilities between India and Pakistan in 1971. Located 450 km west of Karachi, and just 70 km from the Iranian border, Gwadar makes a strike on Pakistani naval assets so much more difficult for Indian forces.

Strategically located close to the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, which sees the passage of more than 13 million barrels of oil on a daily basis, Gwadar also provides Pakistan, and any Chinese naval unit that should be located there as part of an understanding between the two countries, a great opportunity to play spoilsport in the games that are played out in the Gulf. Since most of India's oil is also sourced from the region, Gwadar provides both these traditionally hostile countries the platform to throttle its supplies.

In the Bay of Bengal, on the other side of the Arabian Sea, China has maintained a maritime reconnaissance and electronic intelligence station on the Great Coco Island, which lie about 45 km to the north of the Andaman Islands. These islands were leased to the Chinese by Myanmar's military government in 1994.

The Coco Islands are located at a crucial point in the shipping lanes that access the Malacca Strait. They are also in close proximity to Indian territory. Reportedly the base also allows the Chinese to keep tabs on the Indian missile testing facilities at Chandipur-on-Sea in the eastern coastal State of Orissa.

Ironically, the Coco islands were given to the then government of Burma by India at the time of independence, a decision that would have come back to haunt South Block in 1994, when a subservient military government in Yangon handed them over to the Chinese.

Axis of the East
An Indian naval contingent landing up at Yokosuka for trilateral exercises with Japanese and US forces is not going to reverse any of these developments, which are of long standing. For that matter the report may likely be denied outright. But even at the level of mischief it holds a teasing potential for both India and Japan. They can begin the process of engaging each other at the level of realpolitik, especially since the identifiable threat is common to both, even as the US continues to play the games that it has always played.

China is almost through with its game of influence building in the region, both through overt and covert means. Its area of influence has an impressive spread that circles its vast boundaries from the Far East to the CARs and South and South East Asia. It is indisputably in a position of dominance in all these areas, especially when compared to its Asian competitors. It can now only hope to capitalize on its long-standing efforts.

For India and Japan, however, the game would have just begun, given their aversion, or their inability, to play it earlier.