Author: Chidanand Rajghatta, Times
News Network
Publication: The Times of India
- Internet Edition
Date: November 17, 2001
URL: http://www.timesofindia.com/articleshow.asp?art_id=1485924249
Washington: In an occasional jab
at belittling Pakistan, BJP foreign policy experts like to point out that
long before that country and Afghanistan came into existence, India shared
a common border with the Persian civilisation. Now something new is afoot
at the start of the 21st century. The way things are going, the United
States could soon be straddling India and Iran, creating an unprecedented
American pocket of influence in the region.
On the eve of Prime Minister Vajpayee's
visit to Washington DC, his second in two years, Indian strategists are
suddenly having to weigh the consequences of this unexpected development
on its north-western borders. It is now beginning to seem that apart from
being a frontline state and an ally of the United States, Pakistan could
end up being an American colony.
With each passing day, Islamabad
is having to give up more and more air bases to the US war against terrorism.
More and more US soldiers are being inducted into the region. If the history
of such expeditions is any indication, then American forces, spooks, and
advisors will be around in the region for a long time.
Indian military planners are already
beginning to reflect on what it means to have US air bases, aircraft carriers,
spy satellites, drones, and eavesdroppers in the neighbourhood. Even at
the height of the American influence in Pakistan in the 1980s, Washington
did not have such an array of technical inputs and human intelligence in
place.
At any other time, such an air and
sea armada would have caused the Indian intelligentsia to break out in
rashes. But these are extraordinary times. The feeling in Indian circles
is that the return of US influence over Pakistan may actually help New
Delhi's cause by reigning in an unstable and unruly neighbour.
"It is an entirely difference scenario
from the 1970s when the US actually tilted towards Pakistan. Now, for its
own safety, Pakistan needs to be 'righted'," says a senior Indian military
strategist now in Washington.
To illustrate the changing geo-strategic
dynamics in the region, the soldier-official who preferred not to be identified
by name, pointed out that even as Prime Minister Vajpayee set out to Washington
over the weekend via Russia, the American destroyer USS O'Brien, was steaming
in to dock at Chennai.
The last time the Seventh Fleet,
of which O'Brien is a part, sailed in those waters in 1971, it had distinctly
hostile intentions. "Things have changed; and things are changing as we
speak," says the official.
Such changes are reflected in the
exchanges between the two sides almost every week. In an interview to this
newspaper last week, Admiral Dennis Blair, Commander-in-Chief of the US
Pacific Command, indicated that navy-to-navy cooperation would form the
most significant component of the Indo-US strategic ties.
Admiral Dennis Blair, who is due
to visit India for the third time in three years later this month, also
spoke of intense cooperation in information technology that the US hoped
to have with India in the military sphere. The same mantra was repeated
in New Delhi on Monday when Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld spoke of
India as a "critical country in the high-tech world."
For once, Indian officials and planners
seem acutely conscious of the need to be the receipt of high-tech from
the USand not just the giver. Addressing the on-going exchanges between
the two sides on defence and military cooperation, one official said New
Delhi would be seeking "technologies instead of platforms" from Washington.
"We don't want to end up with finished
systems which will make us dependent on the whims and vagaries of the American
sanctions systems. We would rather have the technologies and build them
into our own systems," the official explained.
Such a dialogue will begin in earnest
when a group of experts from the two sides under the rubric the Defence
Policy Group meet later this year in New Delhi. Although the mechanism
was established several years ago, the group has not met after the sanctions
regime came into effect following the May 1998 nuclear tests.
