A wave of defence diplomacy

P. S. Suryanarayana
The Hindu, March 10

Is India's proposed naval exercise with the U.S. and Japan a step towards a new linkage among the three countries?

EVIDENT BEHIND India's latest plans for a series of naval exercises, along the Pacific coastline of East Asia, is its unusual defence diplomacy of engaging several major powers at the same time. The United States is treated as a Pacific power in this scenario while Russia and China remain on India's naval horizon.

Two of the planned events stand out for their potential to serve as political messages to major powers — even if India has not designed the exercises to trumpet its new closeness to the U.S. and Japan in the East Asian theatre. India intends to team up, for the first time, with "pacifist" Japan and the U.S. for a naval exercise off Yokosuka, a Japanese base, on April 16. Of equal or greater importance is the plan for a U.S.-India naval exercise, the latest in the Malabar series, off Japan itself and not far from China. This is expected to take place before the trilateral effort involving Japan too.

Five Indian Navy vessels — the state-of-the-art destroyer INS Mysore, two less formidable destroyers, a missile corvette, and a tanker — are expected to participate in the U.S.-India exercise for about a week until April 12. After that, three ships, including INS Mysore, will make a "friendship port call" in Japan.

Visit to China

The other two destroyers will, meanwhile, sail to China for a "goodwill port call" and a passage exercise. This aspect of the planning acquires importance as a possible message that India wants to stay engaged with China even while building new bridges with Japan.

The call at a Japanese port is being programmed as a major event in 2007, the designated "Japan-India Friendship Year." India and China celebrated 2006 as their Friendship Year.

No political label has been given to the April 16 U.S.-India-Japan "goodwill" exercise. Of the three, India and Japan participate in the relatively new East Asia Summit process, which includes China but excludes the U.S. Somewhat offsetting such politics is the fact that New Delhi and Beijing independently engage Washington in bilateral naval exercises.

After this trilateral drill, the five Indian warships, presently allocated for the proposed Malabar exercise with the U.S. off Japanese waters, will visit Vladivostok for a port call and a follow-up Russia-India naval event before April-end. Thereafter, the Indian vessels are expected to split into two groups again. One will pay a goodwill visit to the Philippines, while the other should sail to Vietnam for a similar purpose. Both events are scheduled for early May. In recent years, India has come to regard these two Southeast Asian states as emerging regional players.

The entire mission will be preceded by the regular Singapore-India maritime exercise in the final week of March. And, it will be capped by India's participation in the international maritime-defence exhibition in Singapore and in the multilateral Western Pacific Naval Symposium-related exercises in the second half of May.

After the navies of the U.S., India, Japan, and Australia formed a "core group" to help Indonesia face the tsunami crisis of end-2004, the four were regarded as potential allies or new friends with compatible strategic goals.

Last June, Australian Defence Minister Brendan Nelson told this correspondent that no moves were made, until then, to form a coalition involving these four. Last December, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe agreed to hold "consultations" to start a new "dialogue" among India, Japan, and "other like-minded countries in the Asia Pacific region." The U.S. and Australia fall in this category.

East Asian diplomats think that the likely goal of Dr. Singh and Mr. Abe is the formation of either a new sub-group of globalisation or a political caucus. One option, in this scenario, is to add India to the existing "trilateral strategic dialogue" that involves the U.S., Japan, and Australia. Another avenue is the formation of a dialogue forum consisting of India, the U.S., and Japan. A possible objective is to match the increasingly vibrant network that links India, China, and Russia. The question is whether the prospective trilateral naval exercise is a step towards a new linkage among India, the U.S., and Japan.