INDIA MUST PREPARE FOR A US-CHINA MILITARY SHOWDOWN

To many, a US-China conflict may seem to belong to the domain of fiction or Hollywood movies. But such optimism may be an illusion.

The mood in the capital city of Japan is sombre, and while the majority of his people cling to the hope that military conflict involving Japan is impossible or at least avoidable in the modern age, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe knows otherwise. The risk of conflict between US and Chinese forces is rising, and Abe is, therefore, working to ensure that the post-1945 legal limits on the Japanese military get removed, so that a robust defence or attack may speedily get carried out by his forces when and where needed. The “Self-Defence Forces” of Japan are a formidable force, especially the Navy, and Abe is fast-tracking operational congruence with India, so that the ease of joint operations becomes as smooth as that between the United States and Japan. Prime Minister Narendra Modi was handed over a $75 billion currency swap agreement in Tokyo this week, so that he would be in better political shape to ensure closer working relations with Japan in a context where relations between Washington and Beijing are entering storm levels. The South China Sea; the Taiwan Straits; and the Korean peninsula are just three of the theatres in which an accidental or impulsive move by local military commanders on either side could trigger an exchange of fire between ships and between aircraft. As for the Himalayan frontier, Washington is impatiently waiting for the bureaucracy in India to go ahead with the signing of BECA (a geospatial data agreement) so that the legal decks get cleared for full scope cooperation between Washington and Delhi in the exchange of input on the activities of countries that both regard with suspicion. Subsequently, the question will be taken up of ensuring that the Indian Army be given the equipment needed to take on any comer in combat. The US is moving towards shifting some of its defence production facilities to India, but this is running up against opposition within the Lutyens Zone that is fanned by weapons dealers from countries such as France and Russia, who would lose out were India to source a high and rising proportion of its defence import needs from the US, a development that would make geopolitical sense. Another US effort could be to expand the “Five Eyes” signals intelligence alliance into the Six Eyes, so that India gets added to the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK. Among the locations which are suitable for the setting up of tracking facilities capable of covering the Indian Ocean are some of the islands in the Andaman chain, while facilities on the west coast of India could keep a watch on the Arabian Sea. In this militarily binary world, India needs to choose between the US and China as its preferred security partner. Beijing appears to have foreclosed the matter by continuing to expand its hugely expensive “all weather” relationship with the Pakistan military, while knowing from the start that the only two enemy targets of that force are Afghanistan and India. That Pakistan was for long a treaty ally of the US was of no concern to China even during the 1960s, well before the 1972 Nixon-Mao rapprochement between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the US. This was because Beijing was confident (through understandings reached in secret with GHQ Rawalpindi) that at no time—and despite Pakistan’s frequent promises to the US to “fight communism”— would the Pakistan military go on attack mode against the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). However, Pakistan did provide facilities for US