Posted on 03/13/2007 11:06:45 AM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
The ME may soon feel India's growing power
By Eric Margolis Tue, 13 Mar 2007, 11:32:00
The Bush Administration's serial blunders in the Middle East have not only seriously undermined American influence over the region, they have opened the way for new, emerging superpowers to vie for its energy resources. Energy security has become the primary and most immediate strategic concern of Asia's two rising giants, India and China. The Middle East will soon feel the full force of this growing competition.
China's and India's blazing nine per cent plus economic growth rate has pushed them well beyond their original estimates of energy needs, and is even causing tightening supplies in certain sectors. As a result, alarm bells are ringing in Delhi and Beijing and an urgent, often unseemly scramble for new sources of oil is under way. Last fall, I attended the Chinese-African summit in Beijing, the culmination of a masterful campaign by China to lock up a large chunk of Africa's energy and mineral resources. China, which efficiently integrated its energy and military policies, used financial and military aid, and a lot of flattering personal diplomacy, to secure oil concessions in Africa and Asia. Indian officials in Delhi and the business community here in Bombay/Mumbai are deeply worried China may soon have secured all available remaining oil supplies not already controlled by the United States. They are clamouring for action to secure energy supplies for India to assure its continued economic growth and expanding military power.
India's modest domestic oil production has been waning, forcing it to import 70 per cent of its oil. India's imports account for 3.2 per cent of world oil imports; China's 7.6 per cent; the US 25 per cent; and Europe 26 per cent.
India, quite clearly, is being left way behind in the stampede to secure energy supplies. Its oil imports will need to double by 2030 from the current 2.4 million bbls daily to sustain growth. By that year, China's imports will also double and reach 12 million bbls daily. Since most of this oil will originate from the Gulf or Indonesia, both Asian superpowers are rushing to deploy deep water naval forces to protect their oil lifelines, just as the US has done since World War II.
China is building a fleet of modern attack submarines, some of them nuclear-powered, adding missile-armed surface combatants, and extending the range of its land-based naval aviation. The People's Navy has gone from being a weak 'brown water' coastal force to a true 'blue-water' navy that could even challenge the US 7th Fleet in a clash over Taiwan.
But China is unable to project naval power westward through the Strait of Malacca into the vast Indian Ocean and to the Gulf due to its lack of bases and air cover. Here, India holds a major advantage. India's modern aircraft carrier, long-ranged shore-based aviation, and modern, Russian-supplied attack submarines and frigates armed with deadly cruise missiles will give India maritime dominance over the entire Indian Ocean from the coast of East Africa to Australia. Only the US Navy could challenge India's sway over the Indian Ocean.
But China's securing of port rights in Burma, warm relations with East African states, and expanding influence in energy-rich Central Asia, worries India. At the same time, India's surging naval power has deeply alarmed Pakistan, whose oil lifeline through the port of Karachi could be quickly severed by an Indian naval blockade.
Having come late to the Monopoly-like game of grabbing as many key oil properties as possible, India is now racing to make up for lost time. Being a democracy prone to debilitating party politics and infighting, India cannot operate with the ruthless strategic efficiency and speed as Communist China, but it knows time is running short. What this means is that some time soon, India's strategic energy and political interests are going to start actively competing, if not openly colliding, in the Middle East with those of the region's hegemon, the United States. In fact, it is surprising that India has been so slow to recognise that its national security will demand a deeper involvement in the Gulf and greater Middle East. While India's strategists are well aware of this fact, its politicians have been slow to understand just how dependant their growing economy will become on imported oil.
India's surging economy and military will need access to Arab and Iranian oil which, after all, is almost next door. Thanks to Washington's self-destructive Middle East policies, this door is now open to India. The five-way contest between the US, India, Japan, Europe and China for Asia and Africa's energy resources promises to be fascinating. Welcome to the new Great Game.
(Eric S. Margolis is a veteran American journalist and contributing foreign editor of The Toronto Sun)
© Copyright 2003 by The New Nation
Margolis is known to have anti-US & anti-Indian views hence the alarmist tone....
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In a few decades that could be.
But not yet.
Here we go with another delusional terrorist sympathizer journalist. Never before that the US has so much power and influence over the Middle East affairs as it has right now. The US forces control two Middle Eastern countries, have bases in four more, and they simply have absolute and total control of the seas and skies in that area. The US liberated 50 millions people in Iraq and Afghanistan, deposed the terrorist and brutal regimes of Saddam and the Taliban, killed over 70,000 terrorists in Iraq and 10,000 more in Afghanistan, captured tens of thousands of terrorists, forced the Syrian terrorist regime to get out of Lebanon after 30 years of brutal occupation, and yet this idiot, think that the US has little influence in the Middle East.
If the Chinese Navy is similar has the same quality as their manufactured goods, then I do not fear them at all even in a hundred year from now.
Two superpowers with over 90% of their populations living in such a horrible poverty that we cannot even imagine here in the US. Was there a similar superpower before who has similar massive poverty issue? Correct, we called it the Soviet Union.
The Mid-East (and North Africa) already feel the influence of India. For example Indian media (films, music, etc) has totally inundated those areas in the past 10-15 years. Indian culture is much more readily adaptable to ME culture. The effects of Bollywood are seen everywhere.
India should be a staunch US ally, can't really understand why it isn't. We had two major office buildings blown up by Islamist terrorists, they had a bombing/mass murder in their equivalent of the Capitol Dome by Islamist terrorists. They also experience Islamist terror in general just about on the same level as Israel.
They are a democracy and they face the same terror threat we do, if not more so with Pakistan on its border and the Arab lands just a couple of doors down, and Indonesia and the Southern Philippines just off to the Southeast. They are also much more within range of potential delivery systems for Iran's nukes.
And, if they do start attempting to make inroads in the Middle East, they'll become another target of the same anti-infidel demagoguery we are and terrorism within India will very likely increase, at least after the ME countries sober up from their Anybody-But-America honeymoon phase and realize India is an even bigger infidel-based democracy than the US.
So I don't get why there is any daylight between the US and India at all. We should be Siamese twins.
I think India is an ally.
They can vie all they want. I don't think the guy gets it. We aren't there to "lock up" mideast energy resources. To the degree that energy considerations enter into it, we are there to make sure the oil flows, period. Most of the oil is inevitably going to go to Europe or Asia, as a matter of geography, and thats fine. Oil is not completely fungible, but its nearly enough so as to be the same thing. Selling to anyone is the same as selling to us.
I think in the Chavez School of Economics, they teach that if you sell to China instead of the US, it somehow hurts the US. It doesn't work that way.
India has its own ambitions in the region. During Indira Gandhi's reign, Indian forces came close to launching an attack on Diego Garcia, in order to annex it. India's approach to foreign (and economic) policy is more zero-sum than Uncle Sam's. They tend to flatter developing countries and give Western countries the finger. It's part of the Indian conceit that Western imperialism was the worst thing to happen to India. Being part of the West, the US is, of course, on the firing line.
Well, the Marxist school of economics teaches that purchases of commodities at anything other than sky-high prices or prices that are higher than today's = theft.
"They tend to flatter developing countries and give Western countries the finger. It's part of the Indian conceit that Western imperialism was the worst thing to happen to India. Being part of the West, the US is, of course, on the firing line."
In that case China and India should have been allies no? Cuz China very much thinks the same way.
Personally, I hope the Arabs drown in the stuff, and end up once again riding around the desert cutting each other's throats.
Actually, no. A common world-view is not enough to sustain an alliance. There has got to be an appetite for shared sacrifice, typically reinforced by a common culture or ethnic kinship. This was what propelled the US into a war with Germany after Pearl Harbor that took up 80% of its war resources, despite the fact that it was Japan that attacked the US. With neither a common culture nor a common ethnic origin to bind the two nations together, India wants no part of China's problems, and China wants no part of India's problems.
We might call both China and India part of "Asia", but Asia is merely an ancient Greek concept defined to mean neither Africa nor Europe. "Asia" is not a coherent region in the way Europe is. The seeds of the modern European states and cultures lie in ancient Greece. Asia is more like four or five different civilizations (Sinic, Indic, Turkic, Iranic, Semitic) all conflated into one geographical entity. Europe, which is more or less a single civilization, has problems finding common cause. It's therefore no surprise that the Chinese and the Indians would have real difficulty initiating and maintaining an alliance, whatever their world-views on certain topics. It is also the reason an American alliance with India would mainly consist of India being there for us when they need us.
Links please.
"It is also the reason an American alliance with India would mainly consist of India being there for us when they need us."
Why so? And why not America being there for India when US needs India?
From the syallabus on the Masters Course in International Relations at the Tom Clancy University of Codswallop.
Lol!
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