Posted on 09/01/2017 9:37:36 PM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
Has India Secretly Supplied Vietnam with 6,000-pound Supersonic Missiles?
Vietnamese state media claim Hanoi and New Delhi not only agreed on a deal to send BrahMos supersonic projectiles to Hanoi, but also say the weapons have been delivered. India’s Ministry of External Relations, though, denies such a deal exists.
When asked specifically about the acquisition of the BrahMos, Vietnamese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Thi Thu Hang said on August 18 “the procurement of defense equipment by Vietnam is consistent with the policy of peace and self-defense and is the normal practice in self-defense.”
India’s External Relations Ministry said reports of BrahMos cruise missiles reaching Hanoi were “incorrect” August 22.
Whether the deal has been completed could have major strategic implications. First, the short-range ramjet supersonic cruise missile has a 600-kilometer range that puts some Chinese-owned features in the South China Sea in range. The level of tension between Hanoi and Beijing peaked recently when the People’s Liberation Army threatened to attack Vietnamese posts in the South China Sea if a joint venture between Hanoi and Madrid to explore oil fields there wasn’t called off.
Secondly, Beijing and New Dehli have only just ended a chilling military standoff at the Doklam Plateau that began in mid-June. With bilateral relations between China and India already sensitive, the shipment of the fastest missiles on Earth to Vietnam could spark unwanted rifts.
The BrahMos is made jointly by India’s Defence Research and Development Organization and NPO Mashinostroyenia, which was formed by New Dehli and Moscow in 1998.
Vietnam remains a central aspect of India’s Act East foreign policy initiative to build influence in Southeast Asia. In the same way Beijing has cultivated ties with Pakistan, a country perennially at odds with India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has sought deeper relations with Hanoi, the Diplomat reports. In 2016, Modi made the first trip by an Indian prime minister to Vietnam in 15 years as the countries’ leaders toasted to 10 years of strategic partnership.
On August 10, US Defense Secretary James Mattis announced that a US aircraft carrier would drop anchor off Vietnam’s coast in 2018 as Vietnam becomes a more important counterweight to Beijing. And just on Friday, the Wall Street Journal broke news that the Pentagon had finalized a schedule for the US Navy to conduct freedom of navigation operations (FONOPs) in the South China Sea “to create a more consistent posture to counter China’s maritime claims there.”
Beijing has routinely bashed FONOPs, though Washington views them as a way to highlight its excessive claims in the South China Sea. US Pacific Command has completed the finishing touches on a plan to conduct two or three FONOPs over the next few months, unnamed US officials told the WSJ.
In all honesty, I can’t blame China for not liking this.
When push comes to shove though, China brought this on itself with it’s South China Sea subterfuge.
China is woefully ignorant if it thinks it’s South China Sea capers aren’t going to cost it sooner or later.
The other nations in the region, and the United States and India aren’t too happy with China playing a forceful hand.
I certainly hope so.
Vietnam and China are historic enemies. There is no love lost between. They’re the equivalent of the British-French rivalry up until WWI.
China shouldn’t have pissed off India with their South China Sea antics and their provocations in Doklam.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_China%E2%80%93India_border_standoff
It seems like a lot of countries in east Asia are historically enemies with China.
“China is woefully ignorant if it thinks it’s South China Sea capers aren’t going to cost it sooner or later.”
I think China moved forcefully and quickly because Obama demonstrated he was not going to do anything to stop them. This upset the entire region and probably everybody in the area started some sort of program or effort to counter China. Now that Trump is in office China will play nicer. It is unlikely they will, for example, actually attack Vietnam’s oil rigs. They might use sabotage, but probably nothing that can be traced to them. Note for future presidents; act weak, get trampled.
“The other nations in the region, and the United States and India aren’t too happy with China playing a forceful hand.”
It is not that China is playing a forceful hand. If it were about an incontestable claim in legitimate Chinese interests, no one would dispute a Chinese right to be forceful about it.
The problem is the “forceful hand” is being played over the very disputable spurious area drawn by China’s “nine dash line” that China claims as her territory in the South China Sea.
It does not come from any history of China’s occupation or administration of most of the islands, shoals and reefs within the “nine dash line”. That outline is the result of centuries of spurious, never acted on, claims of Chinese emperors. Chinese seafarers would return to China with tales of places they had been. The emperors administration would work with the seafarers to determine just where they had been. And sometimes, as a result, they’d put another pin on a map marking the Emperor’s claim to the place the seafarers had been. And that was 90% of all it was - marks on the Emperors maps making claims of Emperors and those pins on the maps were most all the activity that the claim had.
One reef within the “nine dash line” is less than 90 miles from the coast of Malaysia and more than 1,000 miles from any point of land of China.
It is all of THAT, that is wrong with what China is doing. Were it not for that, were it for some legitimate interest of China, her showing a “forceful hand” would be understood.
yup and don’t forget india/china border territory skirmishes.
I agree, but then it wouldn’t necessarily be a forceful hand.
It would simply be within their purview.
Yes indeed...
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