Posted on 07/26/2012 9:05:56 PM PDT by James C. Bennett
During his recent visit to New Delhi, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta highlighted the evolution of the annual Indo-U.S. naval war game Malabar from a passing exercise for the two navies’ ships into a full-scale engagement across all functional areas of naval warfare. Indeed, the steadily increasing complexity of Indo-U.S. naval force coordination has been a standout feature of an otherwise interest-driven relationship, suggesting Washington increasingly sees India as the western hinge of the U.S. pivot to Asia, with the U.S. Navy backstopping the shift from the Pacific. However, before the Indo-U.S. entente on the seas becomes a full-blown condominium, more dialogue between the two navies will be necessary.
India’s latest naval buildup, unlike a previous one in the mid-1980s, has been welcomed by the existing U.S. alliance framework in Asia at a time when major defense cuts loom in the West and China shows signs of proto-hegemony in its near waters. The degree to which the region is comfortable with the Indian naval expansion is illustrated by former Japanese Premier Shinzo Abe’s endorsement of India’s role in keeping Asian sea lines stable in a way that can reassure Vietnam, the U.S. and South Korea, if not China. India’s stated aim of acting as a net provider of security in the Indian Ocean region has been similarly endorsed by successive Pentagon documents, with the U.S. overtly calling for a greater Indian role in the Indo-Pacific.
This is a far cry from the early days of the Obama administration, when talk of a G-2 arrangement between the U.S. and China angered India. In 2009, a Chinese admiral even talked about dividing up the Indian and Pacific Oceans between the Chinese and American navies. However, rising tensions in the South China Sea have put this narrative to rest. Instead, India and the U.S., along with Japan, Australia and Vietnam, have increasingly converged around the need to maintain freedom of navigation on the high seas. And India is no longer holding back on voicing its support for keeping the South China Sea in particular an open international waterway, as recent comments by the Indian finance minister indicate.
There is also a realization in Washington that India is actually much better placed for a new peacekeeping architecture in the Indo-Pacific than China, owing to both geography and India’s specific naval capabilities. While much has been made of China’s refurbishment of the Soviet-era aircraft carrier Varyag, the Indian navy actually has more than 50 years experience operating carriers and is well on its way to positioning two carrier strike groups in the Indian Ocean starting in 2013, with a third expected by 2020. India has also leased a nuclear attack submarine from Russia, which according to one Pentagon assessment is superior to comparable Chinese submarines in terms of acoustic stealth.
These advances in power-projection platforms are proceeding side by side with the cementing of ties among the members of the Indian-led Indian Ocean Naval Symposium, which is facilitating Indian military deployments in the region. India today provides maritime oversight to the Seychelles, the Maldives and Mauritius. It also patrols the Mozambique coast and has listening facilities in Madagascar and berthing rights in Oman, Qatar and Djibouti. The Indian navy is set to emerge as the chief provider of hydrographic data to Kenya, Tanzania and even Saudi Arabia. In the eastern Indian Ocean, India’s Andaman and Nicobar Command has the assets to surveillance seed all the key chokepoints in the Indonesian archipelago.
This carefully constructed network of relationships may also give India the confidence to accommodate a U.S. Naval presence in the Indian Ocean to which it previously objected. Neither the use of American drones operating out of the Seychelles to target insurgents in the Horn of Africa nor the U.S. presence in Diego Garcia is an unsettling prospect for India anymore.
To the contrary, India’s own expanding posture coupled with the U.S. presence ensures that there is very little space for China to fill in a noncooperative manner. In fact, Chinese analysts have begun calling for expanded maritime cooperation in the Indo-Pacific as well.
One area where India will continue to oppose a heightened U.S. presence is the Bay of Bengal, as demonstrated by the alarm in New Delhi over reports in late May that the U.S. Navy might be looking to base ships in Chittagong, Bangladesh, where they would be able to surveil Indian missile facilities in the area.
However, Washington seems to be sensitive to New Delhi’s red lines, and the State Department quickly denied any plans to base in Chittagong. More broadly, the U.S. pivot to Asia, while projected to move 60 percent of the U.S. fleet to the Pacific Ocean, seeks to maintain a dynamic rolling presence rather than one revolving around permanent bases, something that India will be quite comfortable with.
For its part, the U.S. will want India to demonstrate its acceptance of such a posture by signing the Logistics Supply Agreement, which would allow both sides to use each other’s facilities with a net settlement of costs taking place over a given time period. However, given India’s reluctance to join any overt bloc framework, it is unlikely that India will sign on. More likely is an extension of replenishment facilities to the U.S. outside the framework of a formal agreement.
Indeed, both India and the U.S. will be wary of provoking any knee-jerk countermeasures from China, one of the key reasons why Washington and New Delhi are seeking a trilateral India-U.S.-China dialogue. Nevertheless, it is in the naval sphere that Washington is most inclined to make strategic transfers to New Delhi, and a U.S.-India naval condominium could be the best way for both sides to achieve their strategic objectives heading into the new century.
Saurav Jha studied economics at Presidency College, Calcutta, and Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He writes and researches on global energy issues and clean energy development in Asia. His first book for Harper Collins India, "The Upside Down Book of Nuclear Power," was published in January 2010. He also works as an independent consultant in the energy sector in India. He can be reached at sjha1618@gmail.com.
Photo: Sailors assigned to the guided-missile destroyer USS Halsey stand in ranks as the Indian navy destroyer Sapura pulls alongside during a Malabar 2012 exercise, April 11, 2012 (U.S. Navy photo by Spc. 3rd Class Christopher Farrington).
That phony inflation “calculation” never gets old.
Won't that upset Argentina?
If the peaks of the graph entitled “Unemployment Rate - - -” are extrapolated and compared to the rates of change from the previous valleys, the probability of an asymptotic rise in the unemployment rate should not be unexpected on a six to seven year cycle.
IOW, on the blue line, Sept, 2000 = 2 % jump in Un. Rate; Sept. 2006 = 8 % jump in Un. Rate.
If the blue line peaks at 3/2003 and 5/2011 are equivalent, then 3 years from now there should be a valley and then a jump in the unemployment rate much greater than the jump in 2008-9 caused by the FHA Bankruptcy.
The jump comes a little sooner on the gray or red lines.
BTW, isn’t the Federal Government still stupidly insuring home loans with taxpayer dollars? Have they learned NOTHING from the 2008 Bursting of The Fannie Bubble?
BTW, BTW, what does “SGS” Alternate stand for in real words?
symptom, not cause.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7aXJ3VcmXw
Compare this China city to detroit and other U.S. declining hell holes where they can't even keep the lights on many places. 
China's 35% growth since Obama became president
China to build 50,000 skyscrapers by 2025.
These 12 hellholes cities are what the rest of America will look like soon
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2907789/posts?q=1&;page=101
And many even here say that the U.S. produces so much and is ahead of China. That's bs look at the videos:
China had all this growth at our expense .They stole U.S. technology and sold their crap to America. and used our natural resources to do it. 25 years ago 99% of people in China were peasants living as they did 1000 years ago. Now they far surpassed U.S. : look the videos if you doubt. Fact is the U.S. has unlimited natural resources like oil, oil shale, natural gas, coal, iron ore etc. China has very poor natural resources but yet they ship iron and coal from the Australia build products in china and then ship them to the U.S. and when the U.S. could build all the products we use here because we have the natural resources and wouldn't have to ship them all the way around the world. something is clearly wrong here that China is doing this and we aren't . something has to change but many here say no keep things the same. wtf? It's easy to reverse this .
1. fight fire with fire : do to china what china has done to the U.S. : currency manipulation, import restrictions , etc( hundreds of things China has done).
2. numerically limit imports of china products and other countries. tariffs also
3. reduce regulations and taxes on American companies. that means eliminate the EPA and IRS and only revenue of governments at all levels should only be tariffs and sales taxes period. Then this will allow companies to drill for our own oil etc.
Anyone country can show propaganda, but what I remember most regarding China were pictures from a protest on highway in the middle of nowhere.
That was ONE SWEET HIGHWAY, beautifully paved, shoulders and curbs - no staging in that picture. That pretty much told me it was game over versus them - they’ve won.
There is a huge real estate bubble in China and it is already starting to burst.
Just like what happened to the USA in 2007.
In the first quarter of 2009, Chinese banks lent the equivalent of 35% of GDP in 3 months.
The rural exodus needed the property speculation initially to ensure that the cities were being built fast enough with private investment.
The problem is once a bubble is created it has to pop and the speculators who earned millions will not take the pain but the people will.
China’s been riding an investment boom over the last three years that everyone recognised was unsustainable and it is now bursting.
You are absolutely correct about China eating our lunch. Only a person who has extensive business dealings with China can fix the problem. A community organizer from Chicago ain’t gonna do it. But voters are too stupid to elect someone like Trump who DOES NOT NEED CHINESE CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS and has done extensive deals with China, and has large cajones can fix the problem.
Well yes Trump would do just fine. :D
He’s on Mittens’ side too.
Many thanks for all of this information! WOW!! SGS, and even “Moral Hazard” defined!
Since the Fannie Bubble burst in 2008, I have watched a lot of TV shows about economics, especially CNBC.
NONE, repeat N O N E of any of the talking heads or their expert guests have EVER defined what “ Moral hazard “ is defined as being, even though the term is mentioned multiple times a day.
Thanks for the hotlinks, I will check them out after my vay-kay.
You need to go back and read about how effective the tariffs were in the mid thirties.
We need to stop government spending. We need to drop corp. taxes. We need to get out of our foreign wars. We need to get our energy situation squared away. We need to stop babying our population.
Your plan would be ok, if there were still facilities and skilled labor to take up the slack. And, I hope you have a ton of extra income, because the price of everything would double in your world.
Enjoy your vay-kay!
Moonshot925, the problem with your ‘theory’ is that no work = no consumer demand.
‘Free trade’ with free movement of capital and labor unfettered by ethics or patriotism was promoted by Marx as a way to speed up global communism for a reason.
The problem with your answer is that we do not have the facilities or trained skilled workers. I don’t mean people willing to work—I mean enough people with the skills to make anything.
And the ramp up time would be years. So between implementing tariffs and getting production up will result in a scarcity problem that would tank our economy.
Also, the resultant reprisal tariffs would sink us faster.
The point about not hiring folks without experience is nothing new—that has been going on for eons.
The problem with your answer is that we do not have the facilities or trained skilled workers. I don’t mean people willing to work—I mean enough people with the skills to make anything.
And the ramp up time would be years. So between implementing tariffs and getting production up will result in a scarcity problem that would tank our economy.
Also, the resultant reprisal tariffs would sink us faster.
The point about not hiring folks without experience is nothing new—that has been going on for eons.
And from the management perspective, aside from teachers there is not another group of entitled workers worse than nurses.
.
The Maldives are off the Indian coast.
Argentina claims what they call the Malvinas (Falklands).
So no, it won’t upset the Argentinians if India patrols the seas off the Maldives.
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