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2 India holds key in NATO's world
view By M K Bhadrakumar
Summing up the 10-year ties between Russia
and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO),
a Russian military analyst wrote, "Relations
between the two are a marriage of convenience,
where husband and wife live together, often
socialize with others as a couple, and show every
sign of respect for each other.
"At the
same time, they sleep in different rooms, and have
separate households and personal expenses. Each
side is
primarily pursuing its
interests, and although the couple is formally
married, they cannot be called a real family."
A portrait of arranged marriages wouldn't
unduly perturb Indians. But it would be a sobering
thought for Delhi how shockingly brief Russia's
dalliance with NATO turned out to be when it
rubbed against the realities of life.
As
NATO steps up its courtship of India, Delhi too
will have to think about the kind of relationship
it desires. Not surprisingly, when Indian Foreign
Minister Pranab Mukherjee and NATO secretary
general Jaap de Hoof Scheffer met in New York on
September 28, both sides chose to keep their
landmark 45-minute meeting on a low key.
Washington genuinely seeks a NATO-India
partnership. As NATO retools for the 21st century
for new missions in Africa and South Asia, and as
it advances across the Middle East toward the
Indian Ocean, looking for global partnerships
(numbering 20 at present), India inevitably
figures in its agenda. This became starkly evident
last month.
NATO exercises in the
Indian Ocean There was something very
poignant about the NATO naval force making its
historic visit to the Indian Ocean last month. The
NATO maritime mission involved ships from six
member countries, which set sail from Europe on
July 30. The 12,500 nautical mile route involved
circumnavigating Africa. Though they could have
taken a direct route via the Suez Canal, they
preferred to come hugging the west coast of Africa
and on to the Niger Delta, gingerly rounding the
Horn of Africa - just as the first Portuguese and
Dutch ships came to India's Malabar Coast in the
15th century.
Ships from Portugal, the
Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Canada and the
United States, forming NATO's so-called Standing
Naval Maritime Group, one of four such groups of
the Western alliance, undertook the two-month
mission. After making port in Cape Town, the ships
entered the Indian Ocean in the first week of
September and conducted exercises off the coast of
Somalia, and arrived in the Seychelles for a
four-day port visit from September 14-18. They
re-entered the Mediterranean via the Red Sea last
week.
A NATO announcement said the
deployment in the Indian Ocean aimed to
"demonstrate the alliance's continuing ability to
respond to emerging crisis situations on a global
scale and foster close links with regional navies
and other maritime organizations". Scheffer said,
"Maritime security, ensuring the safe passage of
shipping and supporting a coordinated
international approach to protect energy supplies
are high priorities for NATO."
NATO's
global partnerships The initiative follows
NATO's summit meeting in Riga, Latvia, in November
last year, where the focus was on the alliance's
switch to a global strategy, concentrating on
operations outside its traditional zone of
responsibility, responding to global challenges
and international security and stability.
As the newly appointed US ambassador to
NATO, Victoria Nuland, said in the runup to the
Riga summit, the "post-Cold War honeymoon" is over
and NATO needs to develop capabilities "wherever
and whenever they may arise". "NATO must be the
place where we talk about all the issues affecting
our future - the Middle East, Iraq, North Korea,
China, Iran, just to name a few," she added.
The NATO mission to the Indian Ocean has
been undertaken hardly six months ahead of the
April 2008 summit meeting of NATO in Bucharest,
Romania, where the agenda is expected to be the
alliance's further enlargement as well as
strengthening its capacity and its reach to
undertake missions with partners around the globe.
The emphasis is, to quote Daniel Fried,
the US assistant secretary for European and
Eurasian Affairs, from testimony in the House
Committee on Foreign Affairs in Washington in
July, "in action in key operations in the world
... [since] it is the greatest security instrument
of the trans-Atlantic democratic community to deal
with security challenges today and tomorrow". He
listed these security challenges facing NATO as
including violent extremism, terrorism, nuclear
proliferation, failed states, cyber attacks and
insecurity of energy resources.
Africa
calling The so-called global challenges
are in one way or the other evident in many of the
countries of the Indian Ocean region, which,
therefore, becomes a theater of priority for the
alliance. But that's not the whole picture.
The leitmotif of the renewed scramble for
Africa by Western powers is largely to be traced
to the growing Chinese challenge to Western
dominance over Africa and the requirement to
protect oil. Almost 15% of the US's oil imports
come from Africa.
NATO's future role in
the Indian Ocean forms part of a well-thought
Western strategy. NATO's naval mission to the
Indian Ocean in September coincided with another
major initiative by Washington. The newly created
Africa Command (AFRICOM) of the US military,
reflecting the long-term strategic value of
Africa, is poised to begin its initial operations
in October.
The newly appointed AFRICOM
commander, General William E "Kip" Ward, has
stressed the "need for close coordination" with
NATO. Indeed, since July 2005, NATO has provided
air transport for peacekeeping forces in Darfur.
But Ward anticipates a deeper and vastly expanded
NATO involvement in Africa.
He said last
week, "AFRICOM could assist NATO efforts on the
African continent by ensuring close coordination
of US contributions and capabilities to NATO
operations and training. NATO is uniquely suited
to allow AFRICOM access to European interests and
capabilities and experience on the African
continent ... AFRICOM can provide logistical
support to NATO, professional military training
and engagement in conjunction with and other
security operation and outreach efforts."
AFRICOM's "command tasks" are profound. As
a senior US official put it, they are not about
"searching for militants in lawless or ungoverned
areas" or about "chasing terrorists around
Africa"; rather, they include among other things
"conducting region-wide security operations" and
"if necessary, conducting military operations".
Significantly, on September 20, Washington
pressed ahead with a resolution in the United
Nations Security Council on Afghanistan with a new
element - the US-led coalition's Operation
Enduring Freedom maritime interception component.
Russia pointed out that such a blanket
provision giving the right of maritime
interception did not appear in any of the previous
Security Council resolutions on Afghanistan or any
conflict situation for that matter. Russia sought
clarification, and proposed that instead of
blanket permission, the resolution should "reflect
the imperative observance of international law and
national legislation in carrying out any actions
involving interception of ships in the Indian
Ocean's waters". However, Russian concerns were
ignored and the US pressed for a vote.
The
new provision effectively gives the US-led
coalition in Afghanistan the right to intercept
and board vessels suspected of carrying arms or
reinforcements for terror groups that operate in
the Pakistan-Afghanistan border areas. It serves
the purpose of legitimizing NATO's future maritime
activities in the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea
- an ominous development against the background of
the US's standoff with Iran.
NATO in
the Asia-Pacific At the same time, NATO's
Mediterranean Dialogue (1995) and the Istanbul
Cooperation Initiative or ICI (2004) have already
brought the alliance from the eastern
Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf region. The NATO
presence in the Persian Gulf took a solid footing
when Saudi Arabia became an ICI partner in
January. The alliance is now set to consider a
formal link-up with the Gulf
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