Asia Times: India, China, Russia may yet axisize power


	February 9, 2002	atimes.com

India/Pakistan

India, China, Russia may yet axisize power
By Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI - With the prospect of extended US military presence in Central Asia now increasingly likely, Russia has revived a three-year-old proposal to rope India and China into a trilateral power axis.

When Russian leader Yevgeni Primakov first proposed a trilateral axis against a US-centered, unipolar world in December 1998, he did not elicit too much enthusiasm in either New Delhi or Beijing - thanks to mutual suspicions lingering from the Cold War.

But Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji's successful India tour in January, followed by this month's visit of Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, are believed to have fast forwarded interest in the idea to the point where "working towards informal alliance" is now possible, says an Indian spokesperson.

International affairs analysts say the vast US military presence in Central Asia, occasioned by the war in Afghanistan, has compelled the three powers to reconsider the Primakov proposal - if not to counter the unipolar world order, then to protect their own interests in the strategic, fossil-fuel rich region.

According to Jean-Pierre Cabestan, director of the Hong Kong-based French Center for Research on Contemporary China, the growing US military and diplomatic influence in Central and South Asia is not in Beijing's interests. "The US-led war in Afghanistan has compromised Beijing's fundamental and long-term objectives, increased the say that its Asian rivals (in particular Japan and India) have in regional security issues, and on the whole weakened its image as a great power," Cabestan said in a lecture here last month.

Cabestan said Beijing has begun to take India more seriously as a result of its newly overt nuclear policy, its open-door economy and because of its status as a rival power that could get uncomfortably too close to the United States. This trend is palpable in New Delhi's loud support for Washington's National Missile Defense (NMD) program.

Russia wields considerable influence in both India and China as a major supplier of military hardware to both countries. Indeed India is finalizing, this week, the purchase of an aircraft carrier, nuclear-powered submarines and long-range strategic bombers from Russia as part of a multi-billion dollar shopping list.

Ivanov used the opportunity to vigorously promote the idea of a trilateral axis and has sought to allay apprehensions that this would in any way be detrimental to India's rapidly improving ties, including military cooperation, with the United States.

In his State of the Union address last week, US President George Bush clubbed the three powers together when he said that America was "working with Russia and China and India, in ways we have never before, to achieve peace and prosperity". Bush added: "In this moment of opportunity, a common danger is erasing old rivalries."

According to Rajiv Nayan, a researcher at India's prestigious Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses, a government funded think tank, it is important to note that at present none of three countries that would form the trilateral axis wants to be seen as a long-term dissident to US policy. "All three want to be recognized as responsible countries of the international community and its institutions and norms so that occasional defiance is accompanied by rigorous attempts to integrate with the system," Nayan said.

On the other hand, said Nayan, the triangle as envisaged by Primakov "would not like to make the US a natural ally because the very objective of the triangle is to create a competing center against the United States".

India, which throughout the Cold War years was aligned economically and militarily with the former Soviet Union, is now ruled by a right-wing coalition that has aggressively sought to increase its contacts at all levels with the United States.

But Nayan said India sought support from the United States rather than from Russia in containing China and that is one reason why it cheered on the NMD enthusiastically and was among the first countries to offer support to the US after the September 11 attacks.

Soon after India's nuclear tests in 1998, India's Defense Minister George Fernandes declared that China represented the main threat to India and that the government had written to then US President Bill Clinton to say that China, rather than Pakistan, was the important factor in India's nuclear weapons program.

Although relations between India and China have been steadily improving since their 1993 landmark agreement to maintain peace and tranquility along their common borders, a major irritant for New Delhi has been the continued movement of missile and nuclear weapon technology from Beijing to Islamabad.

"The reported nuclear and missile related transfer in January is indicative of the problem and India remains deeply suspicious in spite of China's denials," said Kanti Bajpai, professor of international relations at the Jawaharlal Nehru University. He listed other areas of conflict as competing interests in Myanmar, rivalry between the navies of the two countries in the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea, the Tibet question and Beijing's non-recognition of Sikkim as an Indian state.

Bajpai said the proposed trilateral axis had, at once, the potential of building an Asian security system, tackling religious extremism, utilizing Central Asian energy resources efficiently, and better handling Washington's missile defense plan. "Militarily, all three fear that the US could end up dominating outer space with both weapons platforms and reconnaissance capabilities that would give it unprecedented ability to use force offensively," Bajpai said.

Cabestan said that China is particularly worried by the NMD project because Beijing has a limited number of inter-continental ballistic missiles, while Russia continues to have enough warheads to challenge the reliability of the US umbrella.

According to Bajpai, there is at present little real prospect of the three turning into strategic partners because of continuing suspicions. But he said an India-China-Russia dialogue on missile defense and its implications needed to be initiated urgently.

He added that a number of areas existed where protocols, discussions and agreements might be reached to enhance their own security and contribute to the security of the wider Asian region. "The most ambitious item on their agenda could be the launch of an Asian security structure which would include rather than exclude the US," Bajpai said. "In the long term it is confidence between these three powers that will allow them to play a larger role in world politics and in the process build a more balanced world order."

(Inter Press Service)