Sunday, September 4, 2016

Deep Jayasekera — Using India to encircle China

Indian Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar and his US counterpart, Ashton Carter, announced Monday that they have signed an agreement that gives US combat planes and warships and their personnel routine access to Indian military bases for resupply, repairs, and rest. The India-US Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA) also allows the Pentagon to “forward position” materiel on Indian bases.
With the signing of the LEMOA, India has taken a major step toward becoming a “frontline” state in US imperialism’s drive to strategically isolate, encircle, and prepare to wage war on China.
This is being done entirely behind the backs of the Indian people. While various Indian military and geo- strategists chortle over the supposed leverage India will gain thanks to its alliance with Washington, the LEMOA is being publicly presented as largely benign. The Indian media is making much of the fact that the LEMOA is a reciprocal agreement that also provides for India’s military to use American bases—no matter that the difference between the global reach of the US and Indian militaries is exponential….
India’s close military-strategic ties with Moscow date back to the Cold War. However, the US has surpassed Russia as India’s largest military supplier and the Indian and US militaries are, as exemplified by the LEMOA, increasingly enmeshed. Washington’s strategic turn to New Delhi has been driven by its determination to thwart China’s rise. But there is no question that at least since 2014, when India failed to fall into line with the US’ depiction of Russia as the “aggressor” in the Ukraine, a key objective of Washington’s India policy has been to weaken and ultimately break New Delhi’s strategic alliance with Moscow.
The world is influx geopolitically and geostrategically. This transition greatly increases the dangers. India is positioning itself as China's rival for Asian hegemony but at the cost of becoming a vassal of the American Empire.

India has also further positioned itself in the Chinese crosshairs without a defense pace with the US.

Defend Democracy
Using India to encircle China
Deepal Jayasekera

1 comment:

John said...

Looks like India has made its decision - and what a stupid one it is. You wonder how much of this is down to the BJP, who may be spoiling for an internal battle at the expense of becoming another US client state. It must be an internal decision or at most a very narrow foreign policy decision (i.e. Pakistan) rather than the idea of supplanting China as the regional superpower or the 21st century's global superpower, but then the BJP aren't the most rational of political parties and they may well believe their own fantasies. Usually a decision like this would require a great deal of establishment approval, with the traditional stewards of political power in the Congress Party at least implicitly acquiescing.

Watch out for China's response...