China Sets Up A Military Base At Cocos Islands As Part Of Ambition To Dominate The Indian Ocean  

Despite the era of very efficient spy satellites that can focus on objects the size of a generous handkerchief, China has been proactive in setting up its spying and military facilities in the Myanmar owned Cocos Islands, 300 km off the Myanmar coast. This is with the newly minted junta’s blessings, after it staged a coup in 2021, and got rid of Myanmar’s elected government.

However, the fact is, the Chinese have been present on the islands since 1994, when they apparently leased one of them from Myanmar. The Cocos Islands are just 55 km from India’s Nicobar Islands.

With India’s decision to militarise its presence in a comprehensive manner all along the 638 km of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, the present upgrading at one of the leased Chinese Cocos Island assumes special significance. But can it do very much beyond the obsessive spying?

India’s plans for its own territory are far more substantial. It is upgrading the airport at INS Kohassa, Shibpur, in the North Andamans, as well as at the Campbell Airport on Nicobar Island into full-fledged fighter bases. The airport at Agatti in Lakshadweep is being transformed for military operations to secure both the Bay of Bengal, and the Arabian Sea up to the Gulf of Aden. Anchorage for Indian Navy ships and those from other friendly countries is being created. Submarine and unmanned underwater vehicle facilities are likewise being strengthened. Drones, UAVs,  surveillance and fighter aircraft facilities, accommodation of personnel etc. are all being transformed. India has truly bitten the bullet on this militarisation.

The islands will now vastly extend the Indian Navy’s reach in the region, 1,000 Km from the Indian mainland, and secure all of triangular India. The armed forces are getting ready to move simultaneously at sea if there is any aggression on our land borders or against our blue water assets.

Lakshadweep sits on the Nine Degree Channel. It lies on the 9 degree line of latitude north of the equator. The Andamans and Nicobar Islands together are being prepared to dominate the Six Degree and Ten Degree Channels towards South East Asia and North Asia. This is being done on a theatre command basis, using a joint Tri-services model so that it can operate efficiently.

 Of late, the Chinese have built updated listening posts, installed new radar and beefed up the runways to receive all manner of military aircraft on Cocos Island. They have built hangars, accommodation, and other infrastructure. All this is plain from Indian and American satellites monitoring the islands.

China has also been flying spy balloons over the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, mapping the ocean floor around the area for its submarines, and spying on ship movements in the Bay of Bengal, and along the East coast of India, including its satellite and missile launch sites there.

The Chinese are also seeking to set up a military base on Sri Lankan land near the state-of-the-art Hambantota Port, which China has built and acquired on a 99-year lease. China has been sending its spy ships there as well.

China is also expanding its presence and facilities at cash-strapped Cambodia’s Ream Naval Base.  It is ‘assisting’ the setting up of naval bases at Kyaukphu, Manaung and Haing Gyi in Myanmar, plus at Mergui and Zadaikyi Katan Islands in Thailand.

All this in addition to their other presence in Djibouti, off Karachi in Pakistan, the island of Feydhoo Finolhu in the Maldives leased by it, and via greater access to Iranian ports near the Persian Gulf.

 After recently declaring that the Indian Ocean is not Indian, just because of its name, China is pursuing its goal of trying to dominate the IOR. But China is at a disadvantage with their facilities being built in politically unstable regions that could undergo changes in government and consequent reversals in policy. Besides, The South and East China Seas are not just Chinese.

India is much better off with its tri-services bases coming up in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. One end overlooks the Malacca Straits, just 80 km away, which links the Indian Ocean with the Pacific and oversees the Bay of Bengal. The other end of the islands secures the Arabian Sea.

The islands belong to it, and India’s QUAD/AUKUS and other alliances act as a force multiplier with interoperability and regular joint naval exercises in the region.

China is desperate to find another viable trade route in addition to the well- used if not congested Malacca Straits, that carries some 20% of global trade as well. Other potential routes are at least 1,200 km longer, need to be thoroughly surveyed and mapped for weather, currents, draughts. Lonely civilian cargo ships and tankers are vulnerable to attack from pirates, in the absence of heavy security accompanying. All this puts up the Chinese costs.

Unfortunately for China, it is not possible to definitively secure the Malacca Straits exclusively for itself. It is an international passageway through another country and is used by many nations.

China has been trying to interest Thailand in creating a new sea route between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific by ploughing through a narrow water-way, Suez Canal style, at the Kra Canal. The proposal is being talked about, but it hasn’t got very far. It has, in any case, been pending for over 70 years. The Kra Canal is meant to slice through the Malay Peninsula about 800 km south of Bangkok, to connect the Gulf of Thailand with the Andaman Sea.

Do either China, or a politically turbulent Thailand, have the money to get this done in the present straightened circumstances? President Xi Jinping led Red China, which now accounts for half the total global debt, along with the United States, also has precarious finances caused by a drastic shrinkage of its exports. Its domestic construction companies and manufacturing facilities have crashed and domestic consumption is sluggish. Chinese GDP has shrunk from double digits to around 5% per annum or less.

The IMF calls this particular cocktail of revenue stress and gargantuan debt, the ‘doom loop’. So, will the Chinese economy, second largest in the world at $ 18 trillion, but with very few of the inherent advantages of the $ 25 trillion US economy, spontaneously split wide open?

China is obsessed with checking India in the IOR, and indeed as a rival in the Asia Pacific and on the world stage even though we are presently only at $ 3.5 trillion GDP. The fear is that in five years time, India is likely to be at $ 10 trillion in GDP and it will be too late to check us. But the IOR is much bigger than just India.

 It is an enormously strategic ocean for the world, through which 70% of global oil, 35% of bulk cargo, and 54% of container cargo passes. China receives 80% of its own oil, and 60% of its other goods via the narrow Malacca Straits.

Fortunately therefore, it is not just a matter of China surrounding India with its ‘string of pearls’. India has been countering its encirclement with radar bases of its own in the Seychelles, a more substantial set of facilities in a leased island off Mauritius close to Diego Garcia, access to an Omani base at Duqm, and so on.

France is present in Reunion, Mayotte and Tromelin Island chains.

America has long had a huge base on Diego Garcia with a 12,000 ft. runway for all types of aircraft. It has anchorage facilities for the world’s largest aircraft carriers and associated warships, and at least 250 military aircraft based on the island, including Poseidon surveillance aircraft.

The US maintains two Carrier Battle Groups and three Amphibious Task Forces ( ATFs) involving some 100 warships and over 40,000  naval personnel in the region.

The Chagos Islands have a British presence.

The Australians are also on some of the Cocos Islands.

The Russians, French, British, Indians, Australians, Singaporeans, Japanese, the Vietnamese, now the South Koreans too, the Americans, of course, regularly patrol the IOR.

America also has a base at Singapore for rotational ships and aircraft. China is fearful that the US could effect a naval blockade at the Malacca Straits if its friction with Taiwan occasions it - or for any other reason, such as Chinese militarisation and partial occupation of the South China Sea, a vital international maritime highway.

The CPEC corridor and Chinese built port at Gwadar in Balochistan has not yielded an alternative route as yet, through troubled Pakistan, all the way to Xinkiang.

The IOR comprises one fifth of the water area of the world and is connected to the Pacific Ocean that together girdle the earth. The IOR connects to Africa, West Asia, all the countries of the Asia Pacific.  Irrespective of what President Xi Jinping is telling the CCP at Beijing, China will never be allowed to dominate it.

(1,479 words)

13^th April 2023

For: Firstpost/News18.com

Gautam Mukherjee

 

Western Frenemies Do Not Want A Strong India To Contend With

Indian External Affairs Minister (EAM), Dr. S. Jaishankar called it a ‘bad habit’ that the West had. He said ‘the West thinks it has a God-given right’ to comment on the internal affairs of India, and cast aspersions on its leadership, including himself. He warns that that this sort of abuse of international protocol can go both ways. And he speaks, not only as a minister of the realm, but a distinguished former diplomat.

To a certain extent it already is, with the Indian media regularly calling out the Western interference, and pointing out its many shortfalls on its home turf.

It is a mote in one’s own eye syndrome, to paraphrase the Bible. Multiple matters, ranging from global warming-based natural disasters, forest fires, frequent shootings at schools, racist killings by police, pogroms allowed by dissident Islamists and Khalistanis, against Hindus, or Indian Missions, render most of the Western carping about India nonsensical.

It is also an intrinsic racist bias, where problems that concern the White nations are given precedence over those of others. Why should blue-eyed and blond children die in Ukraine, was one such proposition.  Similar questions are not ever asked about the ongoing turmoil in Syria. The EAM has pointed to this as well.

Overall, this refusal to take Western bias and distortion as acceptable is a feature of current Indian foreign policy.  

The EAM has also pointed to the efforts being made by Indian politicians who have lost electoral favour in India, attempting to pressurise the government by organising and lobbying ill-informed interventions from abroad. He said our Opposition should actually stop inviting comments from abroad on our internal matters.

Distortions on the revocation of Article 370 with reference to Jammu & Kashmir, which was, in the first place a temporary provision, should have been better understood by the West. Criticism of the Indian judiciary, when it  criminally convicts a politician, is tantamount to disrespect of our institutions, particularly when it is mixed up with allegations of motivation by the government. Slurs also need to be researched properly.

Perhaps the real reasons for all this go much deeper.

It is no longer China, Pakistan, Turkey and sundry others, who oppose Indian ascendancy economically, militarily and diplomatically.  

Against these detractors, from whose ranks Malaysia, with its massive sales of palm oil to India, has wisely dropped out, a large number of countries have come forward to back India.

These include the 120 countries India reached out to, in addition to the ones formally in the G-20, under India’s chairmanship for this year. Many are from all the nations of Africa, South America, West Asia and the Asia-Pacific.

Quite a few of these regard India as a torch-bearer and benign influence for the Global South. This more so as the United Nations General Assembly, (UNGA),  has fallen into ineffectiveness, hijacked by Islamic interest groups, and China.

But even as India is a member of QUAD, BRICS, SCO, G-20, ASEAN, BIMSTEC, etc, while associating with AUKUS; a certain resentment of its rise, even amongst its Western friends, seems to be brewing alongside.

Prominent friends in the West, including the United States, Canada, Britain, Germany, have taken to regularly commenting on and criticising India’s internal affairs and its leaders in its media for some years now. Targets include Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, and External Affairs Minister Dr. S. Jaishankar.

In short, many of the distinguished politicians who have unfurled the proud banner of Indian nationalism as of 2014, when this administration first came to power with a large majority. Leaders, who define the ‘New India’ that will soon propel India to 3^rd rank economically, with a GDP upwards of $10 trillion per annum, and PPP rankings undoubtedly at No.1, up from the present No.3.

This, despite India being the most populous country in the world, already, with the largest young workforce. China, that would like to retard this process, has an ageing population. This is in common with much of Europe, Japan and America. None of these countries and regions have any hope of rectifying the situation despite population boosting measures taken, for at least three decades.

Part of it, a Catch-22 of course, is a local populace resistant to immigration from other races and cultures, while their own economies are faltering. Brexit has not been a great success, prompted as it was by such sentiments.

The Global South is rejoicing about this Indian good news, alongside India, but is this likewise in the G-7 and the G-20?

The criticism directed at India at present wants probably to slow down India’s rate of progress at around 7% in GDP growth year-on-year, the highest amongst any major economy in the world.

It is also a campaign of negativity designed to blunt, if possible, the chances of re-election of the present dispensation for an consecutive third-term in 2024.

A strong Indian government is less biddable from the Western point of view. And India’s propensity for building its foreign policy on enlightened self-interest is putting most countries in the West in an adverse negotiating position, compared to its facile domination of the exchange in the past.

India, as a food surplus nation of over 1.40 billion people is showing up the  currently food deficient West. It is also, more and more, the ‘Pharmacy to the World’, and first in innovation as the Start-Up Capital as well. Its banks are better managed than the West, and its sovereign debt-profile is infinitely better, as hailed by the international rating agencies, the World Bank, the IMF and others.

India is still the biggest buyer of armaments in the world, even in 2023, with an expanded buying list, despite its strong thrust at indigenisation for as much as 68% of its purchases. But this too, raises two new problems. India is emerging as an arms exporter, and a most competitive supplier. And it is buying less, and will buy even less progressively, from the expensive armaments industry of the West.

Therefore, there has been a step-up from the erstwhile media bias in certain well-known publications and broadcasters with a leftist orientation masquerading as liberalism, against the present Indian administration.

Unsubstantiated charges include a tendency to dictatorship on the part of a wildly popular Narendra Modi, communalism (read anti-Muslim and Christian), including of late, an anti- Sikh (read the terrorists that want to wrest Punjab into Khalistan), and anti-semitic bias (no basis whatsoever, given the excellent relations with Israel).

There are also charges of gagging of the Opposition (amplified by the constant whining of electorally feeble and criminally convicted Congress leader Rahul Gandhi), alleged, but spurious  claims, of subversion of Indian institutions including its judiciary, and muscular Hindutva (ditto).

The role of George Soros, a Hungarian Jew and naturalised American, also allegedly active against former President Donald Trump, soon to be in his felony trial in Manhattan, the NGOs and activists he finances, is not often mentioned in these quarters.

Neither is the avalanche of Chinese money via its embassies, Confucian Studies Institutes and direct investments in companies, universities, Hollywood and so on, being used to buy anti-India opinion. These extend to academia and amongst Western politicians, lobbyists, anti-India activists, opposition politicians and their financing.

Pakistan is ever active, despite its bankrupt status, through its official machinery, and its covert ISI. It is prominent in certain countries abroad, particularly Britain, which finds it difficult to stomach India’s rise. Dubai, where the Pakistani underworld has a network, via Bollywood, its infrastructure and financing, via terrorist and drug cartels, and also directly in India through disgruntled elements particularly amongst Islamists and Khalistanis. It is however having trouble keeping this up, given its own terrorism problems internally and breakaway movements in Balochistan, the NWFP, and friction with Afghanistan.

Blow-hot blow-cold countries including the immensely rich on liquefied natural gas (LNG), Qatar, is also sometimes anti-India for hardline Islamic reasons, financing terrorists, and criticising India via Qatar’s media outlet Al Jazeera. Qatar tends to play influence games with both sides. It is a GCC member, despite sometimes prickly relations with Saudi Arabia, and hosts a massive US air base in Doha.

India gets on very well with Israel, Egypt, the UAE and Saudi Arabia. It has a military base access at Duqm in Oman. Oman meanwhile is drawing closer to Saudi Arabia with a new railway line linking the two countries.

India is doing increasingly better with Iran, partially due to Russia’s good offices in addition to its own long-term ties. A land-route from Russia is already operational via Iran, an undersea fuel pipeline is extant.

Russia is developing another sea route from its north to India and India has been invited to build a new IT enabled city at Vladivostock despite Chinese claims on the city and its environs.

India is also doing very well with Greece in the EU, where it is developing the port of Piraeus in an effort to establish another sea route to Europe from India.

Mauritius is allowing India build a new military base in the Indian Ocean on one of its islands close to the British-US occupied Diego Garcia.

All this diplomacy and progress points towards future great power status in addition to India’s economic prowess. And it is being done with much greater bonhomie than anything China is up to in a variety of places around the world.  

So the causes of the disproportionate and intemperate Western media commentary on trivia and gossip are fairly clear. It is expressing discomfort and even a degree of fear at the prospect of a consecutive third term for the present dispensation of the BJP backed by a formidable RSS. If all this has been accomplished in under 10 years, what does the future hold in store?  

So now, various governments have now got in on the act. Government spokespersons in Western countries are commenting as well.  After The US, Britain, it apparently is the turn of Germany.

The US finds it difficult to stomach India’s neutral to independent stand on the Ukraine War under the Biden administration. Should the Republicans win in 2024, some 18 months from now, they will, almost certainly put an end to the Ukraine War, if it is still raging. The possibility of it tipping over into the use of tactical nuclear weapons or even WWIII is ever present already.  But the Republicans could end it because of a greater comfort with Russia than under the Democrats.

Presently, EU and British governments, beholden to American largesse, are chiming into the Biden narrative, though most are feeling the pinch worse than both America, and, ironically, Russia.

A strong reason for British sniping, including via the BBC, is its colonial history with India, and that India has already overtaken it in terms of its GDP. It is also about to overtake Germany next.

Germany also has continued good relations with China, strategically opposed to India, despite China’s role in the Covid pandemic and their support of Russia in the Ukraine War. German Chancellor Schultz recently visited President Xi Jinping in China, one of the first Western leaders to do so, after China called off its draconian Covid lockdowns recently. This despite the NATO and EU positions generally cool to ongoing Chinese ties and the dependence on Chinese supply chains.

Germany has also been the biggest buyer of Russian gas and fuel over the last several decades. It continues to do so to an extent, via a circuitous route, even now, compelled by otherwise very high fuel prices from elsewhere, despite stringent sanctions imposed on Russia by NATO, EU and Britain.

Germany, like Britain, has been steadily slipping in terms of its economy,  including in its vaunted car industry, and other engineering enterprises. This has limited its options and autonomy. France, the other big EU economy, despite its fiscal troubles, is on good terms with India.

Fortunately, so is Japan, which India is also destined to overtake economically,  and this bodes well for the future.

(1,999 words)

April 3^rd, 2023

For: Firstpost/News18.com

Gautam Mukherjee