Significantly less than a month after the first-ever Russian-Chinese joint military exercises off China's north-eastern coast, involving attack submarines, long-range strategic bombers, and amphibious assaults, Russia has suggested a Nato-like bloc for Asia called Common Asian Security (CAS), but both India and China have maintained a silence on it.
Russia and China invited observers from India, Pakistan, Mongolia, Iran and four Central Asian states to the military exercises deceptively called "Peace Mission 2005", and diplomatic sources said Russia is keen to band them together, plus key South East Asian countries, into CAS, partly to offset the eastward spread of Nato, and to get a handle on the political upsurges in Central Asia.
But India has not taken up the Russian proposal in any seriousness, China is upto its own secret schemes, and South East Asian states have vetoed it fearing it would commence another Cold War with the US, because CAS is designed to take on board issues related to non-proliferation, arms control, regional security, and terrorism.