India, Vietnam mull strategic partnership to counter China
Dated 3/10/2005
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India's Ostpolitik involving the ASEAN and the "rimland" states farther afield
Indian naval flotillas steaming into Asian ports, dropping anchor at Limpopo to showcase Indian designed missile destroyers, holding annual joint exercises in the Andaman Sea with the smaller littoral navies, exercising offshore during extended "goodwill" tours with the host country's naval vessels and, generally, establishing a presence in proximal as well as distant seas constantly reminds these states of India's strategic importance.
The legendary Singapore leader Lee Kwan Yew referred to India and China as the two wings of a giant airplane. Without either of them, Asia, he implied, could not fly.
What he tactfully left unsaid, but most Asian countries on China's periphery believe, is that their security depends on the emergence of a militarily strong India as counterweight - because, notwithstanding its security commitments, in a crisis the United States can always choose to withdraw behind the moat of the Pacific Ocean.
The pillars of an obvious and enduring Indian security architecture, if only the Indian government had the wit to envision it, are Israel and a Trucial State, like Oman, in the west and, in the east, ASEAN and Vietnam in China's "soft underbelly", and Taiwan and Japan on the Chinese flank.
Beijing may be apprehensive of a resurgent Japan but, of all the states on its border, it is most respectful of a militarily scrappy Vietnam, which prides itself on successfully fighting off the Chinese hegemon for "a thousand years". And most recently in 1979 gave the invading Chinese armies a bloody nose, which compelled Deng Xiaoping to do the prudent thing - speedily declare victory and get the hell out!
By cultivating a resolute Vietnam as a close regional ally and security partner in the manner China has done Pakistan, India can pay Beijing back in the same coin.
China has strategically discomfited India and sought to "contain" it to south Asia by arming Pakistan with nuclear weapons and missiles. Militarily to focus on Pakistan - the Chinese cat
