Anti-China Bloc in the Making

The Indo-Japanese military alignment is nothing but a part of the United States’ “pivot to Asia” strategy.

We miss our columnist GPD and his column “Of Life, Letters and Politics” in these dark times when Washington, with its “pivot to Asia” strategy – aimed at undermining China in the diplomatic, military and economic realms – and having roped in Japan and Australia as allies, is now girding on Japan to draw in India as the third junior partner in the endeavour.
The Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was given pride of place as the chief guest at India’s Republic Day celebrations on 26 January, and his three-day visit put Japan “at the heart of India’s Look-East Policy”, as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh put it. Abe responded extravagantly by stating that Indo-Japanese relations “have the greatest potential of any bilateral relationship anywhere in the world”! Just last month India and Japan conducted their first joint naval military exercise in the Indian Ocean off the coast of southern India, and more recently, the respective coast guards conducted joint manoeuvres in the Arabian Sea off the west coast of India. And the National Security Council, India’s apex body advising on the country’s strategic security concerns, will meet regularly with the newly-established Security Council of Japan.
New Delhi has also invited Japanese capital to invest in key projects in India’s north-eastern states, including Arunachal Pradesh. This seems to be a push for the long-proposed surface transport corridor from India running through Myanmar and onwards to south-east Asia. As far as economic relations go, basically, Indian capital wants Japanese capital to collaborate with it to help India emulate the Chinese manufacturing sector’s low labour-cost arbitrage strategy and this is already on the anvil in the building of the Delhi-Mumbai industrial corridor with Japanese collaboration. More important, but less reported in the media, was however the four-day visit to India of the Japanese defence minister, Itsunori Onodera, and his meetings with his Indian counterpart, A K Antony. Maritime security figured prominently – the navies of the two countries will conduct joint military exercises on a regular basis, and, for the first time, there will be trilateral drills involving the US Navy too.
How does one explain the re-militarisation of Japan, the impending overturning of its constitutional restrictions on militarisation? Indeed, post-second world war Japan now has its first National Security Strategy. Unwritten it is, but Washington’s “pivot to Asia” strategy is at the heart of the blueprint. China’s rapid economic expansion over the last three decades, her securing of international energy and raw material sources and transportation routes for the same, and the accompanying geopolitical rise have upset the long-established US imperialist-dominated order in Asia. US forces and bases in Asia are being restructured, and strategic alliances with Japan, Australia and India have been put in place to take on China. And now, the three junior partners are being encouraged to establish strategic alliances with each other. Washington has fuelled the already existing tensions between Tokyo and Beijing over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands. And now Japan wants India to join the existing trilateral alliance to confront China. Basically, Washington wants unrestricted access to the East China and South China Seas near the Chinese coast and has been intervening indirectly in the territorial disputes that China has in these seas, including those with Vietnam and the Philippines. In an interview to the Press Trust of India, Onodera said that “(i)f India, Japan and the US are in cooperation and send a common message to the Chinese side that will mean a lot.”
Earlier this month we analysed the “stagnation-financialisation trap” in these columns (1 February 2014), specifically, financialisation as a dangerous rescuer of the economies of the triad, mired as they are in stagnation. Increasing military expenditure is another, but far more dangerous, rescuer of the economy from stagnation. But why are the Indian ruling classes and their political representatives allowing the country to be harnessed to the US agenda as a junior partner? As a junior partner of the US, the Indian Navy is fast becoming the chief policeman of the Indian Ocean, and the Indian military’s dependence on the US military-industrial complex is increasing, this via military hardware and software deals with Israel too. The US, in the wake of the financial crisis, has even been offering co-production and co-development as added incentives in armament deals.
It is a sad, indeed, a tragic commentary of the times that Japan’s reaching out to India, as also the latter’s teaming up with Japan, both are a part of the US’ “pivot to Asia” strategy, rather than an independent move to strengthen bilateral relations.