India's growing military power
India is gradually showing signs of military assertiveness as it is becoming an economic power. India is the second largest populous country (nearly 1.1 billion) in the world and seventh largest in geographical area. It is twenty-three times larger than Bangladesh. There are almost 1,000 people for every square mile of area nationwide, much denser than China. India is likely to overtake China in the 21st century as the world's most populous country. Under the US-India nuclear deal, it will receive nuclear fuel and technology and will be much more capable to enlarge its nuclear arsenal. According to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the India's Defense Ministry has earmarked US$ 2 billion annually to build 300 to 400 weapons over the next 5 to 7 years. Currently India has about 50 to 95 nuclear warheads. Analysts say that there are many reasons for acquiring military power and some of them are described below: Government officials argue that India's commitments have gradually increased both at home and abroad. India's buildup has several overlapping motivations. It now trades vigorously with the world, most critically in oil. It has bought oil fields or engaged in exploration in Iran, Iraq, Libya, Russia, Sudan, Syria, Vietnam and beyond. A more robust military is also vital for protecting millions of Indian workers in the Gulf, who are from time to time threatened by political volatility. But the most pressing motivation may be the fast-moving Chinese. "Immediately after independence, true, we had to engage ourselves for developing our country economically, politically because we were exploited under colonial rule for more than 200 years," Pranab Mukherjee, India's External Affairs Minister (a former Defence Minister) said in an interview. Now, he said, things have changed: "Naturally, a country of this size, a population of this size we will be required to strengthen our security forces, modernize them, update them, upgrade our technology." "We are ready to play a more responsible role," he added, "but we don't want to impose ourselves on others." In a speech in India's Parliament this summer, a rising political star, Ruhul Gandhi, M.P, son of Rajiv and Sonia Gandhi and an official of the Congress Party spoke of a change in civilian thinking that helps explain the change in military strategy. "What is important," said Rahul Gandhi,"is that we stop worrying about how the world will impact us, we stop being scared about how the world will impact us, and we step out and worry about how we will impact the world." Middle-aged Indians remember a time when their country would watch thousands of Indians in jeopardy in a foreign land and know that there was nothing their military could do. But in 2006, when conflict between Israel and Hezbollah threatened Indian expatriates in Lebanon, four Indian warships happened to be in the Mediterranean. The navy rushed the vessels to Lebanon and brought more than 2,000 people on board, not only Indians, but Sri Lankans, Nepalese and Lebanese eager to escape the fighting. Two years earlier, when a tsunami throttled Asia, including this country's own southern coast, the Indian Navy dispatched 16,000 troops, 32 warships, 41 planes and a floating hospital for rescue operations, according to news accounts. Such changes bring pride to many Indians. But some also fear that India may become the kind of swaggering power it has opposed since it became independent from Britain in 1947. In recent years, while world attention has focused on China's military, India has begun to refashion itself as an armed power with global reach: a power willing and able to dispatch troops thousands of miles from the subcontinent to protect its oil shipments and trade routes, to defend its large expatriate population in the Middle East and to shoulder international peacekeeping duties. "India sees itself in a different light not looking so much inward and looking at Pakistan, but globally," said William Cohen, a secretary of defense in the Clinton administration who, in his new role as a lobbyist, represents American firms seeking weapons contracts in India. "It's sending a signal that it's going to be a big player." India is buying armaments that major powers like the United States use to operate far from home: aircraft carriers, giant C-130J transport planes and airborne refueling tankers. Meanwhile, India has helped to build a small air base in Tajikistan that it will share with its host country. It is modern India's first military outpost on foreign soil. India also appears to be positioning itself as a caretaker and patroller of the Indian Ocean region, which stretches from Africa's coast to Australia's and from the subcontinent southward to Antarctica. "Ten years from now, India could be a real provider of security to all the ocean islands in the Indian Ocean," said Ashley Tellis, an Indian-born scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington who has also been an adviser to the Bush administration. "It could become a provider of security in the Gulf in collaboration with the U.S. I would think of the same being true with the Central Asian states." Observers say that Indian military planning is still heavily focused on China and Pakistan, against both of which the country has fought wars. China, whose own military expansion outstrips India's, has not sounded public warnings about India's military modernization but Pakistan is more critical about it. Pakistani officials "are paying attention to Indian plans to project India outside the South Asian region," said Hasan Askari Rizvi, a leading Pakistani expert on that country's military. "There seems to be an emerging long-term competition between India and China for pre-eminence in the region," said Jacqueline Newmyer, President of the Long Term Strategy Group, a research institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a security consultant to the United States government. "India is preparing slowly to claim its place as a pre-eminent power, and in the meantime China is working to complicate that for India." India has worked to close the gap with China by spending heavily on modern arms. Analysts estimate that India could spend as much as $40 billion on military modernization in the next five years (China is spending $90 billion dollars on defense budget). What is most striking is that many of the weapons are designed for operations far from home. Among the more notable purchases are six IL-78 airborne tankers, which can refuel three jets simultaneously and allow the air force to fly as far as Alaska. Other armaments recently acquired or in the pipeline include naval destroyers, nuclear submarines, aircraft carriers and the C-130J transport planes that are a staple of long-range conflicts. India is slowly but steadily maturing into a conventional great power. Times have changed when India which gave the world the idea of Gandhian non-violence and, has long derided the force-projecting ways of the great powers is now showing military muscle to demonstrate that India is "rising" and should be given the role in world affairs commiserating its size, resources and population.
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