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Indo-Asia-Pacific

Strategic Convergence and Prospects for Indo-Israeli-U.S. Maritime Cooperation

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By Harry Halem

Introduction

This past January, Benjamin Netanyahu undertook a high-profile visit to India, becoming the second Israeli Prime Minister to travel to the country. Accompanied by a 130-member delegation, Netanyahu’s trip included a stay in New Delhi, and visits to the Taj Mahal, Mahatma Gandhi’s grave, and Gandhi’s home in the state of Gujrat. The personal relationship between Netanyahu and his Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi, seems extremely strong – in a distinct break from protocol, Modi greeted Netanyahu at the airport, an honor denied to the popular Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during his visit a month later.

Netanyahu and Modi’s strong personal relationship indicates the growing closeness of Indo-Israeli relations. While India opened an embassy in Tel Aviv only 26 years ago, since the two countries have engaged in growing levels of trade and military cooperation – the present diplomatic evolution simply reflects underlying trends. Since 1992, India has also engaged in a sustained rapprochement with the United States. Tacitly aligned with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, the USSR’s collapse revolutionized India’s strategic situation, and has resulted in progressively improving relations with the U.S., despite multiple hiccups along the way.

Strategic trends dictate growing areas of cooperation between India, the U.S., and Israel, particularly in the maritime sphere. As such, U.S. policymakers are faced with the unique opportunity of being able to forge an alliance with a major power that could revolutionize American security architecture in the Near East and Indian Ocean. Despite the potential points of Indo-American and Indo-Israeli friction that remain, Washington can use the relationship between its critical Near Eastern ally and New Delhi to actualize the full potential of this partnership.

The Development of Indian Foreign Policy – Non-Alignment to Balancing

India’s shifting policy toward the West is the culmination of steady changes in India’s approach toward the external world since its independence in 1947. Despite its initial war with Pakistan, India faced few external threats during its first decade of independent existence. Its armed forces were employed internally, enabling the absorption of reticent enclaves into the fledgling Republic. Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister, embarked upon an anticolonial foreign policy, using India’s ostensible moral capital to build links with other nations emerging from their colonial pasts.

The outbreak of war with China in 1962, therefore, was a distinct shock for the Indian governing establishment. Up until that point, China had been viewed as a Marxist brother in arms – Nehru hoped to anchor Indian foreign policy on cooperation with China, and use the combined authority of the two formerly colonial powers to remain independent from the Cold War. Despite its border dispute with China, the PRC’s invasion across the McMahon Line and into Ladakh was utterly unanticipated. Not only were India’s armed forces unprepared for conflict in Jammu and Kashmir’s harsh mountain conditions against the more experienced People’s Liberation Army, China also executed its offensive concurrent with the Cuban Missile Crisis, ensuring that neither Washington nor Moscow could properly focus on the region and lend New Delhi support until after Beijing consolidated its initial gains.

Borders and territories disputed by China and India today. (Graphic News)

Following the Sino-Indian War, India’s foreign policy shifted away from its idealistic roots. However, relations between India and the West remained chilled, particularly over America’s persistent support for Pakistan, a critical facilitator in Nixon and Kissinger’s attempts to realign China during the early 1970s. Ideologically, the socialist, anti-Imperialist Indian National Congress (INC), which dominated Indian politics until the late 1970s, found the Soviet Union to be a more amenable partner than the United States, with its capitalist ideology and close relationship with Britain and other former colonial European powers, while the Kremlin had a progressively increasing interest in balancing China as relations cooled and animosity increased from Stalin’s death onward. India’s relationship with Israel was similarly frigid, albeit for more pragmatic reasons. India initially refused to recognize Israel, and remained wary of appearing too close to the Jewish state despite recognition in 1950. Indian politicians feared the response of the significant Muslim minority population if New Delhi formally opened an embassy in Tel Aviv. Moreover, India was dependent upon Israel’s Arab adversaries for energy supplies, relied on the Persian Gulf states to maintain Indian foreign exchange reserves, and significantly benefited from the productivity of Indian nationals working in the Near East. Formally engaging with Israel would therefore have risked Indian economic and energy security.

The Cold War’s conclusion was a major turning point for Indo-Israeli and Indo-American relations. INC progressively lost its political monopoly from Indira Gandhi’s ouster in 1977 after unprecedented centralization. By 1989, India’s political environment had become much more balanced, with various opposition parties, namely the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its affiliates challenging long-standing socialist economic policies, and implementing free market reforms. American loans underwrote India’s market liberalization. The U.S. also identified India as a potential defense export market, and gradually increased technological transfers. More notably, the U.S. Navy began its Malabar exercises with its Indian counterpart in 1992, explicitly focusing on rehearsing combat operations, rather than non-wartime activities. Indo-American relations then cooled in 1998 when the Clinton administration sanctioned India for its nuclear testing. However, President Clinton quickly abandoned his sanctions policy, while President Bush identified India as a critical potential partner in the Global War on Terror after the September 11th Attacks. The Malabar naval exercises have continued to increase in scope, while Indian Navy and U.S. Navy ships cooperate on antipiracy, counterterrorism, and other maritime patrol missions in the Indian Ocean.

Indo-Israeli relations also progressively thawed. India opened an embassy in Tel Aviv in 1992. Economic relations have flourished since, while India and Israel also have a progressively expanding security relationship. Indian forces have participated in training exercises in Israel, while Israeli defense companies sell advanced technologies to the Indian military – India has used Israeli drones to offset the advantages of its regional rivals. Increased state visits demonstrate the strength of this relationship: the Netanyahu-Modi visits are only the most recent of a rising number of high-profile diplomatic exchanges. Additionally, significant are changes in Indian rhetoric. In the 2014 Gaza War, India broke with its previous strong condemnation of Israeli action in the Palestinian territories, instead blaming both parties for the conflict, and calling upon the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to limit civilian casualties. This reflects a broader attempt to “de-hyphenate” Indo-Israeli relations: New Delhi wishes to build an independent relationship with Tel Aviv, regardless of the Palestinian issue. One can only expect this cooperation to increase in the future.

The Strategic Roots of Cooperation

Policymakers rarely have the opportunity to forge new, lasting alliances. The uncertainty of the international environment makes ensuring sustained cooperation difficult, particularly among great powers – a cursory observation of Sino-Russo-American relations from 1945 to the present indicates this fact. However, the clear confluence of interests between India, Israel, and the United States makes the potential for cooperation extremely high, particularly in the maritime domain.

The U.S. and Israel have clear shared interests in the Eastern Mediterranean, Arabian Gulf, and Indian Ocean. Both require Near Eastern stability to advance their interests. The Islamic Republic of Iran is presently the greatest regional threat to both of their goals. Iranian influence in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon poses a physical threat to Israeli security through irregular assets like Hezbollah and their missile capabilities, or, potentially in the future, a direct threat from conventional ground forces. Iranian expansion in the Indian Ocean also threatens the U.S.’ ability to impose a “far blockade” on China in the event of conflict by attempting to closing the Strait of Hormuz and pressure American sea lines of communication running from the Near East to the Western Pacific. Hence, Israel and the U.S. have a clear joint interest in ensuring their control over the Eastern Mediterranean and Indian Ocean.

India and the U.S. also share a critical interest concerning China. China is a blatant threat to India’s sphere of influence in South Asia. The Doklam Crisis is only the most recent evidence of Chinese encroachment on Indian or Indian allied borders, while China’s hedging strategy involves supporting India’s chief rival, Pakistan. India is the only regional actor that can offer China significant resistance without external support. The qualitatively sophisticated JSDF and Taiwanese militaries are too small to sustainably challenge the PLA absent American aid, while the Vietnamese and Philippine Armed Forces are qualitatively and quantitatively outmatched. India’s active military ranks only behind China’s numerically, while if reserves and paramilitary groups are included, the Indian Armed Forces could field nearly two million more personnel than the PLA. Moreover, as a nuclear-armed state, India can limit Chinese escalatory options in a way no other regional power can. However, India’s military is outmatched by the PLA. The PLAAF fields more combat aircraft than its Indian counterpart, and faces only three substantial regional threats aside from India – the Taiwanese Air Force, Japanese Air Self Defense Forces, and Republic of Korea Air Force (assuming the ROK is not tied down in some fashion by North Korea either through conflict or deterrence requirements) while the Indians will need to divert forces to deterring or fighting Pakistan’s Air Force in any conflict. At sea, the PLAN outmatches the Indian Navy. The PLAN’s two STOBAR carriers’ air wings match the INS Vikramaditya’s in size, while it outnumbers India in every surface combatant category. In the near future, the Indian Navy could face as much as a one-to-four disadvantage in a conflict with the PLAN. Nevertheless, India has a commanding geographic position over the approaches to and from the South China Sea, and can use both naval forces and land-based maritime patrol craft to prevent PLAN surface combatants from entering the Indian Ocean. Considering concurrent American interest in countering China’s rise, formalized cooperation between the U.S. and India would significantly improve the relative position of both countries in the Indian Ocean and South Pacific.

Israel and India also share a number of direct interests outside of their present economic and military transactions. Israel is not directly threatened by China – indeed, Israeli companies have sold the PLA military technology – while India relies on Iran for a significant portion of its energy imports. However, both have a clear interest in Indian Ocean maritime security. Chinese patrols in the Indian Ocean could pressure Indian supply lines, while China’s growing economic relationship with Iran could allow it to diplomatically leverage the Islamic Republic into choking off its oil flows to New Delhi. Israel, alternatively, would be unable to respond to Chinese submarine harassment of Israeli shipping in the Indian Ocean. Despite the IDF’s military sophistication, it lacks a blue water navy, and small powers remain at the mercy of larger adversaries in conflict absent a great power partner. Additionally, damage inflicted upon the Indian economy would harm Israel’s own productivity: Israel has a clear interest in ensuring India remains insulated from Chinese economic pressure. Finally, Israel could benefit from the ability to pressure Iran from the Indian Ocean, rather than simply overland. The U.S. Navy’s current presence in the Arabian Gulf allows for greater Israeli freedom of action on land. However, Israel would benefit from having its own naval forces, giving it the ability to act more independently.

These bilateral interests cohere into a broader whole. India, Israel, and the U.S. would all benefit from a more formal maritime arrangement in the Indian Ocean, while each nation would directly or indirectly benefit from the increases to the others’ security. These overlapping strategic interests are reinforced by the broader desire of all three potential partners to combat terrorism and respond to Islamic extremist organizations. With the roots for cooperation evidently existing, one must understand how to leverage this into a more explicit framework.

Future Steps to Facilitate Cooperation

Despite the clear cooperative potential between India, the U.S., and Israel, actualizing cooperation is a difficult task. Israel would likely be hesitant to be drawn into a formalized security architecture that would commit it to defending tangential interests with force, while India would reasonably be wary of jeopardizing relations with Iran, and by extension its access to oil. Nevertheless, American policymakers can take several steps to increase cooperation and lay the groundwork for a broader Mediterranean-Indo-Pacific security architecture that can respond to increasing Chinese, Russian, and Iranian southward pressure. Four specific policy recommendations can actualize this cooperation.

First, the U.S. should consider inviting the Israeli Navy to future iterations of the Malabar Exercises. Israel’s participation at Malabar would be a public way to signal Indo-Israeli cooperation, without Israel making any formal commitments in the Indian Ocean. Ensuring the stability of military-to-military contacts between the IDF and Indian Armed Forces will help insulate the security relationship between Israel and India despite changes in administration. Other joint training exercises are possible, and would be beneficial. India already sends fighter aircraft and Special Operations Forces units to Israel for various activities – America’s CENTCOM military forces could engage in exercises along their IDF and Indian Armed Forces counterparts.

Adm RK Dhowan CNS exchanging the memento with VAdm Ram Rutberg Commander-in-Chief, Israeli Navy at IHQ MoD, New Delhi. (Indian Navy photo)

Second, the U.S. can encourage further defense cooperation by making a concerted effort to win over the Indian market. The Indian military largely uses Soviet and Russian equipment. All but six percent of the Indian Army’s main battle tanks, and 20 percent of its combat aircraft, are Russian made or designed. Two-thirds of the Indian Navy’s attack submarine fleet, and slightly under half of its large surface combatant fleet of guided missile destroyers and frigates were produced in Russian shipyards. The U.S.’ high-cost systems, and Israel’s smaller industrial base, makes it difficult to imagine either one of them singlehandedly crowding out Russian production. But at least when it comes to surface combatants, one could envision Israeli or American ships being increasingly represented in the Indian fleet, with Israeli and American-designed small surface combatants competing for purchase. Moreover, the Indian Navy’s undersized submarine fleet offers U.S. producers an opportunity to revive diesel-electric submarines, and produce cheaper platforms to counter growing Chinese numerical superiority. Just as the British shipbuilding industry benefited from building capital ships and surface combatants for foreign nations before the Great War, American shipyards could help expand and maintain critical wartime capacity by producing warships for friendly and allied foreign powers. This could extend to IDF and American tanks and other armored vehicles replacing Soviet and Russian alternatives. Israel’s unmanned expertise is a critical facilitating factor. The Indian Air Force already uses Israeli UAV’s, namely the IAI Harop, a loitering munition, the IAI Searcher, a light scout platform, and the IAI Heron, a MALE reconnaissance and strike UCAV. Not only will demand for these sorts of platforms grow, as armed forces globally develop their understanding of teaming between manned and unmanned assets, but increases in AI technology will likely lead to a fully unmanned fighter aircraft in the next two to three decades. India, the U.S., and Israel would all benefit from research and production of such platforms – or risk being left behind by their Russian and Chinese rivals, who are undoubtedly engaging in developing those capabilities.

Third, American diplomacy can help decrease Iran’s role in India’s energy supply by leveraging energy supplies in the Eastern Mediterranean’s Leviathan Gas Field and other neighboring energy deposits. Current exploration indicates that these newly-discovered Eastern Mediterranean resource deposits contain upwards of 16.5 trillion cubic feet of gasoline. Combined with an increase in already high exports from Saudi Arabia, and a concerted effort to export North American oil and natural gas to India, the U.S. can decrease the proportion of India’s Iranian energy imports, and thereby give India the ability to more openly cooperate with the U.S. and Israel by lessening energy security risks.

Fourth, the U.S. should explore political and military relationships with India to increase security in the Indian Ocean. The present Indo-American relationship is remarkably similar to the early stages of Anglo-French cooperation before the First World War. The 1912 Anglo-French Naval Convention, in which Britain offered to secure the North Sea and France’s Atlantic coastline in return for France’s safeguarding of British interests in the Mediterranean, allowed Britain to concentrate its forces against the Imperial German Kaiserlichmarine while maintaining a degree of security in other global chokepoints. Even if implemented successfully, the PLAN will outnumber the U.S. Navy by nearly 150 ships in 2030, and could outnumber the U.S. Navy as early as 2020, and has nearly achieved numerical surface combatant parity today. Most dangerously, between 2025 and 2035, the U.S. Navy’s ship numbers will hover between 310 and 320 – such a disparity increases potential instability Absent a colossal shipbuilding program, the U.S. Navy’s only hope for parity will involve transferring the vast majority of American combat power to the Pacific, while easing force commitments elsewhere. Turning Indian Ocean and Arabian security over to the Indian Navy, in return for American guarantees to protect shared Indo-American interests in the South and East China Seas, may therefore be a preferable solution. At a minimum, the U.S. should consider joint basing arrangements with Indian facilities in the Southern and Western Indian Oceans, replicating the Royal Navy’s commanding position in the Indian Ocean during the Second World War. Israel could also benefit from such an arrangement – its submarines could refuel and resupply from Indian bases, or Indian support ships, enabling more consistent presence on Iran’s southern flank.

Conclusion – Forging the Strategic Relationship

Seldom does the international environment explicitly conform to the goals of high policy. Sophisticated strategies can easily unravel when they encounter certain facts on the ground. However, this makes identifying the points where a state can exert its influence even more critical. The confluence of interests between Israel, India, and the U.S. creates such a situation. With proper American policy action, the U.S. can effectively further its interests in the Near East, Indian Ocean, and Western Pacific, and potentially build a lasting partnership that stabilizes critical regions stretching from Cyprus to Ceylon.

Harry Halem is an undergraduate at the University of St Andrews studying International Relations and Philosophy. He welcomes your comments at [email protected]. 

Featured Image: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi shake hands at a joint press conference in the president’s house in New Delhi, India, on January 15, 2018. (Avi Ohayon/GPO)

Asia-Pacific

Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?

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Graham Allison, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017, $18.30/hardcover, 384 pp.

By David Edgar

The “Thucydides Trap” refers to the line in Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War which states “it was the rise of Athens, and the fear that this inspired in Sparta, that made war inevitable,” and the application of this insight, that rising powers can easily come into conflict with established powers, to present-day relations between the United States and China. Graham Allison’s book, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap, is instructive about the nature of this challenge for policymakers and strategists and lays out what options are available to avoid conflict. But value of the book’s contribution to advancing the discussion reflects the challenging nature of the subject it covers and leaves the reader still in search of answers.

The Thucydides Trap is at the same time one of the most-discussed and the most not-discussed-enough topics among scholars, journalists, and practitioners of international relations. On the one hand, new developments in South China Sea territorial disputes consistently make headlines around the world, with the Obama Administration’s “pivot to Asia” often discussed and critiqued in the same settings. Comparisons between the contemporary United States-China relationship and historical relations between, for example, pre-WWI Great Britain and Germany are hard to miss in magazines and books that examine issues of national security. Allison did much to further this discussion with his 2015 Atlantic article on the Thucydides Trap. On the other hand, some argue that the United States’ reaction to China’s rise lacks a clear direction and that regional tensions in the Middle East and Eastern Europe are taking policymakers’ attention away from East Asia.

Destined for War restates much of the previous discussion about China, the United States, and the dynamics of relative power that led potential rivals to go to war in the past. As such, it is a good overview of the current state of discussion, and one that is remarkably in-depth without being daunting to a reader who is not already familiar with the subject matter. Allison presents an impeccably well-researched history of the lead-up to WWI as well as the Thucydidean relationship between the United States and Great Britain at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. Furthermore, Allison ably depicts the current relationship between the United States and China, with particular attention to statistics showing that China has already surpassed the United States in many meaningful measures of economic power. The strength of the book, alongside Allison’s painstaking research, is its presentation of the historical record and economic statistics in a readable way.

But while the book is an excellent introduction for those who are not already up-to-speed on the present and potential state of relations between the United States and China, it will likely leave the reader wanting more. He does not firmly answer the question of what can be done about it. Allison himself admits that the Thucydides Trap is too monumental to have an easy solution, that proposing such a solution “would demonstrate only one thing: failure to understand the essence of the dilemma that this book has identified.” He calls for a “multiyear, multiminded effort. It will be no less ambitious than the four-year debate that ran from Kennan’s Long Telegram to Nitze’s NSC-68 to shape what ultimately became America’s Cold War strategy.”

In Allison’s defense, he provides a series of “hints for peace” drawn from previous “Thucydides Trap” international relationships and gives several approaches that the United States can take to either confront or accommodate China’s rise. This shows the potential of Destined for War – had these lessons from history and potential avenues for future discussion been the focus of the book, it would surely have been a strong start to the discussion that Allison calls for.

Instead, despite ably presenting the current state of discussion about the Thucydides Trap, Destined for War does little to further that discussion. The book’s “Big Idea,” Allison says, is “in a phrase, Thucydides’s Trap. When a rising power threatens to displace a ruling power, alarm bells should sound: danger ahead.” This is neither groundbreaking nor controversial. History is replete with examples of such conflicts, and political scientists account for them in their theories of why wars happen. Indeed, Destined for War is by no means the first book to introduce this idea, and Allison himself stated it much more concisely in the Atlantic article.

Allison is right – America needs a sustained, honest, and focused discussion about how to react to the fact that China is rising and will rival the United States for hegemony in East Asia sooner rather than later. It is disappointing that Destined for War was a yet another call for such discussion, rather than a start to it.

David Hervey is a senior at Emory University, studying Political Science and Economics. He is writing his senior thesis on The History of the Peloponnesian War.

Featured Image: President Donald Trump meets with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the G20 Summit, Saturday, July 8, 2017, in Hamburg, Germany. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Asia-Pacific

Trump-Xi Summit, Looking Back One Month Later

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By Tuan N. Pham

As the dust settles and more disclosures are made, what can be said now of the Trump-Xi Summit a month later? 

Last month, I wrote an article titled “After the Summit: Where Do U.S.-China Relations Go From Here?” where I posited that China appeared to have a lot to be gratified about in 2016 in terms of advancing its rising regional and international role. The 6-7 April Trump-Xi Summit was the latest strategic signaling to the world that Beijing has abandoned its longstanding state policy of “hide capabilities and bide time” and will now assume its rightful place on the world stage as a destined global power. I also suggested that the heavily choreographed summit seemed more about atmospherics than substance as evidenced by President Xi’s exacting protocol demands prior to the summit, President Trump’s decision to launch missile strikes against Syria during the summit, and the summit itself not yielding any concrete accomplishments beyond pledges of increased cooperation, new frameworks for dialogue, and a state visit to Beijing by Trump later in the year. One month later, as the dust settles and more disclosures are made, what can be said now of the summit?

Part 1 of this two-part series asks what the perceived and actual outcomes are from a Chinese, American, and international perspective. Part 2 will then ask which leader came out relatively stronger, what the ramifications for U.S.-China strategic relations are, what to expect when Trump visits China later in the year, and finally where the strategic opportunities are for the U.S. and how Washington can leverage them.

The Chinese Perspective

Looking back at China’s official public releases, think tank commentaries, and authoritative media reports of the summit, an overarching strategic communications theme was apparent across the tightly controlled and synchronized Chinese public information domain – “the summit charted a course and provided a roadmap for the China-U.S. relations, and established a new cooperation mechanism that will enhance and protect the all-important strategic bilateral relationship.” Supporting talking points shared (and probably coordinated) amongst the various Chinese interlocutors encompassed: (1) complementarity between the economies of China and the United States far exceeds any competition between them, (2) a thousand reasons for two countries to be good partners and not a single reason to damage the China-U.S. relations, (3) that China is firmly committed to the path of peaceful development, does not wish to play a zero-sum game, is not seeking hegemony, and is willing to work with the United States to maintain world peace, stability, and prosperity, and (4) that the U.S. relationship with China will depend on the hope for a “new pattern of relations between great powers” based on the principle of “no confrontation, no conflict, mutual respect, and win-win cooperation.” Common catchphrases used by Chinese government officials, pundits, and news media to characterize the summit included “mutual understanding, mutual trust, mutual respect, and mutual shaping.”

Given the circumstances, it seems that the Chinese public diplomacy apparatus – which Beijing uses to signal its policy priorities – struggled to make the case that the summit resulted in any substantive or tangible outcomes. Instead it expended an inordinate amount of attention on the intangible personal relationship between Xi and Trump and on the former’s proposed four dialogue mechanisms covering diplomacy and security, economics, law enforcement and cybersecurity, and social and people-to-people exchanges. This is not too surprising considering that Chinese think tank punditry and authoritative media reporting prior to the summit were, by and large, focused on building up Xi, jockeying for summit positions, expressing desired outcomes, and in some cases, grandstanding and hedging.            

What may be more telling is the coverage by China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, think tanks, and authoritative media of areas of bilateral tensions – North Korea, Taiwan, South China Sea (SCS), and trade and commerce – during and after the summit. To date, they have been largely limited, vague, positive, and most importantly, provided no indication that Beijing is considering major changes in its policies in the aftermath of the summit.

The one exception may be North Korea. There have been sporadic dialogues in the Chinese media – most notably in the Global Times, a nationalist newspaper run by the state-run People’s Daily, that suggest a growing policy debate within China questioning Beijing’s longstanding support to North Korea, warn of potential sanctions, and caution Pyongyang if it “carries out a sixth nuclear test as expected, it is more likely than ever that the situation will cross the point of no return…all stakeholders will bear the consequences, with Pyongyang sure to suffer the greatest losses.” These media commentaries, while sometimes used to test reactions to potential foreign policies, do not necessarily represent the views of the state. But the warnings appear consistent with Beijing’s recent actions to include implementation of previous United Nations Security Council sanctions and the Xi-Trump phone call on 24 April to discuss possible solutions to the North Korean nuclear issue and denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula.

However, while encouraging, these latest Chinese cooperative moves may be motivated more by Xi’s desire to project goodwill with Trump than to help resolve the North Korean problem. Beijing has shown time and time again that its strategic interests in maintaining the status quo on the Korean Peninsula and ensuring a stable North Korea along its border override its desire to cooperate with Washington to denuclearize the peninsula. The coming months will reveal Beijing’s true intent, and more importantly, its sincerity and resolve this time around. Placating words are meaningless without persistent and consistent actions. Washington should trust but verify.   

The American Perspective 

The White House praised the summit as a positive and productive opportunity for both presidents and their wives to get to know one another, and for their respective staffs to build rapport for the work ahead in reviewing the state of strategic bilateral relations and generating results-focused outcomes that would benefit both countries. Trump and Xi agreed to work in concert to expand areas of cooperation while managing differences based on mutual respect and to elevate existing bilateral talks to reflect the importance of making progress on strategic issues of mutual concern. 

Overall, the meeting details were rather sparse for policy flexibility and probably indicative of the U.S. limited objectives for the summit considering the timing and duration of the meeting: (1) get through the state visit without any enduring policy encumbrances; (2) size up Chinese counterparts for future negotiations (trade, commerce, North Korea, Taiwan, SCS, etc.); and (3) set favorable conditions for the forthcoming and more substantive cabinet-level dialogues and state visit to China. Generally speaking, a major summit within the first 100 days of taking office may be too soon, particularly with the principal nation-state competitor, understaffed national security team, and an unsettled China policy.

Despite the positive and upbeat portrayals of the summit by Beijing and Washington, there was a wide divergence on whether the state visit was a success or not amongst U.S. think tank and media analysts. Some read the lack of a joint press conference or joint press statement as a failure; while others judged the summit as successful simply because it provided an opportunity for Trump and Xi to meet, lower heightened tensions, and set the conditions for future dialogues and negotiations. However, most agreed that the U.S. missile strikes on Syria overshadowed the summit and the summit itself produced few substantive or tangible results. That being said, many saw enough pleasantry between the two sides for restrained optimism in the coming year.

The International Perspective

Most foreign media outlets were cautiously hopeful prior to the summit. Many welcomed the meeting as an occasion to reduce the rising tensions between Beijing and Washington, lower the risk of a disruptive trade war with global ramifications, and explore a new constructive and stabilizing relationship between the two economic and military juggernauts. After the summit, the same foreign media outlets largely acknowledged that there were few substantive or tangible outcomes and the U.S. missile strikes against Syria detracted from the meeting. Some even intimated that the latter may have been a subtle signal to China that the United States is ready to act militarily and unilaterally when faced with threats abroad to include North Korea. Nevertheless, the cordial tone and lack of controversy were generally considered positive steps towards ameliorating tensions in U.S.-China relations during the first eventful months of the Trump Administration.  

U.S. regional allies and partners were rather anxious that Washington would make some sort of unilateral accommodation to Beijing without consultation and at their expense. In Tokyo, there had been apprehensions that the Trump Administration would attempt to use “the scent of a huge deal with China” as leverage to extract concessions from Japan, ease plans to step up pressure on Pyongyang, and give ground in the East China Sea (ECS) and SCS. In Seoul, there were fears that Washington would offer uncoordinated peninsular concessions to Beijing in exchange for pressuring Pyongyang. In Taipei, there were concerns that Trump would continue to use Taiwan as a bargaining chip in its trade negotiations with Beijing and possibly for North Korea, too. In Canberra, there were worries of being left behind on potential economic agreements.

All appear relieved with the summit’s lackluster outcomes. Trump’s telephone calls with Japanese Prime Minister Abe before and after the meeting seemed to allay the Japanese concerns. The Korean response was generally mixed with the Korean Foreign Ministry hailing the summit as successful and meaningful, while the Korean media calling out the meeting for its lack of any agreement on the North Korean nuclear and missile issue. The Taiwanese were likely reassured that the Chinese proposal for a Fourth Communique did not come up, in which Trump would again accede to Xi’s wishes by agreeing that there is but one China and that Taiwan is part of it, instead of the U.S. longstanding policy that it acknowledges the Chinese viewpoint but does not accept the viewpoint. The Australians were simply content that no economic agreements were made that upset their robust bilateral trade relations with China. As for the rest of the region, the media provided limited coverage – as is typical for events outside the region – with post-summit commentary predominantly observed in Singapore. As expected, Singapore took a neutral and measured position of the summit – “does not appear to have gone badly…and achieved little more than just sketching out the challenges which lie ahead on North Korea, SCS, and trade and commerce.”

Conclusion    

This concludes the short discourse on the perceived and actual outcomes from a Chinese, American, and international Regional perspective on the Trump-Xi summit and sets the conditions for further discussion in part 2 on the assessment of which leader came out relatively stronger, ramifications for the U.S.-China strategic relations, expectations of Trump’s visit to China later in the year, and U.S. strategic opportunities and how Washington can leverage them.     

Tuan Pham has extensive experience in the Indo-Asia-Pacific, and is widely published in national security affairs. The views expressed therein are their own and do not reflect the official policy or position of the U.S. Government.

Featured Image: Talks between Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump at the Mar-a-Lago estate in West Palm Beach, Florida, on Thursday and Friday have put bilateral ties back on track. (AFP)

Asia-Pacific

Indo-U.S. Logistics Agreement LEMOA: An Assessment

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The following article originally featured at the National Maritime Foundation and is republished with the author’s permission. Read it in its original form here.

By Gurpreet S. Khurana

On 29 August 2016, during the visit of the Indian Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar to Washington DC, India and the United States (U.S.) signed the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA). Essentially, LEMOA is only a ‘functional’ agreement ‘to account for’ the essential supplies and services that one country would provide (at its port or airport facility) to the visiting military force of the other – an arrangement that the U.S. has made with over a hundred countries worldwide. Nonetheless, the significant symbolic and strategic import of the agreement cannot be ignored. Also, while the proposal was initiated in 2002, it has fructified at a crucial time. Never before in recent history has Asia’s geopolitical and security environment been so tenuous; or the strategic interests of India and the U.S. so convergent. Understandably, therefore, the signing of LEMOA has grabbed much attention, and raised the multitude of questions and speculations. This essay attempts to clarify a few key issues, and appraise LEMOA in terms of its strategic implications.

In the past, India and the U.S. have transacted military logistics, but on an ad hoc basis and largely during combined exercises. LEMOA would change the nature of transactions. Hitherto, each transaction was considered as a separate case and on every occasion, paid for in cash by the side using the supplies or services. LEMOA would entail both sides maintaining a ledger for the transactions, such that much of the debit would be defrayed against the credit, and only the residual balance owing to whichever side would be paid for at the end of the fiscal year. Notably, as a standing agreement, LEMOA is indicative of the expectation on both sides that logistic transactions would increase in the coming years, and expand from combined exercises to coordinated operations.

However, the signing of LEMOA has led to a perception that India has side-stepped “its policy of not entering into a military agreement with any major.” Owing to its civilizational ethos, India’s foreign policy proscribes a ‘military alliance,’ but not a ‘military agreement.’ In the past, India has entered into a plethora of military agreements with major powers on various functional aspects, such as development of defense hardware, combined exercises, and sharing of operational information. Specifically with the U.S., in 2002, India entered into an agreement with the U.S. to provide naval escort to the U.S. high-value ships transiting the Malacca Straits. As another functional agreement, LEMOA represents no departure from India’s enduring policy.

Even under LEMOA, India would be able to exercise its strategic autonomy. The agreement would not restrict India’s strategic options since it is a ‘tier-two’ agreement. This implies that only if and when the Indian government agrees to a U.S. proposal to conduct a combined military exercise or operation (entailing a logistics exchange), will LEMOA come into play. For instance, since the India-U.S. Malabar naval exercise is a standing arrangement approved by the Indian government, LEMOA will apply on all occasions that such exercises are conducted. As another instance, if hypothetically, the U.S. seeks to undertake a coordinated military operation with India to flush out a terrorist group in a neighboring country, based on many factors, India may decide turn down the U.S. proposal, with no obligation to offer the U.S. forces access to Indian logistic facilities. Furthermore, as the Indian Ministry of Defence (MoD) Press Release specifically states, the agreement does not provide for setting up of a U.S. military base on Indian soil.

The above leads to a pertinent question: Does LEMOA give the right to the U.S. and Indian armed forces to use each others’ military bases? According to the Indian MoD Press Release, LEMOA pertains to reciprocal ‘access’ rights to military forces for logistic supplies and services comprising “food, water, billeting, transportation, petroleum, oils, lubricants, clothing, communication services, medical services, storage services, training services, spare-parts and components, repair and maintenance services, calibration services and port services.” Even at present, some of these supplies and services would be available only in the military base of the host country. In the coming years – given the existing trends – when a substantial proportion of Indian military hardware is of U.S. origin, the visiting military force may seek to replenish even ammunition, missiles, and torpedoes from the host country. LEMOA may then become analogous to the reciprocal use of military bases. 

The signing of LEMOA has led to apprehensions amongst a few analysts in India that the benefits of the agreement weigh heavily in favor of the U.S.. Such perception may not be true. The US possesses numerous globally-dispersed overseas military bases and access facilities. In an operational contingency, therefore, the U.S. would expect India to provide essential supplies and services to its military forces only if the contingency occurs in geographic proximity of the Indian sub-continent. Such logistics may also be required for an inter-theatre shift of U.S. forces in an emergency – such as the Persian Gulf crises of 1990, when C-141 transport planes transiting from the Philippines to the Gulf were refueled in Indian airfields – but such occasions would be rare. In contrast, India has no overseas military base, and yet its areas of interest are fast expanding much beyond its immediate neighborhood – notably, the Persian Gulf, southern Indian Ocean and the western Pacific – where its  ability to influence events is severely constrained by stretched logistic lines. Access to U.S. military bases in these areas, facilitated by LEMOA, would provide useful strategic alternatives to India.

In sum, therefore, while LEMOA may be a functional agreement meant to facilitate military operations and exercises, it would enhance the strategic options of the involved parties; and thus pose a credible strategic deterrence to actors – both state and non-state – that seek to undermine regional security and stability. However, to address the possibility of its negative perception in terms of India’s ‘policy polarization,’ New Delhi may consider entering into similar agreements with other  major  powers  with  whom  its  strategic  interests  converge.

Captain   Gurpreet S Khurana, PhD, is Executive   Director at National   Maritime Foundation (NMF), New Delhi. The views expressed are his own and do not reflect the official policy or position of the NMF, the Indian Navy, or the Government of India. He can be reached at [email protected].

Featured Image: Secretary of Defense Ash Carter and India’s Minister of Defense Manohar Parrikar take a photo before their bilateral meeting at the Pentagon on Dec. 10, 2015. (DoD photo by U.S. Army Sgt. First Class Clydell Kinchen)