“India has to note that the United States has for years has
militarily activated the Arabian Sea; the United States is now in the process of
militarily activating the Bay of Bengal hitherto fore viewed by Indian policy
establishment as exclusive military backwaters of India. The military
connotations of such moves whether in complementary role to US strategies or
even in terms of India’s independent strategic postures need to be seriously
contemplated by India’s policy planners.”
Insightful. In view of the US foreign policy objectives in
Afghanistan they have repeatedly asked India to go soft on Pakistan. Will
history repeat itself with Bangladesh – India to make water and trade
concessions to assist US foreign policy objectives!
MYANMAR & BANGLADESH IN UNITED STATES CHINA-CONTAINMENT
STRATEGY
By Dr Subhash Kapila 21/5/2012
United States foreign policy formulations
are marked by a significant quintessential characteristic in that its drivers
are predominantly strategic in nature and superseding any idealistic political
fixations. This once again gets eminently reflected in the new American openings
to Myanmar and Bangladesh in recent months.
Myanmar and Bangladesh rose to the fore in
United States strategic calculus coincidently with US President Obama’s
‘strategic pivot to Asia’ and to Asia Pacific more specifically.
United States ‘strategic pivot’ to Asia
Pacific stood underpinned by an American awakening after a decade of strategic
neglect that China’s military rise and new aggressiveness now needed to be met
by putting into place a China Containment Strategy. American policies of
engagement and congagement with China had not worked.
United States policy planners on surveying
the security architecture of their China Containment Strategy on their
operational maps would have been struck by the stark fact that while East Asia
and South East Asia to a limited extent served its strategic imperatives, it was
the Eastern Flank of Asia Pacific that stood bare without any significant
strategic presence or a strategic partnership.
The Eastern Flank of the Asia Pacific
rested on three countries---Myanmar, Bangladesh and India. While the United
States had a Strategic Partnership with India of sorts, there was no such
linkage with Myanmar and Bangladesh. Notably, Myanmar in American military
perceptions was a military-client state of China and Bangladesh too was indebted
to China as countervailing power to India.
Strategically, it would be a strong American
policy imperative to unloosen Myanmar and Bangladesh from their strategic
linkages with China. Further, for successful implementation of the US strategic
pivot to Asia and its corollary of China Containment Strategy, the American
security architecture had to incorporate Myanmar and Bangladesh in that
architecture.
Of the two, Myanmar has overwhelming military
significance for US strategy as Myanmar has physical geographical contiguity
with China in its northern and north-eastern confines. Furthermore China has
made heavy strategic, military and political investments on Myanmar as part of
its counter-containment strategies aimed at the United States.
United States strategic interests on
Myanmar are for the very opposite reasons that drove China to woo and invest so
heavily and win over Myanmar to its strategic fold.
The United States in a strategic partnership
or in a strategically cooperative relationship with Myanmar would be able to
deny China a land access to the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean. US would be
able to neutralise the carefully crafted overland oil pipelines grid from the
Myanmar coast to South China. This was a Chinese military aim to outflank and
avoid dependence on the Straits of Malacca for its oil supplies which could be
blocked by the United States.
More
significantly, the full consummation of a Myanmar-United States strategic
relationship would facilitate eventually a second land foothold on continental
Asia in addition to Vietnam which is similarly being wooed. Militarily at some
time in the future, Myanmar’s Navy and Air Force bases could open up for use by
United States as part of China Containment Strategy.
Bangladesh while not enjoying any
geographical contiguity with China has what one could call strategic contiguity
with China as countervailing power against India and also in the process having
a Bangladesh-China Defence Cooperation Agreement.
Bangladesh figures in the strategic calculus
of the United States militarily in the Navy and Air Force domains. In the United
States China Containment Strategy, with Bangladesh strongly in its fold
eventuality exists where the US Navy and US Air Force could use Bangladeshi
bases.
Politically, our policy planners view
offshore oil-blocks only in economic perspectives. But United States policy
planners view these in strategic and military terms. The United States strategic
formulations would be to deny to China access to and use of respective offshore
oil-blocks of Myanmar and Bangladesh in the Bay of Bengal. It must be remembered
that an important component of US China Containment Strategy would be the
‘energy strangulation’ of China.
Concluding, it
needs to be highlighted that United States recent political moves towards
Myanmar and Bangladesh were not motivated by Myanmar’s release of Aung San Syuu
Kyi and democratic reforms or in Bangladesh the stamping down on Islamist
terrorist organisations. These were political moves, more as political
fig-leaves, to provide suitable cover for the U-turn in US policies especially
in the case of Myanmar.
United States recent openings to Myanmar
and Bangladesh have to be viewed in the long-term perspective as driven by US
strategic imperatives to draw-in Myanmar and Bangladesh into the over-arching US
China Containment Strategy as both Myanmar and Bangladesh were the missing dots
on the Eastern Flank of the Asia Pacific security architecture of the United
States.
India has to note that the United States has
for years has militarily activated the Arabian Sea; the United States is now in
the process of militarily activating the Bay of Bengal hitherto fore viewed by
Indian policy establishment as exclusive military backwaters of India. The
military connotations of such moves whether in complementary role to US
strategies or even in terms of India’s independent strategic postures need to be
seriously contemplated by India’s policy planners.
sanjeev nayyar
No comments:
Post a Comment