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For years China has been pursuing its policy of a string of pearls; which meant having naval stations around the Indian subcontinent as a means of encircling India.  The building of a port in the Sri Lankan town of Hambantota, Gwadar in Pakistan, courting the island states of Seychelles, Maldives, Mauritius and not to mention Myanmar.

Unwittingly of course, India had been resorting to its own plan of undoing this pearls by its Look East policy that it put in place a couple of decades ago.  Over these years, India has strengthend not only economic, but also military partnership with some key nations of South East & East Asia like Japan, South Korea, Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand & Singapore.

Its no secret that China is one of the biggest trading partner of ASEAN as well as of Japan & South Korea.  But its also a fact that most of these countries are not comfortable with the flooding their domestic markets with Chinese goods.  Also China’s yuan manipulation keeps the prices of their goods cheaper and affects the local economies of countries like Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia etc.  And many of these countries are already protesting the same.

The increasing economic clout of China has also massaged its military ego and it now has a lot of territorial claims against countries like Japan, Vietnam and other South East Asian countries.

It is in this context that one can see how India’s Look East policy is reaping rich dividends.  Not only has it led to economic benefits, but also robust military exchanges between the countries and India.

In all these hoopla, what is not being missed is the increasing defence collaboration between the militaries of America and India.  During the cold war era, India was fully dependent on the Russians for arms supply.  with the collapse of the USSR, the spares dreid up and defence procurement dipped to a low for India. During the Kargil war, it was the Israelis who came to India’s aid with timely supplies of spares and the required ammunition.

Today Israel and the US are increasingly becoming the biggest arms suppliers to India. Over the last couple of years, India has purchased six C-130J Super Hercules aircraft for almost US$1 billion and eight Boeing P-8I planes for more than US$2 billion (2009) from the US.

Also US is in running to bag the massive $12 billion 126 advanced figher for which the testing is already underway.

Though it would do a world of good for India to have a coherent defence policy instead of buying piecemeal arms and ammunitions.  Not to mention try to have an indegenous arms production industry within the country.  Depending on the DRDO and its allied organisations is a suicidal step for the country.  Privatisation of the defence industry would go a long step in indigenisation of defence technology.   The Mahindras, L&T, Tatas are increasing their participation in defence technology and it would do a lot of good in future.

Some good reads on this topic

How India is undoing China’s string of pearls
Delhi’s obsequious Obamamania
India counters China’s “String of Pearls” through Naval Diplomacy

Above pictures courtesy: Tactical Life & Twenty22

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Indian armed forces have chalked out a stunning round of combat exercises with foreign forces over the coming several months to use “defence diplomacy” as a tool to bolster national security as well as promote strategic cooperation.

Defence ministry officials say the 1.13-million Army alone has planned 14 to 18 exercises with countries ranging from the US, UK and Russia to Bangladesh, Mongolia, Thailand and Tajiskistan, both at home and abroad.

For instance, the armies of Seychelles and Singapore will be in Belgaum and Deolali in January for joint combat exercises . Similar is the case with Navy and IAF. Indian warships will hold combat manoeuvres with French warships, including nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle, during the “Varuna” wargames on the high seas in January . “Indian and French navies and air forces have build a high-level of interoperability through such exercises… We have a strategic partnership ,” said visiting French chief of defence staff Admiral Edouard Guillaud.

The US, of course, is leading the charge in this “interoperability” game, with Indian and American armed forces holding a staggering 60 or so wargames over the last decade.

Many more are in the offing. After the ‘Malabar’ naval wargames on the western coast, the “Habu Nag” amphibious exercise at Okinawa (Japan) and the “Vajra Prahar” counterterrorism drills at Belgaum earlier in the year, around 200 Indian soldiers are now leaving for Alaska to take part in the “Balance Iroquois” exercise with American special forces.

Despite defence minister A K Antony always being eager to downplay the expansive Indo-US defence relationship, the armed forces of the two nations have set a scorching pace in their bilateral engagement . Of the 64 exercises conducted by the Army between 2001 and 2009, well over one-third were with the US.

“The US is the only superpower around… We learn a lot from exercising with them. With the vast counter-insurgency experience of our professional forces, we also teach them a lot,” said a senior officer.

Above news source: TimesofIndia

Pictures courtesy: Military photos, Getty

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We can choose our friends, but not our neighbours.  This statement was famously made by our previous Prime Minister, AB Vajpayee. How true.  Given a chance we would like to pack Pakistan and dump them into the sea for being such a pest.  Why not?  Afterall, a country which has terrorism as its national policy against its neighbours, a country that drills hatred into its citizens brains 24×7, a country that doesnt mind soiling the plate that hold its food, Pakistan is nothing but a big pain in the butt for the world community now.

After the leak of more than 90,000 secret documents on the Wikileaks website, more and more sordid exposure of the Pakistani leadership are coming to light.  It was always known that the rogue intelligence agency of Pakistan, the ISI, was hand in glove with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Lashkar-e-Toiba and many other terrorist organisations fomenting teror in India.

But what takes the cake is the ignorant America feeding the Paki army so that it can fund the terrorists which in turn stab the American and other NATO troops currently in Afghanistan in the back.  The same money that the Americans provided the Pakistani government is now being fed by the ISI and Pakistani Army back to the Al Qaeda backed terrorists who are in turn killing the American soldiers.

I wonder how the American citizens are tolerating their government feeding the same scums who are killing their soldiers. Any civilized government would have re-looked at the horrors of the backstabbing that Pakistan has been doing to their soldiers…but not the US government.  The game of strategic reach that the US likes to play so much has stretched its resources so badly that the US economy is on the verge of a collapse.  Still, it refuses to learn from its mistakes.

Inspite of the evidence put forth by the intelligence, that the biggest snake in the hole is nothing but the Pakistani Army/ISI, the Americans seem to have no qualms sharing the same bed with them.  Pakistan has mastered the art of holding a gun to its own head and threatening to kill itself.  Its time the Americans call their bluff.

If the Americans want to withdraw from Afghanistan in 3-4 years as they predict, its best for them to rein in the Pakistani Army/ISI and strengthen the Afghan govt’s hands in developing a strong defence against not only the local insurgents but also the Army/ISI.

As for India, the best thing for it to happen would be the breakup of Pakistan.  I have always believed that a strong and economically stable Pakistan is a bigger headache for India than one which is broken up into pieces.  I love Manmohan Singh and really appreciate the hard work he is putting in trying to find a peaceful solution with Pakistan.  But he doesnt realise that he is barking up the wrong tree and that Pakistan is like the dog whose tail will always be curled.  No matter what we cant straighten it.  Its not a civilized society and probably we need to wall off the borders between the two countries and cut all strategic, business and people to people ties.

According to Canada’s former ambassador to Afghanistan, Chris Alexander…

Gen. Kayani is saying he wants to call the shots in Kabul. To do so, he is prepared to support the principal outfit launching suicide attacks in Afghanistan’s cities. He is backing the Islamic Emirate’s effort to wreck an Afghan-led nation-building process.

The Pakistan army under Gen. Kayani is sponsoring a large-scale, covert guerrilla war through Afghan proxies – whose strongholds in Baluchistan and Waziristan are flourishing. Their mission in Afghanistan is to keep Pashtun nationalism down, India out and Mr. Karzai weak.

It has nothing to do with Islam, whose principles they trample; indeed, the flower of Afghanistan’s ulema (religious leaders) have been among their victims. Gen. Kayani and others will deny complicity. But as the WikiLeaks material demonstrates, their heavy-handed involvement is now obvious at all levels.

To understand the context of this fraught relationship, read a report called The Sun and the Sky: The Relationship of Pakistan’s ISI to Afghan Insurgents, by Matt Waldman, a former Oxfam policy adviser now at Harvard. It is a chilling tale. When the scale of this complicity is fully exposed, it will rank high on the list of modern scandals.

The USA seems to have no qualms cutting off all funding to Iran, North Korea and any other country that doesnt toe its line.  But when it comes to Pakistan, it strangely behaves like an Ostrich who buries its face in the sand.

Tunku Varadarajan hits the nail on the head when he says…

We are now at a crossroads with Pakistan, a point at which we need to pull out old words from the Bush playbook. It is time to state to them—to state, in particular, to Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kiyani, the Pakistan army’s chief of staff—that Pakistan is either with us, or against us. There can be no caveats, no exit clauses, no fine print, no weasely handwringing about Pakistan’s need to retain “strategic balance” in Afghanistan.

Some more articles on the leaked documents

On WikiLeaks, Pakistan and Afghanistan; the tip of an old iceberg

Above pictures courtesy: Pakistanisforpeace & omjiyadav

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Finally, i finished reading this book.  Have been reading it on and off for the past 6 odd months.  In the meanwhile have finished reading a few others too.  Odd, because the book is a very good read and written with lots of historical references.  For someone who loves to know the Roman, Greek, French, British and American history, this book is a treasure trove.

The authors of this book are Bill Bonner & Addison Wiggin who have been writing the free daily newsletter, The Daily Reckoning for more than 10 years now. The newsletter covers a lot about the daily economy, world politics, investment strategies, gold, stock market etc.  Bonner is also the founder and president of Agora Publishing.

The authors believe that the America of today has left the values of its founding fathers far behind and has become an imperial power instead of being a country.  Bonner also believes that the end of America is also coming soon.  The author talks about the dollar crisis, the coming end of the US economy. He writes about how successive US governments have gone to war and wasted all resources, the decoupling of the dollar to the gold standard, the federal reserve under Alan Greenspan with his inflationary policies totally wrecked the US economy.

Quoting from Amazon,

Bonner and Wiggin view ancient Rome as the classical model of empire. Running an empire was an expensive business; the folks in the homeland needed to be mollified with government handouts (bread and circuses), while a large military had to be maintained in the frontier. Rome used its military power to exact tribute from neighboring states; it was a protection racket, no different from the Mafia. Nevertheless, this scheme generally kept the central state solvent and the territories at peace. The United States is also an empire, Bonner and Wiggin maintain, but it does not follow the classical model. It placates its citizens with massive distributions of government largess while using its powerful military to exert influence and keep peace abroad. However, “[i]nstead of getting paid for providing protection, the United States is on the receiving end of loans from its tributary states and trading partners ” (p. 77). This is how the United States became the Empire of Debt.

Empire of Debt: The Rise of an Epic Financial Crisis
Authors – Bill Bonner & Addison Wiggin
Pages – 384
Publisher – Wiley

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After Saina, its Paes again.  Consistency when you are 37 years old is no joke.  At a time when tennis players hang up their racquests, Leander Paes is still going strong.

India’s Leander Paes and Cara Black of Zimbabwe beat South African Wesley Moodie and Lisa Raymond of the US 6-4, 7-6 (5) to win the Wimbledon mixed doubles title here Sunday.

With this victory, Paes surpassed his one-time doubles partner Mahesh Bhupathi in winning the most Grand Slam titles for India. Paes now has six doubles and six mixed-doubles titles. Bhupathi has 11 Grand Slam titles — four doubles and seven mixed doubles titles.

Full article here

Above pictures courtesy: Wimbledon

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