In recent years, Turkey’s foreign policy has attracted scrutiny because of its aggressive postures in the neighbourhood and a confrontational approach towards regional and international powers. The latest example of its bellicose foreign policy was witnessed in the South Caucuses where Turkey provoked a military confrontation between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the long standing Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Though Turkey is not a party to the conflict, its role as Azerbaijan’s primary backer, the supply of weapons and drones, and statement of unconditional support has been instrumental in the eruption of the latest fighting between the two former Soviet republics. Nagorno-Karabakh is an area inside Azerbaijan with a majority ethnic-Armenian population, which has been, since 1994, under the control of an Armenia-backed rebel group wishes to establish an independent Republic of Artsakh in Nagorno-Karabakh.

The Turkish action in the South Caucuses follows a similar foreign policy pattern witnessed over the past decade in the West Asia and North Africa (WANA) region. In the early days of the “Arab Spring” protests during 2011-12, Ankara vocally supported the protest movements and presented Turkey as a “model” Islamic country for its ability to reconcile Islam and democracy in its political structure and governance; President Recep Tayyip Erdogan asserted that this model should be followed in the Arab and Islamic world. Initially, Erdogan was cheered in Arab streets that were calling for the end of corrupt, repressive, and authoritarian regimes. Nonetheless, Erdogan’s own handling of protests in Turkey, his attempts to silence the media and civil society, the targeting of opposition leaders, and purging of civilian and military officers busted the Turkish myth of a model “Islamic-democratic” country.

This did not deter Erdogan, rather it prompted him to adopt a more belligerent approach to expand Turkey’s external influence. The first sign emerged in Turkey’s military involvement in Iraq and Syria. Ankara entered Syria in support of the Islamist rebels and to confront the Kurdish opposition, fearing the formation of a de facto autonomous Kurdish region in northern Syria. Eventually, this led to the creation of a de facto Turkish enclave in Idlib in northwest Syria. In northern Iraq, Turkish armed forces have, since the 1990s, launched military operations to neutralise the hideouts of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) with the consent of Iraqi authorities in Baghdad and Erbil. The frequency of military operations have increased after the breaking down of peace negotiations between the Turkish government and the PKK in 2015, and Turkish armed forces have refused to respect Iraqi sovereignty despite protests from Baghdad. The interventions in Syria and Iraq have generated tensions between Turkey and Iran, on the one hand, and Turkey and Arab regional powers, on the other. Likewise, it has generated bitterness in relations with the United States (US) and Russia due to the two powers being the primary security providers in Iraq and Syria, respectively.

As was the case in Syria and Iraq, in January 2020 Ankara catapulted itself into the Libyan conflict in support of the internationally-recognised Government of National Accord (GNA). Though the Turkish military intervention changed the dynamics of the civil war in Libya, it could not decisively end Khalifa Hifter’s control over the oil-hub of Sirte and a vast majority of Libyan territory. The military intervention nonetheless put Turkey directly in confrontation with the international and regional backers of Hifter—Russia, France, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Egypt—threatening a regional conflict that could only be doused due to proactive mediation efforts led by the United Nations (UN) that eventually led to signing of a ceasefire between the local belligerents.

Similarly, Ankara’s provocative actions in the Eastern Mediterranean region (EastMed) has revived the threat of a Turkey-Greece conflict and led to heightened tensions with France and the European Union (EU). The resource rich EastMed has in recent years received regional attention and Ankara has been riling over its exclusion from the newly established EastMed Gas Forum (EGF) comprising of Cyprus, Egypt, Greece, Israel, Italy, Jordan, and Palestine. Turkey asserts it has legitimate claim over the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in the EastMed, which is disputed by both Greece and Cyprus. The situation came to a head in September-October 2020 and Turkey agreed to back down only after mediation efforts by the US and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) countries, and threats of economic sanctions by the EU, but has not given up its claim over the EEZ.

The question that now arises is: what is prompting the display of aggressive foreign policy behaviour by Turkey? Broadly, there are four factors that can be identified. Firstly, it emanates from the ambition to enhance Turkey’s comprehensive national power to emerge as a regional power and be recognised as a middle power in global politics. Undoubtedly, Turkey possesses the geographic, economic, historical, and economic ingredients, backed by its geostrategic location, to be an important regional actor. However, Erdogan’s confrontationist approach, military tactics and pan-Islamist orientation has pitched Turkey against other regional powers such as the Arab states of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the UAE as well as Israel and Iran, and has strained its relations with great powers such as the US, Russia and EU; its propensity to raise controversial issues at international forums has put it in the cross-hairs of China and India.

Secondly, Turkey wishes to establish a strategic presence in areas that it considers sphere of influence. Its military is already involved in northern Cyprus, Somalia, Syria, Iraq, and Libya, has bases in Qatar and Sudan, and is looking to expand its influence in different locations in its entire neighbourhood. Thirdly, Turkey is eyeing hydrocarbon resources in the EastMed, the Caspian and Black Seas as well as the market for Turkish civilian and defence products in Africa and Asia that can propel its economic growth. Since 2016, the Turkish economy is going through one of the worst slumps in decades and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has further dampened the hopes for recovery. Taking a cue from the Chinese handbook, Turkey has sought to use foreign policy to advance its economic agenda. Though this was done mainly through a soft power approach earlier, Erdogan has increasingly used hard power to achieve this goal. Fourthly, Erdogan is faced with serious domestic political and economic challenges and is using a confrontationist foreign policy laced with the rhetoric of reviving the historical Turko-Islamic glory of the Ottoman Empire as a diversionary tactic as well as a method of retaining his support base.

This aggressive foreign policy approach backed by hard power has, however, led to the deterioration of Turkey’s relations with friends and foes alike. Turkey’s relations with the US have nosedived over several issues, including the procurement of the S-400 missile defence system from Russia and its military intervention in Syria, despite the personal rapport between Erdogan and Donald Trump. Turkey’s relations with Russia are strained due to the military confrontations in Syria, Libya, and in Nagorno-Karabakh despite having good defence and economic relations. Turkey’s relations with the EU have soured due to the growing authoritarian streak of the Erdogan government. Relations with West Asian countries have also nosedived due to Ankara’s increasingly pan-Islamist behaviour.

In the mid-2000s, soon after the ascendance of President Erdogan, Ankara adopted the policy of zero problem with neighbours to achieve its objective to enhance Turkey’s comprehensive national power. However, a decade and half later, riding on a series of foreign policy misadventures, Ankara is left with zero friends.

Views expressed are of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Manohar Parrikar IDSA or of the Government of India.

A new chapter titled “Other Capital Procurement Procedure (OCPP)” has been included in the Defence Acquisition Procedure 2020 (DAP-2020) 1, released by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) on September 30, 2020, which replaces the Defence Procurement Procedure 2016. This procedure is meant for incurring expenditure of capital nature that enhances the utility of the existing assets, such as overhauls, major refits, and upgrades, as also on replacement, of the existing platforms/equipment and not on acquisition of new capital assets.  

The list of items procurable through the OCPP will be drawn up by the Headquarter Integrated Defence Staff (HQ IDS) and the respective Service Headquarters (SHQ) from time to time and promulgated by the Director General (Acquisition) in consultation with the MoD (Finance). No such list is presently included in the DAP-2020. It will be desirable to notify the new list, as and when drawn up, as a supplement to the chapter on the OCPP. Making it public will help in disseminating information to the suppliers about prospective procurements.

Roots of OCPP

This chapter mainstreams the temporary measure taken in 2007 at the behest of the Ministry of Finance (MoF) to ensure that expenditure of capital nature, which was till then being wrongly incurred from the revenue budget, is compiled to the relevant capital budget heads. To prevent any confusion, four lists of items, one each pertaining to the three services and HQ IDS, were drawn up and appended to the government letter.2

A year after the system—later labelled as the Capital Budget Revenue Procedure (CBRP)—was introduced, the lists were reviewed in 2008, and subsequently in 2009 and 2011.3 Meanwhile, a list of items pertaining to the Indian Coast Guard (ICG) were separately notified in 2010.4 Though it is not specifically mentioned in the chapter all these lists get superseded, except perhaps where the Request for Proposal (RfP) has already been issued in respect of any item covered by them.

The introduction of the CBRP created a third stream of capital procurements, besides procurements by the vice-chiefs, etc., under the financial powers delegated to them for buying capital items and by the MoD’s Capital Acquisition Wing  (MoD [Acquisition]). Separate category codes were allotted in 20085 for compilation of expenditure so that its progress could be monitored under these streams.

There were four main features of the CBRP which helped in better utilisation of the capital budget that used to generally remain underutilised at that point of time, besides reducing pressure on the increasingly scarce revenue budget:

1. Expenditure on a listed item was to be booked to the capital budget only if its unit cost was Rs 10 lakh and its useful life seven years. This revised “cost-life” criterion was adopted by the MoD  in 2003, before which the unit cost in the “cost-life” criterion used to be Rs 2 lakh.
2. The revenue procurement procedure laid down in the Defence Procurement Manual (DPM) 2006 (revised in 2009) was to be followed for CBRP. 
3. The Competent Financial Authorities (CFAs) for sanctioning expenditure under the CBRP were to be determined with reference to the scheme of delegation of financial powers for revenue procurement.
4. The offset policy was not to be applicable to CBRP procurements.

Changes in CBRP

The OCPP has done away with the cost-life criterion, prescribes a customised procedure and specific delegation of financial powers for procurement, and seems silent on the issue of offsets. It will be desirable to put to rest any possible doubt about applicability of offsets while notifying the new list of items procurable through the OCPP.

For ease of processing the procurement proposals, a new scheme of delegation of financial powers down to the command level has been laid down as given in Table 1 below.

The way these financial powers are defined gives the impression that the Vice Chief of Army Staff (VCOAS), the Deputy Chief of Army Staff (DCOAS) and their equivalents could exercise the powers of their lower CFAs also. This seems unintended, in which case the mistake should be corrected, apart from instituting some mechanism to ensure that there are no parallel procurements of the same item(s) at the MoD/SHQ and the Command levels.

Procedure

The OCPP envisages aggregation of the long-term “repetitive” requirement (say for five years) of one or more of the listed items by the SHQs with an “inherent 25% flexibility in numbers or cost to cater for unforeseen circumstances” and while the proposals do not have to be a part of the Annual Acquisition Plan (AAP), these will have to be within “the overall financial limits linked to the allotted budget for AAP”. This phraseology is unintelligible and can cause confusion at the implementation stage.

The normal capital acquisition process starts with the Request for Information (RfI) and formulation of the Services Qualitative Requirements (SQR). In OCPP, however, since the scope, cost, SQR and vendor base would already be known, these steps “may not be applicable”, but the SHQ could use their discretion to go through these processes.

The procurement proposals will not have to be routed through the Services Procurement Board, Defence Procurement Board, or the Defence Acquisition Council. Instead, these will be moved on file to MoD (Acquisition) through MoD (Finance) in non-delegated power cases and through the Principal Integrated Financial Advisor in cases under the delegated powers for approval by the AoN (Acceptance of Necessity) according authority. The AoNs will be valid for a period of one year.

There is a cursory reference to the CFAs also being the AoN according authorities. This can be problematic where the proposal entails expenditure exceeding Rs 2,000 crore as for all such expenditure the CFAs are the finance minister (between Rs 2,000 crore and Rs 3,000 crore) and the Cabinet Committee on Security (above Rs 3,000 crore).

All post-AoN activities will be conducted by the Procurement-cum-Negotiation Committees (PNC) in delegated power cases in accordance with the procedure envisaged in the DPM, and by the Contract Negotiation Committee (CNC) in non-delegated power cases exceeding Rs 300 crore as per the DAP-2020 procedure.

It implies that the RfP will be issued under the aegis of the PNC/CNC by the SHQ/MoD (Acquisition) in delegated power and non-delegated power cases respectively “as per the format in DPM suitably modified to be aligned with OCPP”. On receipt of the response, Technical Evaluation will be carried out as per the provisions of the DPM, but no Field Evaluation Trial be carried out.

The Standard Contract Document indicating the general conditions of contract “will be aligned with DPM format suitably modified” and the contracts signed only after obtaining the CFA’s approval. To ensure expeditious completion of the process, “the timelines for OCPP procurements will be as per the guidelines laid down in the DPM”.

Summing up

To sum up, the OCPP is a curious mix of revenue and capital procurement procedures, with heavy dependence on the DPM which is presently under revision. Customising the DPM provisions for procurement under the OCPP could be cumbersome and result in multiple practices being adopted, especially across various command headquarters. It would have been more appropriate to lay down a self-contained procedure in DAP-2020.

Views expressed are of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Manohar Parrikar IDSA or of the Government of India.

• 1. See Defence Acquisition Procedure 2020, Chapter X.
• 2. Government of India (GoI), MoD, Finance Division, Letter No PC-11(1)/Bud.I/2007 dated 25 September 2007.
• 3. Go I, MoD, Finance Division, Letters No PC-11(1)/Bud.I/2007 dated 21 October 2008 and 23 November 2009, and Letter No 2(2)/B.I/2008 dated 13 January 2011.
• 4. GoI, MoD, Letter No FM/1215/1365/D(CG-R)/10 dated 24 June 2010.
• 5. GoI, MoD, Office of the Controller General of Defence Accounts (Accounts b& Budget Division) Circular No A/B/I/13626/CHB-Prefix-II dated 17 December 2008, recirculated by the GoI, MoD, Finance Division, Letter No PC-11(1)/Bud.I/2007 dated 8 September 2009.
• 6. As per Chapter II, DAP 2020, the CFAs are: Defence Secretary (above Rs 300 crore but up to Rs 500 crore); Defence Minister (above Rs 500 crore and up to Rs 2,000 crore); Finance Minister (above Rs 2,000 crore and up to Rs 3,000 crore); and, the Cabinet Committee on Security (above Rs 3,000 crore)

On September 10, 2020, the Indian Air Force (IAF) formally inducted the Rafale into operational service in a befitting ceremony and the Defence Minister rightly termed it a “game changer”.1 The Rafale is an excellent choice and it is almost a decade after the IAF finalised the aircraft through a long and tedious evaluation process that it is finally here. Given the controversy that overshadowed its induction and the existing threat scenario in India’s neighbourhood, the Rafale is making headlines, not just in India but across the border as well.  

The Rafale brings with it proven enhanced combat capabilities and ease of maintainability that multiplies the offensive airpower tremendously. Some airpower strategists have argued that the results of aerial engagements with the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) on February 27, 2019 would have been very different had the IAF possessed Rafale then; and now that the aircraft has been inducted, it will play a pivotal role in the outcome of any future skirmish.

Irrefutably, Rafale is a force multiplier. However, to infer that the results of February 27, 2019 aerial engagements would have been different is not a consequence of the aircraft per se, but the enhanced combat capabilities that are packaged with the Rafale.  There are capabilities that the IAF possesses and these could have been enhanced further through smartly planned timely upgradation of existing fighter fleets such as Su-30MKI, Mirage 2000 and MiG-29.

The aerial combat that took place over Kashmir skies on February 27, 2019 was no ordinary event. For the first time, since the Kosovo Campaign in Europe in 1999, were two countries engaged in an aerial combat with Beyond Visual Range Air-Air Missiles (BVRAAM).2 Since Kosovo, all subsequent air campaigns, be it in Kargil, Afghanistan, Iraq, Mali or Syria, have been devoid of any aerial combat.3 The one that precipitated on February 27 was the first Large Force Engagement (LFE) with BVRAAMs of the 21st century!

Miffed by India’s airstrikes against terror camps inside its Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province’s Balakot region on February 26, 2019,4 Pakistan launched a face-saving “Operation Swift Retort” in the early hours of February 27, 2019. The PAF offensive was well packaged with embedded elements of electronic and communication jammers, BVRAAM armed F-16 and JF-17 aircraft and stand-off strike aircraft.5 However, despite the numerical superiority of the attacking forces, better air-air missiles and, most importantly, the advantage of surprise, the PAF offensive was not only successfully neutralised by a few IAF Su-30MKI, M-2000 and MiG-21 BISON aircraft, but an F-16 was also downed while losing only a MiG-21 in the dogfights that ensued. This is an excellent exchange ratio by any standards of aerial combat.

On that historic day, of all the capabilities of Rafale that the IAF missed the most were its long-range BVRAAM, Meteor and, more importantly, its electronic warfare (EW)capability. When engaged in aerial combat against a numerically superior force, better weapons and EW capabilities can make up for skewed numbers in the sky. Electronic jamming degrades communication and radar detection, creating a fog of war and confusion that can be exploited to neutralise numerical superiority. Rafale’s EW suite and its Meteor BVRAAM are among the best in the world today and gives the aircraft that critical ability to perform optimally even while operating in a dense electronic jamming environment.

Had the Su-30MKIs that engaged in combat with the PAF’s American made F-16s and the Chinese made JF-17s been equipped with a superior BVRAAM and an upgraded EW suite, the kill ratios may have been even more favourable. In such a case, the IAF could have caused higher attrition on the raiders. Furthermore, instead of seeing a courageous pilot paraded as a prisoner of war (PoW), India may have held the bargaining chips at the negotiating table. It was not so much because of delayed induction of the Rafale, but perhaps a consequence of delayed upgradation of the existing fighter fleets, principally the Su-30MKI.

The responsibility for this skewed BVRAAM imbalance and lack of upgraded EW capability has to be shouldered as much by agencies such as the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) as the IAF itself. Upgradation programmes for EW equipment comprising of Radar Warning Receivers (RWR) and Aircraft Self Protection Jammers (ASPJ) have run into delays primarily to foster indigenous production/development.6 Sometimes the specifications given by users may have been over-ambitious but mostly the technology sought was just beyond indigenous capability.

The Su-30MKI is a case in point. With a fleet of more than 260 aircraft and more in the offing, it is the mainstay of IAF and will remain so at least for the next two decades. It is a unique product housing components and weaponry from many countries fitted on a Russian platform. India, France, Israel, South Africa and the Russian Federation have all contributed to the development of this aircraft. While the intent has been to equip the aircraft with the best products from various manufacturers, integrating those systems to function harmoniously has been a challenge for the HAL. Post induction into the IAF in 2002, the first indigenously assembled Su-30MKI was rolled out by the HAL’s Nasik division in 2004. Since its induction into operational service, the Su-30MKI fleet has been trapped in a constant cycle of evolution with many mission-critical equipment that require upgrades awaiting indigenous production or a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Russia. The fleet is now almost two decades old and upgrades are required to retain edge over the enemy.

The upgrade programme for the Sukhoi fleet was initiated about a decade ago and it was to be timed with the first overhaul stage of the aircraft. However, many aircraft have already been overhauled but there has been little progress on the upgrade programme thus far. The responsibility can perhaps be deflected between Russian original equipment manufacturer (OEM) for demanding exorbitant prices and withholding technology, the HAL (Indian manufacturer) and the DRDO for delayed projects,7 the ministry concerned for inordinate delays in clearing projects, and the IAF itself for not aggressively pursuing these issues. The bottom line is that the equipment/capability that directly dictates operational readiness cannot be compromised and it is the IAF that has to draw the line.

Indigenous capability development cannot continue for decades without the desired results and diminutive accountability. Military technology is constantly evolving and it so often happens that technology becomes redundant even before it is operationalised. Staying ahead of the curve is both imperative and a challenge. It thus raises the question: Is national security a suitable opportunity cost for developing indigenous capability? 

By no means is it being suggested that indigenous research and development (R&D) must be shelved and only foreign equipment purchased; however, it must be a parallel process. In our quest for regional dominance, the substitution of expensive foreign equipment by locally developed systems is not just desirable but necessary in the long run. However, this must happen without any compromise in operational capability. The armed forces can no longer bank on drawing board promises to fight the next war. Continuous capability enhancement of combat assets to stay ahead of the adversaries needs strong impetus and that too indigenously. The government's drive for Atmanirbharta or ‘Self Reliance’ in defence production is a step in the right direction. Indisputably, Atmanirbharta in defence production is the key to India’s rise as a great power. However, the opportunity cost must be fixed realistically.

The Rafale has definitely added a punch to the IAF’s firepower and India’s adversaries will surely be taking notes. However, the induction of just 36 Rafale is not the panacea to all our woes. The Su-30MKI, IAF’s largest fighter fleet, will continue to have a vital role to play, at least for the next two decades, in any future conflict. The upgradation programme for the Sukhoi that has been under consideration for many years, and perhaps already delayed a little too long, needs to be expedited. Any further delays come only at the cost of the IAF’s war-waging capabilities, and the developing threat scenario in India’s sphere of interest and influence no longer allows the liberty of time.

Views expressed are of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Manohar Parrikar IDSA or of the Government of India.

• 1. Dinaker Peri, “Rafale induction a game changer, says Rajnath Singh”, The Hindu, September 10, 2020.
• 2. Benjamin S. Lambeth, NATO's Air War for Kosovo, A Strategic and Operational Assessment, RAND Corporation, 2001, Chapter 3, p. 23.
• 3. All these wars were fought either against adversaries that did not possess an air force or chose not to engage in aerial combat. Royal Iraqi Air Force in 2003 and Pakistan Air Force in Kargil in 1999 did not engage their adversaries.
• 4. “Statement by Foreign Secretary on 26 February 2019 on the Strike on JeM training camp at Balakot”, Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India, February 26, 2019.  2020).
• 5. Sameer Joshi, “How Pakistan planned to hit India back for Balakot - the mission, the fighters, the tactics”, The Print, September 14, 2019.
• 6. According to the CAG Audit Report No. 38 of 2015 (Air Force), “Audit examination of 14 Mission Mode projects carried out by DRDO Laboratories revealed that all the projects failed their timelines and their probable date of completion (PDC) were extended many times. In five projects there was cost overrun as well.” See “Chapter III: Defence Research and Development Organisation (Air Force)”, Para 3.1, Report No. 38 of 2015 - Compliance Audit on Air Force, Union Government, Defence Services, Comptroller and Auditor General of India, p. 109.
• 7. Ibid. Para 3.1.8.13: Dual Colour Missile Approach Warning System (DC MAWS), CAG Audit Report No. 38 of 2015 (Air Force), pp. 130-133.

China’s ascent to great power status during the last 30 years has altered the power equation that had existed in the 1990s between China and India and China and the United States (US). In 1990, China’s GDP of US$ 360 billion was roughly equivalent to that of India’s; today, it is some five times larger at $14-plus trillion. With respect to the United States, China’s GDP in 1990 was 20 times smaller, whereas today that gap stands narrowed to 1.5 times smaller.1 The remarkable increase in the size of China’s economy enabled it to step up allocations for its armed forces and enhance their technological capabilities. At an estimated US$ 266.5 billion, China’s defence expenditure is some four times larger than India’s and nearly a third of America’s. This has enabled the People’s Liberation Army-Army (PLA Army) to embark upon a sustained modernisation programme aimed at transforming itself into a “modern, mobile, and lethal ground force”; the PLA Navy to emerge as the largest in the world with 350 ships and submarines; and the PLA Air Force to field some 2,000 combat aircraft, increase the number of 4th generation aircraft in its inventory, and recently test fly a new fifth-generation stealth fighter.2

This alteration in the power equation has pushed China’s relationships with India and the United States into a state of disequilibrium. In international politics, where there is no world government and international law and institutions are like cobwebs at the mouth of a cannon, it is the relative power between any two states that determines the type and pattern of their relationship. China is no longer interested in maintaining the previous patterns of its relationships with India and the United States, which were forged when China’s power was more or less equal to that of India’s and greatly inferior to that of the United States. Instead, China wishes to forge, peacefully if possible and by force if necessary, new types of relationships with India and the United States that are reflective of the extant balance of power.

China’s Hegemonic Objectives

In the wake of the power gap that has yawned between China and India during the last decade or so, China is keen to transform the erstwhile co-equal relationship into a hierarchical one. Whereas China’s objective until recently was to tie India down within South Asia through support for Pakistan, it is now determined to supplant India as the leading power in the Indian subcontinent as well as become a predominant power in the Indian Ocean Region. Evidence in this regard include:

• Construction of strategic roads and ports in Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal and Sri Lanka which could potentially be used for Chinese purposes as the episode involving the debt-trapping of Sri Lanka into leasing Hambantota Port demonstrated.
• Construction of the overland China-Pakistan Economic Corridor from Kashgar in Xinjiang to Gwadar Port in Pakistan’s Baluchistan Province, and loud thinking by Chinese analysts about positioning a PLA Navy task force at Gwadar.
• Articulation of the PLA Navy’s two-ocean strategy to include the Indian Ocean, acquisition of a base at Djibouti, and the real possibility of acquiring “additional overseas military logistics facilities to support naval, air, and ground forces” in several countries in the Indian Ocean Region.3

Given its emergence as a rich and strong country with vital interests spanning the globe, China expects India to demonstrate awed subservience by accepting China’s emergence as the leading power in South Asia and the Indian Ocean Region, embracing and benefiting from Chinese geopolitical projects such as the Belt and Road Initiative, and refraining from security cooperation with the United States. In effect, China would prefer India adopting a policy of short-term appeasement and long-term bandwagoning.

With respect to the United States, the changed power equation has led China to articulate the need for a new type of great power relations entailing respect for the other state’s core interests in its home region: China respecting American interests in the Americas and the Eastern Pacific, and the United States respecting Chinese interests in the Western Pacific and Asia. In effect, China would refrain from intervening in the Americas and the Eastern Pacific in return for America abandoning its security commitments to East and Southeast Asian countries as well as accepting Chinese sovereignty over some 80 per cent of the South China Sea. In other words, in return for China acknowledging American primacy in the Western Hemisphere and Eastern Pacific, the United States should concede to China a sphere of influence in the Asia-Pacific, which, in the words of Foreign Minister Wang Yi, “has been the home and root of the Chinese nation for thousands of years.”4

With a view to generate broader diplomatic support for building such a sphere of influence as well as to couch China’s quest for Asian hegemony, President Xi Jinping had issued the call of “Asia for Asians” early in his term, which envisages the people of Asia themselves running the continent’s affairs, solving its problems and upholding Asian security.5 Finally, to ensure that America is discouraged from even contemplating a military intervention in Asian contingencies, such as China’s conquest of Taiwan, China has developed the Anti-Access Area Denial strategy based on a network of missiles, sensors, and guidance technologies.

The net effect of America withdrawing East of Guam and India accepting Chinese leadership in South Asia and the Indian Ocean Region would be Chinese hegemony in the region stretching between the Western Pacific and the eastern seaboard of Africa, i.e., the Indo-Pacific – a term that China ironically opposes, viewing it as a geopolitical construct aimed at containing Chinese power and influence. If Russia were to concede politico-military leadership in Central Asia to China, which appears probable given the growing power asymmetry between the two countries, then Chinese hegemony would descend upon both continental Eurasia and maritime Indo-Pacific.

A New Cold War

India and America are, however, not willing to accept a redefinition of their relationships with China entailing the abandonment of their respective long-held national interests. The international political system does not have a legal or institutional mechanism to effect such a redefinition of inter-state relations in tandem with changes in the balance of power between them. Such redefinitions, when not voluntary, are brought about through victory and defeat in war – the final argument of kings. War is, however, not a rational, cost-effective means to settle disputes between nuclear weapon states because nuclear weapons have, as Martin van Creveld observed, severed the link between victory and self-preservation.

What does this stalemate mean for India-China and China-United States relations and more broadly to the Asian international order? The only historical experience we have in this regard is the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. That conflict ended when the Soviet leadership realised the relative inferiority of its politico-economic system in mobilising moral and material resources for the global ideological-cum-power struggle. A new Cold War may be said to be emerging between China and the United States driven by the irreconcilable interests detailed above.

Over the last 10 years or so, America has been gearing itself up to tackle the China challenge. It has rebalanced the military posture towards the Indo-Pacific, reaffirmed security commitments to Asian allies, forged new strategic partnerships including with India, Indonesia and Vietnam, declared its intent to preserve freedom of navigation and overflight in the South China Sea and the airspace above it, recognised China as a great power rival that poses a geopolitical challenge to its interests and an ideological challenge to its values, and, in the wake of the COVID pandemic, America has initiated measures to decouple its economy from the Chinese economy thereby reducing dependence and vulnerability.

Some sections of Indian political and intellectual opinion warn against India taking sides in this new Cold War. They advocate the virtues of nonalignment and highlight the wisdom of reprising another version of the policy. What they overlook, however, is the fact that one of the adversaries in the new Cold War, namely, China, is a neighbour that has been in occupation of Indian territory for 50-plus years, lays claim to other large portions of Indian territory, and whose expanding power and influence in the neighbourhood threatens India’s security, interests and influence. Even Jawaharlal Nehru, the progenitor of nonalignment, came to understand this when he declared after the 1962 War that there is no nonalignment vis-à-vis China. Not only did Nehru seek American military aid during that war, but subsequently came to view the Soviet Union as India’s second front and India as the Soviet Union’s second front in the event of either country finding itself at war with China. Within a decade of his statements, India entered into an alliance with the Soviet Union in order to constrain China from intervening in the 1971 India-Pakistan War.

With Russia viewing China as a partner and therefore likely to at best exert friendly persuasion on China to refrain from an open conflict with India, it is but inevitable that India is forging security cooperation with the United States and its Asian allies so as to be in a better position to deal with the challenges posed by China. China’s brazen and unprovoked military occupation of territory along the border with India since April is likely to accelerate such cooperation as well as initiate the process of decoupling the Indian from the Chinese economy.

Conclusion

To sum up, the change in the balance of power between India and China has introduced a disequilibrium in India-China relations. The series of crises since 2013 is a result of this disequilibrium. More such crises are likely to arise not only over the boundary issue but also over China’s and India’s conflicting interests in South Asia and the Indian Ocean Region. In a similar vein, when China’s power becomes equal to or surpasses that of America during the course of the 2020s, Sino-American relations are likely to be buffeted by crises in the East and South China Seas and the Western Pacific. The rival actions and reactions of China, India and the United States – the three main actors in the Indo-Pacific – are likely to determine the pattern of the new Cold War. The key to success in this power struggle would be a strategy that mobilises national resources, fosters diplomatic and military coordination, and rallies international opinion against China’s pursuit of socialist imperialism.

Views expressed are of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Manohar Parrikar IDSA or of the Government of India.

• 1. “GDP (current US$) - China, India, United States”, The World Bank (Accessed September 08, 2020).
• 2. “Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2020”, United States Department of Defense, pp. vi-viii (Accessed September 02, 2020); and Liu Zhen, “China’s latest FC-31 Gyrfalcon stealth fighter prototype may have been on a test flight”, South China Morning Post, September 08, 2020 (Accessed September 20, 2020).
• 3. United States Department of Defense, no. 2, p. x.
• 4. Wang Yi, “Towards a New Model of Major-Country Relations Between China and the United States”, Brookings, September 20, 2013 (Accessed May 23, 2020).
• 5. Xi Jinping, “New Asian Security Concept For New Progress in Security Cooperation”, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, May 21, 2014 (Accessed January 22, 2015).