WORLD, Page 32INDIAThe Awakening of An Asian PowerArmed and assertive, the world's most populous democracy takesits place as a military heavyweightBy Ross H. Munro
Taking off from an air base five miles from the Taj Mahal at
Agra, a fleet of Soviet-built Il-76 jet transports streaked
southward across the subcontinent and then out over the Indian
Ocean. When the planes landed four hours later on one of the 1,200
coral atolls that make up the Republic of Maldives, hundreds of
elite Indian troops charged out onto the tarmac, rifles at the
ready. But the mere sight of the Indian planes had struck panic
among a band of mercenaries trying to bring off a coup d'etat
against the government of President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, and they
quickly fled in boats. Three days later, commandos from an Indian
frigate forced the high-seas surrender of the mercenaries.
India's swift suppression of the pocket coup in the Maldives
last November attracted only mild notice in much of the world. Not
so with India's increasingly nervous neighbors: for them, the
operation was but the latest indicator that the sleepy giant of the
subcontinent is determinedly transforming itself into a regional
superpower. India's new stature has profound implications for the
strategic and diplomatic balance of the area and raises a host of
foreign policy challenges for the U.S.
India is fast emerging as a global military power. New Delhi's
defense budget has doubled in real terms during the '80s and has
in fact outstripped the government's ability to fund it. The
1989-90 budget, unveiled earlier this month, froze defense spending
at $8.5 billion, though some estimate the actual figure to be as
high as $11 billion. Indian scientists and engineers are immersed
in nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. The
1,362,000-strong armed forces, the fourth largest in the world
(after the Soviet Union, with 5,096,000 troops; China, with 3.2
million; and the U.S., with 2,163,200), are raising four additional
army divisions to boost combat strength by 80,000. In the southern
state of Karnataka, a superport is developing to service
submarines, surface vessels, including a planned 30,000-ton
aircraft carrier, and long-range reconnaissance aircraft capable
of patrolling as far away as Africa and Australia.
Since 1986 India has ranked as the world's largest arms
importer: in 1987 it purchased weaponry from abroad valued at $5.2
billion, more than Iraq and Iran combined and twelve times more
than Pakistan. Largely to gain the foreign exchange needed to pay
its military imports bill, India is preparing to enter the world
arms bazaar as an exporter.
As India's military muscle has grown, so has its willingness
to employ force in disputes with other nations. In 1984 Indian
troops occupied the no-man's-land of Kashmir's 20,000-ft.-high
Siachen Glacier, where at least 100 Indian soldiers have since died
every year. By the summer of 1985, for the first time since the
1960s, Indian jawans penetrated into unoccupied and disputed
territory along the China-India border, provoking what Prime
Minister Rajiv Gandhi later called an "eyeball-to-eyeball"
confrontation with China.
In July 1987 Sri Lanka bowed to pressure from New Delhi and
allowed Indian forces to occupy the north and east of the island.
Some 80,000 soldiers remain deployed there, trying with limited
success to suppress Tamil separatist guerrillas who, ironically,
were initially encouraged, armed and trained by India.
But it was the Maldives strike that best illustrated India's
proclivity to take on the role of regional policeman. If the affair
provoked unease among India's neighbors -- Pakistan accused New
Delhi of having stage-managed the coup attempt -- it garnered
approval in more distant quarters. Ronald Reagan, then in the White
House, congratulated New Delhi for a "valuable contribution to
regional stability."
The aborted coup reinforced the view of a number of key
officials in Washington that the U.S. -- and other nations -- must
come to terms with India's growing military and political clout in
South Asia and the Indian Ocean. Said Richard Armitage, then the
U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security
Affairs: "It doesn't make sense for the U.S. not to have a
congenial relationship with the largest democracy and the dominant
military power in the subcontinent -- and with a country that will
clearly take its place on the world stage in the 21st century."
But the question remains: What does India intend to do with
all that power? Ever since the India-Pakistan war of 1971, which
led to the breakup of Pakistan and the transformation of East
Pakistan into independent Bangladesh, New Delhi officially
maintains that its arms buildup is needed to remain strong against
Pakistan. The two nations have been at war three times since India
gained its independence in 1947. Most analysts agree, however, that
India has pulled well ahead of its archfoe: its modern combat
aircraft, for example, now outnumber Pakistan's by as many as 5 to
1. China is sometimes invoked by Indian officials as the "real
threat." But most analysts note that apart from maintaining its
close ties with Pakistan, Beijing has taken no military or
diplomatic action since the 1970s that could be construed as
threatening by New Delhi.
India's growing military machine, meanwhile, has gained the
uneasy attention of its neighbors along the rim of the Indian
Ocean, like Australia and Indonesia. India's lease of a
nuclear-powered Soviet submarine and its acquisition of
Soviet-built long-range reconnaissance planes have raised anxiety
in the Australian Parliament. In Jakarta an army colonel describes
his government as "concerned" about India's longer-term intentions.
For that reason, he explains, Indonesia is planning to build a
large naval base on Sumatra to gain quick access to the Bay of
Bengal.
Rajiv Gandhi has presided over much of the expanded
military-spending program since he became Prime Minister in 1984.
But he claimed in an interview with TIME late last year that India
had no desire to dominate its neighbors: "We don't think in terms
of dominance, we don't think in terms of spheres of influence. The
right direction was what Gandhiji, Mahatma Gandhi, gave us. I see
India today as being one of the prime movers toward a nonviolent,
nonnuclear world."
Most Western analysts doubt that New Delhi has developed the
capacity -- or the inclination -- to launch a sustained military
action outside its immediate neighborhood. Today the territory that
India most covets is purely psychological. Says a West European
diplomat in New Delhi: "More than anything else, India wants to be
taken seriously. It wants to be viewed as a world power. That is
an end in itself."
Indians have long taken umbrage over China's standing in the
international community, which includes membership in the nuclear
club and a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council.
Asks A.P. Venkateswaran, a former Foreign Secretary: "Why is
China's power -- its huge army and its intercontinental ballistic
missiles -- considered absolutely acceptable while India's is not?
There's no reason why India should not have military power
commensurate with its size, as China does."
Also fueling India's wider ambitions is the desire to alter
the common perception, particularly in the West, that it remains
a backward nation mired in superstition and squalor. In fact,
alongside the impoverished land of beggars and cardboard shacks
there has risen a high-tech, postindustrial state led by an army
of self-confident and efficient engineers, scientists and military
officers. In the southern city of Bangalore, the two exist side by
side: women collect tree branches for firewood, while a short
distance away, some of India's brightest technicians hunch over an
IBM 3090 mainframe computer to design cross sections for the light
combat aircraft. The aim of the LCA project is to develop India's
own fighter aircraft at a low cost and, potentially, to export the
plane to other countries.
The U.S. is deeply involved in the program. General Electric
has sold eleven F404 engines to power LCA prototypes, and Allied
Signal, Litton and Honeywell are among the front runners in the bid
to provide flight control and other sophisticated systems.
Reflecting Washington's desire to forge closer ties with India, the
U.S. Air Force will provide training, consulting and testing
facilities for the LCA. Washington hopes the agreement will render
India less dependent on the Soviet Union; New Delhi still relies
on Moscow for many of its weapons imports and most of its
co-production deals. Says a Pentagon official: "U.S. policy is to
help India become self-sufficient in defense technology."
India is considerably less open about its capability to build
nuclear bombs, though many analysts believe the country has atomic
components on the shelf. One official close to the Prime Minister
claims that India can produce a nuclear bomb "overnight," though
Gandhi said in 1986 that it would take "maybe longer than . . . a
few weeks" for India to deploy A-weapons. In February 1988 India
successfully tested the Prithvi, a 150-mile-range ballistic missile
that can carry a payload of 2,000 lbs., more than enough for a
nuclear warhead.
Despite India's pacifist roots in the teachings of Mahatma
Gandhi, Indians crying "Ban the bomb!" are a minority. "If you are
living in a world of nuclear powers, then you must have it (the
bomb)," says Krishnaswamy Subrahmanyam, leader of the pronuke
lobby.
The diplomatic stakes are high for the U.S., which finds itself
caught in a three-way tug-of-war between two allies who distrust
each other. New Delhi still resents the pro-Pakistan "tilt" that
has marked U.S. policy since the 1971 war. U.S. military aid to
Pakistan is cited by Indians as the main reason why they embarked
on their own buildup.
In the U.S., meanwhile, policymakers are divided on the proper
response to India's arms buildup. Says the University of Illinois's
Stephen P. Cohen, a leading U.S. scholar on South Asian security
issues: "A strong India could act as a regional stabilizer, and
this would be in the U.S. interest. But an India that is a regional
bully threatening China or Pakistan would not be in American
interests." Until India makes its long-term intentions clear, the
U.S. and other countries are likely to continue to prepare for
