A
recent diplomatic row with China highlights India’s moves to beef up its
influence in the East Sea via more cooperation with Vietnam, observers say
China’s “peaceful rise” has led other regional
countries to work together as a counterweight to the new superpower, a
development evinced by India’s recent moves to strengthen its presence in the
East Sea and its cooperation with Vietnam, political analysts say.
When receiving Indian External Affairs
Minister S.M. Krishna during his four day visit to Vietnam on September 17,
President Truong Tan Sang welcomed India’s “Look East” policy.
He hailed the active participation of India in
the region and supported the strengthening of the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations (ASEAN)-India dialogue.
President Sang said Vietnam has always
appreciated “the traditional friendship and multilateral cooperation with India
and will actively promote the Vietnam-India strategic partnership for bilateral
benefits and for peaceful stability and development of the region.”
Krishna’s Vietnam visit came amid a new row
between China and India, exemplified by the fact that the Indian company ONGC
Videsh Ltd (OVL) has begun exploring oil and gas in two blocks in Vietnam’s
East Sea waters. The East Sea is also known as the South China Sea.
Beijing had in a demarche — a formal
diplomatic representation of a government’s official position — to India stated
that unless its permission was granted for exploration in Blocks 127 and 128,
OVL’s activities there would be illegal, the Hindustan Times reported on
September 15.
India’s ministry of external affairs (MEA)
said China’s objections have “no legal basis” as the blocks belong to Vietnam.
In New Delhi, external affairs ministry
spokesperson Vishnu Prakash expressed India’s determination to go ahead with
plans to enhance cooperation with Vietnam in the energy sector.
“ONGC Videsh Ltd has been in Vietnam for quite
some time in offshore oil and natural gas exploration and they (Vietnam) are in
the process of further expanding cooperation, with Essar Oil Ltd also being
awarded a gas block in Vietnam,” Prakash said.
In Hanoi, Vietnamese Foreign Ministry
spokesman Luong Thanh Nghi on September 16 reaffirmed Vietnam’s indisputable
sovereignty over the two blocks, stating that any objection like China’s “holds
no legal basis and is thus invalid.”
“Vietnam reiterates that cooperation projects
in oil and gas between Vietnam and its foreign partners, including those in
Lots 127 and 128, lie within its exclusive economic zones [EEZs] and
continental shelf and are completely under Vietnamese sovereignty… in line with
the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and with international
practices, as well as with multilateral and bilateral agreements to which
Vietnam is party,” he said in a statement.
During his Vietnam visit, Krishna and his
Vietnamese counterpart Pham Binh Minh decided that they would extend their
cooperation to defense and various economic sectors over the next three years.
On September 20 The Asian Age cited unnamed
sources as saying that the BrahMos Aerospace – the Indo-Russian joint venture
that has developed the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile – is keen to sell the
missile to Vietnam.
Sources also confirmed that Vietnam is already
on a list of about 15 “friendly countries” — a list drafted by a joint
Indo-Russian supervisory council — to whom the BrahMos missile can be sold. So
far, the BrahMos missile has not been sold to any third country.
On September 2, the Times of India reported
that the Indian naval assault vessel INS Airavat was harassed by the Chinese
navy when it was traveling in open international waters in the East Sea on a
routine call at a Vietnam port.
The INS Airavat paid a friendly visit to
Vietnam between July 19 and July 28. On July 22, the INS Airavat sailed from
Nha Trang Port in south central Vietnam toward the northern port city of Hai
Phong, where it was to make another friendly visit. According to the Times of
India, about 45 nautical miles off the Vietnamese coast on the East Sea, the
Airavat was "buzzed" on an open radio channel.
"This is a typical Chinese
approach," one source familiar with the incident told AFP, adding that
Chinese enforcement vessels try to assert "that this is their territory
and what are you doing in their territory?"
The Indian Navy officially denied the report.
Counterbalancing
act
Analysts say that India’s recent actions
demonstrate that countries are looking for ways to balance the power scale
against China and to ensure freedom of navigation for significant sea lines in
the resource-rich East Sea.
Mohan Malik, a security analyst at the
Honolulu-based Security Asia-Pacific Center For Security Studies said that the
US, India, Japan and Vietnam have become “increasingly uneasy” as Beijing has
made it clear that it would not tolerate another maritime power operating in
the East Sea.
“China’s rapid economic growth, military
power, and hyper-nationalism at home are shaping Chinese public expectations
and limiting possibilities for compromise with other powers,” he told Thanh
Nien Weekly.
“The geopolitical chess game is intensifying
as Chinese and Indian navies show off their flags in the Indian and Pacific
oceans with greater frequency,” he said, adding that India’s total trade volume
with East Asian economies now exceeds that with the European Union or the US.
He said this was a factor driving strategy.
Malik also said that Beijing is increasingly
uncomfortable with the prospect of India’s rise and it has derided US Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton’s calls to India, made most recently in Chennai this
year, to play a greater role in East Asia.
“India’s naval activism has encouraged
countries ranging from South Korea and Japan to Vietnam and Indonesia to view
India as a possible counterweight to the future China in Southeast Asia,” he
said.
Malik predicted that China’s military
alliances and forward deployment of its naval assets in Pakistani, Bangladeshi,
Sri Lankan, and Myamarese ports would prompt India to respond in kind by
seeking access to ports in Vietnam, Taiwan and Japan.
“Vietnam will be a major beneficiary of
India’s evolving maritime strategy,” he said.
Vinod Saighal, former general director of the
Indian army’s military training unit, said the US, the majority of ASEAN
countries and other countries in East Asia like Japan and South Korea look
forward to a stronger Indian presence in the ASEAN region, the East Sea and the
Far East.
“India’s commitment to strengthening Vietnam’s
defensive capability and closer cooperation in defense, trade and the entire
gamut of relations between the two countries
would result in ’strategic reassurance’ for Vietnam,” Saighal said.
“Going a step further, it would allow Vietnam to more purposefully safeguard
its national interest.”
“China’s phenomenal augmentation of its
offensive capability should force these countries, notably Vietnam, India and
Japan, to cooperate much more closely in the field of common defense and
keeping the South China Sea as well as South Asia – at a later stage – free
from Chinese hegemonic designs,” he said.
Iskander Rehman, an international fellow at
the Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses in India, said it would be in
both India and Vietnam’s interests if New Delhi worked towards assisting
Vietnam in the enacting of an effective strategy of sea denial geared towards
China’s rapidly growing fleet.
“Although much media attention has been
lavished on China’s new aircraft carrier, it will be a long time before China
will be able to deploy a full carrier strike group. For the next five to ten
years, both India and Vietnam’s main security naval concerns will revolve
around China’s large submarine fleet which can operate stealthily in the
clustered shallow waters close to the Chinese coastline,” he said.
Carlyle Thayer, a Vietnam specialist at the
University of New South Wales, said Vietnam has already taken the first step by
offering commercial repair facilities at Cam Ranh Bay to all countries.
“This action is not directly aimed at China
but it does demonstrate that other major powers have a national interest in the
South China Sea,” he said.
Thayer said some Indian defense analysts look
on their relationship with Vietnam as a counter to the China-Pakistani
relationship.
“In this view, China will have to act with
more circumspection with Pakistan or face the prospects of a closer
India-Vietnam relationship.”
By An Dien – Minh Hung, Thanh Nien News
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