Strategic Alliance to Control Indian Ocean

The Jerusalem Post Feb 28, 2003

FROM CONFLICT TO CONVERGENCE
India and Israel Forge a Solid Strategic Alliance

By Martin Sherman
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For India, Israel and its affiliated lobbies in Washington can be a useful instrument, for promoting New Delhi's case on the Pakistani issue. This was a topic raised in a recent trilateral meeting held this month in New Delhi, attended by Jewish Institute of National Security Affairs (JINSA), the influential Washington-based think tank, former Israeli intelligence chiefs and Indian security and defense experts.

In the realm of security, the ties between Israel and India are booming. Israel appears to have become India's second largest arms supplier after Russia. Israel has provided India with sea-to-sea missiles, radar and other surveillance systems, border monitoring equipment, night vision devices, and the upgrading of India's Soviet-era armor and aircraft.

Moreover, in marked contrast to Washington's vigorous opposition to the supply of Phalcon reconnaissance aircraft from Israel to China, the U.S. is apparently favorably disposed to the delivery of such planes to India. In December 2002 Defense Minister George Fernandes announced in the Indian parliament that India and Israel are planning to jointly produce and market an Advanced Light Helicopter (ALH). Overall, contracts of over U.S. $3 billion for the supply of military equipment and know-how are said to be in the pipeline.

Given Israel's minuscule territorial dimensions, there is growing awareness of the crucial strategic significance of the marine - and submarine - theater for the country's national defense. The range and destructive power of modern weaponry in the hands of Israel's enemies make most of Israel's land based strategic installations vulnerable to a long-range first strike. Thus, the deployment of sea-borne second-strike capability - an essential factor for effective deterrence of such a possible first strike - is emerging as a strategic imperative for Israel.

In this regard, the Indian Ocean, as location for a logistic infrastructure, facilitating the deployment and maintenance of this capability could well assume vital importance. This is particularly pertinent since advances in satellite surveillance techniques, and the dominant Arab presence along most of the southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean - and ever more inhospitable Europeans along the northern ones - make this an increasingly problematic environment for the Israeli Navy.

Of course, for the establishment and operation of such a maritime venture, cooperation with the Indian Navy would be vital. In this regard, it is especially significant that in 2000, Israeli submarines reportedly conducted test launches of cruise missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads in the waters of the Indian Ocean of the Sri Lanka coast.

There are also persistent reports of mutual Indo-Israeli desire to collaborate on the development of a Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) system, based on the Israeli Arrow technologies.

As both countries face the specter of a possible missile attack from dictatorial, and often less than predictable regimes, this desire is eminently understandable.

However, as the Arrow is a joint Israeli-U.S. enterprise, approval from Washington is necessary for the prospective venture to go ahead. As yet, such approval has not been forthcoming - due to fears of escalating tensions in the already flammable Indo-Pakistani confrontation.

Nonetheless, Israel is said to have already provided India with the Green Pine radar used in the Arrow system - with U.S. consent.

The region spanned by Israel and India include many of America's most implacable enemies. Nothing, therefore, seems more reasonable or more pressing than for Washington to cultivate countervailing centers of power with allies who genuinely and autonomously embrace similar values of liberal pluralism.

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For Washington must seriously address the question of who will dominate the Indian Ocean, the eastern approaches to Europe, and south and central Asia - powers committed to policies of moderation, restraint and the preservation of stability; or those committed to fundamentalist fanaticism and violent radicalism. In this regard it is significant that a recent CIA publication asserted that "Although stability has long been a goal of the [USA], after September 11th, it has become our key objective."

An alliance between India and Israel, openly endorsed by the U.S., would create a potent stabilizing force in the region, which together with like-minded regimes such as Turkey, could contribute significantly towards facing down the forces of radical extremism so hostile to American interests in Western and Central Asia and beyond.

There are however considerations beyond regional stability that make a vibrant Indo-Israeli axis a clear U.S. interest. For example, in the newly emerging balance of geo-strategic power, the growing Chinese challenge to U.S. primacy will almost inevitably dictate the need for a regional counterweight to Chinese domination.

In this regard, a powerful, progressive India bolstered by Israeli technological expertise appears the most plausible and practical alternative. Several weeks after 9/11, prominent Washington Post columnist Jim Hoagland wrote in an article, "A Test of True allies": ............................

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Martin Sherman is Professor of Political Science at Tel Aviv University and a contributing expert at the Ariel Center for Policy Research and a senior research fellow at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya, both also in Israel. Sherman acted as a ministerial advisor in the 1991-2 Shamir government.

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