From the series Asian giants
Trends in rearmament spending and comparisons of military equipment are increasingly set to dominate coverage of the contention between powers in the crisis in the world order. The military factor has entered the strategic debate, accompanied by a wealth of figures and technical details. The increase in military spending as a percentage of GDP represents a widespread sign of the rearmament cycle at this juncture, but spending alone cannot entirely explain the situation, given the qualitatively different natures of the arsenals being compared. Nor are comparisons between this or that type of weapon useful in themselves, because ultimately all weapons are only ever used in combination with the complex military means available to a power, either in alliance or in conflict with other powers in the system of States. Therefore, while it is difficult to assess the real significance of figures or of the latest developments in the military field, it is easier to grasp their general political meaning and to place it in the context of an imperialist contention which is increasingly based on hard power relations.
We have a clear example in the “hundred-hour war” fought by India and Pakistan last month in the skies over Kashmir. The Chinese fighter jets sold to Rawalpindi were able to shoot down the French Rafale jets supplied to India. According to the French commentator Jean-Dominique Merchet, the PL-15 missiles produced in Henan, unknown to the Rafale database, made the difference, suggesting a temporary blind spot. In any case, rather than China’s unexpected military potential in the air or missile fields, it is the medium-term shift in the Asian balance of power revealed by the brief conflict that is fuelling the Indian debate.
Critical review of multi-alignment
The war has knocked India’s global ambitions down a peg, back to the regional level, but this also hints at restraint encouraged by China. For Nirupama Rao, former ambassador to the US and China and foreign secretary in Manmohan Singh’s Congress government, the conflict cannot be seen exclusively as a bilateral flashpoint, given China’s influence over Pakistan’s military position. In the future, New Delhi risks being consumed by a series of short “episodic conflicts” which would absorb its strategic energies.
Happymon Jacob, a student of Raja Mohan at Nehru University in New Delhi and editor of the magazine India’s World, thinks that the regional “balance of power” was clarified in the field: “It is safe to say that China has replaced the US as the most consequential power in South Asia”. Washington is under pressure for its lack of a “clear strategic purpose” for the region, but also for its de facto convergence with Beijing in quelling the two contenders in Kashmir: as a military supplier, diplomatic player, and unavoidable economic power, China already influences the outcome of regional conflicts, eroding America’s role. The balance of power in 1971 was transformed, we note, when the Indo-Pakistani conflict was effectively halted by Washington’s dispatch of the aircraft carrier “Enterprise” in order to put pressure on Indira Gandhi. At the time, the clash between India and Pakistan was also a sort of proxy war between Moscow and Beijing; the Indo-Soviet Treaty of Friendship was still fresh, in response to the historic opening of the US to China, Pakistan’s ally. Today, according to Jacob, Russia’s relative silence, conditioned by its quasi-alliance with Beijing, is revealing. New Delhi will have to manage a declining relationship with Moscow in addition to its uncertain relationship with Washington.
A third transformation therefore concerns the intrinsic limits of multi-alignment. While the decision not to be part of any military alliances is “perhaps the right one”, India must also weigh up the consequences: “our wars will be ours alone to fight”. The Indian doctrine offers numerous advantages in peacetime, but “it may well be ill-suited for times of wars and conflicts”.
Bitter preference for America
In the crisis in the world order, States tend to be cautious and avoid making specific commitments, choosing to keep all options open unless strategic interests are at stake. However, multi-alignment encounters its greatest difficulties during military crises, when India fundamentally needs to obtain clear political support from its allies. New Delhi may not need military assistance in a limited conflict, but the fact that no one has offered it provides a basis for speculating on how India’s strategic partners might behave in the future: “Our policy of multi-alignment is creating a situation wherein nobody is a true friend of ours, […] an unstable, unstructured and transitioning order might require a strategy of multi-alignment in which some partners are more important than others. We must therefore choose”.
Jacob deliberately leaves the hierarchy unspecified. Excluding Russia and China, that leaves relations with Europe and Japan, and the partnership with the United States. Despite the fluctuations and (perhaps temporary) costs of the Trump presidency, the American option remains a necessary one. This is Mohan’s basic assessment, and a result of his realistic calculation of the time needed for the strategic rearmament of European imperialism in the medium term. In The Indian Express, the doyen of foreign policy almost regrets that Washington has shown a desire to “wash its hands” of New Delhi and Rawalpindi by urging them to resolve the crisis quickly, but Mohan also sees the need to accelerate Indian rearmament as a future form of counter-insurance. The Ministry of Defence is already calling for spending of 3% of GDP on defence in the medium term.
Rambouillet’s armed brakemen
Other political currents, currently in the minority but well rooted in Indian capitalism, advocate for a relationship with China, which is also contemplated in the doctrine of Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar. Finally, there is Europe and Japan. Jaishankar himself, on a visit to the Old Continent, is pursuing “very intense inter-action” with the EU. In Germany’s “dual” strategy – reaffirming its commitments to NATO while pursuing European strategic autonomy through rearmament – Mohan detects a certain affinity with India’s position, which underpins multipolarism. As for the Land of the Rising Sun, the opinion of Akio Fujii, editorial director of the Nikkei Asian Review, is useful. He recalls the 50th anniversary of Rambouillet, the summit of the great powers, enlarged to include Europe and Japan in 1975, which gave birth to the G7. In our analysis, this was the first admission that the United States was unable to maintain the post-war order on its own, and was thus forced to co-opt the defeated powers of the Second World War. Conversely, Fujii sees the G7 as the 50-year-long attempt by Europe and Japan to keep the US involved in international cooperation while US relative power declined. This role might now be taken up by the new Asian powers, in opposition to Donald Trump’s tariff war, and as an alternative to the stifling embrace of the Dragon, itself an aspiring champion of liberism. Furthermore, for India’s multi-alignment, Japan’s push to keep the US engaged in Asia is an additional card with which to balance China. Japan’s rearmament, moreover, can play the same balancing role.
Asian petro-yuan
The Japanese Nikkei is rather cold on the Kuala Lumpur summit meeting of China, ASEAN, and the Gulf Cooperation Council, scheduled in response to the tycoon’s tariffs and then his tour of the Middle East. China’s new policy towards its neighbours centred on dual circulation (the strategic link between the domestic market and external projection), and the shift towards the Persian Gulf, with the erosion of the old Carter doctrine of the US as the sole guarantor of the region, have been confirmed. The summit also reflects the multiple relationships between the Asian middle powers and ASEAN’s attempt to resist being divided by American and Chinese manoeuvres; however, Malaysia’s request to negotiate tariffs as a unified bloc was controversial. Chinese comments, on the other hand, emphasise the synergy between the industries, the emerging market, the natural resources and the young labour force of Southeast Asia, the energy and financial power of the Gulf, and China’s market and industrial production chains. Although the energy and security link with the Strait of Hormuz and Malacca remains a raw nerve, the Dragon is contending with India, and even Malaysia and Indonesia, for being the main representative of the “global South”; the real Bandung, it is implied, will be financed by Chinese capital and partly by the petromonarchies which are diversifying their energy revenues made in Asia into the United States and China.
Military-industrial complex
All the elements are in place for a colossal industrial and financial battle involving the big groups from the United States, China, Europe, and Japan - a battle to secure Asian savings and Middle Eastern energy revenues, to be used in the gigantic Asian industrial powerhouse, with over a billion proletarians. Here too, however, Chinese rearmament is casting its shadow. Lu Feng of Beijing's National Development School, founded by Justin Yifu Lin and Zhang Weiying, outlines the military implications of China's "complete industrial system" in a long essay for the Observatory of the Shanghai Spring and Autumn Institute. The Dragon has the market depth to concentrate most of its production processes, both labour-intensive and capital-intensive, within its own borders, and thus to form an industrial system that is relatively independent in the event of war, or at least less vulnerable than that of its adversaries. The author criticises the excessive liquidationist tendencies of China's industrial restructuring, which were already addressed by Xi Jinping in last year's Essays on Financial Work. This served to put the brakes on the dismantling of traditional industries. Today, that correction has been justified in light of America's belated, if not "impossible", attempt at reindustrialisation, and the fears of protectionism immediately expressed by Japan, which lacks a continental market. For Lu, the tariff war has opened the duel of the century between American and Chinese financial capitalism; the latter has a broader manufacturing base and controls many critical supplies for industry. The Dragon's industrial deterrence therefore threatens the American production process: "Who will win this series of economic, political, and military clashes?". All the Asian powers are revising their plans.