HVK Archives: U. S. ignored India's concern over security
U. S. ignored India's concern over security - The Times of India
T V Parasuram
()
September 9, 1998
Title: U. S. ignored India's concern over security
Author: T V Parasuram
Publication: The Times of India
Date: September 9, 1998
In an acknowledgement of India's security concerns, a U S defence
institute has said Washington failed to stop technology and
weapons of mass destruction-related transfer between China and
Pakistan, an issue repeatedly conveyed to the Clinton
administration by India.
These were some of the strongest arguments India had advanced for
its need to carry out nuclear explosions but the Clinton
administration did not accept them, the in-house think tank on
defence issues, the National Defence University's Institute for
National Strategic Studies said in its "Strategic Assessment
1998."
About Chinese proliferation of nuclear and missile technology,
the report says, "China has placed the most objectionable portion
of the peaceful nuclear technology agreement with Iran on hold.
Only the relationship with Pakistan, of high geostrategic
importance to Beijing, will continue uninterrupted."
Despite this, "Beijing has informally signalled willingness to
join with the U.S. to consider ways and means to reduce the
potential for conflict in South Asia. This, too, might prove a
fertile field for exploration by Washington."
However, the institute adds, "The growing economic and strategic
power of India and China - neighbours with old feuds, as well as
nuclear weapons - could be a source of serious instability that
the United States will find hard to ignore but just as hard to
influence."
"Political realities demand that the U.S. be prepared to see the
advantages of a world in which Russia, China and India are not a
threat to the United States" as well as to weigh the consequences
if that does not happen, the institute warns.
However, "the two dominant challenges" the institute envisages by
2018 "are the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction by
rogue states and terrorist groups and the emergence of China as a
power with global reach."
"Two old adversaries," namely Germany and Japan, could become new
ones, though the probability of that is not high," the report
says.
"Even if the threat from North Korea disappears by 2018, as seems
likely, a unified Korea may seem even more problematic from
Tokyo's perspective. China, far stronger in 20 years than today,
will surely be seen as the dominant national security issue for
Japanese policy-makers."
"For the United States, with respect to China, engagement is
containment," the report says, adding it is the only way to
reduce tensions and minimise misunderstandings."
Expressing apprehension over growing Chinese nuclear force, the
institute says, "If the Chinese nuclear force grows from several
hundred to more than 1,000 deployed weapons, the U S will find it
difficult to continue to discuss arms reduction with Russia.
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