Monday, September 23, 2013


India’s Undersea Nuclear Deterrent Poses Proliferation Challenges

By Yogesh Joshi, on , Briefing
    Despite India’s graduation from outlier to tepidly accepted member of the global nuclear order, one area of New Delhi’s nuclear activities continues to raise alarm: its undersea nuclear deterrent. India unveiled its first nuclear submarine, the INS Arihant, in July 2009. Though the ship was largely indigenous, Russia helped in designing the miniaturized nuclear reactor. Just last month, the nuclear reactor in INS Arihant went critical, clearing the way for its final operational trials in the Bay of Bengal. India has designs to produce four to five nuclear submarines by the end of this decade. When integrated with nuclear-tipped sea-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), these submarines will provide India with an underwater nuclear deterrent capability.

    This technical development has posed two new challenges to the nuclear nonproliferation regime. First, the highly enriched uranium (HEU) used in naval nuclear propulsion for India’s nuclear submarines could be diverted for weapons purposes. India has a dedicated enrichment facility for its naval nuclear program at Rattehali, and some of the uranium from this facility was used for India’s 1998 nuclear weapons tests. According to Princeton nuclear scientist and scholar M.V. Ramana, Rattehali has the capacity to produce 22 kilograms of 90 percent enriched uranium annually, or the equivalent of 40-70 kilograms of 45 percent enriched uranium. However, new analysis reveals (.pdf) that qualitative changes in India’s enrichment technology may have increased this capacity to 48 kilograms of 90 percent enriched uranium annually. This capacity is destined to grow as India prepares to launch more nuclear submarines in the future. ...
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    Thursday, August 29, 2013

    What South Korea Can Learn from South Asia’s Nuclear Experience

    EAST ASIASECURITYSOUTH KOREA

    By Timothy Westmyer and Yogesh Joshi

    Those calling for South Korea to go nuclear should look at the India-Pakistan experience.
    RTR30XD1
    India and Pakistan are again at loggerheads, with five Indian soldiersand two Pakistani soldiers were killed on the Line of Control (LOC) in the disputed Kashmir region earlier this month. Since then, the LOC has seen a rapid escalation in cross border exchanges of fire, bringing the sustainability of the 2003 cease fire agreement between the two neighbors into doubt. Earlier, in January, India had accused Pakistani Special Forces of killing two Indian soldiers, claiming one of them was beheaded. These provocations come as progress is stalled in the prosecution of the allegedPakistan-based masterminds of the 2008 attacks in Mumbai. New Delhi remains unable to influence Islamabad’s policy on state-sponsored terrorism, despite the presence of nuclear arsenals in South Asia since the 1990s.
    Something similar is visible on the Korean Peninsula. North Korean provocations have persisted since its first nuclear weapon test in 2006. Seoul, like New Delhi, has vacillated between diplomacy and military threats to no avail. South Korea’s current state of strategic frustration has convinced some leaders in Seoul that their country needs an indigenous nuclear capability. In the lead-up to President Park Geun-Hye’s inauguration, members of her own Saenuri Party encouraged a nuclear build-up. Rep. Shim Jae-Cheol argued the “only way to defend our survival would be to maintain a balance of terror that confronts nuclear with nuclear.” In June 2012, former Saenuri Party chairman and presidential candidate Chung Mong-Joon called for a “comprehensive re-examination of our security policy” that should give Seoul “the capability to possess” a nuclear arsenal. At a conference earlier this year in Washington, DC Chung leaned heavily on the U.S.-Soviet model: “The only thing that kept the Cold War cold was the mutual deterrence afforded by nuclear weapons…The lesson of the Cold War is that against nuclear weapons, only nuclear weapons can hold the peace.”
    These proliferation optimists cite the U.S.-Soviet Cold War model of nuclear deterrence to claim that a South Korean nuclear arsenal would prevent future aggression. The experience of new nuclear weapon states in South Asia, however, suggests that South Korean nuclear weapons will not prove tremendously helpful to this end.
    The South Asian Nuclear Instability
    India and Pakistan have fought four major wars since independence, including hostilities even after openly attaining nuclear weapons in 1998. The Line of Control in Kashmir remains tense to this day with Pakistan-based terrorists operating in Indian-administered Kashmir for more than two decades. Pakistan’s revisionist motives in Kashmir and the deep-seated ideological divide between the two nations form the edifice of today’s India-Pakistan rivalry.
    Several factors within Pakistan’s polity further aggravate animosity between the two nations, especially since nuclearization. First, Pakistan has historically been a garrison state: if all states have armies, Pakistan’s army has a state. Pakistani politics is dominated by the military, which derives legitimacy from its opposition to India. Second, Pakistan has been a conventionally weaker state vis-à-vis India’s military. Pakistan tried to initially offset this vulnerability by incorporating the element of risk and the cult of the offensive in its military doctrine. The major modern conflicts in South Asia were initiated by Pakistan. However, after a comprehensive defeat in 1971, Pakistan’s conventional inferiority prompted it to pursue nuclear weapons as well as sub-conventional warfare against India. Since 1989, Pakistan has supported insurgency in Kashmir and also other non-state actors in the region.
    As Pakistan advanced its nuclear weapons program in the early 1990s, sub-conventional provocations and nuclear deterrence became intertwined in what Dr. S. Paul Kapur, professor at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, has called the instability-instability paradox. Contrary to the stability-instability paradox present during the U.S.-Soviet deterrent relationship where stability at the strategic nuclear level allowed instability for lower-intensityconflict in proxy theaters possible, Kapur writes that in South Asia: “ongoing violence has resulted from a significant possibility of sub-nuclear conflict escalating to the nuclear threshold. Thus, a substantial degree of instability at the strategic level has encouraged lower level South Asian violence.”
    Pakistan relies on this paradox because as a conventionally weaker military power, it can only wage sub-conventional warfare against India’s vast military resources as long as the risk of nuclear escalation looms over the region. India, therefore, typically eschews larger-scale military options against Islamabad due to the fear of nuclear escalation. The instability-instability paradox was evident in several exchanges between India and Pakistan. A year after both sides tested nuclear devices, Pakistani troops in the garb of local insurgents occupied a large swath of Indian Territory in Kargil. New Delhi’s military response to wrestle back control was significantly more reserved than similar operations in 1965, due in large part to the threat of nuclear use by Pakistan. Further examples include after the 2001 attack on Indian parliament, the 2008 carnage in Mumbai, and recent border skirmishes in Kashmir. The presence of nuclear weapons in South Asia has not eliminated the risk of provocations and conflict. Nuclear proliferation optimists should expect no different if both sides of the 38thparallel go nuclear.
    The Korean Peninsula Experience
    The limitations of applying Cold War nuclear logic to the Koreas are now apparent. South Korea’s security concerns and grievances against North Korea are serious, but a ROK nuclear arsenal would be unlikely to prevent future sub-conventional provocations and will face the same challenges present in South Asia’s uneasy peace.
    Nuclear proliferation optimists in South Korea point to a series of North Korean provocations to justify their position. Pyongyang tested nuclear weapons in 2006, 2009, and 2013 and missile technology in 2008, 2009, and 2012. In March 2010, South Korea accused Pyongyang of torpedoing one of its naval vessels, the Cheonan, killing 46 sailors. In November 2010, North Korea bombarded South Korea’s Yeonpyeong Island, striking both civilian and military targets with artillery shells and rockets, killing four and wounding nineteen. Cross border clashes in 2010 resulted in the deaths of two South Korean marines. Scott Snyder, senior fellow for Korea Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, recently predicted “more nuclear and missile tests and/or other North Korean provocations sooner or later, because Kim Jong-un’s legitimacy and his prospects for survival may depend upon it.”
    The DPRK depends on instability at the nuclear level to achieve its national ambitions. Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, declared “we are no longer in a period of cyclical provocations [with North Korea] – where a provocation occurs and then there is a period of time when concessions are made…I think we are in a period of prolonged provocations.” North Korean leaders cultivate an image of irrational decision-making to convince the world that they have the will to move up the escalatory ladder to full-scale conventional or possibly even nuclear war.
    Regular provocations are central to North Korea’s deterrent strategy. As U.S. Navy (Ret.) Rear Admiral Michael McDevitt explained, provocations “reinforce the credibility of North Korea’s conventional deterrent by demonstrating a political willingness to risk war.” Threatening “unacceptable consequences on South Korea” through its artillery pieces and long-range rockets is the primary method the DPRK uses to deter the U.S.-ROK alliance. Instability at the nuclear level is essential to this strategy since it further constrains allied responses. If Seoul procures its own nuclear arsenal, as it considered during the 1970s, it is unlikely that Pyongyang would abandon sub-conventional provocations necessary for its overall national security strategy.
    Applying Nuclear Lessons from South Asia
    The South Asian case is well suited for the Korean Peninsula. First, both South Asia and the Koreas represent a conflict dyad where one state is a status-quo power (India, South Korea) and the other revisionist (Pakistan, North Korea). If Pakistan wants to assimilate Kashmir from a rather satisfied India, North Korean goals have ranged from uniting the peninsula under its leadership to reversing South Korea’s dominance in the region. Second, both Pakistan and North Korea have dovetailed brinksmanship into their respective conventional and nuclear strategies. On the other hand, India and South Korea practice strategic restraint in dealing with their neighbors. Third, conflicting states have divergent identities in both cases. If Pakistan professes to be a Muslim state vis-à-vis the secular but Hindu-majority India, North Korea prides itself on its Junche/communist identity against the liberal democratic South Korea. Fourth, compared to India and South Korea, decision-making in both Pakistan and North Korea is concentrated in fewer hands, which derive much of their legitimacy from opposition to an outside force (Pakistan-India, DPRK-ROK/U.S.). Lastly, both Pakistan and North Korea are weaker states in terms of conventional firepower. Unlike the Soviet Union, which was a revisionist power with a massive conventional force, the revisionist tendencies of Pakistan and North Korea, both conventionally weaker states, require instability at the strategic nuclear level to provoke without prompting retaliation.
    Therefore, the South Asian conflict dyad portends a grim future for a possible nuclear South Korea since provocations would likely continue. Whatever Seoul may hope to gain in deterrence benefits, may be outweighed by loss of international standing and security. In addition, unlike South Asia where the United States may try to serve as neutral intermediary during a crisis, Washington is an active party to the conflict in the Koreas due to troop deployments in ROK and its formal security alliance. The worry that instability at the conventional level will cause instability at the nuclear level to escalate motivates the United States to press for calm and an end to hostilities – including retaliation – after a provocation before the attacked party has a chance to respond. Seoul could expect similar pressure should North Korean provocations occur against a nuclear-armed South.
    The U.S. nuclear umbrella aims to provide South Korea with a measure of protection against DPRK aggression that neither Pakistan nor India enjoys. North Korean leaders must calculate the willingness of the United States to respond with its nuclear stockpile should Pyongyang attack South Korea with nuclear or large-scale conventional forces. North Korea still chooses to engage in a range of provocations – short of full-scale invasion or nuclear weapon use – despite this umbrella. The experience of India under the instability-instability paradox demonstrates that Seoul should not expect for DPRK provocations to radically diminish simply because nuclear bombs in the region have South Korean flags painted on the side.
    Conclusion
    The historian and Oxford University professor Margaret MacMillan warned in her book Dangerous Gamesthat “analogies from history must, of course, be treated with care. Using the wrong one not only can present an oversimplified picture of a complex situation in the present but can lead to wrong decisions.” While analogies are difficult to establish and the variations in context may lead to spurious comparisons, nuclear behavior on the Korean Peninsula can be better explained by trends in South Asia rather than the Cold War. As South Korea weighs whether to join the nuclear armed club, the antagonistic experience of new nuclear states in South Asia – not the more optimistic U.S.-Soviet model – should feature most prominently in those debates.
    Timothy Westmyer is a research and program assistant working on nuclear debates in Asia at the Rising Powers Initiative within the Sigur Center for Asian Studies, George Washington University. Yogesh Joshi is a Ph.D candidate at Jawaharlal Nehru University and was recent visiting scholar at the Sigur Center.
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    Friday, August 2, 2013

    On India's Ballistic Missile Defence with Frank O' Donnell

    India’s Missile Defense: Is the Game Worth the Candle?

    SECURITYSOUTH ASIAINDIA

    By Frank O’ Donnell and Yogesh Joshi

    India’s ballistic missile defense capabilities are rapidly maturing. Could this inadvertently make Delhi less secure?
    RTR1LMT8
    On November 23, 2012, Indian scientists achieved a major milestone in missile defense: simultaneous interceptions of ballistic missiles at altitudes of 30 and 120 kms respectively. Such a feat put India on the map of a select group of nations, such as the United States and Israel, who have the capability of engaging multiple hostile projectiles. Thesetests, declared India’s premier defense research organization – the Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO) – were done in adeployment mode with higher echelons of the Indian Army and Air Force in attendance, making a strong case for eventual induction of this system into country’s defenses. However, with India’s missile defense capability advancing, questions abound on its strategic and regional fallout.
    The History of Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) in India
    In 1983, India initiated the Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme (IGMDP), leading to the research and development of a series of missile platforms from Prithvi to Agni. In addition to these offensive missile platforms, IGDMP also developed defensive missiles such as Akash Surface-to-Air Missiles (SAM). Akash was initially planned for air defense measures and equipped with a potential of conversion to Theatre Missile Defense System. Then, in the 1990s, DRDO started conceptualizing a missile defense plan for India. The actual transformation of Akash SAM into an anti-tactical missile defense began in earnest during this period. 
    The stated objective of this program was to develop a system that could intercept ballistic missiles with ranges of up to 2,000 km by 1997. However, technological incapacity as well as non-proliferation measures by the international community created hurdles in the process. India also was far less enthusiastic in advertising its intentions and objectives in the field of missile defense, lest it invoked American ire. Subsequently, DRDO entered into negotiations with Israel and Russia for BMD platforms and associated technologies. It bought S-300 anti-missile platforms from Russia, developed long-range, phased array radars in collaboration with Israel and built guidance radars with French assistance. As has been the case with all other defense technologies developed by India, its quest for missile defense therefore had both an indigenous component and a foreign one.
    In its current iteration, India’s BMD is a two-layered system. Prithvi Air Defence (PAD) is supposed to tackle incoming missiles at ranges of 80-120 km (exo-atmospheric interception). On the other hand,  the advanced air-defense (AAD) mainly consists of Akash Surface-to-Air Missiles (SAM) that can intercept incoming missiles at ranges of 15-30 km (endo-atmospheric interception). If the PAD system is devised for mid-course interception, the AAD is a terminal phase interception system which can only counter incoming missiles after their entry into the atmosphere. In their present configuration, these systems are designed tocounter missiles with range close to 2,000 km traveling at speeds ranging from Mach 3 to Mach 8.
    For tracking and guidance, it relies on its “swordfish” radar systems developed in conjunction with Israel and capable of simultaneously tracking more than 200 objects with diameters of no less than two inches at a range of 600-800 km. However, DRDO’s hunger for technological innovation remains unsatisfied. It has recently declared its plan to intercept missiles with over 5,000 km ranges, closing in on intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) ranges. These systems would be called AD-1 and AD-2 and would aim to counter missiles with far more velocity, up to Mach 12-15. DRDO has plans to extend the range of the “swordfish” radars to 1,500 km. In the future, a series of geo-stationary satellites may also be used for deduction of enemy missiles.
    Why India Wants a BMD System
    Many factors have motivated India’s quest for missile defense. First, Pakistan’s inclinations to pursue low intensity conflicts and foment terrorism under the shield of its nuclear arsenal have made India extremely uncomfortable with the strategic situation in the region. The Kargil War, 2002 attack on the Indian parliament and 2008 Mumbai attacks were symptomatic of this strategic imbroglio. Many in Delhi hope missile defense will provide India a space for limited wars against Pakistan.
    Another motivating factor was the fear that there could be an unintended launch of a ballistic missile, especially given Pakistan’s vacillation between being ruled by a trigger happy military and being overrun by jihadi extremists. Lastly, India also realized that a limited BMD, especially to secure its political leadership and nuclear command and control against a first strike, would augment the credibility of its second-strike nuclear posture.
    These motivations notwithstanding, perhaps one of the most important factor in advancing India’s BMD capability was the election of a Republican government headed by George W. Bush in the United States. In his May 1, 2001 speech at the National Defense University, the new American president announced plans to abrogate the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty.
    Moving away from the Cold War concept of nuclear deterrence, the superpower was now endorsing defense against nuclear weapons. India saw this policy reversal as an opportunity to develop its own capabilities. Having been shunted to the backwaters of international nuclear politics, as underlined by its absence from the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), India grabbed this opportunity with both hands, becoming the first nation to publicly endorse Bush’s new plans.
    Missile defense became the new mantra for cooperation between the two nations. Since 2002, India and the U.S. have actively engaged each other on missile defense. The subject has been a source of agreement between the two nations at nearly every meeting of the U.S.-India defense policy group. India’s scientists and military have been regular participants in missile defense shows in the U.S., Israel and Japan. If the Bush administration facilitated dialogue with India on missile defense, no policy reversal can be observed under the Obama administration. In fact, the engagement has only increased with the U.S. now proposing ideas such as the joint development of missile defense technology, and softening its stand on sale of Arrow missile defense systems to New Delhi.
    Current State of India’s BMD
    Still, India’s ballistic missile program is far from problem-free. Confusion and doubts surround India’s much trumpeted success in missile interception. Though one can observe DRDO’s declarations of deployment of a BMD in Delhi and Mumbai since 2008, no considerable progress on the front has been made. This should warrant particular concern in light of the scientific community’s tendency to exaggerate its technical accomplishments. There is also some confusion over the accuracy of these interceptions. DRDO claims a 90 percent accuracy level. Civilian analysts, on the other hand, greet this claim with a heavy dose of skepticism; after all, even the most technologically advanced countries have an interceptionaccuracy of 70 percent.
    Also, some critics have questioned the DRDO’s claim that the system is ready to be deployed. As skeptics point out, the system has only been tested in controlled environments. Moreover, the intercepted missiles targeted in these exercises are slow moving Prithvi-class missiles. They also argue that when analyzed against missiles that travel at far greater speeds based on solid fuel booster mechanisms, DRDO’s claims of an effective BMD system seem exaggerated. In other words, DRDO’s capabilities are far from proven when pitted against Chinese ICBMs, such as the DF-41.
    Would India’s BDM Actually Create Security?
    The ultimate shape of the missile defense is also a venue of debate. It is not clear to what extent the DRDO can expand the missile defense shield with its growing technical capability. However, expanding the missile defense to shield large parts of the country may be counter-productive. Logically, only a limited missile defense complements India’s nuclear doctrine, which relies on “assured retaliation” for the purposes of nuclear deterrence. A nationwide missile defense could create concern among India’s adversaries that it is preparing for a first strike; a perception which may ultimately prove disastrous for nuclear stability in the region.
    Second, development of a pan-national missile interception capability is beyond India’s economic means. Still, it is important to acknowledge that a midcourse interception capability, which is India’s primary intention, can also be employed at a broader level. With increasing capabilities in the booster strength of its ballistic interceptors and of its ground radars, it is hard not to foresee mission creep in India’s ballistic missile interception program.
    These issues intersect with potential negative strategic ramifications of India fielding a BMD program. Pakistan is acutely sensitive to any perceived military edge, current or future, that India may be developing. For example, Pakistan’s nuclear force expansion is believed to have been accelerated as a direct response to India’s conclusion of a civil nuclear agreement with the United States in 2008. Although the civil nuclear agreement could only potentially affect Indian nuclear force development by broadening its access to the international nuclear fuel market, and freeing up its domestic uranium for nuclear force expansion – a possible but hypothetical scenario – this was apparently enough cause for Pakistan to ramp up its nuclear force production. A limited fielding of a partly unproven Indian ballistic missile defense capability, as DRDO is planning, could similarly be enough to compel Pakistan to grow its nuclear arsenal – with all the potential dangers that this entails.
    For instance, this would elevate threat perceptions in both New Delhi and Islamabad. The disparity in Pakistan’s growing nuclear arsenal size, compared to India’s more halting efforts, was enough for Jaswant Singh, a former Minister for External Affairs and nuclear negotiator, to call in 2011 for an end to the central tenet of no-first-use in India’s nuclear doctrine. Ending no-first-use would also dispel the atmosphere of restraint pervading the doctrine, and signal to Islamabad that New Delhi was increasingly comfortable with the use of force in the next crisis, protected by a lower nuclear threshold and a BMD shield. Given that Pakistan would develop its own sub-conventional, conventional and nuclear means to counteract these shifts, the price of fielding BMD capabilities would be a tenser strategic environment.
    An Indian BMD system could also provoke a Chinese reaction. The BMD capabilities fielded by the United States are the subject of certain neuralgia among Chinese strategists, who continually worry that these will provide Washington with a first-strike capability against China’s deliberately small nuclear forces.
    More broadly, Washington’s interest in India’s BMD projects could validate suspicions in Beijing – especially prevalent in the wake of the 2008 civil nuclear agreement – that the United States and India are attempting to contain Chinese great power aspirations. As shown in the Sino-Indian border stand-off in April, in which Chinese troops occupied and then refused to abandon positions they had taken within Indian territory for a prolonged period, China has not been shy in reacting to Indian activities that are of far less concern to China than the BMD issue. At a time when India and China are making a renewed effort to secure a long-term agreement on the status of their borders, BMD developments could therefore worsen the trajectory of their relationship, all while offering India uncertain returns.
    Thus, the BMD program provides India with the prospect, albeit still distant, of blocking or reducing an offensive missile strike, and also serves as an area where American and Indian defense scientists can collaborate – building important bridges between the two states that could later transfer over into other areas. However, these benefits need to be weighed against the likely negative regional reactions. At the same time, it also is likely to raise tension and perhaps have unintended second and third order consequences in India’s relations with China and Pakistan. Thus, instead of being wholly consumed by the technical aspects of BMD, Indian policymakers need to also ask themselves whether the game is still worth the candle.
    Frank O’ Donnell is a doctoral candidate in War Studies, King's College London and research associate with the Centre for Science and Security Studies. Yogesh Joshi is a research scholar at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
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    Saturday, July 20, 2013

    On India, Japan and balance of power in Asia with Kei Koga, Harvard University

    Japan-India Security Cooperation

    SECURITY

    By Kei Koga & Yogesh Joshi

    Singh’s recent trip to Japan markedly expanded ties, with the potential to contribute to regional stability.
    India
    When India and China confronted each other in the highlands of the Himalayas this April, the reverberations could be heard in Tokyo. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, during his visit to Japan in the last week of May to coincide with 60 years of diplomatic relations between the two countries, relayed the concerns regarding an “assertive” China and the changing power dynamics in the region in no uncertain terms. Indicating India’s growing realism, Singh further assertedthat “historical differences persist despite our growing interdependence; prosperity has not fully eliminated disparities with and between nations and there are continuing threats to stability and security in the region”.
    Singh could not have been more correct in explaining the relations the two Asian democracies have with their bigger neighbor, China. The 4,200-kilometer Himalayan land border between India and China is Asia’s largest border dispute, over which the two states went to war in 1962. Meanwhile, China’s recent behavior towards Japan’s control of the Senkaku Islands (known as the Diaoyu Islands in China) has been seen as extremely aggressive. Economic interdependence has not helped ease tensions. Despite the enormous trade volumes between Japan and China, standing at about $330 billion in 2012, the aftermath of the 2010 boat collision and China’s aggression over the disputed islands illustrated that interdependence is no cure when it comes to peaceful resolution of territorial conflicts. Worse, Beijing has often used the trade asymmetry with Japan to its own advantage, stopping the supply of commodities such as rare earth metals on which Japan depended.
    With its growing military and economic capabilities, the continued rise of China is now politically overshadowing established powers like Japan and rising states like India in equal measure. This disparity of relative power growth has created a perception of a slow but certain shift in the balance of power in Asia towards Chinese hegemony. As these asymmetries grow, smaller states have started hedging against China. In the India-Japan partnership, one can observe similar strategic maneuvers with shades of power politics.
    At the recent Japan-India Summit,  Singh declared “Japan as a natural and indispensable partner in our quest for stability and peace in the vast region of Asia-Pacific.” Echoing him, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe also repeatedly emphasized his 2007 remarks, “Confluence of the Two Seas,” which highlighted the maritime security and cooperation between the two countries.
    China was clearly alarmed by this development, evident in the commentary that appeared in the Communist Party organ, Global Times. Calling Japanese “petty burglars” and “international provocateurs,” it warned India of getting close to Japan “at its own peril.”  Clearly, Beijing has not missed the emerging balance of power in Asia.
    In fact, an Indo-Japanese entente against the growing influence of China in Asia is not a recent phenomenon. Japan and India have been cooperating on defense and security issues since 2001, when the bilateral Comprehensive Security Dialogue was inaugurated. Further institutionalization of bilateral security cooperation continued, with the two countries issuing “the Joint Declaration on Security Cooperation between Japan and India” in October 2008, and commencing the bilateral 2+2 dialogue in 2009.
    Still, there seemed to be an implicit strategic consensus not to create antagonism with China. During his first term, Abe sought to enhance strategic relations with India, fundamentally driven by the balance of power in Asia, hedging against China’s uncertain future. More cautious was India, then Asia’s rising star – the world’s most populous democracy with two decades of high economic growth backed by the liberal reforms from the early 1990s. Its foreign policy became more pragmatic, and New Delhi eschewed unnecessary strategic provocations vis-à-vis China. This was well illustrated in 2006, when Abe called for a “concert of democracies” – the U.S., Australia, India and Japan – to join hands in the Asia-Pacific. India (and Australia) were the first to back away from the arrangement lest it provoked China’s ire.
    What has changed since then is the perceived strategic environment in Asia-Pacific, driven by both the rise in China’s relative power compared to neighbors such as India and Japan and the relative decline of the United States. Clearly, Beijing’s willingness to wield its growing power has complicated matters for Tokyo and New Delhi when it comes to disputed territories. Even if China’s growing power and its aggressive foreign policy was not enough, the war-weary and financially stretched America – the traditional guarantor of stability in the region – has raised pulses in both Tokyo and New Delhi. Despite strong assertions from Washington and the promise of a “rebalancing” to the Asia-Pacific, emphasized by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel at the recent Shangri La Dialogue, most states in East Asia understand that they can no longer rely entirely on the United States for their security, given U.S. defense spending cuts over the next decade. Another important change lies in Indian attitudes. Whereas Japan’s concerns about China have been consistent, India has always sought to avoid getting boxed in by Asia’s balance of power politics, to maintain strategic flexibility. But this also makes India vulnerable when power asymmetries widen. This sense of vulnerability, thanks to the extremely rapid accretion of Chinese power, has prompted India to look to Japan.
    It is in this context that the recent visit of Prime Minister Singh becomes crucial to the current regional flux. Both India and Japan decided to further enhance security cooperation. They agreed to regularize and increase the frequency of maritime defense exercises, while India agreed to purchase the US-2 amphibious aircraft for reconnaissance along its maritime frontier. Moreover, to enhance science and technology cooperation, the two countries agreed to step up cooperation in cyber security. They also inked a number of economic agreements, whereby Japanese capital would be invested in mega infrastructure projects such as the Delhi-Mumbai industrial corridor and the Mumbai metro project. With these announcements, bilateral cooperation has widened and deepened. Given other growing areas of cooperation such as bilateral coast guard and naval exercises and the rapid institutionalization of the US-Japan-India Trilateral Dialogue, Japan-India channels of communication have expanded, bolstering bilateral political and diplomatic confidence. This seems to follow the initiative that Abe set out in his 2012 article to establish the “Asia’s Democratic Security Diamond.”
    However, it is still not clear how India and Japan will respond to the “assertive” rise of China in the future. The uncertainty lies in two fundamental differences. One is their threat perception: while India fears China’s potential threats from land, Japan sees threats in the maritime arena. To fill these gaps, the first step would be to conclude the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA), to correctly assess the changing strategic landscape in East Asia and deepen understanding of each side’s threat perception. This could enable India and Japan to evaluate the possibilities and limitations of security cooperation. The second difference is their approach towards nuclear weapons. Although Japan and India agreed to step up efforts to conclude a civil nuclear agreement that would allow Japan to export its nuclear plant, Japan is concerned that India has yet to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). In the course of negotiations, the first step would be to promote such a deal, in which India’s CTBT signature, not ratification, becomes the decisive factor in concluding the civil nuclear agreement.
    In light of the global and regional security implications, the two countries should take cautious steps to further their bilateral security cooperation. Carefully crafted, India-Japan security cooperation would provide the region with a new strategic tool for maintaining stability in East Asia, a condition that will be crucial if Asian economies are to maintain their impressive growth in the decades to come.
    Kei Koga is a research fellow of International Security Studies at the Belfer Center, Harvard Kennedy School and Yogesh Joshi is a research scholar at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
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