Besides drawing legions of armed forces and triggering high-profile global diplomacy, the tsunami strike in the Indian Ocean has reinforced political and military pragmatism in New Delhi and Beijing.New Delhi and Beijing have traditionally been suspicious of each other, as well as of the US military presence in their neighbourhood. Demonstrating a new realism, India and China are easing their military tensions and working with the reality of American naval primacy in the Indian Ocean.In normal circumstances, China would have been wary of India’s move to join the relief coalition involving the US and its major Asian allies, Japan and Australia. Instead, as the core group on tsunami relief was being announced in the US, Beijing was expanding the list of military confidence building measures with Army chief Gen N C Vij, who was visiting China at the time.Without a murmur of protest against the group, which has expanded to include the Netherlands and Canada and might draw in the EU, China has decided to contribute to the relief effort. Besides considerable aid, Beijing has decided to send a team of 220 search and rescue workers that includes a contingent of military engineers to Indonesia. Some of this pragmatism has rubbed off on Pakistan, which is sending two naval ships to join the relief effort in Sri Lanka and flying a few sorties of C-130 transport aircraft to Indonesia.China has long given up the demand for American troop withdrawal from Asia. Beijing knows that if US troops pull out, Japan will rearm itself. The logic is not very different in New Delhi. India has given up the 1970s’ slogan of ‘Indian Ocean as a Zone of Peace’ that focused on removing American forces from the region.New Delhi knows that if the US military leaves East Asia and the Persian Gulf, there will be someone else filling the power vacuum. Few in Delhi want to see China become the beat cop in the Indian Ocean.Even as they reconcile to American presence in the region, Beijing and New Delhi naturally want to increase their own military standing in the Indian Ocean. There, the two giants of Asia share a problem—of being unloved by their neighbours. Beijing and New Delhi are aware that their growing power creates political anxieties in the region. Demands for American withdrawal only deepen suspicions about the hegemonic aspirations of Beijing and New Delhi. In an attempt to signal their peaceful intent, they have raised the profile of their military diplomacy in recent years.Last September, China invited military officers from 16 neighbouring countries to observe an Army exercise Iron Fist 2004. In 2004, there were a hundred high-level defence exchanges, and naval exercises with Britain, France and Australia, a counter-terrorism exercise with Pakistan and a mountaineering exercise with India.Last year, Beijing conducted 19 rounds of strategic dialogue with 13 countries, including the US, Russia, France, Britain, Germany and Canada. It sends hundreds of military officers to foreign institutions and trains nearly a 1,000 foreign officers in its own.India, too, has stepped up military engagement with great powers as well as neighbours in the Indian Ocean. It has signed defence cooperation agreements with Sri Lanka and Singapore and has cooperative arrangements with many nations, stretching from Seychelles to Vietnam.Recognising that they cannot keep other powers out of their own neighbourhood, India and China have become pragmatic in their search for a stable balance of power in the Indian Ocean. Their responses to the tsunami disaster reflect a determination to contribute to regional security within a framework of multilateralism rather than proclaim exclusive spheres of influence.
