The Possible Reasons of the Emergence of India on Military Power
I. Introduction
Located the south of the Asian continent, India, also known as the giant in Asia, is the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world. Since getting independence in 1947 from British, the giant India has been developing all sectors to modernize the country. During the late century, in 2011, India became the world-ninth economic power with 8% annual increasing and became a member of G-20 and BRICS, which were the group of fast-economic-growing countries in the world. What the world notices India the most is its military power. Indian military power is growing very fast. Just years after its independence, the governments mostly concentrate on the military sector and use billions of dollars to develop it. Amazingly, India conducted its first nuclear weapons test in 1974 and in 1998 it announced officially to the world that India had the nuclear atomic (BURNS, 1998).
Moreover, India is the most weapon importer in the world and plans to use its budgets around 100 billion dollars to modernize country’s army forces. Clearly, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley sets the military budget at 2.29 trillion Indian rupees ($38.35 billion) for 2014-15, 50 billion rupees more than what the previous government agreed in an interim budget earlier this year (Miglani, 2014). Furthermore, according to ITAR-TASS, India buys 10,000 Invar missiles and 200 BrahMos, which are ramjet supersonic cruise missiles that can be launched from submarines, ships, and aircraft from Russia. Recently, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government also buys 8,356 Spike missiles and 321 launchers from Israel in a deal worth 525 million dollars. Be noticed that India has 1.325 million troops whose number is the world’s third-largest military after China and USA (Staff, 2013), nuclear weapons, navies and one of those is produced by Indian hands. Nationalist leader Modi, who stormed to power at elections in May 2014, has said that India must build up its military might to the point that no other country “dare cast an evil eye” on the South Asian nation, (Arab News, 2014).
II. India emerged the military because of India-China conflicts
Due to the long complicated border disputes between China and Pakistan, India is under the pressure of the power of these countries. For instance, in April 1914, India and Tibet became independent countries from England, and England established borderline between India and Tibet, called MC Mahon Line. However, in October 1950, China occupied Tibet and Aksai Chin, which was territory of India. In 1959, there was protest in Tibet, and soon the leader Dalai Lama moved to India, and since then China considered it as a political invading. Starting from that time, China and India had violence each other and it continued until both countries agreed to withdraw their military forces in August 1995. Until now, there are potential conflicts because they have not solved the problem properly and they just have claimed each other that they were the owner of specific territory.
In order to reply to this conflict, India tried to modernize its military power during the end of 1980. Additionally, these two superpowers were involved in war related to border dispute in 1962 (Babbage & Gordon, 1992). This conflict has left a significant impact to India in addressing and developing their military capabilities. Concentration and modernization of India’s military entails all three forces of defense, namely land, navy and air. Moreover, emphasis also was focused on the development military technologies and research. May / 18 / 1974 India successfully produced its first’s nuclear bomb that was tested in Pokran (Gupta, 1995).
III. India emerged the military because of India-Pakistan conflicts
Not so different from China, India also has conflicts with Pakistan, which is known as Kashmir dispute. It also happens due to the result of England colonization. In August 1947, Pakistan became an independent country. Until now, it is still complicated because Pakistan has independence without decision for Kashmir. British allows Kashmir to decide itself whether accede to India or Pakistan or to be independent state. According to BBC news, The Maharaja, Hari Singh, who was a Kashmir’s leader at the time, wanted to stay independent but eventually decided to accede to India, signing over key powers to the Indian government - in return for military aid and a promised referendum. After that, India forced to occupy Kashmir 2/3 and Pakistan came and ruled the rest of the land. Since then, the territory has been the spark for two of the three India-Pakistan wars, the first in 1947-8, and the second in 1965.
Furthermore, the development has directly given security threats to India with the superpowers and United States assistance to Pakistan. Development such as arms race, China-Pakistan relationship, United States-Pakistan and separatist rebellion in Kashmir has raised Indian leader awareness to re-examine policies such as neutral policy and independent region from the grip of superpower and national defense policy (Gupta, 1995). This current development has promoted India, which was under the governance of Prime Minister Indira Ghandi to study and made changes on national defense policies. This military development process has made India emergence as a new military power when India came forward as a nuclear power. The world was stunned by the threat during the South Asia conflict in 1998 (India and Pakistan) that could bring the use of nuclear in the clash (Samah, 2001). Directly the conflict between these two states has enlightened the world with the emergence of India as a military power and as a developed nation in the field of nuclear technology.
IV. The Prevention of Terrorism and Invasion
India is one of the countries, which suffers the most from terrorism. Crowded city, religious palaces, markets and others more in India are the main areas that terrorists seek to attack. For example, on November 2008, there was the dispute caused by terrorist gunmen and Indian Commandos in Mumbai city, which was reported to kill more than 150 people. Mostly, the dead were Indian people and at least 20 were foreigners. In addition, there was the suicide bombing attack took place at Wagah, the town, which was located on India-Pakistan border. It killed approximately 55 people, and no less than 120 people wounded. Most attacks in the past few years were admitted to cause by Pakistani terrorists. Pakistani Government also officially backtracked to the link of Mumbai attack and said they found six suspects although Pakistan always denied that any attack against India originated in Pakistan. Furthermore, according to the New York time magazine published on 4th September 2014, they mentioned about the announcement of Al Qaeda, one of the world biggest terrorists group. It has released a video announcing to establish a new branch in India in order to resuscitate Jihadists in a region because they believed that India was a part of the land of Muslim. Moreover, about fifty years ago, Sino-Indian conflict occurred as the result of territorial disputes during the time China invaded Aksai Chin, which was located at the northeast Kashmir. Likewise, China was really aggressive with India as India opened for the presence of Dalai Lama, a Tibetan Buddhist who seeked for independence for Tibet as the autonomy from the China because it was considered as "Tibet card" for India to play against China as China is traditionally and continuously the biggest enemy. The two countries did not trust each other anymore. Then, as China emerges their military power, India cannot stand still and does nothing because India needs to protect himself from being captured by China, the greatest regional enemy (Lidarev, 2012). As the result, Indian navies, calling themselves as the Blue-Water Navy, was designed to deal with Chinese plans that wanted to augment sea-going capacity and made goods on distant seas ambitious as well as to race with China’s maritime development in this recent year that made India could not stand still not to do something to protect themselves (Singh, 2015).
V. Regional Power
India becomes the largest weapon importer in the world. The India tries to improve itself to be a powerful state in order to protect its territory from the external aggressors. As a result, India now is the nearly superpower. In recent year, the buying program of India includs aircraft carriers, destroyers, frigates, submarines, amphibious transport ships, and surveillance aircraft. Especially, India is interested in rising of navy modernization to serve their national interests and self-defense (Braden, 2013).
A hurry red dragon (China) is also interested in the Indian Ocean, the third largest body of water, and it is also important for the Asia’s economies. Therefore, China, one of the most exporters through the seaway, is growing interest in protecting any interruption to the sea lines of communications (SLOCs), which connects it to the economy of the world (Braden, 2013). Few years ago, China built up the navy militaries in the Indian Ocean, and China also made the relationship with countries that are around India, such as Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Myanmar by building the ports in those countries. This made India become wary too much and India saw this action of China as the tightening “string of pearls” around New Delhi’s neck (Arnold, 2015). Therefore, in order to respond to the China Treats and defend itself, India plans to spend more than £10 billion on a fleet of new warships and submarines. Furthermore about £5.2 billion will be spent on six nuclear-powered submarines (Stevens, 2015).
The Indian Ocean is the third largest body water and it is very important to India. The economy of India depends on the seaborne commerce through the Indian Ocean, which is the way that India imports the crude oil from the Africa and Middle East, and exports the goods to many various countries in the Asia and East through the seaborne.
VI. Conclusion
In conclusion, if we look at the perspectives of realism, we can see that Indian rulers are mostly influenced by realist theory. As we see, India has been trying to raise itself after its independence mostly focusing on its own interests. For example, it is the most weapon importer in the world due to the reasons that India needs to enhance its own secure. One argument of realist (Zakaria, 1993) is argued that there is no authoritative, impartial method of settling these disputes – no world government – state are their own judges, juries, and hangman and often resort to force to achieve their security interest. In practicing, India, who has enormous enemies on border disputes, is trying to defend itself from the attacks and the invasion from those counties. Similarly, according to Morgenthau and other realists, their arguments can be inferred that each state has to secure itself. Therefore, India that is one of the most being attacked by terrorists highly concentrates on this problem and emerges a very strong and effective military. Lastly, Indian geography is very dangerous since its neighbors have different not only religions but also ruling systems, China, for instance. Therefore, if we apply the realist arguments again, we can see that India is also influenced by those theories. Realists say that country should practice balance-of-power politics, and country has to be powerful (International Politics on the World Stage). Since India and China claim themselves as a superpower in Asia, India needs to militarize its power to be strongest to compete with China. Moreover, India tries to balance its power when its neighbors ally with China because India concerns that today they are still friends, but tomorrow they may be the enemy. Because of this pressure and another agreement of realist said that country must be armed because the world is dangerous (Morgenthau), India started emerging on its military power since its independence.
Reference
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Royal University of Phnom Penh Internalational Relations 101
Institute of Foreign
Languages Assignment
Department of
International Studies Academic Year: 2014-2015
Writen by
Uk Dararath
Mom Sothavatey
Lee San Minh
