India as Global Military Superpower?Experts Call it ‘Dreamy Yearning’
Ravi S Jha
NEW DELHI — India’s top strategic experts have scoffed at the idea of the country emerging as a ‘military global super power’.
With India and the United States strongly demonstrating that New Delhi is moving from an era of ‘non-alignment’ to ‘poly-alignment’, and by doing so it is growing from a regional military power to a global power, the Indian defence experts said on Thursday they are far from being convinced.
A top US military think-tank has implied that India’s rise as a regional and future global military power now seems certain. Brian Hedrick of Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) of US Army Department of Defence in a paper “India’s Strategic Defence Transformation: Expanding Global Relationship” has suggested that India is bound to become a global military super power.
But India’s independent strategists aren’t buying this conjecture. They 
suggest that such a discourse is just
eyewash. “It’s a dreamy yearning for India to even think that it will be a 
military super power anytime soon,” said Ajai Sahni, director, Centre for Conflict Studies.
“Weak internal security; corruption and inefficiency, ill equipped and under-paid armed and police force,
bureaucratic red tape, outdated laws 
are few reasons why India cannot,” Sahni said. Reacting to SSI’s claim that India’s defence establishment was 
undergoing an unprecedented transformation, Indian experts countered that it was far from being true.
“India takes decades to buy ultra modern defence equipment, even though it doesn’t shy away from signing defence deals all over. The aircrafts which were inducted in the Indian Air Force two decades ago are still no where to be seen,” he said.
Commenting on SSI director 
Douglas Lovelace’s widely published views on India rapidly modernising its military, and seeking strategic partnerships with the US and other nations, ‘with an aim to expand its influence 
in the Indian Ocean and beyond’, 
Indian experts suggested that this is a mere sweet talk, while the US had allowed to fund billions of dollars, and free military aid to Pakistan.
India has increased the number of countries with which it has defence-specific agreements from seven to 26 by the end of 2008. Also undenyingly India has conducted more joint military exercises with the US than with any other country, and the recent series of joint military exercises have now become an annual affair.
But there is a growing concern in India about the substantial increase in US military and economic aid to Pakistan. “There are concerns that these military equipment and funds are being diverted by Pakistan for anti-India purposes,” said former Indian high commissioner to Pakistan, G Parthasarthy. “If India is really emerging a global super power then why isn’t the US addressing India’s concerns on this,” he asked.
Although he agreed that India and the US have forged institutional mechanisms for counter terrorism cooperation after the establishment of the US-India Counter-terrorism Joint Working Group, Parthasarthy added the Kerry-Lugar bill passed by the US Senate tripling non-military aid to Pakistan to $1.5 billion per annum for the next five years shows why Washington needs to be explicit in its views.
Reacting to comments made by Hedrick, who is a military advisor to the Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia at the US State Department, saying that India’s interests have changed over the past decade or more towards attaining the global super power status, the strategic experts pointed out that India will have to stop living in its own imaginary world.
India’s military strategy is entirely made up of Pakistan or China’s counter strategies. India’s military power boasts of offensive, broad front, and highly lethal strategies vis-à-vis China or Pakistan’s counter strategy which is based on comprising war avoidance, counter offensive etc. “Beyond this, India isn’t really global,” said former deputy chief of the army staff Satish Nambiar.
Another veteran Brahma Chellaney, who teaches strategic studies at Centre for Policy Studies, said it is too early to state that India would be a global military power. “India-US strategic partnership appears to be moving towards a higher trajectory. This doesn’t mean India is achieving globally what it should have first achieved regionally,” he said.
India and the US co-operation have been growing in the areas of defence, economy, energy, technology and innovation. “The shared value of democracy has consolidated mutual understanding and partnership with US. The possibility of nuclear use in South Asia increases with the increase in threat to vital interests. There are too many priorities, and India should first address them,” he said.
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I m sure I will live to see Pakistan get back on the growth trajectory.. We have more at stake on what happens on the other side of the western border.. After all, we are the same people..
