Bay of Bengal war games to help fight terror, piracy

INDIA: Indian and U.S. aircraft carriers plow through the Bay of Bengal launching fighter jets into the air. American submarines cruise below Japanese, Australian and Singaporean warships.

The stated aim of this week's massive war games off India's east coast is to improve the ability of the five participating militaries to fight terrorism and piracy. But in the five days of naval exercises that began Tuesday, experts see a broader strategic shift that is being driven in large part by the fear of a rising China.

At the center of Asia's new strategic landscape is the warming relationship between New Delhi and Washington - and, to a lesser extent, India and Japan - after decades spent on opposite sides of the Cold War divide.

China isn't the only issue drawing them closer - the nations have increasingly entwined economies and populations, for example - but it is certainly among the biggest.

"The Chinese are expanding in a huge way into the Indian Ocean," says Rahul Bedi of the London-based Jane's Defense Weekly.

Defense officials at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi had no comment on the exercises, although reporters were being allowed onto American warships for the drills.

Last month, Adm. Timothy J. Keating, the commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, denied the exercises were aimed at isolating China.

"We are looking to minimize the potential areas for misunderstanding and confusion between all of us in the region and China," Keating said during a visit to New Delhi.

Even so, analysts say, while securing vital trade routes for oil and energy resources is certainly part of the rationale behind the exercises , the scope and location of the exercises won't go unnoticed, they say.

"India has taken the precaution of informing China that this is not meant to make an Asian bulwark to contain China," New Delhi-based strategic analyst Ashok Mehta, a retired Indian general. "Nevertheless, perceptions will lead many others to a different conclusion."

The exercises stretch from India's eastern coast, past the Coco Islands to the Strait of Malacca, one of the world's busiest waterways through which 25 percent of all sea-borne oil shipments pass, according to U.S. government figures.

Taking part in the exercises are 13 U.S. warships, including the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Nimitz and the nuclear submarine USS Chicago. India has seven warships participating, including its sole aircraft carrier, the INS Viraat.

Two Japanese destroyers, a frigate from Singapore and an Australian frigate and tanker are also taking part. During the exercises the forces are practicing air defense, air strikes, interceptions and anti-submarine drills, said Capt. V. K. Garg, a spokesman for the Indian Navy. "With three carriers involved, air exercises will dominate this interaction"

For India's government, the exercises - the largest ever hosted by the South Asian nation - are also sending a clear message to communist political allies who have threatened to bring the government down over a recently agreed civilian nuclear deal with the United States, which they say projects New Delhi too far into Washington's orbit.

"The exercises are an indication to everyone that the government is not being taken to task by the left," said Mehta. "It reaffirms India's commitment to the U.S."

New Delhi, Thursday, AP.