Ever since April 19th, when India claimed it had successfully test fired its AGNI-V missile from Wheeler Island off the coast of Odisha state in eastern India, the arms race in Asia has drawn international attention for many reasons.
The Islamic republic of Pakistan, which fought three and a half wars with India, responded with five nuclear-capable missile tests within several weeks. Because Pakistan has already achieved enough delivery capability for a nuclear strike in any part of India, the tests were just saber-rattling of little strategic significance.
Quite notably, AGNI-V, with its 5000-plus kilometer range,has been viewed as "China centric;" capable of reaching Beijing and Shanghai along with the Chinese financial hub concentrated in its northeast. Indian officials called it a "game changer" in characterizing the success of their first ICMB. The Chinese media, voiced in English by The Global Times was cautious and conscious in responding to the AGNI-V test, stating that India lags far behind China in its military potential. On the other hand, Chinese strategists and top scientists alleged that the Indian missile had a range of more than 8000 kilometers, but had been downplayed by India under NATO pressure.
It is rumored AGNI-V will be equipped with multiple independently targeted reentry vehicles (MIRVs) by 2014, but given India’s track record in the timely delivery of indigenous defense armaments, this is an unlikely scenario. In light of India's successful placement of a record number of satellites into orbit atop a single missile, the country probably does have the necessary technology for MIRVs. But India's complicated, politics-ridden bureaucratic system, oxymoronically blessed by democracy, is obviously a hindrance to achieving this.
The Global Times was right in assessing India’s military imbalance vs China’s. China successfully tested its first nuclear device in 1964, and detonated its first thermonuclear device just thirty two months later, in 1967; an unbeatable record. In contrast, India’s assertion of the status of its H- bomb with a yield of 45 KT, which she claimed to have imploded in 1998, twenty four years after its first nuclear explosion of 1974, is incredible. India’s ability for nuclear weapon simulation with the data available from just six nuclear detonations is questionable, whereas China has tested their nuclear weapons into perfection.
Article comments
1 - Aga Majid
This articles author, Dileep Yogi is obviously biased, because he is an Indian writing from India. He would be well advised to help improve the lot of Indian Dalits , Sikhs, and Christian minorities. People who live in glass houses should throw stones, especially one shaped like a boomerang.
2 - Dileep Yogi
I would definitely agree on the pathetic side of daliths in India.. But when it comes to minorities, the republic of India has extended maximum protection to them and the Hindu tolerance towards other faith is universally accepted. Even though my name is misleading I belong to the minority Syrian Christian denomination which has never ever been subject religious persecution; please refer;
New Advent
Christians of Saint Thomas
St Thomas Christians
3 - Glenn Contrarian
Dileep -
I am not worried at all about a war between China and India - China knows better, and it has nothing to do with the likelihood of military victory. It's because they'd be sacrificing their economy in a very real way. They'd immediately lose all business with Europe and America and their economy would collapse, and they know it. China is being somewhat belligerent in some areas, true, but there's things - like war with Russia or India - that they would not do, because they know that not only is there no victory in a nuclear war, but they also know that America would be on Russia's and India's side almost immediately. They'd almost certainly lose such a war militarily, and their economy would be devastated even if they 'won'.
So a war between China and India is really, really low on my list of worries. Worry instead about the Muslims over in Pakistan doing something really stupid with their nukes. In a way, I sort of hope that Iran develops nukes, because once they do so, Pakistan's got enemies on both sides and they'll be forced to grow up.
4 - Les Slater
I do not dismiss the dangers inherent in the dynamics of global politics and economics as pertain to this area of the world.
It is in the whirlwind of instability of deepening crisis of the world capitalist system that draws all inexorably in. War is not only out of the question but is becoming more likely.