It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
The decision to use the Indian Navy in the region comes days after Chinese state media announced that the southern Hainan province, which administers the South China Sea, approved laws giving its police the right to search vessels that pass through the waters.
India signed a pact with Vietnam in October last year to expand oil exploration in the South China Sea.
Although Beijing has urged New Delhi not to push ahead with the project for the sake of "peace and stability", the Admiral said that the Indian Navy was ready to support state energy firm ONGC and had carried out exercises in preparation
Originally posted by Zaphod58
There has been shooting in the region in the past, and nothing came of it. Just because a shot is fired, doesn't mean WWIII is going to break out. The region is going to heat up, but maybe with an outside party intervening, things will calm down a little bit. I doubt it, but we can hope.
Originally posted by Trajan
India won't be aggressive with China unless they know for certain that the U.S. and Europe will back them up.
On the Indo-Sino border, China has heavily fortified positions and tens of thousands of soldiers stationed. To the west, India faces Pakistan with 600,000 soldiers and some of the world's best intelligence agencies and quite a modern air force.
Both Pakistan and China are strategic allies (in an effort to box India in) and have promised an attack on one is an attack on the other. If India fought both of them it would be shattered into a thousand pieces.
I believe India is the pawn that the West will send to escalate tensions in the region. Then, when (if) war breaks out between both powers, the U.S. and Europe will send military aid to India and it's allies (Vietnam, Taiwan and Japan mainly) while Russia will send aid to China.
Any fight between these two powers (which can adapt to their losses and recover any casualties pretty quickly) is going to shatter Iran and, by extension, Syria.
The end game? Crush Iran and Syria without having to fire a single shot. Also postpone China and India's eventual economic dominance.