The former South Dakota senator argues in a new book that Washington should send a devastating message to Beijing.
Former Republican Senator Larry Pressler, in his latest book, has asked the Trump administration to strengthen Indian navy, providing nuclear weapons in order to send a “devastating” message to China, which according to him, has been troubling the Asia-Pacific region.
The former senator, who authored the landmark Pressler Amendment, wrote in his new book Neighbors in Arms: An American Senators Quest for Disarmament in a nuclear Subcontinent that strengthening the Indian Navy’s nuclear capacity has become inevitable in the current circumstance.
Pressler, who served in the Senate from 1979 till 1996, was the first Vietnam veteran elected to Senate.
The new book says the Chinese navy is posturing aggressively against the US in the Philippines and the Spratly Islands – all lying in the disputed the South China Sea near Vietnam.
The islands that have become the subject of contention is situated in the middle of the important air and sea navigation route for the ownership of which China has locked horns with its neighbors – Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, and Taiwan. According to Pressler, the free access to these strategic South China Sea lanes is critical for international trade and travel.
“In addition, there are oil and gas reserves in China. We really do not want a naval war with China. It would be costly to defend a place like the Spratly Islands,” Pressler writes in the book.
“But we can send China a devastating message by strengthening the Indian navy. An Indian navy that has the capacity of delivering nuclear weapons would cause China great concern. In fact, if we actually outfitted the Indian navy with nuclear weapons, China might back down from its antagonistic stance in the region,” Pressler says.
Of late, the US has been helping India to strengthen its navy but in addition to that Pressler has advocated that “America should also develop an ‘intense soft power’ relationship with India, that is to say, we should work on promoting more non-military relationships like those fostered by the millennium.”
Neighbors in Arms, which contains more than 250 pages, has been available online since July 20.
The former South Dakota senator is known for Pressler Amendment, which restricted US economic and military assistance to Pakistan unless the president certified annually that Islamabad “does not possess a nuclear explosive device.”