As President Barack Obama prepares for a major Asian diplomatic offensive away from the Middle East, manufacturers and merchants of arms are preparing to make the occasion profitable for themselves.

    The eve of the twin offensive - Obama's scheduled meeting with China's President Hu Jintao in Beijing on November 16-17 and the White House banquet for India's Prime Minister Manmohan on November 24 - is witnessing a campaign to create and exacerbate tensions between the two Asian giants. The multi-pronged, media-fueled campaign carries the clear fingerprints of the military-industrial complex.

    The campaign, of course, is not entirely new. It has served as an important part of the case for the "US-India strategic partnership" ever since George W. Bush made it a mantra for the mandarin and militarists of both countries. The "partnership," it has been repeated endlessly, is premised on a role for India as a "counterweight" to China in the most populous continent. Until recently, however, New Delhi and Beijing had at least kept up some good-neighborly appearances, with rounds of talks on border issues and economic relations.

    The Indian public was hardly prepared for the concerted campaign, aimed at escalating tensions with China, that took off earlier this month. It began with stories of Chinese incursions into Indian territory and about China building a dam on the cross-border river called the Brahmaputra in India. Equally unexpected was the extraordinary and entirely uncharacteristic way Beijing extended an added impetus to the campaign.

    An editorial in China's People's Daily of October 19 supplied fresh ammunition to the campaigners with its ferocious, studiously undiplomatic attack on India. Putting the issue in a geopolitical rather than a bilateral context, the editorial came down on India's "hegemonic designs." Speaking for India's other neighbors, the state-owned daily scoffed at New Delhi's foreign policy of "befriend the far and attack the near."

    The editorial counseled: "India, which vows to be a superpower, needs to have its eyes on relations with neighbors and abandon the recklessness and arrogance as the world is undergoing earthshaking changes." For good measure, the daily added: "For India, easing of tension with China and Pakistan is the only way to become a superpower."

    The tone and timing of the editorial could not have suited tension-mongers in India better. Their task was made even easier the next day when China's foreign ministry issued a terse statement saying Beijing was "strongly dissatisfied" with the visit earlier this month by Singh to India's Himalayan State of Arunachal Pradesh. The denunciatory statement was widely perceived, and presented by the campaigners, as an attack on India's democracy itself, as the prime minister had visited the state to address an election rally.

    China, on the other hand, lays claims to about 90,000 square kilometers of the state's territory. It described the Singh visit as an attempt to "trigger disturbances in the disputed region." India's External Affairs Ministry retaliated by calling on China to stop its development projects (including one on the trans-Himalayan Karakoram Highway) in the disputed, Pakistan-administered part of Kashmir. When a security expert, Bharat Verma of the Indian Defence Review, prophesied on July 12, 2009, that "China will launch an attack on India before 2012" to divert the attention of its own people from "unprecedented" internal problems, he drew some attention, but did not really set alarm bells ringing. Somewhat more successful, however, was the shrill media chorus about Chinese threats, skillfully connected to the brief Sino-Indian conflict of 1962.

    The agitprop over the issue grew intense enough to invite official intervention. The prime minister and his colleagues themselves have been constrained to caution against exaggerated stories of border violations, while the claim on the dam has been denied. The Arunachal Pradesh affair, however, did make a difference to New Delhi's attitude.

    The Singh government has chosen to displease China on the issue again by officially allowing the Tibetan leader Dalai Lama, exiled for decades in India with his followers, to visit a Buddhist shrine at Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh in the second week of November. New Delhi has lifted previous restrictions, in place for years, to make this pilgrimage possible. Beijing has left no doubt about its bitterness at this Indian move.

    Former Indian diplomat M. K. Bhadrakumar links it all to the larger interest of the US military-industrial complex in India as a 100-billion-dollar market for arms. He relates it also to the rewards Indian brokers and commission agents hope to reap.

    Says he: "Powerful Indian lobbyists have been at work in whipping up a war hysteria and xenophobia over China.... it is ... certain that these lobbyists can expect a windfall out of Sino-Indian tensions." He adds: "... a gravy train is getting ready for the Indian elites. The People's Daily commentator may have unwittingly waved off the train from the platform."

    The past couple of days have witnessed some promise of a Sino-Indian thaw. Conciliatory statements have emanated from both the capitals. There is talk of a compromise on the Dalai Lama issue, which will let him visit Arunachal Pradesh purely as a religious leader, without the permission to make political statements there.

    The change is attributed to the desire in both Beijing and New Delhi to go ahead with the scheduled meeting in India's Bangalore on October 27 of the foreign ministers of China, India and Russia. The meeting is seen as a move towards a multi-polar world.

    Will this geopolitical exercise involving the two Asian giants prove a match for the mega-billion enterprise of the military-industrial complex? Time will tell.