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2 India could yet play the 'China'
hand By M D Nalapat
A
convergence of events in 2007 has prompted some
policymakers to suggest that a warming of
relations between China and India is only a matter
of time [1]. In December 2007, the first-ever
joint military exercise euphoniously code-named
"Hand-in-Hand 2007" was held in Kunming, in
southwest China's Yunnan province, which borders
Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam.
The exercise
involved approximately 200 soldiers in a
counter-terrorism exercise that was hailed by
Chinese media as a "landmark development" in
Sino-Indian relations. On top of that, in
an
apparent show of solidarity and leadership among
the developing countries, India and China
"hand-in-hand" jointly objected to a draft 2009
climate deal at the UN talks in Bali.
Indian Minister for Science and Technology
Kapil Sibal said that China and India cooperated
by leading the Group of 77 (G-77) and "took care
of the concerns of the various shades within the
developing world itself". These events,
culminating in Indian Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh's first visit to China in five years, taken
together, have led some to think that 2008 will be
the start of "spring" for Sino-Indian relations. A
deeper probe, however, into the history of Sino-US
relations provides insights for how India might
manage its increasingly complex and strategic
relations with China.
Although it has now
become conventional "unquestioned" wisdom to
regard president Richard Nixon's opening to China
in the 1970s as a geopolitical masterstroke, the
reality was very different - there was almost zero
prospect of the USSR and China once again acting
in concert, at least the way they did while Joseph
Stalin was still alive. Both the ideological and
personality differences between the Chinese and
Soviet leader would have played out to ensure that
the tension between the two remained - and to the
benefit of the United States.
A case can
be plausibly made that a more even-handed US
policy of playing Beijing and Moscow against one
another through switching preferences between them
would have yielded higher geopolitical returns for
the United States. In other words, whenever a
situation developed where the USSR could assist
the global or regional goals of US policy, a
movement in Moscow's direction away from Beijing
may have ensured the action needed from the USSR
to achieve US objectives - instead of linking the
United States to China in a manner that became
apparent at least since the 1980s.
With
the benefit of hindsight, the US strategy of using
the mujahideen against the Soviets in Afghanistan,
which gave rise to the Taliban that later provided
a safe haven for al-Qaeda, created a blowback that
over time became greater than the gains from tying
up the Soviet armed forces in a primitive theater.
Washington's use of the Beijing-Moscow
rivalry to motivate the USSR toward a withdrawal
of forces by using the bait of a tilt towards
China in the Sino-Soviet matrix of tensions may
have proved effective - in conjunction with the
setting up of a neutral Afghanistan. While much
has been made of the policy of detente, the
reality is that policy toward the USSR was much
more circumscribed in its range and possibilities
than was the case with China. From Nixon and Henry
Kissinger onward, US policymakers lavished
attention and benefits on China out of all
proportion to both the country's then-geopolitical
weight and the benefits secured. Even in such an
intangible relationship, few would deny that the
overwhelming advantage has gone to China.
Some argue that the US policy of strategic
alignment with China helped significantly in
dealing with the Vietnam War; however, the
recorded course of that conflict does not
encourage such a hypothesis. Beijing continued to
supply North Vietnam with munitions and other
requisites of war, and acted energetically only to
defend its own interests, rather than those of the
United States [2].
Moreover, had the
United States not acted in the acquiescent manner
that it did, and instead given backing to elements
in Cambodia less oppressive than the Khmer Rouge,
it is plausible to assume that greater
geopolitical rewards may have been secured in
place of the meager returns received from the
policy of tiptoeing around China and its
surrogates. It was only after the United States
and its allies' retreat from Vietnam that Beijing
changed from its policy of substantial assistance
to North Vietnam in its conquest of the south. In
contrast, both in the development of its economy
as well as in the development of its technology,
US assistance to China has been generous and
critical for the development of China as an
emerging superpower.
The dominant tendency
with which policymakers in the United States get
fixated on a threat - and then search for allies
to meet it - often leads to the lavishing of help
on countries erroneously seen as beneficial. One
salient example is the reliance by the United
States on the Pakistani army for counter-jihad
operations. Despite the steady worsening of the
situation on the ground in Afghanistan, and the
rise in capabilities of the Taliban, this policy
continues without significant modification [3].
The relationship between Washington and
Beijing is very similar to that of Washington and
Islamabad, in that both cases show a one-sided
bunching of benefits, to China and Pakistan,
respectively. In the case of the 1980s Afghan
jihad, a present by-product is the creation of a
trained and motivated cadre of zealots who have
the will and, in some locations, the ability to
inflict harm on major US allies, and sometimes on
the United States itself.
In the case of
China, it has been enabled in large part by US
policy to emerge as a significant geopolitical
competitor. Whether in South America, Africa or
Asia, it is clear that the policies of the United
States and China have often collided and will
continue to diverge more than converge in the
long-term. For example, Beijing's close links with
Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, General Than Shwe in
Myanmar as well as Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe,
apart from equally close links to a range of other
countries that are opposed to US interests, such
as Sudan and Iran. Moreover, the provision of
missile systems to more than a dozen states, and
nuclear know-how to North Korea and Pakistan are a
further demonstration of the one-sided nature of
the US-China strategic relationship.
The
triumphal nationalism that followed the 1997
handover of Hong Kong to China generated the first
symptoms that caused a rethink in the US defense
community of the policy of providing strategic
ballast to China. The ascendance of the
independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party
(DPP) as the ruling power of the government in
Taiwan has raised the probability of military
action by China across the Taiwan Strait. This
would almost certainly result in the involvement
of US forces, together with those of Japan. In
such an eventuality, the role of India in this
final scenario would be of value in locking up a
significant chunk of China's military capability
along its southern border.
The possibility
of India joining with the United States and Japan
in hostilities against China would necessitate a
distraction in the concentration of China's
military on the Taiwan Strait. Moreover, India's
naval and other assets could take over several
maritime commitments of the United States in the
Indian Ocean, thus freeing a much larger force for
the Chinese theater. There is also the value of a
close strategic link with another country of a
billion-plus people, one that is, moreover, a
democracy that hosts more than 220 million people
who speak the English language.
Will India
pull a "China" on Beijing and garner geopolitical
benefits by offering itself as a counterweight
against China, in much the same way as China
secured gains for itself by professing to serve as
a counterweight to the Soviet Union? Should India
become a US ally, the strategic situation for
China would worsen not simply in Asia but across
other continents as well, for India too has a
large footprint, reaching across most parts of
Africa and Asia, as well as selected countries in
South America.
Such a pairing of the
world's two largest democracies seemed an unlikely
prospect until the advent of President George W
Bush. Since that time seven years ago, the White
House has made relations with New Delhi a
priority, and there have been many who have seen
the developing US-India partnership as a hedge
against China.
Certainly, an alliance
between the United States and India would give
China pause in challenging the security interests
of either the United States or India in a manner
that could lead to a situation of conflict. A
strategic nightmare for Beijing would be for India
to become the southern prong of the pincer that
has Japan as the
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