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China's southern
discomfort
By Mohan Malik
The
war clouds have receded following high-level United
States diplomatic efforts and arm-twisting of Pakistani
and Indian leaders. However, concerns over the outbreak
of a conflict in South Asia have not completely
disappeared, particularly in view of Pakistani President
General Pervez Musharraf's inability, if not
unwillingness, to deliver on his promise to stop
permanently terrorist incursions into
Indian-administered Kashmir.
The India-Pakistan
crisis has also highlighted once again the long shadow
that Asia's rising superpower, China, casts on the
Indian subcontinent, especially at the time of
heightened tensions. In fact, Beijing has long been the
most important player in the India-Pakistan-China
triangular relationship.
Since the Sino-Indian
border war of 1962, China has aligned itself with
Pakistan and made heavy strategic and economic
investments in that country to keep the common enemy,
India, off-balance. Interestingly, China's attempts to
improve ties with India since the early 1990s have been
accompanied by parallel efforts to bolster Pakistani
military's nuclear and conventional capabilities
vis-a-vis India. It was the provision of a Chinese
nuclear and missile shield to Pakistan during the late
1980s and 1990s that emboldened Islamabad to wage a
"proxy war" in Kashmir without fear of Indian
retaliation.
While a certain degree of tension
in Kashmir and Pakistan's ability to pin down Indian
armed forces on its western frontiers is seen as
enhancing China's sense of security, neither an all-out
India-Pakistan war nor Pakistan's collapse serves
Beijing's grand strategic objectives. Concerned over the
implications of an all-out war on China's southwestern
borders post-September 11, Beijing has been keeping a
close watch on the fast changing situation and has taken
several diplomatic-military measures to safeguard its
broader geostrategic-strategic interests in Asia.
At a conference on interaction and confidence
building measures in Asia in Kazakhstan held in early
June, Chinese President Jiang Zemin pressed Indian Prime
Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to enter into direct talks
with Musharraf to prevent the Kashmir conflict from
exploding into a full-scale war. However, Vajpayee
refused to budge. Later, in an interview with the
Washington Post, the Indian premier complained that he
saw "no basic change in China's policy. China continues
to help Pakistan acquire weapons and equipment." Since
most war-gaming exercises on the next India-Pakistan war
end either in a nuclear exchange or in a Chinese
military intervention to prevent the collapse of
Beijing's most allied-ally in Asia, this article
examines China's response to the recent India-Pakistan
crisis and its likely response in the event of another
war on the Indian subcontinent.
Beijing's
response
Since the late 1990s, China had become
increasingly concerned over the gradual shift in the
regional balance of power in South Asia with the steady
rise of India coupled with the growing India-US entente
and the talk of "India as a counterweight to China" in
Washington's policy circles, and Pakistan's gradual
descent into the ranks of failed states.
Since
the end of the Cold War, a politically dysfunctional and
economically bankrupt Pakistan's flirtation with Islamic
extremism and terrorism coupled with its nuclear and
missile programs had alienated Washington. However, the
September 11 attacks changed all that. Pakistan saw an
opportunity to revive its past close relations with the
US, shed its near pariah status, and enhance its
economic and strategic position in relation to India by
instantaneously becoming a frontline state in the
international coalition fighting global terrorism. In
return, Washington lifted sanctions and agreed to
billions of dollars in aid and debt rescheduling. From
Washington's perspective, courting Musharraf made
geopolitical sense because Pakistan's military not only
knew a great deal about the Taliban, Osama bin Laden and
al-Qaeda, but also because any US military operation
against Afghanistan could not be successful without the
bases, logistics, personnel and airspace in neighboring
Pakistan. In Beijing there were great expectations of a
sharp downturn in India-US relations because in many
ways what happens on the Indian subcontinent is
unavoidably a zero-sum game and Pakistan's new
relationship with the US did affect India negatively.
However, tensions between South Asia's two
nuclear-armed rivals rose sharply after the terrorist
attacks first on the Kashmir assembly in early October
2001 and then on the Indian parliament on December 13
last year. New Delhi responded by massing troops on the
Pakistan border and warned of retaliatory, punitive
military strikes against terrorist camps inside
Pakistani-controlled Kashmir. While condemning
terrorism, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said
that "Kashmir is an issue left over by history and needs
to be resolved through peaceful means".
A South
Asia specialist from China's National Defense
University, Wang Baofu, noted with satisfaction that
under the new circumstances, "The United States,
considering its own security interests, readjusted its
policies toward South Asian countries and started paying
more attention to the important role of Pakistan in the
anti-terrorism war, therefore arousing the vigilance and
jealousy of India." Wang criticized India for defining
resistance activities in Kashmir as terrorism "by taking
advantage of the US anti-terrorism war in Afghanistan,
thus putting more pressure on Pakistan through the
United States," and praised Musharraf for his "clear-cut
attitude toward fighting against international
terrorism".
Musharraf visited Beijing twice in
less than a fortnight in December 2001-January 2002 for
consultations with Jiang and Premier Zhu Rongji, while
General Zhang Wannian, vice-chairman of China's Central
Military Commission, met with General Muhammad Aziz
Khan, chairman of Pakistan's Joint Chiefs of Staff
Committee, and was quoted as telling Khan, "For many
years the militaries of our two nations have maintained
exchanges and cooperation at the highest and all levels
and in every field. This fully embodies the all weather
friendship our nations maintain."
Zhang's
reference to "cooperation … in every field" (meaning,
nuclear and missile fields) was a thinly veiled warning
to India to back off. Later, Beijing matched words with
deeds by rushing two dozen F-7s jet fighters, nuclear
and missile components and other weapon systems to shore
up Pakistani defenses in the tense border face-off.
People's Liberation Army (PLA) troops from the military
regions of Chengdu and Lanzhou and their respective
sub-divisions, the Xizang (Tibet) and Wulumuqi (Urumqi),
along China's southern borders, were also put on alert
in January to test their war preparedness should the
conflict in the Indian subcontinent spill over onto
Chinese soil.
Following Musharraf's January 12
speech in which he announced a crackdown on extremist
organizations waging jihad from Pakistani territory,
tensions somewhat subsided. The Chinese media claimed
some credit for mediating between the two rivals,
despite the Indian government's aversion to the dreaded
"m" word: "Mediated by the United States, China, Britain
and Russia, leaders of India and Pakistan recently
expressed their desire to try to control the tense
situation." Interestingly, this stance contradicted then
Indian foreign minister Jaswant Singh's statement during
Zhu's visit to New Delhi in mid-January that "China has
neither any intention, nor shall it play any mediatory
role between India and Pakistan".
However, the
May 14 terrorist attack on a military base in Jammu that
killed 34 people, mostly women and children, once again
highlighted the danger of escalation along the border
where more than one million troops backed by heavy
armor, warplanes and missiles are deployed. There was
renewed tough talk of war, including nuclear war on both
sides of the border. Beijing called for restraint from
both New Delhi and Pakistan and emphasized the need for
peaceful dialogue to settle outstanding disputes.
Chinese Defense Minister Chi Haotian also urged
both countries to desist from a military conflict and
not to threaten each other with nuclear weapons.
Describing the US's diplomatic moves (that is, the
dispatch of Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage
and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in early June) to
defuse the India-Pakistan military stand-off as "too
little too late", the state-run media accused Washington
of showing "no genuine desire to resolve the Kashmir
issue". It noted that Washington had clearly not taken
the tensions very seriously when it went on with a
10-day joint military maneuver with India on May 16-26,
thereby implying that the recent India-US joint military
exercise had emboldened India to up the ante against
Pakistan.
Concerned over the "one-sided nature
of public appeals" to Musharraf to halt cross-border
terrorism into Indian Kashmir from Washington, Moscow,
London, Paris and Tokyo, Chinese Foreign Minister Tang
Jiaxuan told US Secretary of State Colin Powell on May
27 that "the international community should encourage
direct dialogue between India and Pakistan in a more
balanced and fair manner, which is the most effective
way to lead South Asia towards peace and stability".
Apparently, the growing threat of nuclear war and the
prospect of Pakistani nuclear weapons falling into the
hands of Islamic terrorists have made Washington lean
heavily on Islamabad. While publicly calling for
restraint by both sides and claiming to be even-handed,
China has not only continued to covertly side with its
long-term ally but also militarily supported Pakistan.
At the same time, Beijing repeatedly asked New Delhi to
do more to end the military stand-off.
The
nuclear connection
In a prepared testimony before
the US Senate governmental affairs subcommittee in early
June, John S Wolf, US assistant secretary of state for
non-proliferation, revealed that "China recently
provided Islamabad with missile-related technologies,
which include dual-use missile-related items, raw
materials and other accessories essential for missile
manufacturing". In a sense, China's nuclear and missile
assistance to Pakistan over the past two decades has now
created the risk of a conventional conflict swiftly
escalating into the world's first nuclear war.
Beijing has not only provided Islamabad with
nuclear bombs, uranium and plants (all three Pakistani
nuclear plants - Kahuta, Khushab and Chasma - have been
built with Chinese assistance) but also their delivery
systems: ready-to-launch M-9 (Ghaznavi/Hatf), M-11
(Shaheen), and a number of Dong Feng 21s (Ghauri)
ballistic missiles. This cooperation has continued
despite Beijing's growing concerns over the
Talibanization of the Pakistani state and society. When
Islamabad carried out a series of missile tests amid
heightened tensions apparently to warn New Delhi to back
off, the Indian government drew the international
community's attention to Pakistani missiles' China
connection. "We are not impressed by these missile
antics, particularly when all that is demonstrated is
borrowed or imported ability … the technology used in
the missiles is not their own but clandestinely acquired
from other countries," said a spokesperson of the Indian
External Affairs Ministry.
More importantly, the
Sino-Pakistani nuclear nexus seems to have introduced a
new element of uncertainty and complexity into
sub-continental strategic equations. While the attention
of world leaders and the media is focused on the
nightmarish scenario of a nuclear Armageddon in South
Asia and large-scale mutual assured destruction leading
to the death of 12 to 30 million people, strategic
circles in Islamabad and New Delhi have been discussing
the pros and cons of a short, limited nuclear war in
Kashmir following intelligence reports about the forward
deployment by the Pakistani military of low-yield (five
kilotons or less) tactical nuclear weapons (TNWs). Such
miniaturized battlefield nuclear weapons have a one-mile
destruction radius and can be used effectively against
large troop concentrations and advancing tank formations
along the Line of Control in Kashmir. Tactical nukes can
be launched over an unpopulated area from field
artillery guns or aircraft to halt enemy advances in an
effort to intimidate a numerically stronger enemy. Since
the damage is localized or confined to a certain area,
the danger of impacting on the civilian population is
greatly reduced as compared to a strategic nuclear
weapon of the Hiroshima kind, and therefore need not
evoke massive retaliation by enemy forces. The
mountainous terrain in Kashmir provides the perfect
setting for their use. In addition to the US and Russia,
only China is believed to have the largest stockpile of
about 120 TNWs or "baby nukes", some of which may have
been delivered to Pakistan following PLA deputy chief
and military intelligence boss (arguably China's most
important military figure) General Xiong Guangkai's
visit to Islamabad in early March. The question then is:
Would India, which does not possess TNWs but has
strategic nuclear weapons in abundance, keep the nuclear
conflict limited or escalate to the strategic level and
respond with massive retaliation?
Some analysts
attribute the recent lessening of tensions to the
belated recognition in India's strategic circles that
New Delhi cannot afford to dismiss Pakistan's repeated
threats of using nuclear weapons as "mere posturing" or
"bluffing" on Islamabad's part. Others believe that
Indian strategic planners' tendency to discount the
threat of nuclear escalation may well be based on some
fundamentally erroneous assumptions:
That the United States would not allow Pakistan to
be the first Islamic country (and the second nation
after the US) to use nuclear weapons to settle a
territorial dispute as it would mean the end of the
non-proliferation regime and encourage other countries
to go nuclear;
That the presence of US forces in Pakistan would be
a constraining factor;
That the international community (the US, UK, China
or the United Nations) would intervene in time to
prevent such a catastrophe; and
That India could count on American and Israeli
military support to seize and/or take out Pakistan's
nuclear and missile infrastructure.
These
assumptions seem to be based less on cold, hard-headed
calculations of the strategic interests and influence of
major powers (especially the US and China) and may well
be a sign of wishful thinking on India's part. It is
worth noting that new strategic and geopolitical
realities emerging in Asia post-September 11 have put a
question mark over Beijing's older certainties,
assumptions and beliefs.
China's
concerns
Much to Jiang and his politburo's
chagrin, the US-led war on terrorism has developed in
ways that could not have been foreseen, with potentially
disastrous consequences for China's core strategic
interests. A major unintended (and unsettling, from
Beijing's standpoint) consequence has not only been to
checkmate and roll back China's recent strategic
expansion moves in Central, South and Southeast Asia,
thereby severely constricting the strategic latitude
that China has enjoyed post-Cold War, but also to tilt
the regional balance of power decisively in Washington's
favor within a short period.
The supposedly
"brief" unipolar moment in history seems to be turning
into a long-lasting imperial moment - Pax Americana par
excellence. More importantly, recent developments show
how tenuous Chinese power remains when compared to that
of the United States. The Chinese believe that Russia,
India and Japan have all been big winners in this, and
that the United States is probably going to have a
better relationship with all of them, leaving China out
in the cold.
The fast-changing strategic scene
not only undercuts Chinese ambitions to dominate Asia,
but also hems in the one country in the world with the
most demonstrable capacity to act independently of the
United States. Not surprisingly, the beginning of 2002
saw Chinese leaders and generals shedding their earlier
inhibitions about publicly expressing concern over the
growing "southern discomfort" - the ever-expanding US
military power and presence in southern Asia
post-September 11. China's Chief of the General Staff,
Fu Quanyou, has warned the US against using the war on
terrorism to dominate global affairs by saying that
"counter-terrorism should not be to used to practice
hegemony". On an official visit in April in Iran, Jiang
Zemin openly repudiated the US stance against the
Iranian and Iraqi regimes, saying, "Our opinion [on
terrorism] is not the same as the United States," while
in Germany, he told the Welt am Sonntag, "We all want to
fight terrorism. But the states involved in the fight
against terror each have their own specific viewpoint."
China's initial optimism that new
Sino-US-Pakistan triangular cooperation in the aftermath
of September 11 would wean Washington away from New
Delhi turned out to be wishful thinking as the Bush
administration officials went out of their way to assure
India that America's intensifying alliance with Pakistan
would not come at India's expense. If anything, the
current crisis has strengthened the American commitment
to building stronger relations, including defense ties,
with South Asia's superpower.
However, China
does not want to see India raising its power, stature
and profile regionally or internationally. Chinese
strategists have long argued that China's pursuit of
great power status is a historical right and perfectly
legitimate, but India's pursuit of great power status is
illegitimate, wrong, dangerous and a sign of hegemonic,
imperial behavior. For its part, New Delhi has long
accused Beijing of doing everything it can to undermine
India's interests and in using its ties with other
states to contain India. Beijing is also alarmed over
the growing talk in right-wing policy circles in
Washington and New Delhi of India as emerging as a
counterweight to China on the one hand and the fragile,
radical Islamic states of West Asia on the other.
Earlier, when President George W Bush unveiled
his missile defense plan, New Delhi had responded far
more positively than most US allies. Some Indian
strategic thinkers even see in the emerging India-US
quasi-alliance an opportunity for "payback" to China. As
former Indian ambassador to Pakistan and Myanmar, G
Parthasarthy, put it, "Whether it was the Bangladesh
conflict of 1971, or in the Clinton-Jiang Declaration in
the aftermath of our nuclear tests, China has never
hesitated to use its leverage with the Americans to
undermine our security."
Growing Chinese
pressure on the Malacca Straits has already led to a
strategic alignment between India and the United States,
with their navies jointly patrolling the Straits. More
significantly, India-US strategic engagement has scaled
new heights with the announcement of a series of
measures usually reserved for close US allies and
friends: joint military exercises in Alaska that would
improve India's high-altitude warfare capabilities in
the Himalayan glaciers of northern Kashmir where it
faces Pakistan and China; sale of military hardware
including radars, aircraft engines and surveillance
equipment to India; joint naval exercises and the
training of India's special forces; and intelligence
sharing and joint naval patrols between the Straits of
Malacca and the Straits of Hormuz.
Washington
also gave the green light for Israel to proceed with the
sale of AWACS to India - something that was earlier
denied to China for fear of enhancing Beijing's air
surveillance and early warning capabilities in the
Taiwan Straits. All these measures send an implicit
signal to China of India's growing military prowess. A
cover story in authoritative Beijing Review by China's
noted South Asia specialists expressed concern over the
US sale of arms to India which "enables it to become the
first country to have close military relations with the
world's two big powers - the United States and Russia".
To make matters worse, in early May, Prime Minister
Junichiro Koizumi of Japan, Beijing's other Asian rival,
who also sees China representing a clear and future
threat to its security, called for a broadening of
Japan's security cooperation with India.
Many
Chinese strategists believe that India is now using the
war on terrorism as a pretext to use the military option
to subdue Pakistan and/or to destabilize and dismember
the country. Pakistan is the only country that stands up
to India and thereby prevents Indian hegemony over the
region, thus fulfilling the key objective of China's
South Asia policy. As South Asia-watcher, Ehsan Ahrari,
points out, "India may end up intensifying its own
rivalry with China by remaining steadfast in its
insistence that Musharraf kowtow to its demands,
especially if China calculates that US-India ties are
harming its own regional interests. China, though still
concerned about the continued activism of Islamist
groups in Pakistan and contiguous areas, is not at all
willing to see the regional balance of power
significantly tilt in favor of India."
Chinese
strategists also worry about the destabilizing
consequences of a prolonged US military presence in
Pakistan and increased influence on the future of
Sino-Pakistan ties, as well as on Pakistan's domestic
stability. The US military presence in Pakistan could
further sharpen the divide within the Pakistani military
into pro-West and pro-Beijing factions, with China
supporting the latter to regain the lost ground
post-September. The pro-Beijing lobby in the Pakistani
military is reportedly getting restive and waiting to
strike if and when Musharraf falters. The pro-China
faction within the Pakistani military could also join
hands with the pro-Islamic fundamentalist faction or
those who find Pakistan's loss of its strategic depth in
Afghanistan for elusive gains and US military presence
on their soil very hard to digest. The US arms sales to
India and joint India-US military exercises may further
sour China and Pakistan's willingness to assist
Washington in its war on terrorism. War
scenarios
It is said that each conflict simply
prepares the ground for the next one or every war
contains the seeds of another war. The Afghan war of the
1980s against the Soviet occupation culminated in the
war of terrorism in 2001. Whether the war on terrorism
will in turn lead to another war or a clash of
civilizations or a nuclear jihad in South Asia, only
time will tell. But what worries China more is the
possibility that it could be drawn into a conflict, not
between Pakistan and India per se, but between Pakistan
and the US, with the latter using India as a surrogate.
With the top al-Qaeda/Taliban leadership fleeing into
Pakistan's wild west and Pakistani Kashmir, it is
becoming increasingly clear that the war against
Terrorism is zeroing in on Pakistan as the next
battlefield.
Should the India-Pakistan conflict
escalate into a nuclear one, neither the geopolitical
nor the radioactive fallout will remain limited to South
Asia. It could bring the US and Pakistan on a collision
course, again with India acting as a US partner. Such a
development would obviously present China with difficult
choices. Open support for its most allied ally would
jeopardize China's relations with the US and India. But
non-intervention on Pakistan's behalf, however, could
encourage India to solve "the Pakistan problem" once and
for all with or without a nuclear exchange and thereby
tilt the regional balance of power decisively in its
favor.
An unrestrained Indian power would
eventually threaten China's security along its soft
underbelly - Tibet and Xinjiang. Should post-Musharraf
Pakistan disintegrate or be taken over by Islamic
extremists, a new level of instability will rock the
region and increase tensions among Pakistan, India and
China. Another dreadful scenario is one wherein
Chinese-made Pakistani nuclear weapons fall into the
hands of the US, Israel or even India in the event of a
civil war should al-Qaeda/Taliban declare jihad against
Pakistan - the weakest ally of the US anti-terrorism
coalition. Such a scenario may lead to information
regarding China's own nuclear program and the extent of
help provided by Beijing to Islamabad. The scenario of
Pakistan in splinters, with one piece becoming a radical
Muslim state in possession of a nuclear weapon, can no
longer be simply rejected as alarmist fantasy.
Difficult choices
These scenarios put
Beijing on the horns of a dilemma. Some Chinese
strategists see in the current South Asian crisis as an
opportunity to recover lost ground and thwart India's
ambitions to challenge China's economic and military
primacy in Asia. Should another war between India and
Pakistan break out, New Delhi's high hopes of an
India-US alliance to counter China may never
materialize, a welcome development from China's
perspective. Some hawks in the PLA see China even
benefiting from an India-Pakistani nuclear war. For
example, at the time of the 1999 Kargil War, one Chinese
military official reportedly told a Western diplomat
that "should India and Pakistan destroy themselves in a
nuclear war, there would be peace along China's
south-western frontiers for at least three decades, and
Beijing needs 20 to 30 years to consolidate its hold
over restive Tibet and Xinjiang provinces." However,
this remains a minority viewpoint as a nuclear war will
have worldwide repercussions in terms of global economic
depression, humanitarian crises, proliferation of
weapons of mass destruction and China's developmental
priorities. The majority believes that Beijing should
have absolutely minimum involvement in a situation where
there can be no clear winners.
While recent
lessening of tensions and the announcement of
de-escalatory measures are welcome signs, the risk of
another India-Pakistan war remains high because the
jihadis and powerful sections of the Pakistani military
establishment have openly expressed their anger over
Musharraf's submission to the US diktat and may launch
devastating strikes sooner rather than later, in turn
forcing India to retaliate. While the Pakistanis are
confident that in the event of a war with India, China
would throw its weight behind Pakistan, diplomatically
as well as militarily, the Indians believe that the
Chinese would not do so for fear of India playing "the
Taiwan and Tibet cards".
Interestingly, on May
31, the day Pakistan's new UN ambassador, Munir Akram,
issued an explicit nuclear warning to India, a Chinese
Foreign Ministry spokesman denied a Times of India
report that Jiang Zemin had assured a US Congressional
delegation that China would not favor Pakistan in the
existing tensions, and claimed that the report was "not
based on facts". A Chinese South Asia analyst at Fudan
University in Shanghai, Shen Dingli, added, "China needs
to send a message: For my own security I will
intervene." Though Beijing may not overtly intervene in
a limited war, it will have to come to Pakistan's
defense if the latter's very existence as a nation-state
is threatened by India. Clearly, there is a great deal
more to the Chinese role in South Asia than meets the
eye.
In the final analysis, Beijing's response
to the next India-Pakistan war will be shaped by its
desire to protect Chinese national interests, no matter
what the cost. And, geostrategic concerns require China
to covertly side with Pakistan, while publicly calling
for restraint by both sides and appearing to be
even-handed. Even in the absence of a war, Pakistan
hopes to continue to benefit not only from the
intensifying Sino-Indian geopolitical rivalry in
southern Asia but also from the coming showdown between
China and the United States, which is likely to increase
the significance of China's strategic ties with
Pakistan.
Dr Mohan Malik is professor
of security studies at the Asia-Pacific Center for
Security Studies, Honolulu, USA. The views expressed in
this article are those of the author and do not reflect
the official policy or position of the Asia-Pacific
Center for Security Studies, the US Department of
Defense or the US government.
(©2002 Asia
Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
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