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4 SPEAKING
FREELY Security: India loses its
grip By Zorawar Daulet Singh
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
Online feature that allows guest writers to have
their say. Please click hereif you are interested in
contributing.
Chinese President Hu
Jintao's recent visit to South Asia has marked a
turning point in regional geopolitics. The visit
has brought to the fore the overwhelming relative
weakness of the Indian state. India today is in
the unenviable position of having lost
control of the subcontinental
security system, arguably the most enduring
component of its grand strategy.
Over the
past decade, while Indian strategists were
intoxicated by the blueprints for India's nuclear
deterrence and power-projection capabilities in
the high seas, India shrank economically. At first
glance, this is especially surprising since most
analysts point to the rise of Indian power.
Following on the heels of America's own
engagement in South Asia over the past
half-decade, during which the United States has
successfully cultivated comprehensive bilateral
relations with the two largest countries, Hu's
visit was an eye-opener to the new realities in
the subcontinent and indicative of India's waning
influence in regional affairs.
Specifically, Chinese engagement in the
region can be seen as an extension of the global
geopolitical competition between the United States
and China. In the next three years, China is
projected to replace the US as India's most
important trade partner. So while security elites
in New Delhi were busy preparing plans for a new
diplomatic offensive through a revival of the
Tibet issue, which was for all practical purposes
resolved more than 50 years ago, Hu has sought to
deepen Beijing's economic engagement with the
subcontinent by evincing keen interest in building
linkages between all regional states, particularly
India and Pakistan, with mainland China.
It is instructive to note that Hu
classified his trip in Pakistan as a trip to
"South Asia", indicative of a transition in
Chinese diplomacy and a reiteration of its
emergence as an economic superpower. Similar to
the United States, China has articulated interest
in engagement in the South Asian region, without
discriminating between the regional states. The
growing economic leverage of China on both India
and Pakistan and even on the smaller South Asian
states has meant that it did not need to respond
to Indian belligerence on the Tibet issue.
Instead, Hu's pragmatic public statements
have confirmed that China has transcended its Cold
War approach to security - the "encirclement" of
India and more generally the notion of security
competition as a zero-sum game. Rather, China's
engagement with South Asia, with its predominantly
economic focus, can be seen as a microcosm of a
more general approach in its foreign economic
policy - developing trade and investment linkages
and thereby gaining leverage in bilateral and
multilateral forums.
China's extraordinary
economic climb since 1978 has transformed the
"Middle Kingdom" into the top league of great
powers. Today, China is a global provider in
economic terms occupying a pivotal position in a
number of transnational manufacturing supply
chains. Its trade and investment linkages with
Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin
America have expanded its global reach. In 2004,
China's trade volume grew to more than US$1
trillion, making it the world's third-largest
trading nation. Today, China accounts for 55% of
Asian exports, 7.2% of world imports, 16.5% of
global import growth, and an astounding 15% of
global demand growth.
While China views
South Asia as another region, given its
geographical contiguity, it is extremely
interested in stability on the subcontinent. This
explains the restrained nature of its economic
engagement with some of the smaller South Asian
states, conscious of not offending Indian
sensibilities.
Nonetheless, the emerging
patterns of engagement are clear - other South
Asian states will not be held back from
economically engaging external actors, especially
as India is increasingly unable or unwilling to
meet regional development needs.
How then
did Indian policymakers squander the opportunity
decisively and irreversibly to shape the
geopolitical opportunity that emerged after the
1991 economic reforms? First, an important reason
for failure lay in the persistent rigidity of
Indian security thought, which was unable to
accommodate and adopt a comprehensive conception
of security, one that highlights the importance of
economic leverage in a state's foreign relations.
And second, India's inability to execute a
balanced path to economic development exacerbated
the conduct of its foreign policy.
Redefining security The concept
of economic security has come to the fore as a
critical component of comprehensive national
power. Historical geo-economic trends offer
substantial evidence as to how states use their
economic levers as national-security instruments.
The US lend-lease program during World War
II, the Marshall Plan in its aftermath, and more
recently Russia's energy and trade links with
Central and Eastern Europe exemplify the utility
of the economic instrument. A sound economic base
is the fundamental prerequisite for leverage that
a state is able to use as a political instrument
in the pursuit of foreign-policy objectives - to
compel or
