Page 1 of 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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