Page 1 of 3 Dalai Lama at apex of Sino-Indian tensions
By Peter Lee
India has engaged in high-profile hand wringing over the Barack Obama
administration's renewed focus on developing the United States' relationship
with China, as New Delhi perceives a pattern of diplomatic, economic and
military encirclement by Beijing.
A Chinese threat is seen in the "string of pearls" - China's access to maritime
facilities in Myanmar, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and the Maldives - and
in the military buildup on India's eastern border that threatens to sever the
"chicken's neck", the narrow Siliguri Corridor between Nepal and Bangladesh
that connects India's landlocked eastern boondock to the national heartland.
In July 2009, one pundit predicted war with China "by 2012", in the article
"'Nervous China may attack India by 2012'" [1], published by the Times of
India: "China will launch an attack on
India before 2012. There are multiple reasons for a desperate Beijing to teach
India the final lesson, thereby ensuring Chinese supremacy in Asia in this
century," Bharat Verma, editor of the Indian Defense Review, wrote in the
article.
But a look at prevailing trends in South Asia indicates that China's
adventurism will be moderated by its own vulnerabilities. The fate of Tibet
could emerge as Asia's defining security issue - to Beijing's detriment - if
China and India can't manage their differences.
An adjustment of the special Indo-American relationship consummated under
president George W Bush was inevitable once the Obama administration entered
office in January 2009.
One of the most erratic and destabilizing initiatives of Bush's erratic and
destabilizing presidency was his opening to India. Bush and his national
security advisor, Condoleezza Rice, entered office determined to upgrade
relations with Delhi. To do so, a key diplomatic and legal impediment to
intimate security cooperation had to be swept aside: India's development of its
civilian and military nuclear programs outside of the nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty (NPT) structure. This initiative was not popular, even inside the Bush
administration.
Robert Blackwill, the abrasive, arm-twisting (literally - he left government in
2004, shortly after he allegedly yanked the arm of a female embassy functionary
in a rage over a missing airline reservation) US ambassador to India was a
mentor to Rice and one of the most aggressive advocates of the new
relationship.
He described his struggles with non-proliferation types and the pro-Pakistan
former secretary of state, Colin Powell, and his deputy, Richard Armitage, in
colorful terms in the article: "What are the origins of the transformation of
US-Indian relations?" [2]
... [T]he non-proliferation "ayatollahs", as
the Indians call them, who despite the fact that the White House was intent on
redefining the relationship, sought to maintain without essential change all of
the non-proliferation approaches toward India that had been pursued in the
[Bill] Clinton administration. It was as if they had not digested the fact that
George W Bush was now president. During the first year of the Bush presidency,
I vividly recall receiving routine instructions in New Delhi from the State
Department that contained all the counterproductive language from the Clinton
administration's approach to India's nuclear weapons program. These nagging
nannies were alive and well in that State Department labyrinth. I, of course,
did not implement those instructions. It took me months and many calls to the
White House to finally cut off the head of this snake back home.
Assisted by Blackwill's persistent insubordination and the determination of
India's foreign secretary at the time, Shyam Saran, Bush cut the Gordian knot
in a manner that suited his world view of the US and its allies unconstrained
by the international system and its network of treaties and instead dispensing
instruction to it.
The US unilaterally concluded a nuclear deal with India that made a mockery of
the NPT and logic by exempting eight Indian reactors capable of generating
fissile weapons material from inspection. Then the United States orchestrated
acceptance of the deal by the International Atomic Energy Agency and, after
considerable arm twisting, the Nuclear Suppliers' Group. The deal was ratified
and signed by the US and Indian governments in late 2008, in one of the last
acts of the Bush presidency.
The deal, enshrined in US law as the United States-India Nuclear Cooperation
Approval and Non-proliferation Enhancement Act, was sold as a reward for
India's good record as a democracy and as a non-proliferator as it developed
its nuclear program outside the NPT. India's less-than-stellar record as
contributor to nuclear tensions in South Asia - it had danced to the brink of a
nuclear exchange with Pakistan as recently as 2002 over Kashmir - was pointedly
ignored.
India was overjoyed at its good fortune, having gained an undeserved pass for
its nuclear program and recognition of a privileged role as an American
security partner at the expense of its detested rival, Pakistan.
Bush remains a popular figure to the Indian establishment. Tellingly, after he
emerged from the traditional one-year hiatus of presidents who have left
office, one of his first stops was the hospitable venue of the Hindustan
Times-sponsored Leadership Initiative Conference in New Delhi.
The Hindustan Times concluded its interview with Bush, "India's voice on the
global stage very important: Bush" [3] with the following question/statement:
There are some who believe you have been the best US president for India.
In his reply to the newspaper, Bush - while modestly stating that he would
await history's verdict - did not presume to disagree.
When asked what the United States got out of the nuclear deal, Bush jocularly
cited reduced import barriers for India's luscious mangoes in the US market as
justification.
A more realistic case was made that US suppliers of nuclear gear would benefit
from India's entry into the global market for plants and equipment, though
Russian and French suppliers, with their proven export records, would be
expected to fare better selling to India than America's civilian nuclear plant
builders.
Beyond its shortage of unambiguous benefits, the deal brought a number of
negatives with it.
The Indian transaction - and the inescapable conclusion that the United States
had institutionalized a double standard of forgiveness for its allies and
selective enforcement against its enemies - has created inevitable problems for
the United States in its attempts to create a united front against Iran.
When the Bush administration declined to extend similar nuclear privileges to
the (admittedly, undemocratic, serial-proliferating) government of Pakistan, it
contributed to the sense of anxiety and suspicion of the US within the
Pakistani military that dogs American efforts to gain Islamabad's wholehearted
participation in its bloody AfPak strategy to this day.
It also brought the security tensions implicit in the Sino-Indian relationship
to the surface. China vigorously if fruitlessly opposed the Nuclear Suppliers'
Group waiver to India, earning considerable resentment from India in the
process.
The primary significance of the Sino-American relationship was, apparently,
geostrategic. In its official statements, the Bush administration never alluded
to a significant rationale for the Indo-American alliance: China.
After he left government, Blackwill was considerably less circumspect. While he
acknowledged that there was no sense of immediate existential threat underlying
from Beijing underpinning the relationship between Washington and New Delhi, he
went on to say:
Like some in Washington, India is enormously attentive
to the rise of Chinese power ... as the Indian military thinks strategically,
its contingency planning concentrates on China. It is partially in this context
(as well as energy security) that India plans a blue-water navy with as many as
four aircraft carriers. India will also eventually have longer-range combat
aircraft and is working on extending the range of its missile forces. What
other US ally, except Japan, thinks about China in this prudent way? On the
contrary, witness the current widespread eagerness within the European Union to
lift its arms embargo against China. As a Chinese general said to me a few
years ago, European policy toward China can be summed up in a six-letter word:
Airbus.
The American conservative's platonic ideal of
confrontational Sino-Indian relations driven by border disputes (and a unique
interpretation of the phrase "honest broker") was supplied in a Wall Street
Journal op-ed: "The China-India Border Brawl" [4] by Jeff Smith of the
right-wing American Foreign Policy Council in June 2009:
What is
Washington's role in this Asian rivalry? ... Washington should leverage its
friendly relations with both capitals to promote bilateral dialogue and act as
an honest broker where invited. But it should also continue to build upon the
strategic partnership with India initiated by former president George W Bush,
and support its ally, as it did at the Nuclear Suppliers' group and the ADB
[Asian Development Bank], where necessary. Washington must also make clear that
it considers the established, decades-old border between the two to be
permanent.
Most importantly, though, the Sino-Indian border dispute should be viewed as a
test for proponents of China's "peaceful rise" theory. If China becomes
adventurous enough to challenge India's sovereignty or cross well-defined red
lines, Washington must be willing to recognize the signal and respond
appropriately.
Alas for India, its privileged position near the
heart of American security calculations did not survive the global financial
crisis, the deterioration of the situation in Afghanistan, and the Obama
administration.
Obama, who won his Nobel Peace Prize in part for his efforts towards world
nuclear disarmament, not the granting of deals to ostensibly right-minded and
responsible nuclear democracies, pledged during his presidential campaign to
obtain ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.
Indian experts promptly announced that India's first hydrogen bomb test had
been a dud, implying that enmeshing India in international nuclear agreements
would be an unacceptable compromise of India's ability to perfect its weapons
and ensure its security. (See
India reels under explosive nuclear charge, Asia Times Online)
More significantly, the Obama administration has embarked on a policy of
"strategic reassurance" towards China, intended to obtain China's active
assistance in resuscitating the global economy and to ensure it will not dump
its massive holdings of US public debt.
The US-India relationship remains, but for the time being it is stripped of the
China-pushback elements that imbued the Bush administration's initiative with
its appeal, sense of urgency, and bilateral recklessness.
In South Asia, the US no longer has the Bush administration's luxury of
cultivating relations with India while a medium-intensity conflict festers in
Afghanistan. Instead, the US has found itself desperate for effective
cooperation from Pakistan as it attempts to forestall a political and military
collapse in Afghanistan that, aside from its strategic implications, would be a
considerable embarrassment for the current US president.
The Obama administration made an effort in good faith to square the
US/Afghanistan/Pakistan/India circle by promoting a grand bargain involving the
disputed region of Kashmir. In an attempt to win the support and gratitude of
the Pakistan military - and enable the shift of resources to the Afghanistan
border - the US tried to put negotiation of Kashmir on the regional agenda and
revealed the first conspicuous fissures in the Sino-American relationship.
The Indian government is resolutely opposed to internationalization of the
Kashmir issue, since the demographics are against it. The area is
overwhelmingly Muslim - even more so now that a terror campaign has uprooted
almost 300,000 Hindu residents and turned them into internally displaced
persons - and the inevitable destination of a good faith negotiation would
appear to be the alienation of a large part of India's current holding of Jammu
and Kashmir.
At New Delhi's vociferous insistence, Kashmir was deleted from US special envoy
for Afghanistan and Pakistan (AfPak), Richard Holbrooke's portfolio, and the US
State Department sent him off to try to solve the AfPak mess without explicit
reference to the central preoccupation of Pakistan's army.
Beyond assuring that the desperately distracted Pakistan government would be
deprived of the good offices of any third party to overcome the entrenched
Indian position on Kashmir, the decoupling of Pakistan from India's
geopolitical concerns also confirmed a more subtle shift: the near-total
marginalization of Pakistan as a Chinese asset in South Asian affairs.
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