China behaviour at the NSG and other matters

The record will show, that China is the last country in the world that can afford to talk about nuclear non-proliferation. The Chinese have been arguably the most irresponsible power when it comes to nuclear weapons. The US refused to share weapons secrets with the UK, or France. Russia refused weapons knowhow to China. But for its part, China gave Pakistan a nuclear weapons design and even tested the weapon made by the Pakistanis. That designed, now refined and miniaturised, is available in digitized form and has been circulated to every known rogue state in the world courtesy the Khan network.

As far as India is concerned, China couldn’t have done us more harm. As Islamabad has repeatedly emphasized, India is the only destination for Pakistani nuclear weapons.

The Chinese behaviour at the Nuclear Suppliers Group meeting in Vienna last week were characteristic. Through the whole issue of the Indo-US nuclear deal, they played a low-key role, assuring India repeatedly that they would not stand in the way of India getting an NSG go-ahead for civil nuclear cooperation. But when in the August 21-22 meeting it became clear that there would be opposition from some small but rich, white countries the Chinese sensed opportunity. Even then, their opposition was subtle, first in the form of a commentary in the official People’s Daily on September 1. See Siddharth Varadarajan’s blog for an unofficial translation.

Then, during the meeting itself, the Chinese stuck to their official line that the NSG must balance proliferation concerns and promotion of civil nuclear trade. But in the several bilateral meetings between Indian leaders and their Chinese counterparts like President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao in the past year or so, the Indians came away with the impression that the Chinese would adopt at least a neutral attitude to the Indian project.

But, according to insiders, on September 5, the Chinese started raising all manner of petty issues along with the more substantial ones raised by the so-called white knights—Austria, New Zealand, Ireland—knowing fully well that time was of the essence and delay would doom the deal.

In other words, the Chinese wanted the white knights to be the cat’s paw for their own real desire of denying India the civil nuclear deal. But they over-reached and the result has been some loss of face as India has publicly called them to task. The Prime Minister and External Affairs Minister pointedly refused to name China as one of the countries that facilitated the deal during his meetings with Yang Jiechi, the Chinese Foreign Minister in New Delhi on September 8. The National Security Adviser had very publicly expressed his “disappointment” with China on TV on Saturday 6.

For his part, the Chinese foreign minister told the Indian media on September 8

“I am surprised by these reports. Facts speak louder than words. China has always worked responsibly towards consensus both in the International Atomic Energy Agency and the NSG.”

In itself, this is a minor episode, especially since the NSG waiver did come through, but it tells us a great deal of China’s real attitude towards India which is one of seeing us as a pesky second-rung country, no matter what they may say publicly.

History

After defeating us in the border war of 1962, the Chinese have adopted a policy of not confronting India directly. Instead they have invested in our neighbours, principally Pakistan, to keep us in check. Given the almost primal Pakistani hostility towards India, this policy has worked very well. This has enabled Beijing to normalize ties with New Delhi and even develop important bilateral ties, even while having ensuring that India remains locked into a hostile strategic relationship with Pakistan.

China has been Pakistan’s “all weather friend” since the 1960s. The first instance of the usefulness of this friendship came when after initiating hostilities with India in 1965 Pakistan found itself floundering as India attacked across several fronts along the international border in Punjab and Rajasthan. They ran to Beijing which issued a series of ultimatums on India and even mobilized its forces for war, compelling New Delhi to accept a UN mandated ceasefire when it was on the verge of comprehensively defeating Pakistan.

In 1971, Indian diplomacy, war preparations and the deepness of the Pakistani morass in Bangladesh prevented Beijing from intervening.

During the Kargil war, too, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif rushed to Beijing for help. Only when China refused to intervene, that he called up his friend Bill Clinton and got the US to pull that hot chestnut our of the fire.

Why China can't afford to talk on non-proliferation issues

In the latest issue of Physics Today, Thomas C. Reed, a former American nuclear weapons designer and cabinet official, has told a most remarkable story . It is about how the Chinese deliberately cultivated and provided information on its nuclear weapons programme to a senior technical intelligence official of the US nuclear weapons programme. This officer Danny Stillman and his team were allowed to travel to China and visit some of the most secret Chinese nuclear weapons facilities and given access to its scientists. While Reed’s article is really about the Chinese nuclear tests between 1964-1996, what is important from our point of view are two bits of information given to Stillman.

In 1982 China’s premier Deng Xiaoping began the transfer of nuclear weapons technology to Pakistan…. Those transfers included blueprints for the ultrasimple CHIC-4 design using highly enriched uranium, first tested by China in 1966.”.

"A Pakistani derivative of CHIC-4 apparently was tested in China on May 26, 1990."

In other words, not only did China provide the design, but it actually tested a Pakistani fabricated device.

Reed’s revelations come on the heels of the reports about how Chinese weapon designs given to Pakistan have subsequently been updated and given to Libya, North Korea, Iran and perhaps other countries. According to Peter Grier “Did rogue network leak nuclear bomb design?” the Christian Science Monitor June 18, 2008,

“An infamous atomic smuggler may have had blueprints for a compact, sophisticated nuclear warhead, and that could mean that the world's proliferation problem is even worse than many experts had thought.

US officials have long declared the nuclear technology ring run by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan to be shattered. But revelations that a digitized bomb design turned up on the computer of an associate of Mr. Khan's show that US and UN investigators may not yet know everything Khan did, despite the fact that he has been under house arrest in Pakistan for years....”

“US and UN investigators have long known that the Khan network sold to Libya a nearly complete set of blueprints and instruction manuals for a relatively basic nuclear warhead of Chinese design.”

As Joby Warrick and Peter Slevin revealed in a story “Libyan Arms Designs Traced Back to China: Pakistanis Resold Chinese-Provided Plans” in Washington Post in February 2004

“Investigators have discovered that the nuclear weapons designs obtained by Libya through a Pakistani smuggling network originated in China, exposing yet another link in a chain of proliferation that stretched across the Middle East and Asia, according to government officials and arms experts.

The bomb designs and other papers turned over by Libya have yielded dramatic evidence of China's long-suspected role in transferring nuclear know-how to Pakistan in the early 1980s, they said. The Chinese designs were later resold to Libya by a Pakistani-led trading network that is now the focus of an expanding international probe, added the officials and experts, who are based in the United States and Europe."

Political Olympics in Beijing:The US is reaching out to China because of Russia

We are witnessing another twist in the kaleidoscope of the world order. Because of their convenient quadrennial occurrence, the Olympics are a good point to mark a shift in not just sports, but global affairs. Yesterday we carried an article noting that China could overtake the US as a “sporting power” by the time of the London Games in 2012. Today, I want to look at the issue through the prism of geopolitics.
From China’s point of view, the Beijing Olympics were meant to tell us what China has achieved and that it is now a top-ranking world power in every sense of the term. Remarkably, world powers, too, underscored that verdict. I say “remarkably” because just months ago, with the Tibetan protests at their height, it appeared that the world powers were determined to rain on China’s party. But on August 7th and 8th you only had to look at the love-fest that Hu Jintao, George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin were involved in during the pre-inaugural banquet and the inaugural ceremony to understand that China’s Olympian moment had indeed arrived.


The presence of the world leaders was no accident; they were responding to the shifting plates of the international system. It was not entirely a coincidence that the day Putin was watching the Olympic inaugural ceremony, Russian forces were invading Georgia.

Russia

Despite somewhat difficult relations with China during his presidency, George W. Bush came to celebrate Hu Jintao’s party in response to the oil- fueled resurgence of Russia. Beijing, ever-wary of Moscow, played its role as the good host to the hilt ignoring Bush’s for-the-record references to human rights and freedom. The Chinese may have settled their border dispute with Russia, but memories are long in Beijing, especially about the way in which China lost vast tracts of land to Imperial Russia during its century of shame. The Chinese are bound to have noticed that Russian arms exports have shown a steady downward drift as Moscow acts to preserve its own military edge over China.
Bush’s performance, a balancing act of enjoying the Games, praising China and at the same time trying to nudge it along better human rights observances is part of the new US strategy. Gone is the neocon effort to depict China as the new Soviet Union. The aim now seems to have reverted to the idea of coopting China and encouraging it to be more democratic and to play by the international rules which the US still defines.

America

The US argument on China is summed up by US Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson in an article in the current issue of Foreign Affairs. He said that some in the US argued that China was a threat and must be countered, while others like him felt that its growth “is an opportunity for the U.S. economy.” The challenge for Washington was to manage China through engagement.”
That this is the new strategy was underscored in an uncharacteristically nuanced speech by President Bush at the dedication ceremony for the huge new US embassy building in Beijing on August 7. He pressed all the right buttons on Chinese history, culture and its recent economic achievements. Even his references to the need for a regime of open trade giving way to a political atmosphere of open ideas was done in a tone of talking to Beijing, rather than talking down to it. “Change in China,” he declared, “will arrive on its own terms and in keeping with its own history and its own traditions.” This was a clear message that the US no longer sees the Communist party run government there as somehow transient.
All this is not about the economic rise of China alone. We know that the Chinese are now set to overtake the US as the largest producer of manufactured goods in the world, four years ahead of time because of the weakened American economy. The US will lose its 100-year dominance in this sector, but looked at another way, the Chinese will merely resume a position they occupied for four centuries till the Opium war of 1840.
This is also about the rise of Russia. They may have been intervening in a local quarrel, in Georgia, but their larger message was to tell the west that the climate in Moscow had changed and that Russia would act decisively to protect its national interests. Georgia, you may recall, is the region through which a US-backed pipeline commissioned in 2006 broke the Russian monopoly of Caspian oil. Just the other day, Russia had threatened to deploy nuclear-capable bombers in Cuba in retaliation for what it saw was an American provocation in putting their missile-shield radars in Poland and Ukraine, its erstwhile “allies.”

India

So what we saw in Beijing on those two August days was a visible manifestation of the shifting tectonic plates of the world order. There were other leaders there as well — Yasuo Fukuda of Japan, Nicholas Sarkozy of France and our own Sonia Gandhi. But we are merely a supporting cast to the larger players. Ms Gandhi was received with due courtesy as the leader of India’s ruling party. The Chinese understand dyarchy where state and political power are shared, but India was not really in Beijing, either in the sporting events or in its politics.
China itself remains opaque. While its undoubted economic prowess is on display, there are unmistakable signs that its economy is slowing down. As it moves by design into the high-tech, high-innovation regime, its leaders need to also take care of the tens of millions who work in its low-tech, high volume sectors. Despite censorship, the internet has opened up China in an unprecedented way. Beijing may have been gratified by the nationalistic feelings that erupted in the wake of the Tibetan protests, but they know nationalism is a monster that cannot be easily controlled, by the party, or by anyone. Within China, the debate over whether China needs to integrate itself with the world system or go its own way, as it has done till now, has not been decided either way.
China has so far observed mercantilist principles in its dealings with the world — putting economics ahead of everything else. But the luxury of refusing to take positions on issues like Darfur may not last too long. If China wishes to be a world leader, it must display leadership, which also means taking the world community along with it on matters of international concern.
Nothing in these trends affects India in a negative way. We may not be growing as fast as China, but we are growing. “Rising India” can take advantage of China “risen” which has become an object of envy and fear in many world capitals. We are not competing with China for anything, most certainly not in the Olympics.
Our inner divisions and weak polity inhibit any aggressive Indian response to the rise of China. On the other hand, the Chinese ascendancy has pushed many countries to come closer to us as a way of hedging their bets on China. The problem is that there is no consensus on even the most obvious measures that would help India, such as the Indo-US nuclear deal which will remove India from a set of pariah regimes and provide it the wherewithal to make up its abysmal energy deficit.
In these circumstances, India will have to be a middle-of-the-pack runner till it can gather the wherewithal and the nerve to move to the front.
This article appeared first in Mail Today August 14, 2008

What will it take to make Indian mouse into a tiger?

Prabhu Chawla's revelation (in Mail Today March 31, 2008) that the Communist Party of India (Marxist) played a role in canceling the Dalai Lama's scheduled meeting with the Vice-President Mr. Hamid Ansari tells us a lot about India’s foreign policy. Beyond the issues of non-alignment, independence and its new orientation is the reality that it is unusually timid.
I am reminded of the Russian poet Evegeni Yevtushenko's 1960s work “Monologue of a Polar Fox On An Alaskan Fur Farm”. The poem is an allegory on the subject of freedom in the erstwhile Soviet Union. A blue fox being bred for its fur in an Alaskan farm finds its cage door open. It leaves the cage for a while, revels in his new found freedom, dreams of the future life outside, and then he returns into the cage because as the poet notes, “A child of captivity is too weak for freedom.”
India is like that poor blue fox. For 60 years it has been in a cage, not always of its own making. And now when the door has opened, it is unable to cope, and finds greater comfort in remaining in its prison, rather than risking the joys and uncertainties of freedom.

Jawaharlal

It is no use blaming the communists for this predicament. The larger Indian intelligentsia, political formations like the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party must take responsibility for the state of affairs. As for the Left, its attitude is not remarkable. Through their history, they have set one standard for themselves, and another for the others. Their foreign connections, including funding, is seen by them as being part of socialist internationalism; similar activities of others are attributable to machinations of imperialism. China's policies — be they expressed in Mao's homicidal sweeps like the Great Leap Forward and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution — are regrettable “errors” of a great man, while the mild pragmatism of our Congress party in seeking to maintain good ties with the United States is a sell-out to, what else, imperialism.
Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru's idea of non-alignment was to create space in the power blocs that emerged in the wake of the Cold War. But it came with a price, for example on Kashmir. Beginning 1953, after a war and many tortuous sessions with the United Nations mediators, India and Pakistan came close to resolving the Kashmir issue through bilateral talks. The protagonists were Pandit Nehru and the Indian government and the Pakistani governments, headed first by Khwaja Nazimuddin, and then by Muhammad Ali Bogra. Despite Sheikh Abdullah’s arrest in June of 1953, talks between the two countries were undertaken, with Nehru indicating his acquiescence, probably for the last time, for a plebiscite to decide the issue. But, the US decision in February 1954 to begin large-scale arms aid to Pakistan put paid to this.
But notwithstanding the paranoia of the Left, India was never important enough for the US to directly involve itself in our affairs. When Pakistan was ready to do their bidding, why would they have wasted their time on an argumentative and self-important basket-case that this country was till the 1990s?
Speaking to a TV channel last week, CPI(M) elder Jyoti Basu charged the United Progressive Alliance government with being far more pro-US than Jawaharlal or Indira were. Nehru may have been critical of America, but faced with a challenge across the Himalayas in 1962, the country he turned to was the US. The letter Nehru wrote to John F. Kennedy asking for a military alliance with the US in mid-November 1962 is still classified, but its summary prepared by S. Gopal reveals that for the father of non-alignment, the concept was both strategic and flexible.
For 20 years after she swept the elections of 1971 Indira Gandhi's world view dominated that of India. Both in her domestic and foreign policies, she followed a highly personalised style, one that tended to privilege personal over the national interest. So instead of depending on institutions like Parliament, Cabinet and Ministries, she worked her policies through chosen advisors. Little wonder, then, that the decision to conduct India's first nuclear test in Pokhran in May of 1974 was not based on any detailed assessment of why it was to be undertaken and what the government expected to do after the event.

Indira

What the Left finds so attractive about Indira Gandhi, reviled by many of them in her lifetime, is a selective reading of her foreign policy — her decision to hold back formal condemnation of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979, her friendship with Cuba and Palestine, and her anti-American posturing. It ignores the fact that India's policy of détente, and then entente, with the United States was initiated by Indira Gandhi — the first during the Emergency itself and the second beginning with her second coming in 1980. Everything that has happened since — the economic liberalisation, the defence cooperation with the United States and indeed the Indo-US nuclear deal, have their origins in decisions taken between 1980 and1984.
The consequences of these policies have been far reaching. We already know what economic liberalisation has wrought, notwithstanding some carping criticism of “neo liberalism”. It has brought closer relations with the United States, which in turn has paid enormous dividends in terms of lubricating India’s political relations with a slew of countries ranging from Europe, the ASEAN and Japan.
This has had a noticeable impact in India’s relations with China. In Bush's first term, and till 2005, at least, the Chinese wooed India eagerly. The breakthrough decision to provide a political input on border negotiations in 2003, and the Agreement on Guiding Principles and Political Parameters, signed in April 2005, were part of this trend. They feared that the US was bent on “encircling” them by creating an alliance of democracies — Japan, Australia, India, Russia and the new Central Asian republics. But once they found that the Left had effectively stymied the Indo-US entente, the tone and tenor of their relations with India changed. When Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani visited Arunachal in 2003 we did not hear any protests from Beijing. But when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visited the state in February 2008 the Chinese issued a formal protest.
What the Left has achieved is much more than torpedoing the Indo-US nuclear deal. Its stranglehold on the government has prevented any meaningful reform of the public sector, which includes the stultifying bureaucracy. It has succeeded in delaying India's steady incorporation into the higher tier of the comity of nations. The process began in the NDA period when India was invited to participate in a Group of Eight meeting in Evian and was followed by moves to accommodate New Delhi into the United Nations Security Council. The nuclear deal was a major detail that needed to be taken care of. The leading countries of the world could not have had India in the UNSC or the G-8, even while it remained a pariah in terms of nuclear and high-tech trade.

Choice

Our cage door did not open because the Americans pressed some lever. It did so for two reasons. First, after 1991 the Indian business class has discovered that outside the open cage door were not threats, but vast opportunities. The second was that India surprised the world by bucking against the US-led efforts to freeze its nuclear status as a “have not”. The Pokhran II tests of 1998 cut through the self-imposed prison constructed by our own rhetoric of disarmament.
Today those who push the so-called “independent” foreign policy for India, are actually seeking to persuade us that the prison never existed. They want to neutralise India by creating an association in the mind of the people with the now obsolete concept of non-alignment. The Left’s ambition runs deeper towards signing the country up with the alliance of autocracies — Russia, Iran, China, Venezuela and Cuba.
India is being offered a choice today. Hitherto, Indian policies were often determined by the actions of others. Today, New Delhi’s views and policies make a difference. India’s growing economic and military power, combined with the soft power that only a flourishing democracy and an open society can exercise, provide it with the wherewithal to become a truly global player. But while the US can offer us one option of faring forward into the new world, there is also the other— of going back into the cage.
The article was first published in Mail Today April 2, 2008

To be great China needs to uphold Tibet culture

After being overwhelmed by the People’s Liberation Army in 1950, the Tibetans have broken out in open revolt thrice —in 1959, 1989 and now in 2008. Considering the herculean efforts that have been made by China to control the Tibetans, this is remarkable, and ought to serve as a warning of sorts to Beijing. The Chinese have played a cynical game in Tibet. They claimed that they entered it to liberate its people from serfdom and to protect its special status, but in fact they split Tibet into several provinces and what we call Tibet today comprises just half its traditional territory. Despite professing atheism, the Chinese have blatantly interfered in the religious practices of Tibet, including taking decisions on who is an incarnate lama.
No country in the world supports an independent Tibet. Yet, among the people in democratic countries, Chinese sovereignty over Tibet is only reluctantly conceded. Most Indians, barring the Communists, believe that Tibet is a colonial possession of China, held down by the force of the People’s Liberation Army. The reality is, of course, partly true though more complex.

Suzerainty

Though the Lama rulers of Tibet accepted Chinese authority over their country, they were not vassals in the sense that Korea and Vietnam were. Indeed, the Tibetans emphasise that neither the 5th Dalai Lama in 1652 nor the 13th in 1908 performed the ceremony of kowtow when they met the Chinese emperor. On the other hand, it is clear that the Tibetans accepted what the British called “suzerainty” , a loose kind of Chinese overlordship with considerable autonomy. But between 1911 and 1951, Tibet was completely independent.
When the Communists took control of China in October 1949, one of the first items on their agenda was to assert Chinese control over Tibet. As in the case of the erstwhile Soviet Union, Mao Zedong’s declaration that there would be self-determination for the minorities in the People’s Republic turned out to be a cynical exercise in deception. The Chinese Communist Party insisted that the territorial limits of China were the same as those of the Qing dynasty that was overthrown in 1911. It is not as though the Tibetans welcomed the Chinese as liberators. Despite the enormous difference between the Chinese and Tibetan forces, the latter resisted the Chinese onslaught and only after some 30 major and minor battles did the Tibetans sue for peace. A 17-point agreement was signed that allowed for Tibet “national regional autonomy” and helped retain its political and cultural structures. However, the increasing pressure by the Chinese, as well as perhaps some American instigation, led to a revolt that brought the “one country two systems” effort to an end. In 1965 the Tibet Autonomous Region(TAR) was constituted, but two years later, Tibetan culture and autonomy were devastated by the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Since the late 1970s the Chinese have sought to promote the economic development of Tibet and opened it up to the outside world. This has been manifested by the growth of tourism, as well as the infrastructure in terms of a new railway and several new highways and other development projects.

Sovereignty

The ongoing Tibetan uprising is, or ought to be, a matter of great concern to India. Just a glance at the map will show why this large region, with which we share a 4,056-km border, is of such strategic importance for our country. Many of our principal rivers rise there, and since 1951 this historically undefended area of India has come under the administrative control and military occupation of China.
This development was resisted by India from the very outset. Advised by the British, India did not contest China’s decision to “liberate” Tibet. It deluded itself that it was merely recognising Chinese “suzerainty” , even while upholding its autonomy. However, when “suzerainty” turned out to be nothing but old-fashioned “sovereignty”, and that too, of the colonial variety, New Delhi could do little. In 1954, it tamely signed away all its special diplomatic privileges to the “Tibet Autonomous Region of China”. This was but the beginning of a phase that led to a humiliating defeat of the Indian army at the hands of the People’s Liberation Army in 1962 on the borderlands of Tibet.
So, today, India has had to reconcile itself to the situation in Tibet. Indeed, at almost every turn it has had to go out of its way to reassure China that it recognises its sovereignty over Tibet. This is how the last joint declaration during the visit of Prime Minister Vajpayee to China in June 2003 reads: “The Indian side recognises that the Tibet Autonomous Region is part of the territory of the People’s Republic of China and reiterates that it does not allow Tibetans to engage in anti-China political activities in India.
The Chinese side expresses its appreciation for the Indian position and reiterates that it is firmly opposed to any attempt and action aimed at splitting China and bringing about ‘independence of Tibet’.”
And this is how the April 2005 Joint Statement during the visit of Chinese premier Wen Jiabao reads: “The Indian side reiterated that it recognised the Tibet Autonomous Region as part of the territory of the People’s Republic of China and that it did not allow Tibetans to engage in anti-China political activities in India.”
All this is presumably seen by Beijing as expiation by India for its initial insistence that the Chinese respect Tibetan autonomy under their “suzerainty”, and for giving shelter to the Dalai Lama.
The Chinese are now playing a waiting game in Tibet, hoping that the passing of the 14th Dalai Lama, currently 73, will enable them to put in place a puppet. This is the procedure they have followed in the case of the Panchen Lama, the second great Lama of Tibet. The two Lamas are supposed to help determine each other’s reincarnation. When the previous Panchen Lama, who was a Chinese prisoner, passed away, the search committee headed by Chadrel Rimpoche found Gedhun Choekyi Nyima as his reincarnation and this was announced by the Dalai Lama. But the Chinese imprisoned Chadrel and got another search committee to come up with another name. No one is sure where Nyima is, and the substitute Panchen Lama has been installed in his place. It is this crass interference in Tibetan cultural and religious traditions that raise questions about China’s motives in Tibet.

Identity

Yet if the experience of the world is anything to go by, Chinese actions will not help in curbing Tibetans’s desire to assert their cultural and religious identity. This is the lesson from the current uprising that has spread not just across TAR, but Gansu, Sichuan and other areas that are part of traditional Tibet.
India cannot turn the clock back on Tibet and undo the policy track it adopted in 1950. But what it can, and should do, is to insist that China not use the cover of national sovereignty to deny Tibetans their human rights, which most importantly include the right to practise and uphold their culture. At the same time, New Delhi must make it clear to the Tibetans and the world community, that such a goal cannot be achieved through militancy. In fact militant confrontation only aids the Chinese to split the Dalai Lama from the younger generation of Tibetans. The Dalai Lama has taken a most reasonable position on negotiations with China and publicly opposed a boycott of the Olympics. Tibetan rights will not be obtained by humiliating Beijing, but by persuading it that in today’s world, great nations are identified by the rights enjoyed by their minorities. No matter what the CPC theorists may be telling the old men in Zhongnanhai, there simply will never be anything called “democracy with Chinese characteristics.”
This article appeared in Mail Today March 26, 2008

The Chinese are not ten feet tall

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s first visit to China comes amidst a welter of scare stories about Chinese “incursions” into Indian territory and how its rapidly developing infrastructure in Tibet poses a threat to India. But there is another, more astonishing side which scarcely makes it to the headlines: Sino-Indian trade that totaled $5 billion in 2003, has touched $34 billion (January-November 2007).
This could not have come without the development of another relationship, not across the inhospitable Himalayan border, but the seas, between Indian and Chinese enterprises, entrepreneurs and managers. Since the 2003 visit of Prime Minister Vajpayee to Beijing, the bandwidth of Sino-Indian relations has broadened and, to change metaphors, while it is possible to see them as a glass half empty, it would be more correct to view it as one half full.

Border

Blaming the Chinese for doing something we have fallen behind on — building roads and investing in communications and other services in the difficult mountain regions — is, to say the least, perverse. India has had similar plans on the books since the mid-1960s, but most are decades behind in implementation. The Chinese rightly saw their Tibet railway as a prestige project and completed it ahead of schedule; India’s Kashmir rail project, is probably a decade from completion.
As for the incursions, the issue is more complex. Indo Tibetan Border Police chief V.K. Joshi said in October that the Chinese had made some 140 incursions into Indian territory all across the Indo-Tibet border, but none were serious. “Their perception of the Line of [Actual] Control could be different from ours...,” was his simple and straightforward explanation. The 4056-km India-Tibet border is not an international border in the legal sense. It is a Line of Actual Control which is itself not clearly defined, unlike, say, the Line of Control with Pakistan in Jammu & Kashmir. Its ambiguity is best brought out by the Chinese formulation that in the east it “approximates the illegal McMahon Line” but it is not the line, as defined by the 1914 treaty. There are also important differences in the Sikkim-Bhutan-India trijunction.
In the west the situation has been much more fluid. The Chinese themselves have presented various versions of the LAC. One was affirmed as the “correct” line in December 1959, there was another put forward in 1960, and finally there were the positions that the Chinese occupied during the October-November 1962 border war; at each stage occupying more and more of territory that India claimed as its own.
The border is important. As long as it is not settled, it can be used to quickly ratchet up tension. There is a certain symmetry in Indian and Chinese claims which could aid its settlement. The Chinese hold what they claim in the western sector, India holds what it claims in the eastern sector. Both contest what the other side holds — New Delhi says China’s control of Aksai Chin is illegal and Beijing disputes India’s control of what is now Arunachal Pradesh. A dispassionate look at history will show that both established control over the disputed territories they hold in the 1950s. Major R ‘Bob’ Khating took control of Tawang, the most significant town in the North East Frontier Agency, in February 1951; the Chinese, too, began building their road and consolidating their hold over Aksai Chin in this period.
The 2005 agreement on political parameters and guiding principles for the India-China boundary question has outlined the only basis on which the two countries can resolve their dispute — on a largely “as is where is” basis. Yet, movement is painfully slow. There was a time in 2003 when there were expectations that there would be quick movement. That was the time when the Vajpayee government expected it would be voted back to power. Since then, though there is agreement on the principles, there has been no significant movement. The reason seems to be that the Chinese are not sure whether this is the moment to settle.

Power

So, they have raised the issue of the Tawang tract. In May 2007 Chinese foreign minister Yang Jiechi told his Indian counterpart Pranab Mukherjee at a meeting in Hamburg that the presence of settled populations in regions under dispute would not affect China’s claims on those regions. Yang’s statement appears to undermine the crucial Article VII of the guiding principles that says: “In reaching a boundary settlement, the two sides shall safeguard settled populations in border areas.”
Relations between India and China would have been complex even if there had been no border dispute. But to see the Chinese as being aggressive, or hell-bent on domination, is to court enmity, a luxury that India cannot afford. Both countries have known strengths and weaknesses vis-à-vis each other. If China has the advantage of easier lines of communication on the Tibetan plateau, the region is also thousands of kilometres away from its core territory, as compared to a couple of hundred on the Indian side. The Chinese have never quite gained the loyalty of the Tibetans and worry about the impact of the Dalai Lama and the exiles in India. But India also knows that it suffers from a strategic disadvantage since the Indian heartland is so close to Chinese air and missile power in Tibet.
But this military talk is itself archaic. In 1962, the hapless Indian brigade ordered to capture Thag La had no idea what lay behind the ridge. Today Lhasa is open to Indian tourists and richer pilgrims en route to Mansarover. The Nathu La route has been opened up and traders travel all the way to Lhasa. In addition electronic and photo reconnaissance provides India a detailed picture of the PLA deployments. A Chinese surprise attack is simply out of the question. Indian military strength is substantial and it possesses the means of nuclear reprisal.

Change

So the Chinese “threat” has migrated to Pakistan, Burma, Bangladesh and various Indian neighbours. But, here, too, there is a tendency to overstate Chinese strengths and understate its weaknesses. A look at the map will reveal that almost all of Beijing’s oil supplies have to pass through India’s territorial waters, a jugular if ever there was one. Geography ensures that China can never be a threat to India in the Bay of Bengal and Indian Ocean region, in the same measure that India cannot really threaten China in the South China Sea. So there is no real basis of confrontation at the maritime level either. Actually, given their internal demands, what both need and seek is stability, not just regional, but global.
China has in the past, and continues at present, to play an irresponsible role in aiding Pakistan’s nuclear and missile programme and its actions have harmed Indian security immeasurably. But the same could be said of our history with our new friend, the US. History, in any case, should not determine future policy. It can provide a perspective, but should not hold a veto.
Anyway, in the Sino-Indian context, a great deal of what the future holds will be determined in Beijing, rather than in New Delhi. The very dynamism of its economy is bringing it to the point where it cannot postpone political reform for much longer. Such a development could have a wide-ranging impact on China’s internal relations with regions like Tibet and Xinjiang, as well as its neighbours like India. Our task is to stay the course and offer China a relationship of friendship and cooperation, without being deferential or defensive on any issue.
The article was published in Mail Today January 9, 2008

Burmese Days

The events in Burma(Myanmar) have led to the usual round of self flagellation in India. Liberals have denounced the attitude of the government and demanded that India take a tough stance against the military junta, others have hit out against Sonia Gandhi for speaking at the United Nations on World Non-Violence Day on Gandhiji's birthday and not referring to events in Myanmar. The events in the country have brought home to us the difficulties that a wannabe superpower confronts. New Delhi has to not just address its own needs, but live up to the expectations of our well-wishers and friends and the fears of our adversaries.

Most Indians, speaking from their hearts, support the Burmese people’s aspirations for democracy, and want an end to the brutal military regime that has blighted their nation. But successive governments in India have had to deal with our secluded neighbor, ruled by a paranoid military regime, using their heads. In other words, New Delhi has had to calculate and calibrate its policies keeping in mind India’s national interests: First, to ensure that Indian actions do not result in an expansion of Chinese influence in the country; second, to ensure that Burma will not be used as a sanctuary by a slew of insurgent groups operating in Manipur and Nagaland.; and third, to access Burma’s considerable oil and gas resources.

While the frustration of those advocating action in Burma is understandable, its not clear as to what they would have had the government do. India’s leverage is strictly limited. Indian exports to Burma are of the order of $450-400 million, and imports around $80-100 million. (In contrast, Thailand is Burma's main trade partner accounting for some 49 per cent of its exports and providing for 22 per cent of its imports). Indeed, in relation to India, the levers are held by Burma because we are the ones that want Burmese resources and and security cooperation. So it is not surprising that the Indian reaction to the uprising last month was low key. New Delhi sought to steer clear from condemning the military junta, and instead pushed the generals to release Aung San Su Kyi.

Burma is already under a US and European embargo, so additional restrictions will hardly matter. In any case Burma’s economically most significant border—that with Thailand is virtually open. The Chinese who have far more leverage than India choose to term the events there as an internal matter and leave it at that. The ASEAN who gave membership to Yangon as an incentive to promote “national reconciliation” between the military and the people, have little to say about the current developments. The UN special envoy Ibrahim Gambari toured the country and met Aung San Su Kyi twice, and obtained a commitment that the junta chief General Than Shwe will meet the jailed leader. During a briefing of the UN Security Council, he warned that there would be "serious international repercussions" if Burma did not move towards democracy.

If India is to be accused of cravenness, the attitude of Beijing is downright mendacious. At the UN Western countries circulated a draft to condemn the "violent repression" of democracy activists and called for a dialogue between the military and the opposition. The Chinese begged to differ. They said that the whole issue was an internal matter of the country and that pressure and sanctions would only encourage confrontation.

Earlier this year in January, China and Russia had vetoed a US-drafted Security Council resolution that demanded an end to political repression and human rights violations on grounds that the Burmese crisis was not a threat to international peace and security, the council's mandate.

Burma has been ruled by a military junta since 1962. The 1990 elections were swept by the National League for Democracy under Su Kyi, but they were annulled by the military led by the present leader General Than Shwe. After an initial effort to embargo the regime, the world began to come to terms with it. The Chinese were the quickest off the block. In 1989, they used their time-tested tactic for establishing themselves—providing arms transfers to a military regime. A deal in 1989 worth anywhere up to $1.5 billion not only signaled its strong support for a discredited military junta, but brought rewards in the form of access to the Hangyi Island on the Bay of Bengal which it developed as a deep-water port. Beijing also got access to the Grand Coco island, north of the Andamans, from where it could monitor Indian missile tests at Balasore in Orissa.

The Chinese actions were in keeping with its record of an amoral foreign policy that has made it the savior of unpleasant regimes around the world. China today is the major importer of Sudanese oil, it is, of course, North Korea’s main trade partner, and it has been Pakistan’s staunchest friend ever, supplying it with conventional and weapons of mass destruction. There is no regime that is outside the pale for China, and the standard pretext to oppose international action is to say that whatever is happening is an “internal matter” of the country. To an extent Chinese behavior is a function of self-interest. China is also an autocratic, ruthless regime which does not believe in democracy and has crushed the democratic aspirations of its people with force. So its stand should be no surprise.

Yet, countries like India have to contend with it, or be left with the option of pursuing a morally sound, but practically bankrupt policy that lacks the wherewithal to provide any meaningful result. Between 1988 military coup and 1994, India openly supported the restoration of democracy in Burma. India shares a 1,400-km long border with Burma that runs along a mountainous region from Arunachal Pradesh to Mizoram. Though militarily significant, the border is porous. In any case the tribal people are free to move up to 20kms on either side because of their interconnections. Though most of the Nagas live in India, a large section lives in Burma, as do Kukis and Mizos who claim a close relationship with the Chin peoples of Burma. There is a close relationship between the militancy in the Indian north-eastern states of Nagaland, Manipur and Assam and Burma. Naga and Kuki groups are able to use Burma as a sanctuary and training area, while the United Liberation Front of Assam and some Meiti insurgent groups of Manipur, use it to obtain arms. As it is, drugs from the golden triangle have led to serious addiction and HIV problems in some of the North-eastern states, especially Manipur.

In the early 1990s, Indian officials quizzed the Burmese about the Chinese activity, and were blandly told that the Chinese were helping their development efforts and India had the choice of doing the same. In 1997, the ASEAN admitted Yangon into the grouping as an alleged means of moderating its behavior So India followed suit, rather than be outflanked. It made diplomatic overtures to Yangon, offered it membership in the BIMSTEC grouping and offered aid. In recent years, New Delhi has provided some military aid, notably in the form of some old BN-2 Islander communications aircraft.

New Delhi’s primary concerns were driven by security—of the North-east, as well in a larger sense of the Bay of Bengal and its eastern shore and island territories of the Andamans and the Nicobar. The oil and the gas prospects are a bonus, though there are many in India who see the economic linkages as the means of developing the North-east, even while ridding it of the conditions that have given rise to the insurgencies. It must contest and counter Chinese gains, which is itself a tall order considering the enormous effort being put by Bejing which is also driven by the strategic need of finding ways of bypassing the choke point of the Malacca straits. According to analysts, China plans to construct a series of gas and oil pipelines and roads from Yunan to the coast of the Bay of Bengal in Burma not only to exploit Burma’s natural resources, but as potential trans-shipment points logistical lines leading into China.

As repression in Burma grows and the world community becomes restive over the situation there, the military junta has begun to dig in for the long haul. It suddenly shifted its capital to Naypidaw, some kms from Yangon, on the edge of a denuded forest. The intention is to prevent “regime change” by a military action on the more accessible Yangon.

The regime has also started re-jigging its relations with China to the detriment of other players. Early last month, an India-South Korea consortium that had the “preferential buyer” status for two blocks in the Shwe natural gas project were summarily told that they would have to defer to China. The gas field off the Arakan coast was discovered in 2003 and are expected to have one of the largest gas yields in South-east Asia. Clearly the military junta has calculated that it would be better to rely on Beijing’s hard-headed policies and UN Security Council veto than India’s woolly-headed approach. In any case, India’s options remain limited, especially because it continues to require the Burmese Army’s cooperation to check the north-eastern militancy.

The Burmese developments, where India is locked in a direct contest with China, brings out the need for not just a sophisticated policy, but an effective policy mechanisms in India. Our biggest weakness is the lack of effective institutions to guide our policies. As of now, policies relating to Burma are handled by a slew of ministries—commerce, petroleum and natural gas, home affairs, external affairs, and defence. India does have a national security council, but the body is merely a deliberative body, which takes a long-term view of a particular subject. In any case, according to observers, the NSC system remains non-functional. Decision-making bodies like the Cabinet Committee on Security are hampered by the fact that the system is based on the sum of the parts rather than a single integrated institution.

One part of the real story is that India’s effort to overhaul its higher defence management system has stalled. Efforts to overhaul the system and create new instrumentalities like the Chief of Defence Staff, or the National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO) have not worked as they should have. The ruling United Progressive Alliance government seems unable or unwilling to press ahead. It is no secret that the UPA's Home and Defence Ministries are its worst-run.

In the meantime, India fumbles with issues where its short-term needs have to be calibrated with its longer term world view and national interest. In the short-term we have to deal with the dictators in Burma, Pakistan or the mullahs of Iran, but in the long term we would want the emergence of secular-minded and democratic polities in these countries. But short-term compromises have a way of becoming long term policies, as the US seems to be discovering in the case of military in Pakistan. India is not what it is because of politics or history, but its democratic and secular values. Lose them and you lose the essence of the country.

The Left's Chimera

We have maintained from the very outset, that the Left alone has opposed the nuclear deal based on a coherent principle, though wrong-headed. However their opposition is so wrong-headed and blinkered that they are seriously endangering our national interest. The Left sees US as a major negative force in global politics and have hence opposed the nuclear deal because it will help bring India and the US closer together. The politburo statement of August 18 and the Left parties statement of August 7 make that clear.

Serving Chinese interests

This does not mean that the statement and the positions are well reasoned, they are not. They are a mishmash of blinkered ideological rants and cynically argued half-baked positions, some are not even based on fact. One lamentable conclusion does come through—the CPI(M) is not really concerned by India’s national interest, its idea of national interest is so distorted that it usually ends up serving China’s national interest. This is the Chinese take on the nuclear deal:

“Judging from the (Indo-US 123 Agreement) text, however, the US has made big concessions and met almost all Indian requests, including full supply of nuclear fuel to India and allowing it to dispose nuclear waste. India's right to continue conducting nuclear testing will depend on "circumstances". According to the text, if India can satisfactorily justify its nuclear testing, the US would acquiesce. That is, Washington has actually acknowledged India's right to retain nuclear testing......

....It is quite obvious that the US generosity in helping India develop nuclear energy is partly due to its hegemony idea, which made it regardless of others' opinions, and partly due to the intention of drawing India in as a tool for its global strategic pattern.” (“Prospects of Indian-US nuclear cooperation misty,” People’s Daily Online August 14, 2007)

So even the Chinese concede we have a good deal, even though they are clear that they don't like it.

Hyde Act Red Herring

Critics in the Left and the right are making a deliberate attempt to insinuate the Hyde Act into the deal. This act is US domestic legislation and binds the US Administration. The Bush team believes that the 123 Agreement it negotiated with India meets all the requirements of the act. There is a simple principle of international law, enshrined in the Vienna Convention on the Law of the Treaties, that an international agreement always trumps domestic legislation. Article 16 (4) of the Indo-US 123 Agreement notes, “This Agreement shall be implemented in good faith and in accordance with the principles of international law.” While the US and India have not ratified that convention, both have operationally abided by it because it codifies customary international law. International diplomacy would become infructous if states began to cite domestic law to overwhelm their international commitments. Article 27 of the treaty notes, " A party may not invoke an internal law as justification for its failure to perform a treaty. "

Misreading the documents

August 7 statement: “Serious concern had been expressed by the Left Parties about various conditions inserted into the Hyde Act passed by the US Congress. A number of them pertain to areas outside nuclear co-operation and are attempts to coerce India to accept the strategic goals of the United States. These issues are:

· Annual certification and reporting to the US Congress by the President on a variety of foreign policy issues such as India’s foreign policy being “congruent to that of the United States” and more specifically India joining US efforts in isolating and even sanctioning Iran [Section 104g(2) E(i)]

· Indian participation and formal declaration of support for the US’ highly controversial Proliferation Security Initiative including the illegal policy of interdiction of vessels in international waters [Section 104g(2) K]

· India conforming to various bilateral/multilateral agreements to which India is not currently a signatory such as the US’ Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), the Australia Group etc [Section 104c E,F,G]”

Are the US strategic goals towards India merely those ? All that one can see here is an effort to serve the Iranian and North Korean national interest, as well as that of any country that wishes to make missiles, chemical and nuclear weapons.

August 7 statement: “The termination clause is wide ranging and does not limit itself to only violation of the agreement as a basis for cessation or termination of the contract. Therefore, these extraneous provisions of the Hyde Act could be used in the future to terminate the 123 Agreement. In such an eventuality, India would be back to complete nuclear isolation, while accepting IAEA safeguards in perpetuity. Therefore, the argument that provisions of the Hyde Act do not matter and only 123 clauses do, are misplaced.”

My reading is that the termination issues are just two 1. a unilateral resumption of Indian nuclear tests (which incidentally is only implied and not mentioned in the Indo-US 123) and 2. As per the 123 Agreement’s Article XIV Section 3 which says the agreement will be at an end if India materially breaches the IAEA safeguards agreement. The article goes on to note that what constitutes the material breach will not be decided by the US, but the IAEA Board of Governors. What could be fairer and more reasonable ?

What it is all about

Why beat about the bush (pun unintended) and deconstruct a confused and confusing argument. Let’s ask the straightforward question : Does the US have an agenda in pushing the nuclear deal? Of course it does.

But that’s not quite the same thing as accepting that India will slavishly serve that agenda. What it will do, is what it has always done-- utilize the opportunity to move its own agenda forward. India has its own agenda and sees in the present global conjuncture an opportunity to strengthen its own position relative to the major powers.

What is remarkable about the Left’s self-view of India is as to how weak they think the country is. India with its nuclear-tipped armed forces, 8 per cent plus growth rate and burgeoning foreign exchange reserves has never been stronger than before. It has beaten back the challenge of US-led containment, as well as its most dangerous internal insurgencies. India may have been amenable to US tuition thrice in its history—when we became free and were reeling from the effects of partition, in 1962 when our forces were defeated by the Chinese and in 1991 when our economy crashed. But a glance back at all the instances will show that the Americans did not display and particular interest in “taking over” India. An India run from Washington is a chimera of the Left’s creation.

The only loophole I can see for the continuation of the Left's support for the United Progressive Alliance government is the paragraph four of the August 18 statement which notes,

“Till all the objections are considered and the implications of the Hyde Act evaluated, the government should not take the next step with regard to negotiating a safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency.”

If the CPI(M) is willing to go through the motions of having these considered, it could raise its objections. The government has no doubt considered the implications of the Hyde Act. To suggest otherwise is to believe that the Manmohan Singh government, its negotiators and top nuclear scientists like Anil Kakodkar are working as agents of the US. But given the Left’s demonology anything is possible.

Incidentally, whose game is the CPI(M) playing by insisting that the deal be stopped before going to its logical stage? That is the point we will get an exemption from the Nuclear Suppliers Group. Once that happens, India will be able to make deals with countries like France and Russia who will not insist on the kind of conditionalities that are there in the Indo-US 123 Agreement. Again, incidentally, the US will give us in writing that it will not insist on a Right of Return clause in any NSG agreement.

American Pie

Many questions and some answers on the Indo-American engagement. This article appeared in Mint, July 5, 2007



The Fourth of July is a good day to meditate on the role of the US in the world, especially its relationship with India. In recent days and weeks, there has been a lot of chatter on this issue, first with Condoleezza Rice’s call for India to abandon non-alignment, and then with the visit of the USS Nimitz to Chennai. The protest in Chennai over the arrival of a nuclear-powered, and possibly nuclear-armed, ship is bizarre. India, too, has nuclear weapons, has operated a nuclear-powered submarine, and hopes to operate several more, DRDO (Defence Research & Development Organisation) and DAE (department of atomic energy) willing, in the next few decades.

As a matter of policy, India does not reveal the location of its nuclear weapons. But for all you know, one of the locations could be in Chennai, maybe near Poes Garden. Considering that the huge Kalpakkam nuclear complex is within Chernobyl-distance of Chennai, the anti-nuclear aspect of the protest is ludicrous. On the other hand, if the protest is merely anti-American, well that’s not a problem. We are a democracy, after all.

In a recent review-essay in Washington Post, professor Joseph Nye ( thanks to 3quarksdaily) has pointed out about the US that “the centrality of values in our national myths has long led to oscillation between realism and idealism in our foreign policies”. More than shared ethnicity or common descent, the US is a nation that has been created by ideology and its identity is shaped by a set of values that it seeks to universalize. We are all familiar with America’s desire to reform and indeed remake the world in its own image in the Wilsonian tradition. We also know that in practice, America has undermined democracy, cosseted dictators, tortured prisoners and so on.

Yet, while we rightly criticize the US for Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib or secret renditions, we would be wise to take a modest approach. Our own prisons contain hundreds and thousands of people who are yet to be tried. Where the inmates of Abu Ghraib were humiliated and psychologically tortured, hundreds of “anti-national elements” have faced brutal physical torture in our detention centres. There has been no accounting for thousands who have “disappeared”—many illegally executed by our security forces. Indeed, custodial torture is the norm, rather than exception in the Indian police system.

This is no excuse for American behaviour in their war on terrorism. But howsoever many the warts that have showed up on America’s face, the US has played a sterling role in putting human rights observance on the global agenda and pressured many brutal regimes to clean up their act. To paraphrase Nye, America’s self-image may have been based on a generous measure of self-deception, but its insistence that they are based on immutable values of liberty, equality, justice, tolerance have also pushed the world down the road to moral progress.

India, too, is a nation that is based on values rather than a common ethnicity, religion or culture. The original preamble that constituted India as a sovereign democratic republic spelled out these—justice, liberty, equality of status and opportunity and fraternity. Later, under the somewhat sordid circumstances of the Emergency, “secularism” and “socialism” were added. While the former was a prescient insertion, considering the direction that national polity was to take in the ensuing decades, the latter was a spurious genuflection to the poor electorate.

What kind of relations can these two, somewhat similar countries have? For most of the past 60 years, the US followed a policy of what Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph termed “off-shore balancing” of India by supporting Pakistan, and on one occasion China, to prevent India from assuming the regional role to which its size, population and capabilities entitled it.

Beginning with the second Clinton administration and coinciding with India’s economic rise, the US has sought to change course. The US offer to resume civil nuclear cooperation with India is only one manifestation of its desire to enlist India as an ally in the Asian region. In 2006, US officials openly spoke of the need to assist India to become a great power. Yet, the American blandishments come with a caveat. It’s clear from the perspectives emerging from the American strategic community that the US wants India to “bandwagon” with it, rather than become an autonomous strategic actor. The American perspective on non-alignment is one indicator of this. Another is its opposition to India’s dealings with Iran. Looked at anyway, India should be on friendly terms with the world’s second largest oil exporter and the holder of the world’s second largest reserves of natural gas. But what the US is saying is that India must tailor its policies to Washington’s global agenda and perspective, whatever be its own national interests. As for non-alignment, Condi’s comment was not inaccurate. Non-alignment will matter less and less in our current global trajectory. But till we get to that hightable—as an economic giant and permanent member of the UN Security Council—it’s not a bad idea to hang on to a property in which we have invested a lot. The somewhat incoherent 120-member body is both a lever and a hedge in our period of transition.

Because we live in an imperfect world, India and the US will continue to pursue policies shaped by their values, as well as narrow national interest. But, if, to use an old-fashioned imagery, history is a linear unfolding of the march to progress, then we can possibly think of a future where the two concepts will converge.

Beijing Conundrum

This article appeared in Mint, June 21, 2007. (Mint is Hindustan Times' new daily, brought out in collaboration with The Wall Street Journal)




Is there a chill in India’s relations with China? While actions such as denying a visa to an officer from Arunachal Pradesh, an area claimed in its entirety by China, seem to suggest so, Indian leaders say there is nothing new about this. But what are we to make of a statement by Chinese foreign ministerYang Jiechi to his Indian counterpart Pranab Mukherjee at the Asia-Europe meeting in Hamburg in May that the presence of settled populations in regions under dispute would not affect China’s claims on those regions?

In other words, bringing into question a key agreement of 2005 that observers have believed would be the basis of a Sino-Indian settlement of their vexed border dispute.

Speaking in Jakarta on Tuesday, Mukherjee said that “outstanding differences” with China on the boundary issue could not define the agenda of the bilateral relations. He reiterated New Delhi’s belief “that there is enough space and opportunity in the region and beyond for both India and China to grow together”. New Delhi has been firm in reiterating its own claims, even while refusing to get rattled by Chinese remarks. Officials, speaking on the background, have said that the recent meeting between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Chinese President Hu Jintao on the sidelines of the G8 summit in Heiligindamm was a routine event with no evidence of any special tension between the two countries.

There is a certain value in taking some remarks and actions at face value. In this category would be Singh’s comment in Heiligindamm, declaring that China was India’s “greatest neighbour” and that New Delhi would do everything to improve ties with it. As a statement of fact, it is unexceptional. It should be possible to view China’s claims on Arunachal in the same way. Like it or not, the Chinese dispute India’s ownership of the state and have done so actively since the mid-1950s.

The two sides are involved in intense negotiations to resolve this dispute that led to a war between them in 1962. The situation there is no longer what it was at that time. India has strong defences along the entire 4,000km line of actual control (LAC) that constitutes the Sino-Indian border, and has adequate surveillance and other mechanisms to ensure that it will not be taken by surprise. Some Indian positions in Ladakh and North Sikkim are such that China worries more about an Indian surprise attack, than the other way round.

Yet there are legitimate questions about the pace of the Sino-Indian border negotiations. While the strategy of setting aside the border dispute and building ties on the trade and commerce front is sound, it has its limits. There are several points where India and China dispute even the location of LAC and these can be used to quickly ratchet up tension. We need not take too seriously a false claim made by a BJP MP from Arunachal that the Chinese have intruded 20km into the Indian side of LAC. While there are agreements of 1993 and 1996 to keep a lid on any potential conflict because of this, quiet borders are not the same thing as settled borders.

What appears disturbing is Yang’s statement to Mukherjee. In April 2005, the two sides signed an 11-point agreement on “political parameters and guiding principles” of a settlement, which indicated that they would resolve the dispute on an “as is, where is” basis—China would keep the Aksai Chin region of Ladakh and we would keep Arunachal Pradesh. Yang’s statement appears to undermine the crucial Article VII that says: “In reaching a boundary settlement, the two sides shall safeguard settled populations in border areas.” The area in question is the Tawang tract that contains the town of that name housing an important monastery.

So what is Beijing up to? The Chinese have always displayed an enormous sense of timing in dealing with foreign and security policy issues. They seem to be calculating the pros and cons of settling the border dispute. They will want to ensure that the settlement occurs when the balance of power remains in their favour, but not so soon that it aids India to become the regionally dominant country. What they see is a country that is slowly getting its act together in the South-Asian region, but is still some way away from being able to handle the complex compound of hard and soft power to assert itself, as the Chinese themselves have done. China will most certainly not help India achieve regional pre-eminence, but they do not want to be on the wrong side of an India that has done so either. Therefore, the complicated choreography.

The China Syndrome

Rising China may worry some people, but there is no need for panic. This article was published in Hindustan Times March 7, 2007

On Sunday, Beijing announced China’s military budget for the year: 350 billion yuan (approximately $ 45 billion), 17.8 per cent more than last year’s and the biggest increase in five years. Just a few days before, India announced that it would increase its defence spending by 7.8 per cent to Rs 96,000 crore (nearly $ 22 billion) in the coming fiscal. Where a surge of concern greeted the Chinese statement, there was not a ripple anywhere after the Indian declaration — except, not surprisingly, in Pakistan.

The Chinese figure was given as a one-line statement by Jiang Enzhu, a National People’s Congress spokesman. The Indian figure was detailed by Finance Minister P Chidambaram in the budget papers, breaking down the figure for the precise expenditure of the three services and the capital expenditure for acquisitions. Subsequent documents will add even more detail in the coming months.

The lack of comparable documentation for China has led to charges that the figures do not take into account spending on military R&D, arms imports, Chinese strategic forces, the People’s Armed Police militia and PLA reserves, as well as State subsidies to the Chinese military-industrial complex. The US Defence Intelligence Agency claimed that while the declared 2006 budget was $ 35 billion, the real defence spending could be $ 70 to $ 105 billion for the year.

We refuse to see this as a sinister effort by the Chinese to fudge the figures, but simply as an instance of their accounting practices that are Byzantine even in non-military areas. As for the military, after all India does not include the figures for defence civil estimates of Rs 16,695 crore (which includes defence pensions) in its military budget figure. Nor is it possible to quantify the military component of the Departments of Space and Atomic Energy figures. The expenditure on seven different paramilitary forces, too, do not show up on the defence ledger. After Richard Bitzinger considered that the listed size of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is 2.2 million, a planned expenditure of $ 45 billion should not be seen as extraordinary, when India’s 1.1 million force takes up $ 22 billion.

The issue is not who hides what and why, but the larger issue of the military posture and planning of the PLA. Of the four modernisations that Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping exhorted the Chinese to undertake in the late 1970s, ‘national defence’ was the fourth and last — after agriculture, industry, and science and technology. Since 1997, the Chinese defence spending has seen double digit increases of around 13.7 per cent adjusted for inflation.

Modernisation has meant drastically reducing the size of the PLA, getting it to shed its vast business empire of factories, hotels and real estate holdings, as well as enhancing its military capacity through better training, equipment and doctrines. Since the self-stated Chinese goal is modernisation, the expenditure figures should not surprise us. Speaking of the meagre Indian Budget increase, Jasjit Singh, a leading Indian defence analyst has stated that “a minimum 15 per cent hike” would have been in order to meet the ends of the armed forces. The figures simply inform us of Beijing’s steadfastness in pursuing its goals, rather than point to some sinister plan for world domination.

In its 2006 report, ‘Military Power of the People’s Republic of China’, the US conceded that in the near term, Chinese military modernisation efforts were focused on “Taiwan Straits contingencies, including the possibility of US intervention [against China]”. Certainly, if you plan to militarily check a rebellious province and in the process confront the world’s sole superpower, the military expenditures do not appear unreasonable. India has expended a great deal of blood and treasure to bring its rebellious J&K province to heel. But all it has had to confront has been Pakistan. Taiwan’s history, its current politics and military capabilities present a much more complex challenge to Beijing.

And the real worry for China is the possibility of US intervention. Given that the sheer preponderance of US military strength, a military budget that is about ten times that proposed by China, the very idea of planning for a possible conflict with the US is daunting. But it is not courage or political will that the Chinese lack, but military hardware. In their limited way, they are trying to make up for it in somewhat difficult circumstances of an embargo on hi-tech military systems from the EU, Israel and the US.

But the Chinese have had some luck. The collapse of the Soviet Union gave them the opportunity to obtain a variety of Russian military equipment — Sukhoi fighters, Sovremennyy destroyers, Kilo-class submarines, S-300 anti-aircraft missiles, Yakhont anti-ship missiles. These are not particularly threatening. India has imported, and imports, similar, and in cases, more sophisticated systems from Russia.

But the key difference lies not in the near term, but in longer term Chinese efforts in defence R&D and industry. Where India dithered, they went and hired large teams of scientists and engineers who have given a much needed fillip to their defence R&D and industry, which was till then based on reverse-engineering systems the Soviets had supplied till the early 1960s.

While India’s puny R&D efforts reflect their small budgets and shoddy political and scientific management, the Chinese have systematically used every import to add muscle to their R&D infrastructure. This is not something new. India and China got the MiG-21 together from the USSR in the early 1960s. India, unlike China, even received a licence to manufacture the aircraft, but never managed to go beyond that phase. The Chinese reverse-engineered the aircraft, sold it to Third World clients and built up a vigorous aerospace industry that has fielded the country’s first indigenous fourth-generation fighter, the J-10.

The US perspective on China’s modernisation is shaped not just by its commitments to Taiwan, but also by its self-view as a superpower and its natural desire to remain so. This was summed up in the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review that noted that “China has the greatest potential to compete militarily with the United States and field disruptive military technologies that could over time offset traditional US military advantages”.

An Indian perspective must be much narrower. Does the Chinese military modernisation offer any special threat to India? The answer is no. We face no credible trans-Himalayan threat. From the naval point of view, things are actually lopsided in India’s favour. Eighty per cent of China’s oil is carried on ships that must pass by the Konkan coast, go around Sri Lanka and between the Andaman & Nicobar Islands to the Malacca Straits. The implications of this are obvious.

India’s inability to get its defence R&D off the ground and to mesh its civil and military industries for national defence needs is a major long-term infirmity. In the short run, New Delhi is able to make up for its poor R&D performance by being able to access Russian, European, Israeli and now US technologies. But this is at the cost of developing indigenous capabilities and reflects a level of geopolitical weakness. In contrast, China’s steadily growing prowess in these areas provides it with the potential of emerging as a superpower in its own right, sooner rather than later.

The Sum of All Their Fears

India's national security bureaucracy doesn't really have an inspired record. It seems to lack the grit to fight the country's battles abroad and wants to stay holed up in fortress India. This article was published in Hindustan Times November 29, 2006

As 2006 draws to a close, there is some satisfaction in knowing that despite turbulence — some of it caused by our own instrumentalities — India’s most important foreign relations, that with Pakistan and China, are on track. The year began with expectations of rapid movement on the Pakistan front, only to be belied by the Varanasi blasts, the blockade on Siachen, the recriminations of the Mumbai blasts, followed by postponement of the foreign secretary-level dialogue. Towards the year’s end, a throwaway remark on Arunachal Pradesh led to another kind of turmoil, one often caused by the circulation of a lot of hot air.

As is our national wont, we have been convinced that all the problems were caused by our adversaries, real and potential. Our own actions and motives are, and have always been, as pure as driven snow. However, more than anytime in the past, there were disturbing signs of a kind of dissonance being introduced into the system by what is politely called the ‘national security bureaucracy’. This comprises members from the armed forces, the intelligence agencies, police forces and the civilian babus who believe that they have the exclusive franchise on deciding what constitutes the national interest, and the best way of preserving it.

The best (worst?) example of this was the National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS) paper warning against investment by China into certain important sectors. This was sent out to various ministries reportedly by the principal secretary to the Prime Minister and has done a great deal to needlessly roil Sino-Indian relations. Just why this was done is a bit of a mystery.

The NSCS, comprising relatively junior officials, is meant to merely service the National Security Council. The latter body comprising the Prime Minister himself and his ministers for defence, finance, home and external affairs, take the actual decisions. To advise the NSC, two additional deliberative bodies have been provided — the National Security Advisory Board, comprising experts in various fields and a clutch of retired officials, and the Strategic Policy Group. While the former is meant to be the source of external advice to the NSC, the latter, comprising all the top secretaries to the government, the chiefs of the three services and the intelligence agencies, is the top advisory and deliberative body to the NSC. Its additional value is that it is supposed to undertake what the Americans call an ‘inter-agency process’, where the views of various important departments and ministries are put forward and reconciled before becoming official policy. A parallel system servicing the Cabinet is the committee of secretaries. In the case of the Chinese investment policy, it is well-known that the finance, surface transport and external affairs ministries disagreed with the NSCS’s view. But since a senior PMO official has fired the guns from the shoulders of the NSC secretariat, what we have is an ill-considered, hawkish policy, rather than a balanced and considered opinion of the government.

The aim no doubt was to upset the government’s China policy. As indeed was the needless furore on the Chinese envoy Sun Yuxi’s remarks. While Sun could have had a better sense of timing to reiterate Beijing’s known views on the subject, it was not particularly edifying to hear the whining and sloganeering over what is a well-known Chinese position. A country aspiring to be a global player, must have the maturity to accept that if it has a point of view, so do others.

No doubt there are similar forces at work within Pakistan and China as well. But in India, we have the benefit of living in an all-too-transparent system where manoeuvres of mendacious officialdom are easily visible. Such openness is not available in Pakistan or China. The actions of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in using jehadis as a cat’s paw are not easy to prove, even though we must cope with their impact. The Chinese system is even more opaque. But its policy is to use Pakistan as a foil against India, rather than do anything negative frontally.

Fortunately, on both Pakistan and China, the political leadership of the country has shown a strong and steady hand. They have ensured that the momentum of efforts to normalise ties with these countries have not been derailed. At every stage of improving relations with difficult neighbours, the political class has had to lead. Rajiv Gandhi had to overrule officials before his pathbreaking visit to Beijing in 1988. Manmohan Singh, who does not have Rajiv’s clout, has had to fight every step of the way against bureaucrats and ministers who claim they are the repository of Rajiv’s legacy. It was on his insistence that the Hurriyat was permitted to travel to Pakistan without visas. He has also expended personal political capital on pushing the Indo-US nuclear deal.

The PM and his team have pushed through the anti-terror mechanism with Pakistan and the result has been a distinct improvement in India-Pakistan relations. Despite uncalled for pressure by the army, they have set the resolution of the Siachen and Sir Creek issues as a benchmark for the coming months. They are keeping their eyes firmly on the capstone of the peace process — the final settlement of the Jammu and Kashmir dispute. This process is further down the road than publicly acknowledged.

Likewise, despite Chinese procrastination, the government has steadily pushed for a final settlement of the Sino-Indian border dispute. The recent visit of Chinese President Hu Jintao gives a feel of the texture of New Delhi’s global policies. The latest Sino-Indian joint communiqué talks of the “global and strategic” significance of the relations between the two countries — a factual description of the current reality. It says that the two countries do not see themselves as “rivals or competitors but [are] partners for mutual benefit”. This sounds somewhat rhetorical, but is again true in that the unmoderated rivalry and competition between two nuclear armed States in a globalised economy is tantamount to mutually assured destruction. So the statement adds that “they agree that there is enough space for them to grow together”, a practical and forward-looking formulation. While the opacity we have referred to does cloud a better understanding of Chinese policies towards India, the facts are that Beijing is shifting towards a neutral position on the India-Pakistan issues, especially on Kashmir.

The broader Indian strategy, as probably that of China, is to enhance relations with a cross-section of important countries — the US, the EU, Japan, Russia, the Asean, South Africa, Brazil, etc. Based on the values that shape our nation and its foreign policies — secularism and democracy — it is inevitable that our ties with some countries will have a flavour quite different from those of others. But this does not mean that one set of relations will be benevolent, and the other conflict-ridden.

As long as human relationships are about power, the only way to promote restraint is to maintain a balance of power. But where in the past this was seen as a zero-sum game, in today’s inter-dependent world, it requires an appreciation of the balance of interests of various nations.

In this new vision of the world, too much is at stake to allow the national security bureaucracies to decide the direction of policies. While we must heed their views with all the seriousness they deserve, because it is their task to keep track of the family silver, we cannot allow them to run away with the agenda. They have the right to be suspicious of our real and potential adversaries. But suspicion unrelieved by any effort towards amelioration usually becomes paranoia. It breeds a ‘fortress mentality’ that takes comfort in hiding behind the high walls of national security. But the threats outside will inevitably breach the walls if not countered, through flexible and innovative strategies, at some remove from the walls of our fort.