BSF Jawan’s Video Has a Simple Message: India Should be Ready to Pay for Security

The Border Security Force constable Tej Bahadur Yadav who uploaded a video complaint about the quality of food that the forces get on the India-Pakistan border is, by the standards of his force, a trouble maker. The BSF may not be misleading us when it says that he has been a difficult jawan all through his 20 years of service because his action in uploading a video is not in keeping with the rules and regulations of either the BSF or any other police force.
But then, he is only the product of a new political culture which has sought to use the military to push their own political agenda.  A popular meme to people who complained about demonetisation or, for that matter, anything else, is to remind them of the difficulties faced by the jawans who guarded the LoC. So instead of pulling up the constable for rank indiscipline, union home minister Rajnath Singh and his deputy Kiren Rijiju are scrambling to defend themselves and declaring their commitment to the welfare of the jawans.




That said, there is need to point out that the lot of the police and paramilitary personnel in this country is indeed a tough one. By the standards of this poor country, the jobs they get are coveted, paying them reasonably well and providing a pension at the end of it.
However, their working conditions, especially when compared to the Indian Army are rough. The CRPF is overused in all manner of contingencies from superintending elections, to fighting Maoists in Chattisgarh and countering militants in Jammu & Kashmir. There is little time for rest and training and often the jawans have to do without their annual leave. All this is despite the fact that the size of the BSF and CRPF continues to grow over the years. In 2004, the BSF was roughly 210,000 strong, today it is 260,000 and the CRPF which was 230,000 in 2004 is now nearly 310,000.
The responsibility for this state of affairs rests squarely with the home ministry and the leadership of the respective forces. It is up to the leadership to tell the ministry that if they want a well-trained, well rested force to be used for internal security duty, they need to tell their ministers the size of the manpower they need to ensure that. Recruiting people and then keeping them on short-leash affects both the morale and effectiveness of the personnel.
The army takes care of its jawans. All soldiers, for example, get two-and-a-half months of leave per annum and their officers make sure that they avail it. Further, the army follows a system of rotation of its units to ensure that between every operational deployment, a battalion is given a “peace” posting where the jawans can enjoy some kind of a family life.
Second, the Indian army rations are not purchased locally, as is probably the case with the Central Para Military Forces (CPMF), but procured and distributed at a more centralised level and the disbursement is, again, generous – a specified amount of meat, atta, rice, dal, eggs and vegetables. There have been scams at the central procurement level, but on the field, the jawan gets his due and his officer has to make sure he gets it. In the army, the failure to ensure that your man is getting his rations and is taking his leave is docked against your record.
The real difference between the CPMF jawan and the Indian Army soldier is the quality of leadership they receive – and that is the root of many of the problems. The young lieutenant who leads his 30-man platoon at the beginning of his career roughs it out with them on the picket on the Line of Control and in patrols along the Line of Actual Control with China. He rises to a company commander, battalion commander and then may go on to command a brigade, a division or an army. And so, even the top-most officers are familiar with the issues and problems of the lowly jawan. He also knows the tricks of the trade that malingerers and trouble-makers may employ, and he is also aided by the tough military justice system to enforce discipline. But he knows that in the end that he may have to lead these men into battle, so it is not discipline alone, but the quality of his leadership that must carry the day.
This is very different from the CPMF, where the senior positions above a DIG are occupied by Indian Police Service officers  who arrive laterally at their command positions with  little knowledge or experience of the field. As it is, the CPMF are often deployed in penny-packets making their command and control difficult.
Rajnath Singh and others may claim they worry about the welfare of the jawans, but in all fairness, the BSF and, especially the CRPF, often get the short end of the stick. The locales of BSF deployment are sometimes extremely trying, but they do not get the standards of ration or leave and rest that army personnel get. As for the CRPF, its jawans have termed the force – with a touch of black humour – the “Chalte Raho Pyare Force,” (Keep Moving, Beloved Force) for their continuously shifting deployments.
All this, of course, pales into comparison to the quality of life of the ordinary civil policeman and policewoman. We are not talking about the caricature corrupt cop, but the ordinary constable who gets little or no facilities of any kind. Housing is often in slums and even police stations lack basic structure or furniture in many cases.
The simple message that comes out from Tej Bahadur Yadav’s complaint, howsoever wrong-headed it was, is that if you want security, you must be ready to pay for it.
The Wire January 10, 2017

Pure red herring

Purity versus pollution have been part of the Indian way of life for millennia, manifested most perniciously in our caste system, which divides people between the highest, who are ritually the purest, and the lowest who are the most polluted. Ritual purity is the feature of many religions, but nowhere has it had the malign impact that it has in India.
Confined to religious and social practice and scientific practice, the concept now seems to have leapt across social and religious practice into the contemporary political discourse. Speaking to the nation on New Year’s Eve, Prime Minister Narendra Modi weighed in, terming the whole demonetisation exercise as ‘a historic rite of purification’ aimed at ridding the society of the ‘badness’ and ‘evil’ that had crept in in the form of corruption, black money and counterfeit currency.
‘Purity’ is fine as a scientific concept, but applied to religious, political, social and economic categories it is troublesome. We often hear of temples being washed after Dalits have entered them, or Dalits being segregated from upper castes in schools, villages and eating places. The ‘ghar wapsi’ movement calling for the reconversion of those whose ancestors had allegedly converted from the Hindu faith is another manifestation of this, as are movements to dictate dietary choices. Most crippling remain the notions of purity applied to the female body, which are the foundation of the poor status of women in our society.
But what is ‘purity’ when it comes to economic development and growth? Modi’s words suggest that it means a society without corruption and an economy where everyone pays his/her taxes. This is perfectly fine as an ideal for a society, but to term them as a sine qua non (essential condition) for economic growth is both ahistorical and fraught with risk.
A glance back at the growth of capitalism will reveal that the industrial transformation of the West came along with crass exploitation, colonialism, robber barons and genocide. Subsequently these countries have cleaned up their act, though instances of corruption and bribe often pop up in countries like Sweden, Norway or the UK. The Chinese version of growth between 1990-2010, too, came with huge corruption, which Xi Jinping is now trying to fix. But wealth came before the cleanup.
Actually, the closest parallel to emphasising ‘purity’ in a society comes from the failed socialist experiments ranging from the utopians like the Saint-Simon or Robert Owen and the Marxist-Leninists. Indeed, in their zeal, the latter committed even greater crimes in pursuit of that ‘pure’ ideal called communism. There is, of course, our own version of a pure society in Ram Rajya, which is entirely mythical.
With the decline of communism, almost everyone agrees that some form of capitalism is the best means of economic progress. ‘Pragmatism’ in policy is the key word – once a goal is identified, appropriate ways and means are worked out to achieve it without being over-burdened by ideology. We are all agreed that India should become a developed economy, with a special thrust on inclusiveness, given our background of exclusion of large chunks of society. The issue of ‘pure’ versus ‘impure’ means, or ‘goodness’ and ‘badness’ of people or society are red herrings.
The essence of modern capitalism is the freedom of choice, constrained by rules and laws to make an otherwise brutal system, humane, efficient and inclusive. Certainly, India need not go through the terrible 19th century experience of capitalism. Fighting corruption and tax-evasion is important, but it cannot be a pre-condition to the growth process, but only part of a more complex process that irons them out over a period of time through appropriate policy.
India’s obsession with purity has cost us dear through history. The opportunity costs of denying social mobility to large segments of the population, especially the Dalits and women cannot even be computed. What we do know is that a society so divided was unable to offer resistance to repeated invasions of the country because purity rules demanded that only certain castes could wield weapons.
It almost seems that Modi is looking to create the New Indian, an uncomfortable echo of Stalin and Mao’s New Socialist. But there is also an echo of his fellow Gujarati, Mahatma Gandhi, who believed that impure means could never deliver pure ends. Our Independence had to be obtained through non-violence, the Mahatma believed, and our economy based on satisfying the minimal needs and a rejection of mass industrialisation. Eventually, Independence came because World War II bankrupted Britain. And, fortunately, Gandhi’s heirs rejected his ideas of a village-based economy which would have been a disaster of epic proportions.
Where will the current drive for a ‘pure’ means of attaining economic growth lead us? No one knows, probably not even Modi.
Times of India January 7, 2017

India's continued growth is under threat but elsewhere 2017 could herald a new world order

Because time moves on, the world is always in a state of flux. But regions and countries move at a different pace.2016, however, was marked by several long term trends in key nations and regions coming to a head at the same time giving us that special sense of churn and dislocation.

The terror attacks in Belgium, France and Germany confirmed the beginning of a long and hard slog to contain Islamist radicalism in Europe. With Brexit, the unexpected British decision to leave the European Union, there are signals that the European Union itself was possibly under threat.

British PM May went to India at the head of a business delegation with the aim of bringing down barriers to commerce and paving the way for a free trade agreement following Brexit

Developments

In the United States the election victory of Donald Trump defied pollsters and pundits, and now threatens to upend the political order in the world's sole superpower and had portentous consequences for the world order which the US has shaped since World War II and which its incoming President threatens to disrupt.

Our own contribution - demonetization  - may not have shaken the world, but it has certainly rattled India.

Just what will be its consequences is something we will watch out for in 2017.

Prime Minister Modi's New Year Eve speech was supposed to give us some clarity on the issue, but it turned out to be a damp squib.

There are other events in the year gone by which have yet to take a definitive shape -the failed Turkish coup, the US-Iran rapprochement, the UNCLOS arbitration court's award in the South China Sea, the failure of the Trans Pacific Partnership - and which can have wider geopolitical consequences in the year to come.

There is little doubt that 2017's most momentous development will be the unfolding of the Trump presidency.

His rise, statements and his Cabinet appointments suggest that the US is determined to change the international rules of the game.

This could have huge implications for the global trading system of course, but more complicated could be his efforts to re-write the tenets of America's global political doctrine based on liberal internationalism.

Conventional wisdom has it that the Trump doctrine would push allies to spend more on defence, but the big question is whether the alliance system can survive the strain imposed on it by a Trump presidency.

For Europe 2017 could be a make or break year. There are many elements in this mix- a potential US rapprochement with Russia, the possible election upsets in its two principal nations, France and Germany, and the rise if Islamist radicalism.

Powerplay

In China, the event to watch is the 19th Communist Party Congress likely to be held in November.This is likely to involve much jockeying for power for it could decide the succession to Xi Jinping in 2022.It offers Xi the ability to shape the direction the party and the country will move because he will seek to put in place a Central Committee and politburo which will reflect his priorities.

In these circumstances, the Chinese approach to the US will be a cautious one, waiting to see how things play out before making any new moves.

For us in India, the UP election outcome is easily the most important political event of 2017.

With demonetisation kicking in and the Parliament still locked, the chances of significant reform that could accelerate economic growth is doubtful.

Perhaps this is as Modi has calculated, putting all efforts in the development arena in a back-burner till he consolidates himself politically, which means winning the UP elections and consequently the general elections of 2019.

Policies

Modi may be in a position to control the narrative domestically, but he will not have an easy ride abroad.

For one thing, the expected rise in oil prices will remove the cushion the Indian economy has enjoyed since he became Prime Minister.

For another, the consolidation of the China-Pakistan partnership and their entente with Russia have put India in a bad spot in relation to South Asian politics.

New Delhi has made a mess of its China policy and it will require some deft and realist diplomacy to set things on an even keel.

But the bigger headache could well come from the failure of Modi's Pakistan policy. 

The chances of any rapprochement now look bleak, at least through the rest of Nawaz Sharif's term which will end in 2018.

The situation in Kashmir and the Line of Control clashes bode ill for the coming year because such a situation can spin out of control at any time.

Whatever may be Modi's calculations, any war with anyone would spell disaster for the country.

The Modi team has invested a great deal on the United States, but, given Trump's inclinations, the US may not have much need for India in its international calculations.

Indeed, a too-quick an exit of the US from our region poses a challenge for India since it is simply not ready, economically, politically or militarily to play a greater role in regional affairs.

Mail Today January 1, 2017

The Modi Government Has Dismantled India’s Foreign Policy

One of the government’s biggest failures has been its handling of Kashmir, singularly blaming Pakistan for everything that went wrong without understanding the nature of civil violence in the state.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India arrives at the Hangzhou Exhibition Center to participate in the G20 Summit, in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, China, September 4, 2016. Credit: Reuters/Etienne Oliveau/Pool

As a kid in the 1950s, I remember my parents thrusting Meccano sets at me, with the fond belief that it would encourage their son to become an engineer. It turned out that I was good at taking things apart, but hopeless at putting them back together again. Something like that seems to be the case with the Narendra Modi government. It has proved to be a good at dismantling the old, but is finding it uncommonly difficult to construct something new. Maybe, as in my case as a budding engineer, Modi and company are simply incompetent.
The fiasco of demonetisation is just one of the things that comes to mind. Look at the once hallowed Planning Commission, which has given way to the Niti Ayog, whose CEO has decided that the way to push policy is to run lotteries. In the realm of foreign policy too, the Modi team has dismantled the older policies towards Pakistan and China, but nothing new seems to be on the horizon. All it has achieved is an increase in the truculence in our relations with our two big neighbours and potential adversaries. As for the management of various ministries, especially defence, the less said the better.
Where competence is the issue, the real big test has been the government’s Jammu and Kashmir policy. Sad to say, it is difficult to give it anything but a failing grade. Last week, militants ambushed an army convoy near Pampore, killing three jawans and injuring two. This was the fourth attack on an army convoy since August and is part of the uptick in violence in the Valley, which, according to the Indian Express, has led to 60 soldiers being killed in the state this year, double the annual toll in the last two years. The deaths of the soldiers can be attributed to two reasons – the Line of Control turning “active” (as much from Pakistani actions as our reactions) and the internal situation in the Valley deteriorating because of the inability of New Delhi to manage the fallout of Burhan Wani’s killing.
The government of India has taken a strange ideological position that the violent civil protests that hit the Valley in the wake of the killings are entirely directed by Pakistan. Indeed, in the wake of the demonetisation, there was a claim that the instances of stone pelting had declined because the Pakistani agents had run out of cash to distribute to the stone pelters. Needless to say that this crude narrative was entirely false. Anyone familiar with the cycle of violence that wracks Kashmir will know what is Pakistan-directed and what is spontaneous.
Last week, S.P. Vaid, special director general of the Jammu and Kashmir police, told Rising Kashmir in an interview that there was no proof that Pakistan was involved in the civil protests in the Valley or was directing the calendar of protest events. He noted that the number of militants active in the Valley had gone up to some 250-270, as against an earlier estimate (not by Vaid) of just 150 in 2015. (This item has since vanished from the newspaper website, but look hard enough and you will find its traces.)
Pakistan may not be involved in the violent civil protests in the Valley, but it is involved in other nefarious activity. One is the pushing of the so-called Border Action Teams to attack Indian army positions along the LoC. The other is the “special” violence, such as the burning of schools and attacks on police personnel. In any case, Pakistan doesn’t need to do much, all it has to do is to sit back and watch.
The big problem is the inability of the government, both in Srinagar and New Delhi, to understand the nature of the civil violence in the state. Blaming Pakistan is the simplest option. Actually one major reason for the violence is the disillusionment of the supporters of the PDP who were largely in South Kashmir with their party’s link up to the BJP. While electoral arithmetic indicated that there was little choice, the emotions of the people have been contrary. This is manifested also in the fact that while the Jammu and Kashmir police estimates that 80% of the militants in the north are not locals, while in the south, they comprise 80-90% of them.
Like it or not, the Jammu and Kashmir issue has two components – the domestic “dissidents” represented by elements ranging from the insurgents to the Hurriyat and the external factor, Pakistan, which continues to provide political, moral and material support to militancy in the Valley and conducts a proxy war against India through its jihadi armies. In the meantime, the National Conference which has stood as a steadfast as a rock with the Indian Union through the worst of the Kashmir disturbances, is making noises about azadi.
While military force is required to deal with armed rebels, there is need to simultaneously engage the political elements, whether they are the Hurriyat or the National Conference in a dialogue process aimed at restoring normality to the state. The government’s somewhat belated response has been to send a Track II delegation led by former finance minister and senior BJP leader Yashwant Sinha to the Valley. But just how much authority Sinha has with the heavily securitised  Modi setup in New Delhi is difficult to gauge.
The issue of Pakistan is more complex. After reaching out to Islamabad in 2014 and 2015, Modi found them a hard nut to crack. Following the Pathankot attack, he appears to have decided that Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif lacks the heft to deliver anything and India’s policy has since been to roundly denounce Pakistan at every international forum and call for its isolation through sanctions for supporting terrorists.
This one-dimensional policy is not yielding any results. Pakistan continues to give as much as it takes in the brutal cross-LoC boxing match. The so-called “surgical strikes” do not seem to have deterred them in any way and as the figures cited above show, all that has been achieved through the missteps in handling the domestic issues and Pakistan may be to put Jammu and Kashmir back in the ICU it was till 2005.
Far from being isolated, Pakistan is now being seen as a solution, rather than a problem on the issue of resolving the Afghanistan tangle. If anything, New Delhi seems to be isolated. On December 27, China, Russia and Pakistan will have their third meeting of their “trilateral working group” in Moscow. On the other hand, India’s friend Iran has expressed a desire to join the China Pakistan Economic Corridor project.

Pakistan is handling its Indian end skilfully, which is what cannot be said about the Modi team. Rawalpindi is ensuring that its attacks on India focus on military or police targets and do not get the kind of mileage that the Mumbai massacre of 2008 got. In any case, in an environment where terrorism is hitting closer home in  Turkey, Belgium, France and Germany, no one is particularly concerned about what is happening in our part of the world. In essence, Modi’s anti-terror campaign is barking up the wrong tree.
China is another issue. New Delhi has worked under the illusion that it is competing with China. The Modi government  has adopted a posture aimed at disconcerting Beijing – inviting the prime minister of the Tibetan government-in-exile for Modi’s swearing in, allowing the Karmapa and Dalai Lama to go to Tawang, sharply and publicly criticising China for not supporting India’s case in the NSG and demanding support for proscribing Masood Azhar. Baiting the dragon, especially on the issue of Tibet, is risky policy. It could lead to China encouraging Indian separatists in Kashmir, Punjab and elsewhere.
thewire.in December 23, 2016

In Bucking Army Seniority, Modi Takes a Leaf from Pakistani Playbook

So India has now decided to tail Pakistan. Following Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s decision to go down the seniority list and appoint the officer fourth in the seniority list  as chief of army staff, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, too, has gone down the list to select the officer third in the Indian list of seniority as the army chief, Lieutenant General Bipin Rawat..
Sharif also simultaneously appointed the senior-most in the Pakistani list, Lt Gen Zubair Mehmood Hayat to the rank of Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee. In  keeping with the trend, we are hearing that Lt Gen Praveen Bakshi might be elevated to the position of chief of a tri-service defence staff.  As Mohan Guruswamy has pointed out in a Facebook post, this would entail Bakshi superseding Rawat, who has just superseded him.
Supersession at the apex level of the army has not been unusual in Pakistan. But the Indian decision to appoint  Rawat, the current vice-chief, as army chief  in succession to General Dalbir Singh Suhag has been met with controversy. The principle of seniority is a hallowed one in the Indian army, and each supersession is remembered as victimisation of a deserving officer like P.S. Bhagat or S.K. Sinha.
It is a bit difficult to accept the government’s claim that Rawat was chosen solely on the basis of his merit. When you reach the rank of an army commander, you have already gathered a life-time’s experience in soldiering. The army chief is not an operational commander who needs to be experienced in counter-insurgency. He is a supervisor – the battlefield commander is the regional army commander. Look at the 1965 war, where Lt Gen Harbaksh Singh commanded the western front, or the 1971 war where Lt Gen Jagjit Singh Aurora commanded the eastern front. If we could push through reforms in our defence system, we would actually have theatre commands and the army chief, as is the case in China, the United States or other countries, would be merely responsible for provisioning and training the force.
Yet, for the present we cannot deny the government its reasoning process. Prime Minister Modi and his cabinet committee on security felt that Rawat had all the requirements they wanted. They may be wrong, but that doesn’t take away their prerogative to take a decision along lines they consider the most optimal.
In doing what the government did, it has followed a laid down procedure –  five army commanders and the serving vice-chief constituted a panel of names which were put up to the CCS for selection. There is no requirement that the senior-most officer be selected, hence the need for a panel. However, over the years, in a bid to avoid controversy over appointments, the governments of the day have gone with seniority. Actually, for no government appointment is strict seniority a good idea – not just for the army chief, but in other departments as well. Ideally, we should do away with the seniority system, provided it is done through a well-thought through design and understanding of the longer-term implications.
The army promotion ladder is steep and is already plagued with another problem—the “zero fault” syndrome, where any error can lead to losing your place in the queue.  As is well known, only people who actually do things are likely to make errors. So, the zero-fault approach leads to an over-cautious officer cadre, which is not good when you want a war-winning military.
Another factor that deserves consideration is the need to give the incumbent of a top office in the military a term of at least four to five years. The current two-year tenure is simply inadequate, with the incumbent taking six months to sit firmly in the saddle and the last six months in planning his retirement. But if longer terms are to become the norm, so will larger scale supersession.
It is true that all this sounds nice in theory, but we live in a deeply divided society where caste, religion and even sub-caste affiliations colour a person’s view. This is evident in the army itself, where chiefs are accused of promoting personnel from their own respective arm and regiment. V.K. Singh was accused of promoting Rajput regiment officers and now Dalbir Singh Suhag is charged with promoting officers from the Gurkha regiments. In such an environment, biases are not just imagined, but real. Besides such biases are the human ones where sycophancy and a desire to please the bosses can be passed off as capability.  An unflinching look at our politics and society would suggest that, perhaps, it is a good idea to go by seniority alone till we become more complete “Indians” and our approach to government and governance is more professional.
That said, there is a problem in appointing Bakshi as CDS after Rawat has been named army chief. Whether it is the Arun Singh committee in 1990, the Group of Ministers recommendations in 2001 or the Naresh Chandra committee in 2012, they have all seen the CDS/permanent chairman chiefs of staff committee as the primus inter pares – or first among equals. He is meant to be the principal and single-point military adviser to the government. In view of that, the Naresh Chandra committee suggested that he be selected from among the serving army, navy or air force chiefs. Hopefully the government will not just make a token appointment. The country desperately needs a CDS figure – not a decorative figurehead – whose office must be fully empowered; just what powers the CDS must enjoy have been listed out by various official committees in great detail. Announcing a CDS without those powers, as some in government have mooted, is to rob a serious recommendation of its substance.
thewire.in December 20, 2016

China's looking at its Trump card

The unusual run-in that President-elect Donald Trump has had with China is a matter of great concern and should not be ignored. It began with a phone call to Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen on December 2, breaking the protocol that had operated for 37 years, when no US president had spoken to his Taiwanese counterpart.
US scholar Oriana Mastro notes in a blog post that the call could well have been unintentional, but typical of Trump, he resorted to bluster in defending the call, asking whether China had asked the US “if it was OK to devalue their currency, heavily tax our products going into their country or to build a massive military complex in the middle of the South China Sea? I don’t think so.”
On Saturday and Sunday, the world watched bemused as Trump las­h­ed out at China for seizing an American drone that was doing some hydrographic/surveillance work on the high seas off China. After criticising China for stealing the drone, Tru­mp raised the ante by declaring that China could keep it, thus, blocking an easy resolution to the issue. Trump’s signaling on China is unpredictable. Earlier in the month, he appointed Terry Branstead, the governor of Iowa as the Ambassador to China. Branstead has excellent ties in China reaching up to Xi Jinping.
Speaking at the Halifax Security Forum several weeks ago, US Pacific Commander Admiral Harry Harris observed that “Capability x Resolve = deterrence”. The element of resolve seems to be missing in the US responses to Chinese assertiveness in the South China Sea. Obama admin’s weak response is underscored by the fact that the drone was captured in Philippine’s exclusive economic zone and outside even the so-called nine-dash line that China claims as a maritime border. With the TPP dead in the water, a key weapon in the Obama administration’s ‘pivot’ to Asia appears to have lost steam. Its policy seems confined to rotating F-22 fighters through the region.
China is not unaware that it was the period in the wake of Nine Ele­ven, when the US was focused on Iraq and then Afghanistan, that it had an unchallenged rise in the South-east Asian region. It was aided by the 2008 economic melt-down which the Chinese handled well with their massive stimulus to enhance their relative standing in the world system. Even so, as a country that is simultaneously a great power and a rising one, it needs to ensure that the old super-power is not hostile to it.
The Trump presidency could offer a period of opportunity. An erratic president, with a poor grasp of policy could stumble in a range of areas, giving Beijing a free run not only in South-east Asia, but Central and West Asia as well. On the other hand, notwithstanding the rhetoric, it could be that Trump is softening Beijing for a deal.
China is not the kind of country to get into a deal due to pressure or in a hurry. It is quite capable of pushing its interest in a long-term framework and battening down the hatches while waiting out the Trump era. On the other hand, it could cause considerable trouble for the US through its linkages in Afghanistan, Central Asia and Iran. But with a slowing economy, there are domestic compulsions for Xi Jinping not to get locked into a confrontation with the US.
Dealing with China is an extremely complex issue. The Chinese world view is very different from that of the US and its allies, and its policy-making process quite opaque. The Trump style disdains complexity, but unless Trump reveals some of the genius of Ronald Reagan, simplistic answers to complex issues will pose great danger to the global order.
As outlined in his campaign, it would appear that hostility to Islamist radicalism, rather than China, forms his core belief. In this, he sees Israel as his close ally and the battle to come in civilisational terms. In line with this, Russia is part of the solution, rather than a problem. There are other indicators suggesting that his focus will remain in the Middle-East — the nomination of retired generals like Mike Flynn as NSA and James Mattis, former Centcom chief, as Secretary of Defense.
If this is so, don’t be surprised if Trump is willing to cut a deal with China along the lines of the “New Type of Great Power Relations” mooted by Xi Jinping in his first meeting with Obama in Sunnylands in 2013. Xi’s view involved (1) no conflict or confrontation, and treating each other’s strategic intentions objectively; (2) mutual respect, including for each other’s core interests and major concerns; and (3) mutually beneficial cooperation, by abandoning the zero-sum game mentality and advancing areas of mutual interest.
In geopolitical terms, this could mean Trump reverting to the American position on Taiwan and accepting Chinese primacy in the South China Sea. The problem is trying to understand what the Chinese would be willing to offer the US in exchange. Let’s be clear, Trump the businessman, is unlikely to offer a free lunch.
December 20, 2016