Book Review: Dragon on our Doorstep

Dragon on Our Doorstep: Managing China Through Military Power is a vast book covering virtually every aspect of India’s defence policy, from 1947 to the present. It examines issues as diverse as China’s grand strategy, the demolition of Babri Masjid, to building military power and the succession of the Dalai Lama. But its focus is quite clear, managing India’s real security problem – the rise of China.
Given the enormous asymmetry that has already developed in the comprehensive national power of China and India, there is no resolution that is possible, the issue can only be managed and the authors suggest that to even begin that process, India must set its defence system right. This is not, as its name may imply, a hawkish call to arms, but a sober analysis which argues that military power is an important part of the mix of any country’s geopolitical perspective. But India has diluted this ingredient, has suffered the consequences and will continue to do so till it changes its approach. So, it is critical of those who speak blithely of a two-front war with China and Pakistan, arguing that even a one-front war was not an option. What it advocates is an effective military capacity as a precondition of building durable peace with Pakistan and China.

Pravin Sawhney and Ghazala Wahab,
Dragon on Our Doorstep: Managing China Through Military Power
Aleph, 2017

This is a provocative book and deliberately so, aimed at shaking Indian complacency. As the editors of Force magazine, the authors have traveled across the country, visited numerous facilities and units, and spoken and interacted with a large number of military officers in key positions. A great deal of this is evident in the material that has been marshalled in the book, as well as in the assertions that they make in the book. You may or may not agree with all of them, but they definitely provoke thought.
Over the years, political leaders, bureaucrats and even military leaders have begun to work with the assumption that no external force can dare to attack India, not just because we have nuclear weapons now, but that we are so big and populous that it would be a foolhardy enterprise.
They may not have understood the character of defeat. More often than not, it is a state of mind – within two weeks of the German offensive in 1940,  with Paris and most of France still to be conquered, the French  government threw in the towel and accepted defeat. This  was not very different from  November 1962, when a broken Pandit Nehru wrote off Assam and appealed to the US for military assistance, or the slow defeat of the US in Vietnam between 1968 and 1975.
At the root of India’s problems, the authors write, is the erroneous belief that a large and well equipped military alone can win wars. Given the fact that wars are an  extension of politics, the one thing that India has not been able to get is its politicians to understand this. Not only do politicians tend to shun things military, but they also systematically exclude the military from higher defence management.
Carl von Clausewitz is well known for his observation that, “war is nothing by the continuation of policy with other means” – in other words, without political ends, war is  meaningless. And repeatedly, as the authors show in India’s case, those political ends have not been  clear – the most recent being the 2002 Operation Parakaram. If fighting must have a political purpose, surely it behoves those who are involved to closely integrate the political and military  means. It is not just a question of political ends, but the necessity of the political leader to control every aspect of war – its intensity, its direction and length etc.

Ghazala Wahab. Credit: Twitter

Given this, it is vital for the politicians to have a grasp of military affairs, or, at least, clearly understand what the military is all about. Of course, it goes without saying that military leaders, too, need to understand national policy. So while the politics must always be in command, the military must be in a position to influence the leader. But the leader and his political ilk must make it a point to understand why their country is spending a vast fortune in buying guns, tanks, maintaining millions of men in arms. They cannot depute this function to the civilian bureaucracy as they have done till now, to the detriment of the security of the nation. Only the political leader can take decisions that may simultaneously span diplomacy, trade, military operations and politics.
In some ways, for example, the success of the Allies in World War Two arose from the ability of an arch imperialist (Winston Churchill), a half democrat (Franklin D. Roosevelt) and a dictator (Stalin) to work together towards a common goal. They coordinated their diplomatic strategy, military offensives, military assistance while their adversaries were an axis only in name, with little coordination and diplomacy.
India’s official defence budget is now over Rs 3,59,000 crore, including pensions. If you add the nuclear and space activities it is even greater. It is vastly more than what we spend for health, social welfare and infrastructure.
Surely, this would mean that the politicians in-charge would take the task of purposefully spending this money, managing the men and ensuring that the country gets the best bang for the buck. But, as we know, this is far from the case. Indeed, the country’s defence system is seriously dysfunctional, making it unfit for a major war as became evident when the challenge came – following the terrorist attack on parliament in 2001 and the Mumbai attack of 2008. By their own reckoning, the modernisation of the three wings of the armed forces is delayed by at least a decade. There is no point trying to blame a single minister or government – the problems are systemic. Efforts have been made by expert committees and even the standing committee on defence in the parliament to recommend change, but the government has been firmly proof against any advice.

Pravin Sawhney. Credit: Twitter

Things have not changed much with the Narendra Modi government. The authors note that the ambitious ‘Act East Think West’ slogan raised by the government has no place for military power in its planning. In their view, “thinking strategically and developing an appreciation of military power are two major shortcomings of India’s foreign policy.”
This foreign policy weakness is compounded by the fact that India does not have a defence policy either. For the past decade a small group of strategic specialists have been trying to push the government to adopt a strategic defence review, duly approved by the cabinet committee on security, to outline India’s priorities in the area of defence and provide  a coherent narrative as to how it plans to cope with the challenges. The main aim of this is to ensure that the entire governmental system is on the same page when it comes to the vital area of defence. Though documents have been drafted by the National Security Advisory Board, the governments of the day have not seen it fit to study, let alone accept or reject them.
This is an impressive piece of work and beyond the actual recommendations, there is a wealth of information that an interested reader can gather about the way India’s defence system works (or doesn’t).
The Wire February 13, 2017

Hammer Of Authority:The Indian military is its own police and judge. That’s the problem.

One  way to understand our current military justice system is to read the sections in the Army Act of 1950 dealing with “offences in relation to the enemy and punishable with death” relating to warlike situations. Samples: “shamefully” abandoning a garrison or a defence position, casting away arms, cowardice, assisting the enemy, putting up the white flag of surrender, spreading rumours that may create alarm, a sentry who “sleeps upon his post or is intoxicated” in times of war.
Independent India has got no soldier execu­ted; that does not mean we have not had cowardice or desertion in times of war, or sentries who fell asleep. All it does is to tell us how antiquated the law is. The colonial ring of its language, and some provisions, date many of its provisions to the 1911 Indian Army Act.

There is something inherently authoritarian about the military justice system because the military is a kind of dictatorship functioning within a democracy. Given the requirements of military discipline and the preservation of good order, the system has felt a need to create an authoritarian regime where authority flows from the top to the bottom. Also, questioning an order, or not following the draconian rules, can lead to punishment that would be considered severe by the regular laws of the country.
Good order and discipline are not just about war time, but relate to the daily life of an army man requ­ired to keep the military’s fighting edge keen at all times. For this, there are summary procedures for commanding officers of units to punish jawans up to the rank of a hawaldar. Death sentence may not visit you if you desert, mutiny, steal, strike or threaten superiors in peace time, but you can still get 14 years RI and be cashiered, which means no retirement benefits.
There are other problematic provisions, such as “unbecoming” or “disgraceful conduct” of officers and junior commissioned officers, not too clearly defined, but venture into areas that go against the moral ethos of the armed forces and their sense of honour. Actually, unlike the police or other state instruments, army personnel can be punished for cruelty to civilians, defiling religious places and even infidelity.
 The aim of the system is to provide a quick, but fair procedure. Safeguards are built in, but the very nature of the system raises questions. The military courts, or the courts martial, comprise benches of five or three officers with no legal training—even the prosecutor and defence councils are line officers. General courts martial usually have a judge advocate who is supposed to advise the court on the finer points of the law.
 In essence, the military is its own police, forensic dep­artment, judge and jury, and this is the biggest weakness of the system. While the summary court-martial is a useful means of maintaining good order, when it comes to more serious crimes, collecting evidence, its presentation and consideration by a non-specialist group can be problematic. The idea that peers are the best judges goes back to the European notion of a jury trial. In India, the system was abolished after a jury acquitted a naval commander of a 1959 murder of a businessman. The Bombay High Court overturned the verdict and tried and convicted him through a bench.

Over time, the infirmities of the system have been app­arent, especially since it has no built-in right to appeal and, given its draconian nature, bears instances of its misuse. To deal with this, the government established the Armed Forces Tribunals (AFTs) in 2007. The members here are mixed—senior retired judges and senior retired military officers.
The big problem, however, is that the AFTs come under the ministry of defence, instead of the law ministry. So the appeals system is run by the very outfit against whom the appeals are usually entered. The key powers to have their judgements and orders impl­emented have been withheld from the Tribunals, and their rulings are simply ignored, if found inconvenient.
Separating the military from society has often been seen as a means of enhancing the military effectiveness of the forces. The Army Act was a manifestation of this. But times have changed, and so have the very nature of warfare and the context of the old rules. Getting soldiers to follow orders must be accompanied by a culture where not only illegal orders are challenged, but instead draconian discipline to get them to follow orders, the officers depend on their self-esteem as professionals and their sense of being part of a team.
 There are reports saying the government intends to provide the legal teeth to the tribunals. The MoD and the three services are not very happy about this, but the time has come to bring the military justice system in line with the mores of contemporary society.
Outlook February 17, 2017

In an America First world, pursuing an India First policy is the logical response

The Trump disruption is now in full flow and the tectonic plates are shifting under our feet. The fault lines run along the issues of trade, immigration, relations with China and Iran.
In Trump’s America First world, there are no friends and enemies. Trusted friends and allies have been given short shrift as the new President has taken the US out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). How little the US bothers about loyalty is evident from Donald Trump’s testy conversation with Australia’s Prime Minister Malcom Turnbull last week. Trump’s bullying behaviour towards Mexico indicates that he cares even less about good neighbourliness.
At first sight, India has little to worry. Prime Minister Narendra Modi says that his conversation with Trump was “warm” and that he had invited the US President to visit India. The two leaders had “discussed security in the region of South and Central Asia” and resolved that the two countries “stand shoulder to shoulder in the global fight against terrorism”. But parsing the sentence could well suggest that the US may want Indian boots on the ground in the quagmire of Afghanistan. Note there is no reference to the flavour of yesterday – the Asia-Pacific aka the Indo-Pacific.
There are actually just two ways of dealing with Trump: Go along with whatever he says and does, or hedge. New Delhi would be well advised to adopt the latter course. Trump is the kind of person who will insist on always holding the steering wheel and maintain that only he knows the direction; complainers will be asked to get off. In an America First world, pursuing an India First policy is the logical response.
In recent years, India, like many other middle powers like the UK, Germany or Japan, has gotten used to leaning on Uncle Sam who, of course, revelled in the role of global leader. But things have changed and it is time to explore other options. Without much money or military muscle, our India First strategy has to be based on building durable coalitions with like-minded countries without egregiously stepping on American toes.
First, we need to shore up our most vital external area – the Persian Gulf. Obama exempted India from the oil sanctions in 2012. But such accommodation would be out of character in the Trump era, which has just put Iran “on notice” for testing a ballistic missile. Leave alone sanctions, the big worry now is the possibility of a shooting war in the region. Trump has declared that “nothing is off the table”, with regard to Iran.
India will not escape the collateral damage of a war in Iran. It is the fourth largest supplier of oil to India, and any war against Iran will also hit oil supply from our other partners like Saudi Arabia and Iraq. More than oil, a US-Iran standoff will dent our geopolitical plans centred on the port of Chabahar to link up to Afghanistan and Central Asia, as well as the International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC) connecting India’s west coast ports through a multi-modal network to Europe, via Iran and the Russian railway system. INSTC is India’s humble but important version of China’s One Belt One Road plan.
Second, we need to guard against instability in the Asia Pacific. Steve Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist, said in early 2016 that war with China and Iran were real possibilities. In his confirmation hearings, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson declared that the US would deny access to the seven artificial islands China had constructed in the South China Sea.
India would not be directly affected, and may even revel at China being put in its place, but even a short sharp clash between two of the world’s leading powers will, at a minimum, generate severe turbulence in the global economy which cannot but affect our growth.
What we need is an eastern coalition with Japan, Vietnam, Australia, Indonesia and Singapore to rein in China, but also moderate American adventurism. A western coalition with Russia, Persian Gulf states and Japan should aim to calm things down in the Persian Gulf. Russians have a major stake in INSTC, and oil from the Persian Gulf is vital for Japan.
One country is in both lists, Japan, which has emerged as a major economic partner and aid giver to India. Tokyo is enhancing India’s domestic connectivity and has expressed interest in partnering India in Chabahar and the larger connectivity goals in Iran and Central Asia. Strategic coordination between the two middle-powers of Asia would be a big hedge against the vagaries of America First.
Times of India February 4, 2017

Dealing With Hafiz Saeed Not Easy For Pakistan Because JuD Commands Great Street Power

So we are back to the future with the “house arrest” of Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, the malignant head of the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba. As of now we have no direct knowledge as to why the Pakistan Punjab Province government took this step, so it becomes a bit difficult to analyse the situation. Perhaps there was American pressure, because Indian efforts have not yielded results.

 
The News of Pakistan claims that both American and Chinese pressure led to the present action, though the US pressure is not because of the present Trump administration, but its predecessor Obama Administration. (https://www.thenews.com.pk/latest/182810-JuD-chief-Hafiz-Saeed-put-under-house-arrest-sources)   Maybe like the last time around the whole thing is another farce designed to pull wool over our eyes. The Pakistani notification says that action is being taken as he under the watch list as per the sanctions under UN Security Council Resolution 1267 of 1999. Both the JuD and Hafiz Muhammad Saeed are specifically listed in the resolution. Under the resolution, Pakistan must seize their property and restrict their movement.
Saeed is, of course, desperately wanted by India for his role in planning the terrible terrorist attack on Mumbai on November 26, 2008 that took the lives of 166 people. In 2012, the US placed a bounty of $ 10 million on his head for his role in the killing of 6 American nationals in the Mumbai attack. Though he is the head of the founder and head of the LeT, he now claims that he is merely the head of the Jamaat-ud Dawa and the Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation. Now, Pakistani sources say he has renamed the JuD as the Tehreek-e-Azadi-e-Kashmir, to maintain the fiction that a) it operates outside Pakistani territory from the so-called Azad Kashmir, and b) that it is devoted exclusively to the Kashmiri “freedom struggle.”
It may be recalled that Hafiz Saeed had been placed under a similar house arrest in the wake of the Mumbai attack and was released by the Lahore High Court in June 2009. At the time the government appealed against the judgment, but in May 2010, the Supreme Court of Pakistan dismissed the appeals. Actually, Saeed was arrested even earlier in 2001 following the attack on the Parliament House in New Delhi. With India threatening military action, he was held till March 2002 and then arrested again for a couple of months following the Kaluchak massacre. It was at this time that under Musharraf’s orders, the parent organisation Markaz Dawa ul Irshad changed its name to Jamaat-ud-Dawa and Saeed distanced himself from the LeT. At the same time Musharraf ordered the LeT to shift its  operations to Pakistan Occupied Kashmir. The JuD made a name for itself in the relief work it did during the Kashmir earthquake of 2005 and subsequently spread its wings as a social welfare organisation, keeping its Lashkar-e-Tayyeba connections clandestine.

Following the Mumbai attack of 2008 and the enormous evidence accumulated by Indian and American officials on the complicity of the LeT in the massacre, Pakistani officials raided the LeT camp in Muzaffarabad, POK and arrested its Operations Chief Zaki ur Rehman Lakhvi and 12 other persons. A year later Lakhvi, Mazhar Iqbal, Hammad Amin Sadiq, Abdul Wajid, Shahid Jameel Riaz, Jamil Ahmed and Yonus Anjum  were charged by a Pakistani anti-terrorism court for helping execute the attack. However in December 2014, Lakhvi was given bail and despite the efforts of the Pakistani government, he was finally released from jail in April 2015. Most observers say that Lakhvi’s jailtime was spent in relative luxury and he retained his operational command of the LeT.
There is nothing secret in the connections between Lakhvi and Saeed and US national Daood Gilani aka David Coleman Headley said in his testimony to a Mumbai court early last year that he had been assured by his handler, the ISI official Sajid Mir, that nothing would happen to either Lakhvi or Saeed.

In his statement to the Indian authorities, Ajmal Kasab, the captured gunman who was subsequently hanged by India, said that Saeeed was personally present in selecting the terrorists for their attack and has visited them during their training. However, the issue has been clouded by the fact that Kasab formally retracted his confession, claiming that it had been forced.
Legal proof in terrorism cases is very difficult. After all terrorists don’t maintain minutes of the meetings in which they plan and organise their attacks. However, in the case of Saeed, he has openly broadcast his hatred for India and his intention of not just “liberating” Kashmir, but conducting jihad throughout India.
Dealing with Saeed will not be easy for Pakistan because the JuD and the FEI have established roots across Pakistan, especially in Punjab through their active social welfare works. In addition Saeed has been active in the Dife-e-Pakistan Council, an umbrella coalition of more than 40 right-wing religious outfits that support the Afghan Taliban and the closing of NATO supply routes to Afghanistan. They may not have widespread support in the country, but they still have a great deal of street power.

Given the past history of Saeed’s arrest and releases, it remains to be seen as to whether Islamabad is serious in shutting down the Lashkar/Jamaat outfit. It would require a great deal of political courage to do so. But more important, it would require the cooperation of the Pakistan Army and the ISI which have always maintained close links with the outfit. If that happens, it would mean the beginning of the strategic shift away from the use of state sponsorship of terrorism by Pakistan. But, as of now, it remains a big ‘if’.
Outlook web 31 January 2017

Trump May Be Pushing China Into Clash That Won’t Benefit Anyone

 
US (L) and Chinese national flags flutter on a light post at the Tiananmen Square.

Given his actions on a range of issues so far, US President Donald Trump is likely to go after China using a range of tactics from punitive tarrifs to casting aside the US’s ‘One China’ policy and embracing Taiwan. So far, of course, he has scored a self-goal by scrapping the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), the foundation on which the Barack Obama administration’s “pivot” to Asia was anchored.

In an intriguing op-ed in the New York Times, Yan Xuetong, a leading Chinese academician has painted a dramatic portrait of what China can become if it is put into the pressure cooker by Trump.
Instead of playing it on the backfoot, China could, he said, actually take on the attack on the frontfoot and emerge as a “full fledged super power”. What does that mean? First, it could fill the vacuum left by the US abandoning free trade by creating a new trading bloc to replace the TPP. Australia and South Korea would be encouraged to join, but Japan would be left out of the new bloc.
Second, he says, as of now, only “Pakistan is a traditional military ally,” but if the US changed its one China policy and recognised Taiwan’s independence, China “should establish as many military alliances as possible.” Specifically, Beijing should enter into military pacts with Cambodia, Thailand and the the Philippines. With the trade and military alliance in place, Beijing would become “the leader of East Asia and make the region safer.”
Third, even as the US cracks down on immigration, Beijing should change its policy and begin welcoming immigrants. This way it could possibly attract some talented Americans who wanted to have nothing to do with the Trumpian US, as well as the best and the brightest from other parts of the world. Such immigration and the US ability to attract the best students from around the world has long been seen by China as an essential attribute of American soft-power. Despite its authoritarian system, China has been going out of its way to attract foreign students and talent, but it is no where as successful as the US. But, Yan says, opportunity is beckoning.
Yan, dean of the prestigious Institute of International Relations at Tsinghua University in Beijing and a PhD from University of California at Berkeley, is perhaps the leading theorist of shaping the Chinese Communist Party’s Marxist-Leninist-Maoist system to the needs of the world of today. He has termed its culture as “atheist Confucianism” and has compared the politics of China’s “communist ruled socialist country based on private ownership” to the dragon that has aspects of fish, bird, deer and snake! Yan’s views on China developing alliances are well known because he believes that the world is becoming bipolar and that this will actually make it more stable.

In 1993 when presidential candidate Bill Clinton attacked incumbent George H.W. Bush’s China policy and threatened punitive tariffs, Washington Post carried a full page infographic which showed how much each household would end up paying for the common items they bought from the supermarket. Sanctions on US companies in China and counter-tariffs would bring the cost of the trade war back home as well. As Stephen S. Roach, former chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia, has pointed out in a recent article, the relationship is more of a “co-dependency” and evolved out of their mutual needs. In the 2000s the Chinese helped to keep US consumer prices low, while their purchase of US treasury bills helped keep US interest rates low. There can be little doubt that making an abrupt and unilateral change to the terms of the relationship will have devastating consequences for not just the China and the US, but other countries as well.
China has, of course, been steadily building its way into super-powerdom. The beginnings of its financial architecture are visible in the setting up of the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank. As for trade, it is mooting the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) as well as the Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific.
From the point of view of security, besides the bilateral pacts Yan is speaking off, China has already gone some way in creating the SCO where counter-terrorism military exercises and intelligence sharing are conducted.
No doubt, the idea of China as a power rivaling the US appears to be fanciful today. China’s GDP may be greater than the American one in PPP terms, but it is still poor in per capita terms. Likewise, the US remains a much greater military power. But, unlike the US, which has stumbled twice in recent times – in its $ 2 trillion “war of choice” in Iraq and the 2008 financial crisis – China so far has been coasting along, though facing some headwind in recent years.
Trump’s policies seeking headlong confrontation may compel Beijing to get into a fight that it would otherwise have avoided. But there can be little doubt that such a clash will damage both parties, though to what extent cannot be gauged now.
The danger became manifest this month when US secretary of state nominee Rex Tillerson said in his confirmation testimony on January 11 that “We’re going to send China a clear signal that first the island-building stops and second your access to those islands is also not going to be allowed.”
The Chinese response was measured, emphasising its “irrefutable sovereignty” over the islands. Earlier this week, White House spokesman Sean Spicer said that the US would protect its interests in the South China Sea region. “We are going to make sure we defend international territories from being taken over by one country,” he added.
Now, the international tribunal that nixed China’s Nine Dashed Line in 2016 has not had a say on the sovereignty of the islands which it says are not true islands, but rocks entitled to just 10 nm of territorial sea. The islands are contested between China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei and Malaysia. So far the US position was to emphasise the freedom of navigation and overflight in the region, but not take a position on the sovereignty of the islands.
In the past few years, China has built up military facilities on three key reefs after reclaiming land there. The Subi reef, Mischief reef and Fiery Cross island now have airstrips and hangars capable of taking military aircraft.
A US effort to prevent their access to the islands would be a blockade, which is an act of war in international law. As it is, the location is sensitive for China because it is proximate to the Hainan Islands, the main base for the nuclear propelled submarines which carry a key element of their nuclear deterrent.
It is no surprise then, that the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists have advanced their Doomsday clock by half a minute to just two and a half minutes to midnight.
The Wire January 28, 2017

Trump's bite as bad as his bark as hopes for a 'presidential' leader fall away

The full weight of Donald Trump's election as the President of the United States is now being felt.Unlike his predecessors, he seems determined to walk the talk of his campaign. Expectations that he would become more 'presidential' and moderate his views have been belied.

Trump: Great for India?

Consequences

The flaws, both moral and practical, in his policies are also becoming apparent.

Take the decision to block Muslim travelers from Iraq and Iran. Now Iraq is the country that the US willfully devastated through a war, and now it is refusing to deal with its human consequences.

As for Iran, Mr Trump may not know it, that in the Islamic world there is probably no other country whose middle class is more pro-American than the Iranians.

And the irony is that the Saudis, who are responsible for funding terrorism all over the place and whose nationals allegedly carried out the horrific 9/11 attack are not on the Trump exclusion list.

Indeed, there is no record of American citizens being killed by nationals of Yemen, Syria, Somalia or Sudan either.

Another strange policy measure has been to remove the Director National Intelligence and the Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff from the National Security Council.

Instead, he has included his right-wing strategic adviser Stepen Bannon, a former media and financial executive, to the NSC.

The American NSC, as its name suggests, is the principal adviser to the President on foreign policy and security and its principal job is to coordinate the work of other departments.

The removal of two key staffers is bound to affect the institutional capacity of the body. More important, it will give freer rein to controversial NSA chief Mike Flynn.

The hapless travelers who have been blocked from the US, from their loved ones, families and jobs, have only one alternative - turn to the courts.

But it will not be plain sailing for other Trump policies, principally, his effort to upend the world trading order and bottle up China in the mainland.

Trade war

Recall, earlier this month, the US secretary of state designate Rex Tillerson declared that America would 'send China a clear signal that, first, the island building stops and, second, your access to those islands also is not going to be allowed.'

In effect, the US would blockade China from accessing the military bases they have constructed on Mischief Reef, Subi Reef and Fiery Cross island in the Spratlys chain. 

The tribunal that heard the Philippines claim against China did not make any judgment on who owns the features. So any effort by the US to blockade China would constitute an act of war.

The Chinese have in the past couple of years strengthened their positions on the islands and built hangars and point air defence systems.

So far, the US policy had been to carry out Freedom of Navigation Operational Patrols. But last year, the US did privately warn China not to begin any reclamation or construction on Scarborough Shoal, an area which even the arbitral tribunal clearly said was within the Exclusive Economic Zone of the Philippines.

But the Obama policy was criticised for being ineffective. It remains to be seen what 'avatar' of Trump we will see in the region - the hawk or the deal maker.

The issue of trade, of course, is paramount in the relationship between the US and China and the world is bracing for a possible trade war which will damage not only the US and China but could have a wider fallout.

Rough ride

Companies in South-east Asia who are linked with the US and China through supply chains will also be affected.

A slow-down in Chinese exports would lead to a reduction in their import of raw materials from countries in South-east Asia, Australia and Africa.

Of course, any effort by the US to hike tariffs would be challenged by China in the WTO and it is possible that this could actually be resolved by a deal between the US and China.

But with Trump you never know.

In all this, India is a bit player. We will not be directly affected by the trade war, though we need to worry about pressure on IPR issues relating to pharmaceuticals, and of course, to business process outsourcing. 

Notwithstanding the nice readout of the Trump phone conversation with Modi, we need to watch out because of the nature of the new administration which seems to believe that it alone has the answer to everything, and in any case, no one else has problems, only the United States.

If we are prepared to play the role of a supine partner it s okay, but if India wants to stand up to the US on issues that matter to it and pursue its own national interest, we should be prepared for a rough ride.

So far, India and the US had steadily developed a congruence of interests in a range of areas, today, all bets are off. 

Mail Today January 29, 2017