Indo-China Row Signals Breakdown of Confidence-Building Measures

The statement issued by the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) on the India-China Army Commanders meeting that took place on Saturday, 6 June, was anodyne. Expecting anything more at this stage would be premature.

The operative line of the statement is that “the two sides will continue the military and diplomatic engagements to resolve the situation and to ensure peace and tranquility in the border areas.”

Having heard each other out – at the Chusul-Moldo point on the Line of Control, near Pangong Tso Lake – in two sessions totalling six hours, India’s 14 Corps Commander Lt Gen Harinder Singh and the South Xinjiang Military District Commander Maj Gen Liu Lin wanted their respective headquarters in New Delhi and Beijing to weigh in on the issue, before making any commitments to each other, let alone revealing the outcome to the media.

On Friday, there had been a video conference between the Joint Secretary (East Asia) in the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), Navin Srivastava and the Director-General in the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) Wu Jianghao, to discuss bilateral relations, including the Ladakh issue.

Note a key point here. Unlike India, where the MEA and the National Security Adviser Ajit Doval are responsible for the border policy, in China, the PLA is a power unto itself and it may or may not consult, or even inform the MOFA of issues.

The two meetings on Friday and Saturday suggest that getting the Chinese to back off from the positions they have taken in the Galwan Valley, Gogra/Hot Springs and Pangong Tso could take time.

Given the systematic manner in which the PLA has acted, it would suggest that the process would not be easy, since the action itself is not the reflex of some local commander, but something carefully thought through with a particular end in view.

The problem, however, is to determine just what that end could be, taking into account the possibility that China is working to obtain more than one goal.

What the events of the past month and more are signalling is a breakdown of the long and laboriously-constructed Confidence Building Measures (CBM) regime, that had been established to maintain peace along the LAC.

If Beijing is not willing to move back from the positions it has seized in this period, the past CBMs stand nullified and we could see a tit-for-tat process of both sides occupying suitable positions on the LAC.

This would be dangerously escalatory. And the Chinese should be forewarned that with the improvements in the infrastructure on the Indian side and our denser deployments along the LAC,  they could find the going tougher than they may have anticipated

Confidence Building Measures

The first CBMs arose from the 1993 Border Peace and Tranquillity Agreement (BPTA). This gave rise to the very notion of a “Line of Actual Control (LAC)” marking their border on the Himalayas. Since there were varying perceptions regarding where the LAC lay, they committed themselves to jointly checking and fixing the parts of the line where they had “different views as to its alignment”.

Associated with this was the notion that the two sides would progressively reduce their military deployments along the LAC to a “minimum level”, based on the principle of “mutual and equal security”. This far-reaching agreement was aimed at not only calming the LAC, but building a peaceful trajectory to Sino-Indian relations.

The follow-on second CBM was the 1996 agreement on “Confidence Building Measures in the Military Field Along the Line of Actual Control in the India-China Border Areas”, spelt out some measures to clarify the LAC and to work out limits of their respective militaries and various armaments such as tanks, infantry combat vehicles, howitzers, SAMs and SSMs on the LAC. Combat aircraft and helicopters were barred from flying within 10 km of the LACA decade later came the third big military CBM, which was the 2005 “Protocol on Modalities for the Implementation of Confidence Building Measures in the Military Field Along the Line of Actual Control in the India-China Border Areas”, which was essentially built on the 1996 agreement.

The agreement spelt out the standard operating procedures on what would happen when patrols met each other on the territory that both countries claimed. They would display a first banner emblazoned, “This is Indian/Chinese territory”. They would then flash the second banner, on which would be written, “Turn around and go back to your side”. Instances when these banners had to be shown were later termed “face-offs”.

Since 2008, alarmed at the Indian actions in strengthening their border defences, China began proposing that the two sides sign a Border Defence Cooperation Agreement (BDCA). Beijing somewhat ingenuously wanted India to freeze border construction, arguing that it was not necessary in the light of the other CBMs. But India demurred.

In January 2012, the two sides signed a fourth CBM on the establishment of a working mechanism for consultation and coordination on India-China border affairs. This was seen as a move to replace the old joint working group process that linked the two foreign ministries. But this was not enough to prevent the Depsang face-off in March 2013.

Following the event, the fifth agreement, BDCA was finally signed on 13 October 2013. Significantly, while all the other CBMs and MoUs were signed by civilian officials, the signatories of the BDCA were India’s Defence Secretary and Admiral Sun Jianguo, Deputy Chief of General Staff of the PLA.

It was evident then, and it should be now, that the PLA plays an autonomous role in shaping Chinese foreign policies.

This agreement reiterated the previous agreements and enhanced the interactions of the military operations departments and the defence ministries. The two countries agreed that even while observing the provisions of the past agreements, they would not tail the patrols of the other side in areas where there was no common understanding of the LAC.

Subsequently, the PLA wanted to discuss a sixth pact which would be a code of conduct on the border areas. In his visit to China in 2015, Prime Minister Modi strenuously advocated that the two sides must take measures to resolve their border issues, and if not, return to the 1993 process of clarifying the LAC. The Chinese side-stepped the issue saying that the process of clarifying the LAC had “encountered difficulties.”

Difficult Times?

The process of clarification was agreed to through the 1993 and 1996 agreements. The two sides exchanged maps revealing their perceptions of where the LAC lay. Then, in 2000, they exchanged maps of the western sector.

But, according to Indian officials, so varied was the perception of the LAC here, that the Chinese side called off the process. The Chinese side clearly sees an advantage in an unsettled LAC, and after the BDCA failed to resolve all the issues, they began suggesting that the outstanding problems could be incorporated in a CoC that the two sides would adhere to.

All these agreements understood that there were differing perceptions of the LAC. To paraphrase the witty general: The Chinese have a version of the LAC, and the Indians have their own; and then you have the Chinese understanding of where the Indians place the LAC and an Indian view of the Chinese perception of their LAC.

But these differing perceptions were limited to 14-18 points along the LAC and both sides patrolled to where they saw their LAC. The CBMs were aimed at reducing – if not eliminating – tensions arising from this. But now, the Chinese seem to be suggesting that those agreements are no longer valid – they will not let the Indians do what they have been doing all this while. If this is indeed so, we are in for difficult times.

Quint JUne 7, 2020 

https://www.thequint.com/voices/opinion/india-china-lt-generals-meet-on-bilateral-relations-ladakh-military#read-more

Why Only Blame Nehru For India’s Defeat in 1962 War With China?

Some time in late 1949, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru summoned Indian Army Chief, General KC Cariappa, and asked him whether India could intervene and block a Chinese takeover of Tibet.

The chief’s forthright answer was ‘no’ — given India’s commitments in the west (re: Pakistan) and the disorganised state of the Indian armed forces. He could, at best, spare one battalion (about 900 men) and that too, for deployment at Yadong or Gyantse, across Nathu La, near Sikkim. Subsequently, Nehru sought and got Cariappa’s advice put down on paper in writing.

In 1962, Nothing Could Have Prepared Us for Communist Party of China’s Ruthlessness

To many today, Nehru’s record is marred by the military defeat that India suffered at the hands of China in 1962. Even though many key papers and documents remain classified, Nehru’s China policy is seen as a monumental failure. To an extent, this view is magnified by people whose goal is more ambitious — dismantle the entire legacy of Nehru — his role in fighting for freedom, giving shape to the new republic, building the ‘temples of modern India’ — science and technology institutes, steel and power plants, dams — and giving the country a modern outlook, one that rejects obscurantism and communalism.

As Ranjit Kalha noted in his monumental India-China Boundary Issues, the military option in Tibet was extremely hazardous and could not have been accomplished without British or American help. Both were ‘strongly disinclined’ to assist and, in fact, discouraged India from exercising that option. Neither India nor UK, or any member of the Permanent Five in the UN, acted on Tibet’s request to take up the issue in the UN.

Once the PLA had occupied Tibet, it was a foregone consequence that there would be friction on the border given China’s built-in irredentism.

Given the lie of the land and the lack of capacity on the Indian side, we would be on the receiving end. Nothing could have prepared us for the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the psychotic ruthlessness of its leader Mao Zedong.

1962 Indo-China War: Very Little That India Could Have Done Differently

Nehru’s handling of China was torn between his idealistic vision of a resurgent Asia in which India and China would be friends, and the practical consequences of a major power establishing its authority in the northern borders of India. But once the military option was ruled out, he had few other choices. He sought to promote the notion of an autonomous Tibet, but the Chinese outflanked him by their 17 Point Agreement of May 1951 under which the Tibetans, led by the Dalai Lama, accepted the sovereignty of China.

In retrospect, there is actually little that could have been done differently except that India could have parlayed its recognition of the new People’s Republic of China and the surrender of Indian privileges in Tibet, for Beijing’s recognition of the boundary.

As for the boundary itself, Nehru was clearly outplayed by Zhou Enlai. He strung the Indians along for nearly a decade and only told us in 1959 that in their view, that there was no agreed Sino-Indian border.

Yet, there was also a realistic side to Nehru which quickly acted to consolidate Indian influence across the Himalaya. First, he helped in overthrowing the rule of the Ranas and re-establishing the authority of the Nepali monarchy. The Indo-Nepal Agreement of July 1950 remains a monument to that effort, and successive Nepali leaders have spoken of abrogating it, but have not had the courage to do so

What Nehru Did to Secure Border

India signed defence agreements with Bhutan in August 1949, Sikkim in December 1950. In 1951, Bob Kathing and the Assam Rifles took charge of Tawang, and the long process of consolidating Indian administrative authority, in what was then known as the North East Frontier Agency (NEFA), begun. As Bérénice Guyot-Réchard has shown, this was a huge task given the backwardness of the region.

Nehru took two other steps to secure the border. First, he authorised the Intelligence Bureau to gather intelligence on the China border, and second, he established a committee headed by Lt Gen Himmatsinhji to recommend ways and means to consolidate Indian authority along the entire Sino-Indian border.

Just how staggering the task was is evident from the fact that despite huge effort and expenditure, India even now, 70 years later, does not have a comfortable network of roads across the Himalayas.

Roads remain narrow, are often washed away, and in many parts require tunnelling. Other areas await railway lines that have been planned, but are yet to come up. In the Nehru era, the country could, at best, scratch the surface of the problem, considering it also had to address huge challenges of national consolidation and development as well.

Indian Defeat of 1962 Was As Much In the Mind as Reality

Perhaps the biggest mistake the country made was not to update its assessment of the Chinese in Tibet. In 1950 they clearly did not pose a military threat to India. But by 1960 they did. Yet in this decade, India reduced its military by half and constrained its defence expenditure. It only woke up in 1959 when Zhou Enlai told Nehru that the entire Sino-Indian boundary was yet to be delimited.

A major reason for this was where Nehru’s first ministry had been peopled by the likes of Sardar Patel, BR Ambedkar, and Maulana Azad. Sardar Patel’s passing in December 1950 made Nehru a larger-than-life figure in the government.

Sadly, at two ends of his term as prime minister, he also came under the influence of two men who played a questionable role when it comes to China — Sardar KM Panikkar who was ambassador to China in the 1950-52 period, and VK Krishna Menon who was Minister of Defence from 1957-1962.

Where Panikkar’s advice critically muddled India’s response to China on the border issue, Menon’s flawed handling of the Army in the run up to the war undermined India’s defence posture.

Of course, in all this, we should not forget that the Army itself was a divided house, and neither should our view of the war be shaped by its performance in the Eastern sector alone. In Ladakh, despite overwhelming odds, it stood up and fought well. The Indian defeat of 1962, was as much in the mind as reality. But often that is what defeat is all about

Challenges Nehru Faced Back Then – And Why We Shouldn’t Judge Him So Harshly

It is easy today – when Indian capacities have increased manifold and we are even a nuclear weapons state – to criticise Nehru’s policies. Certainly he made many mistakes, but as it is famously said – hindsight is 20/20. But what he did must be seen in perspective. First, of the challenges he confronted as the prime minister of an entirely new entity called the Republic of India, whose key provinces had been torn apart in a traumatic division.

There were parts of the country, especially in relation to the border with Tibet, where the administrative writ of the country did not even run. 

Second, independence came to India after 150 years of colonial rule that had impoverished the people and kept them in illiteracy and backwardness. Nehru was but one man, a giant among us, no doubt, but still one who was dependent on his colleagues, bureaucrats, institutions like the IB and the Army and so on. Each of them, too, played their own role in the tragedy that India’s China policy led to in October-November 1962.

In assessing the Nehru era, Srinath Raghavan has said that Nehru well understood the “nature and the limits of power,” and that “moral and political legitimacy was as important as economic and military resources.” This is a lesson that the Chinese have probably learnt in relation to India since 1962. Their recourse to military force has left a deep trauma on the country. It has propelled India’s effort to accumulate ‘hard power’ and, as decades have unfolded, it is evident that that power remains focused on China.

Quint May 27, 2020

 https://www.thequint.com/voices/opinion/nehru-china-india-war-1962-military-defeat-lessons-tibet-border-dispute-opportunities#read-more

The overt Chinese message

How must one deconstruct the ongoing Sino-Indian face-off along the Line of Actual Control (LAC)? Are events in Naku La in Sikkim and Pangong Tso, Hot Springs, Galwan Valley in Ladakh connected? Or do they have independent drivers? As usual, the answers are not clear, though we should be clear that the actions are about signalling, not making war.

If the events are connected, they are being directed at the theatre level and may have a larger purpose. But if not, should they not be seen as a part of the normal summer-time patrol rush? This is now more frenetic because both sides have improved their infrastructure and mount more patrols in areas where there is a difference of perception with regard to the LAC.

There is one problem with this thesis. Galwan, Hot Springs and Naku La have not been on the list of the 16-odd places along the LAC where there have historically been differing perceptions of the LAC and consequent ‘transgressions’. These have been addressed by a range of agreements with standard operating procedures laid down to prevent any escalation of tensions. Reports now suggest that the tension in Pangong and Naku La has died down. But the Galwan situation remains a puzzle.

First, let us enter a caveat. China does not have an independent media but India does. And it is important to always question official accounts. Media personnel have no access to the areas we are talking about—Galwan, Hot Springs, north bank of Pangong. What we know is what we are being told by some agency—maybe the intelligence, the Army, or the ITBP. In the past, their approach has sometimes been mendacious and quirky.

In 2009, there were a spate of articles in the Indian media charging China with violating the LAC. In September, ‘official sources’ said Chinese forces had intruded 1.5 km into the Indian side of the LAC near Chumar, and sprayed the word ‘China’ in red paint on many rocks there. In June, two Chinese helicopters had violated the Indian air space near Chumar. A PTI report reportedly based on confidential defence documents said Chinese helicopters entered the Indian air space in Demchok area and the Trig heights in north Ladakh, and air-dropped canned food, which were past their ‘use by’ date.

As for Galwan, India has wrought a qualitative change in the area by completing the Durbuk-Shyok-Daulat Beg Oldi road in April 2019. This is also known as the Sub Sector North road and has strengthened India’s posture in this strategic area greatly. The current stand-off was apparently triggered by India trying to build a branch of this road up to its own side of the LAC in the Galwan Valley.

Alarmist reports saying the Chinese have actually intruded into the Indian side area are difficult to accept, since the LAC is just about 10 km from the road. In any case, the Chinese already dominate parts of the road from the heights on their side of the LAC.

Forces in Galwan are separated by at least 500 metres, though the PLA movements seem designed to block further construction of the Galwan Valley road. But they are not into fist fights, as in the Pangong area; or face to face, as in Doklam. Perhaps this is a result of jangled nerves in the local Chinese HQ which has long been used to dominating the area, or a longer term calculation relating to defending Tibet in relation to growing Indian capabilities in eastern Ladakh and northern Sikkim.

A large part of the problem arises from the shifting Chinese stand on just where the LAC lies in the western sector, where their claims have always been somewhat murky. The Chinese claim line of 1956, reaffirmed by Premier Zhou Enlai in 1959, showed both Chip Chap and Galwan rivers flowing into the Shyok, outside their claim. In 1960, they expanded their claim and occupied the Chip Chap and Galwan river valleys. A similar move led to the occupation of Siri Jap on the Pangong Tso. Indians set up posts to counter them, but these were not tenable and wiped out in the 1962 War, after which China occupied another 5,000 sq km along the LAC.

There is a possibility that all the events — in Sikkim, Pangong, Galwan — have another driver: Covid tensions between the US and China. Last week, somewhat uncharacteristically, its outgoing top diplomat for the region, Alice Wells, said the tensions were a reminder of the ‘threat’ posed by China. She added that whether it was the South China Sea of the border with India, ‘we continue to see provocations and disturbing behaviour by China’.

Hit by Covid, and the economic disruption, the Chinese are rattled by the increasingly hostile US. In the past couple of months, temperatures in the South China Sea have been rising; now, US actions, triggered by the approaching elections, have pumped anti-China rhetoric to a dangerously high level. So, Beijing could well be doing some signalling, warning New Delhi to stay away from whatever Washington has to offer. The actions across the LAC could well be a signal to suggest that India, too, has many immediate vulnerabilities and getting involved in any US-led venture could be counterproductive.

Tribune May 26, 2020

https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/comment/the-overt-chinese-message-89980

Heart of darkness: Help for millions of migrant workers has been mangled in a bureaucratic maze

The Covid pandemic has revealed India’s heart of darkness, but it has also shown us its soul. It’s residing in heroes like Jyoti Kumari, Anirudh Jhare and Mohammed Yakoob and scores of other unnamed people who set aside their own travail to give succour to fellow migrants hard scrabbling their way home.

Jyoti cycled 1,200 km from Delhi to Darbhanga, with her injured father as the pillion. Instead of heading home to Nagpur, Anirudh pushed disabled Gayoor Ahmed’s tricycle for five days to his home in UP. Pushed off a truck ferrying migrants, Yakoob refused to abandon the dying Amrit Kumar. No help was at hand as Yakoob cradled Amrit till his end.

Darkness is what is not easily visible. It is the casualness with which the country was shut down in a couple of hours, putting millions of people through an ordeal that will be remembered for generations. Whether it delayed Covid, remains a matter of debate.

The initial government fumble in handling Covid is understandable. This is a ‘novel’ or new virus, and its effects not clearly known. But by March 25, there had been enough time to think of options and consequences. Perhaps our allegedly grounded leaders and their allegedly experienced bureaucrats have no inkling of the role of tens of millions of migrant workers in the economy of their continent-sized country. Canute-like on March 29, the Union home secretary ordered the migrants to stop. Businesses were asked to pay them full salary and landlords ordered not to demand rent.

That was in the make-believe world of North Block. In the real world, it was each man for himself. For small businesses it was sink or swim. For millions of workers it was about food and rent, here and now. Beyond the fatwa there was little else. So the migrants decided to vote with their feet: Better to starve and die at home than in some distant shanty, uncared and unmourned.

So just a step beyond darkness is the emptiness you can find in the bureaucratic soul whose directive to help migrants arrived as late as May 15 and who earlier had no compunction charging destitute people rail fare with a “corona tax”, to reach home. ‘Empathy’ and ‘compassion’ are not in the common vocabulary of our languages. They do not quite translate to daya and sahanubhooti, that are more about charity than self-realisation. But even charity, with notable exceptions, has been absent.

Those who have lost everything and are still trying desperately to reach a place far away called home have been lathi charged, blocked at borders, cheated, sent to camps and generally treated as subhumans. In a recent interview Naushad Forbes, the former CII president, suggests that had government accepted a proposal to guarantee loans to companies by banks to fund wages during the lockdown and also transferred money directly into their Jan Dhan accounts on a periodic basis, the workers would have been reassured.

Now the government has come up with an allegedly vast stimulus, but it’s mainly for the long run when, as Keynes said, we’ll be dead. Schemes have been announced for migrants, though how they’ll work is a mystery. There has been some black humour as well – the labour reforms of UP and MP.  Given their hopeless physical and human infrastructure, do they seriously think they will attract Cisco or Apple by stiffing their already benighted workforce?

Orders have borne no relation to reality or logic. Restart industry, but go to jail if anyone gets infected. Fifty people can attend a wedding, but only 20 a funeral. Go through stringent social distancing till you reach your seat in the aircraft and then be jam-packed for the flight. But if you’re looking for a true blue bureaucratic maze, look no further than the shambolic evacuation of migrants by rail – which is only halfway done.

Times of India May 22, 2020

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/toi-edit-page/heart-of-darkness-help-for-millions-of-migrant-workers-has-been-mangled-in-a-bureaucratic-maze/

Modi Must Get India Out of COVID Mess to Make Foreign Policy Work

It is now impossible to assess how Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s foreign policy has fared in the first year of his second term, without factoring in the COVID-19 global pandemic. There cannot but be a permanent question mark over what it may have been, and what it is and will be.

There are, of course, many metrics to measure the Modi foreign policy of the past year. How we fared with friends, enemies and neighbours, whether we attracted foreign investors, and, in the specific case of India of the past year — how we dealt with the fallout of controversial domestic policy decisions like abrogating Article 370 in Kashmir and the controversy surrounding the Citizenship Amendment Act and the National Register of Citizens.

Internationalising the Kashmir Issue

Indian foreign policy had to face considerable headwinds, first with the Kashmir issue. The bifurcation of the state and indeed, its demotion to Union Territory status in August 2019, met with adverse response across the world, especially on account of the large scale detentions and the crackdown on information. New Delhi undertook a major diplomatic outreach which met with, at best, mixed results. There was an unprecedented closed door meeting of the UN Security Council, and the European Parliament also discussed the issue. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar traveled to China, Europe and the US, other ministers traveled to West Asia, and the PM personally spoke to President Trump, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel termed the situation ‘unsustainable’ during a visit to New Delhi.

In the past year, we have seen the US Congress Committees get active on the issue and the US President repeatedly offer to mediate between India and Pakistan. Mediation offers came from other friends as well — UAE, Saudi Arabia, Norway and Russia.

The CAA, which was passed in December 2019, led to widespread protests across the country as it was seen as a deliberate move to target Muslims in the subsequent NRC. The protests led to a brutal police crackdown in UP and several university campuses, and the arrests of hundreds of people. Beyond the violence, the issue was now being seen as a matter of religious freedom. To top it all, serious riots broke out in Delhi, even as President Trump was in the process of winding up his visit. He obliquely referred to this when he deflected a question on the CAA at a press briefing, even while implying he did raise the question of religious freedom in India with Modi

Post-CAA Crisis Face-Saving Exercise & India’s Established Foreign Policy Agenda

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres condemned the violence and “alleged use of excessive force by security forces” and called on the government to respect the freedom of expression and peaceful assembly. Bangladesh PM Sheikh Hasina felt that the CAA was “not necessary,” even though she accepted that these were internal issues of India. There was sharp criticism from Malaysia, Turkey, Kuwait, Afghanistan, as well as the European Union. The research arm of the US Congress said in a report that the CAA, in tandem with the NRC, could affect “the status of India’s large Muslim minority.”Countries that had viewed India as a rising economic power, a rational actor promoting global peace and stability, were taken aback by the developments. New Delhi, which was envied even by China for its democratic and pluralistic credentials, was suddenly on the back foot. Instead of promoting India as an investment destination, ministers were forced to explain our domestic policies in capitals around the world.

 Beyond these issues was also India’s established foreign policy agenda — managing ties with China, maintaining the tempo of improved relations with the US, keeping ties with Europe and Russia well oiled, providing greater depth to India’s economic partnership with the Gulf countries, keeping India’s neighbours in line, and playing a larger role in the world stage – preparatory to a stint as non-permanent member of the UN Security Council next year.

India’s Continuing Inability to Deal With Pakistan

But, perhaps because of the domestic protests and, of course, COVID, nothing has really stood out, except the somewhat florid ‘Namaste Trump’ tamasha in Ahmedabad. Even the Chennai informal summit between Modi and Xi Jinping of China was lowkey, if useful.

But if there was something striking in a negative way, it was the continuing failure of India’s ability to deal with Pakistan, or even with other important neighbours like Nepal.

A unique metric in judging Modi’s foreign policy always is his numerous foreign visits. Outbound visits, barring the months of December and January, have been a regular feature of Modi’s first term. In the first six months of the new term, Modi’s performance was par for the course. Ten foreign visits which virtually took him around the world —Brazil, US, Russia, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Maldives and Sri Lanka, France, UAE and Bahrain, Thailand, Bhutan and Kyrgyzstan.

This year, even as he was rounding off the winter inbound visit season with the Trump visit, COVID-19 was spreading its tentacles. Visits to Europe for the EU summit, a stopover in Egypt, an important visit to Bangladesh, the Victory Day parade he was to have witnessed in Moscow in early May, were all cancelled.

Various multilateral summits such as those of the SCO, BRICS and G20 and a possible participation at the G-7 summit hosted this year by his ‘friend’ Donald Trump are on the horizon, but there is a question mark before all of them

Future of Indian Prosperity Depends On FDI & Foreign Trade

There is only one major challenge in the coming year for Modi where domestic and foreign policy intersect — getting India out of the COVID quagmire. Principal among these challenges is to ensure that his implementation matches his words. His government has laid out a vast reform agenda and he has spoken of a “quantum jump” for the economy through the bold reforms announced “to create a self-reliant India.”

Like it or not, the future of Indian prosperity still rests on the tried and tested formula of FDI and foreign trade.

For that, wooing foreign companies and governments is an important thing, but far, far more important are domestic changes that will create the kind of pool of trained and disciplined labour that can deliver on the promises.

Six years ago, as Sadanand Dhume pointed out in the WSJ, the same Modi announced his ‘Make in India’ scheme of raising manufacturing to 25 percent of India’s GDP. The reality today? Between then and 2018, manufacturing has actually declined from 15.1 per ent to 14.8 percent of the GDP.

So, this change will not come by ringing declarations, clanging thalis, or lighting candles, but patient and systematic work to transform the every day lives of Indians, make them better educated and in better health.

This project will require a decade and more to finish, if we are lucky

US-China ‘Estrangement’: An Opportunity & Danger For India

Prominent in the emerging foreign policy agenda is the fallout of the US estrangement with China. It provides both an opportunity, as well as danger for India. The US is mooting the Economic Prosperity Network (EPN) of like-minded countries, organisations and businesses to re-jig global supply chains away from China.

Though India is mentioned as a major component of this EPN, it’s not clear whether New Delhi is game for the kind of standards that the US will insist on the areas of digital business, energy and infrastructure, trade, education and commerce.

Our level of readiness made us balk at membership in the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). The US is unlikely to give India the kind of economic space it gave to China in the 1980s and 1990s, and whatever be the case, a new American ‘technosphere’ with re-constituted supply chains will take a decade or so to stabilise, if it actually gets off the ground.

The dangers to India from adopting an adversarial posture towards China are mainly geopolitical.

Given our poor record of dealing with our other neighbours, Beijing’s open hostility could prove to be much more costly. There will also be opportunity costs to pay in the area of economic relations with what could be the rival ‘technosphere’.

Quint May 19, 2020

 https://www.thequint.com/voices/opinion/indian-foreign-policy-covid-modi-govt-china-united-states-pakistan-relations-diplomacy#read-more

Why is China Building Its Nuclear Arsenal As World Fights COVID?

On May 8, the editor-in-chief of the Chinese Communist Party newspaper Global Times, Hu Xijin commented in his weibo post that “China needs to expand the number of its nuclear warheads to 1,000 in a relatively short time and procure at least 100 DF 41 strategic missiles.” This was needed to “curb US strategic ambitions and impulses towards China,” he added. The discussion in the weibo (Google translation) appeared to support the view, though some did mention the fate of the Soviet Union which got into an unrestrained competition with the US.

The next day, in a longer editorial comment in Global Times, Hu, noted that while in the past the numbers of Chinese weapons were enough for a nuclear deterrent, they may not be sufficient to deal with the US government’s “strategic ambitions and bullying impulse” against China.

Snapshot

• The numbers of Chinese nuclear weapons may not be sufficient to deal with the US government’s “strategic ambitions and bullying impulse” against China.
  
• China has 290 warheads, as against 6,000 each held by Russia and the US.
  
• The debate on capacity expanision in China could well be a trial balloon floated by the government itself.
  
• The last remaining arms control agreement—New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), that limits long range nuclear weapons—is set to expire in February 2021.
  
• For India, a fledgling nuclear weapons state, such developments can only bode ill.

China Is Concerned About the Nuclear Arsenal of the US

Hu argued that in the past, China was seen as a second rate country by the US, but today it had recognized it as a strategic competitor. Since Trump took office, he noted, China was the target of US “nuclear arsenal investment.” If China continued in its old thinking, it “would bring us a tragedy.”

An accompanying article in Global Times the same day featured a noted Chinese military expert Song Zhongping as saying that the US was no longer seeing nuclear weapons for just deterrence. They are “now viewing them as deployable [for use] on the battlefield”. He was referring to the US decision to field low-yield nuclear weapons in February this year.

Chinese experts like Song and Wei Dongxu saw the possibility of conflict spilling over from what was happening in Taiwan and the South China Sea. The article noted Chinese nuclear force modernization in the form of the fielding of the DF-41 road-mobile missile, the testing of the Type 096 nuclear submarine and its companion JL-3 missile and the development of the H-20 stealth bomber. The issue that seems to be bothering Beijing is that of numbers. As of now estimates say that China has 290 warheads, as against 6,000 each held by Russia and the US, but of which only 1500 or so are active.On the same day, asked to comment on Hu’s remarks, Hua CHunying, the official spokeswoman of the foreign ministry said that those were Hu Xijin’s personal views “and he enjoys freedom of speech in China.” Pointing to Beijing’s No First Use policy on the employment of nuclear weapons, she said it was the duty of the big nuclear powers (US and Russia) “ to further reduce their arsenal drastically”.

The ‘Moderate’ Chinese

Other more moderate voices have also spoken up. On Monday, Tsinghua Professor and top nuclear expert Li Bin, wrote in The Paper that the size of the arsenal is a matter of scientific calculation and that there was nothing in Hu’s argument that was specific as to why a thousand more weapons were needed. He offered a four point algorithm that would help reach that number of weapons that were “enough.” There could be circumstances, arising out of new roles for the weapons, or technical issues, which deemed the number insufficient. But people like Hu, needed to point out what these were instead of deriving some new numbers “intuitively.’

All this debate in China could well be a trial balloon floated by the government itself. The reasons are not too far to seek. Besides the February 2020 decision to field low-yield nuclear weapons, the US is also moving to rope in China for any future arms control talks.

US-Russia Conflict is Passé, It’s All About China Now

Nine months from now, in February 2021, the last remaining arms control agreement—New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), that limits long range nuclear weapons—is set to expire. The US has been delaying the talks for its extension because it now wants China to be part of the treaty as well.

The US walked out the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) with Russia in August 2019 claiming that Russia was violating the treaty by deploying a new type of cruise missile, the 9M729 which violated the provisions of the treaty .

Russia, in turn, blamed the developments for the US abandonment of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002. But the subtext of the decision was China which has hundreds of what would be INF class missiles on the mainland, ones that can hit Taiwan, Japan, India and the US territory of Guam.

Both the INF and New START were essentially US-Russia agreements. Now, with China looming larger in US calculations, it wants Beijing to also join up to any future agreements, even though the Russians are game to renew New START for another five years. China legitimately claims that in terms of numbers, its arsenal is simply too small for it to be involved

New Trends in Nuclear Capacity Building Dangerous For India

New START now restricts deployed strategic warheads and bombs held by the US and Russia to 1550, a steep reduction from the 6,000 cap of START 1, though the warheads have been “retired” not scrapped. China is reported to have some 290 strategic warheads.

While there is no confirmation of Chinese numbers, the US NSA Robert O’Brien believes that they are “moving ahead very quickly on every type of advanced platform and weapons system known to man.” China itself acknowledges that it is modernizing its arsenal, but does that mean numbers or delivery systems ?

Old treaties expiring is bad enough, as is modernization of the weapons delivery system. But even more dangerous are the new emerging threats in the nuclear area—the use of AI and hypersonic missiles. For India, a fledgling nuclear weapons state, such trends can only bode ill.

Quint May 15, 2020    https://www.thequint.com/voices/opinion/china-us-nuclear-weapons-warhead-russia-treaty