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Professor, strategic thinker, author and commentator

A Chance To Reshape Pakistan

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A Chance To Reshape Pakistan
(c) Far Eastern Economic Review

by Brahma Chellaney

The devastating earthquake that struck Pakistan and Afghanistan on October 8, 2005, not only claimed tens of thousands of lives, including 87,000 in the Pakistan-controlled state of Kashmir alone. By devastating Kashmir and northern Pakistan, the quake also hit a principal recruiting ground and logistical center for global terrorists. It leveled a number of terrorist training camps in a region that serves as the last main refuge of al Qaeda—and quite possibly the hiding place of Osama bin Laden.

The earthquake in Pakistan is an example of how a natural disaster does not have to be an unmitigated tragedy; it can provide the shock needed to trigger political change and economic revitalization. In this particular region, both are desperately needed. Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf has emphasized only one opportunity afforded by the quake—resolving the intractable territorial dispute over Kashmir waged by Pakistan and India—but this calamity offers a more fundamental opening for Pakistan to chart a better future for itself. This future can be realized through wise use of aid money being offered for the region’s reconstruction.

Northern Pakistan has become crucial not only to India and Pakistan but also to the global war on terrorism. As a tool in this war, a huge amount of international aid is flowing into quake-ravaged northern Pakistan, giving donors the potential leverage to steer the region away from terrorism. Besides disbursing at least $160 million in emergency relief aid, international donors have pledged $5.8 billion for long-term reconstruction.

As another component of the international relief effort, the United States has sent 1,200 troops to the militant strongholds in the mountains of northern Pakistan, and NATO is sending up to 1,000 more. Donors to the relief effort can be assured that that their aid, at a minimum, will not be used to rebuild the terrorist infrastructure destroyed by the forces of nature. But entirely rooting out terrorism in Pakistan is a problem that seems as enormous as the sums being disbursed there.

Hobbled by military rule, militant Islam, endemic corruption and dependency on foreign aid, Pakistan remains a main breeding ground of global terror and the likely hideout of the most wanted terrorists. Leading fugitives captured in Pakistan in recent years include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, al Qaeda’s third in command; Abu Zubeida, the network’s operations chief; Yasser Jazeeri; Abu Faraj Farj; and Ramzi Binalshibh, one of the 9/11 coordinators. These al Qaeda leaders were found living in cities across Pakistan.

In a television interview last August, Pakistani Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri boasted that his country had not handed over “a single Pakistani” to the United States, and that all the captured al Qaeda figures transferred to U.S. authorities were foreigners. However, Pakistan’s home-grown, al Qaeda-linked Islamist militias, like the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, continue to operate openly in the northern parts of Pakistan, despite an official ban on their activities.

Ominously, Pakistan has emerged as a common thread in the investigations of most acts of international terrorism. As Gen. Musharraf himself acknowledged July 21 in an address to the nation after the London subway bombings, “Wherever these extremist or terrorist incidents occur in the world, a direct or indirect connection is established with this country.”

For the U.S. and other NATO states, the quake relief and reconstruction in Pakistan offers an important opportunity to win hearts and minds in a citadel of anti-Western radicalism—a country that the Congressional Research Service warned is “probably the most anti-American country in the world right now.” After all, U.S. tsunami relief helped change attitudes in another Muslim country, Indonesia, where survivors in the province of Aceh still are grateful for the help they got from America but not from Islamic separatists.

But unlike in Aceh, Islamists and underground militants were quick to begin rescue-and-relief operations in the quake-battered parts of Pakistan even before the state could respond. In fact, extremist organizations, as The Wall Street Journal reported on Nov. 23, are now openly competing with international teams in relief work, with the lead being taken by Jamaat-ud-Dawa (an offshoot of the Lashkar-e-Taiba), labeled a terrorist organization by the U.S. and India and banned by Gen. Musharraf in 2002.

Through such dedicated work, the Islamists have boosted their popular image at the expense of the ruling military, whose sluggish and muddled initial response belied its claim to being Pakistan’s most reliable institution. Even in Islamabad, it took military rescuers two hours to reach the only building that collapsed, with just one crane available in the entire city.

Now, children orphaned by the quake are being “adopted” by Lashkar-e-Taiba and other underground groups, which impart what the Jamaat ud-Dawa calls “Islamic education.” In the years ahead, these youths will swell the ranks of jihadists, who pursue violence as a sanctified tool of religion and a path to redemption.

The spread of the jihad culture in Pakistan, which one American analyst described as “Colombia with nukes and Islamic fundamentalism,” poses serious regional and international challenges, not least because of the shifting poses of Gen. Musharraf in regard to the state’s commitment to antiterrorism. Pakistan’s dictator has since 9/11 ridden two horses—extending selective antiterror cooperation to the United States, symbolized by the high-profile al Qaeda arrests, and maintaining a political alliance with Islamist parties at home. In this way Gen. Musharraf has managed to pocket billions of dollars in U.S. aid and at the same time helped to promote the religious far right.

The terrorism scourge in Pakistan emanates not so much from the mullahs as from whiskey-drinking generals. The Pakistani military reared the forces of jihad, fathered the Taliban, and maintained long-standing ties (through its infamous Inter-Services Intelligence agency) with terrorist groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba. Yet by passing the blame for the disastrous jihadist military policies to the mullahs they control, Gen. Musharraf and his fellow generals have made many outsiders believe that the key is to contain the religious fringe, not the military. Their finger-pointing has only bred resentment among the Islamists, leading to the first cracks in the military-mullah alliance that has long dominated Pakistan. Gen. Musharraf’s standing at home has now been further damaged by his inept handling of the disaster.

The quake relief operations underscore the need for quiet international action to help secure Pakistan’s peaceful future by encouraging Gen. Musharraf to uproot the terrorist complex and take measured steps toward democracy. These relief operations, involving many foreign governments, 237 NGOs and the United Nations, can aid the global war on terror by helping the injured and the displaced in what remains the last bastion of transnational terrorists. Such is the remoteness of these quake-hit militant strongholds that, according to Jan Egeland, the U.N.’s top relief envoy, thousands of residents in higher areas risk freezing to death as they have not received any help even with the harsh winter setting in.

The Pakistani regime has said it is not in a position to finance the massive cost of reconstruction and rehabilitation. Yet, according to the military commander of the new U.S. Disaster Assistance Center in Islamabad, Navy Rear Adm. Michael LeFever, Pakistan’s recovery demands a long-term reconstruction phase after the current relief efforts. That means Pakistan will have to rely on outside funds for reconstruction and grant foreign teams and troops access to the militant areas.

At an international donors’ conference in Islamabad last month, Pakistan surpassed its target for funds for long-term reconstruction. The U.S. has tripled its commitment to $510 million, including $100 million in cash. The biggest donor state, however, is Saudi Arabia, which has promised $573 million. Other pledges include $1 billion each by the World Bank and Asian Development Bank, $501 million by the Islamic Development Bank and $270 million by the European Union. India, which declined international aid in its own section of quake-damaged Kashmir, has donated $25 million. The international effort is aimed at building civil infrastructure of a kind that never existed in the quake-torn areas.

That makes it vital to ensure that international reconstruction aid is not illicitly diverted to terrorist groups or employed to rebuild the “hate factories” that churn out trained, committed extremists. The aid needs to be used to help foster development and societal deradicalization in an area steeped in religious bigotry and teeming with Islamists of different hues and nationalities. This can only be ensured through close international monitoring and accountability in the disbursement of funds.

Such necessity has been underlined by the role of Islamist groups and their young gun-toting members in quake relief. According to Pakistani and U.S. media accounts, militants belonging to banned groups and wielding Kalashnikov rifles and walkie-talkies are in charge of a number of field relief camps in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir. The groups include the Jaish-e-Mohammed and Al Rasheed Trust, a Karachi-based charity accused by the United States of channeling funds to al Qaeda. With even wounded army soldiers reportedly seeking treatment at militant-run field clinics, the state appears to have ceded ground to the extremists.

Yet it is true that the disaster has opened the first real opportunity for the international community since the launch of the global war on terror to help Pakistan drain its terrorism-breeding swamps. Helping drain those swamps, however, will not be an easy task, given the way the culture of jihad is now deeply woven into the national fabric of Pakistan—as seen, for instance, in the culture of some of its 4,000 madrassas, which are not just seats of medieval theology but also schools imparting training in arms. What has made this radicalization so difficult to reverse is that it claims the imprimatur of religion.

Underground groups, despite their reportedly heavy quake-related losses, have not slowed their violent activities, as is evident from the killing of dozens of their members by Indian border troops while attempting to sneak across the frontier since the quake. What is needed is not just action against such groups, which keep changing their names, but the dismantlement of the infrastructure of terror in Pakistan. But that process can begin only if Islamabad first stops Islamist charities linked to known terrorist organizations from winning the battle for hearts and minds through their prominent role in quake relief.

Pakistan’s fate has always been in the hands of three As — Allah, army and America. Now Allah’s wrath has wrought ruin on the playground of terrorists, and the army has a new opportunity, with America’s support and international aid, to put an end to the stricken region’s role in fomenting global jihad. That will be a concession not to the outside world but to Pakistan’s own future as a viable, modern nation state.

The writer is professor of strategic studies at the privately funded Center for Policy Research in New Delhi.

http://www.feer.com/articles1/2005/0512/p047.html 

 

Will Pakistan Pull Back From the Brink?

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Charting a better future for Pakistan

Brahma Chellaney

(c) 2007 South African Institute of International Affair, Johannesburg

The central issue that will determine regional peace and security in southern Asia is not so much the state of the India-Pakistan relationship as what will be Pakistan’s future. Will Pakistan emerge as a stable, moderate, Muslim state? Or will it sink deeper into militarism, extremism and fundamentalism?

How the Pakistani state evolves in the coming years will have an important bearing not just on regional security but also on international security. Appellations that Pakistan has earned in recent years, such as “Problemistan”, “Terroristan” and “Al Qaidastan”, have underlined its threat potential to international security. From South Africa to Europe, and from India to the United States, Pakistan’s future has become an important issue for one’s own security.  

Many states face serious internal challenges or conflicts. As the main sanctuary of Al Qaeda today, Pakistan, however, is in a class of its own. Even if the world ignores the civil conflict in Sri Lanka, for example, there are no implications for international security. But Pakistan you cannot ignore.

Ominously, Pakistan has emerged as a common thread in the investigations of most acts of international terrorism. As Pakistani ruler Gen. Pervez Musharraf himself acknowledged on July 21, 2005, in an address to the nation after the London subway bombings, “Wherever these extremist or terrorist incidents occur in the world, a direct or indirect connection is established with this country”. The United States may have roped in Islamabad, at the point of gun, as an ally in its war on terror but, as U.S. National Security Adviser Steven Hadley has said, Pakistan is also the “site where the war is being carried about”.

Thus, the larger world has an important stake in Pakistan’s future — in ensuring that it emerges as a moderate, de-radicalized, stable state. And because the world has such an important stake, it also has the responsibility to contribute to the stabilization and moderation of Pakistan. This is a responsibility of the international community as much as it is of the Pakistani people.

The theme of this session is fitting. South Africa has a role, and ought to play that role. Closer cooperation with Islamabad will give South Africa the space and influence to positively influence Pakistan’s decisions and actions. I have always believed that the path to positively influencing a nation lies through cooperation, not sanctions.  

A second point to note is that a military dictatorship that is part of the problem internally and regionally cannot be part of the solution.

If democracy is good for the peoples of South Africa, India and the United States, it is also good for the people of Pakistan. That is why the short-sighted, politically expedient U.S. policy of propping up a one-man junta in Pakistan is so counterproductive. It has made a difficult situation worse, internally and regionally.

General Musharraf oils his dictatorship with American aid, as did the previous Pakistani dictator, Gen. Zia ul-Haq, who spurred on the rise of the forces of jihad.

Pakistan’s problems have aggravated under military rule. Military rule has not contributed to the stability of Pakistan, or to keeping corruption under check, or to controlling the forces of jihad. In fact, the reverse is true.  

For example, the 2006 Failed States Index of The Fund for Peace, Washington, ranks Pakistan as the 9th most dysfunctional state in the world, even ahead of North Korea. No state with a well-developed civil society has ever become or faced the danger of becoming dysfunctional.

As the latest survey of Transparency International reveals, two-thirds of Pakistanis polled regard the present military regime as the most corrupt the nation has had since experiments with democracy began in 1988 following the previous military dictator’s death in a mysterious plane crash. In Transparency International’s annual Corruption Perceptions Index, Pakistan has slipped from the 87th position in 1999, when Musharraf grabbed power, to the 142nd rank out of the 163 listed countries. Pakistan is now identified as among the most corrupt states in Asia, along with Bangladesh and Burma (Myanmar).

Even Pakistani writers are beginning to acknowledge that at the taproot of Pakistan’s problems lies military rule. For example, columnist Ayaz Amir, writing in the Karachi-based Dawn newspaper on November 3, 2006, had this to say: “Extremism is not just a problem in the tribal areas. Strange notions of jihad and strategic depth lurk in the mindset of the army command and the intelligence services. Rooting out these notions requires not the spurious nostrums of moderation at which Gen Musharraf has become so skilful but a move towards a genuine democracy in which the army’s sole function should be to look after national defence and confine itself strictly to its role under the Constitution. Military rule has been the mother of extremism in Pakistan”. He went on to urge that, “We must return to being a normal country…”

The scourge of Pakistani terrorism emanates not so much from the mullahs as from whiskey-drinking generals who reared the forces of jihad and fathered the Taliban. Yet by passing the blame for their disastrous jihad policy to their mullah puppets, General Musharraf and his fellow generals have made many outsiders believe that the key is to contain the religious fringe, not the puppeteers. 

The reality is that without the military’s vice-like grip on power being broken and the rogue Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency being cut to size, there can be no real, sustained movement in Pakistan toward democracy, or against terrorism, or to stop the illicit flow of narcotics. Narco-terrorism is a phenomenon largely of the military’s creation that dates back to the Afghan war of the 1980s, when the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency used the ISI as a conduit for funnelling arms to the anti-Soviet guerrillas.

The Lashkar-e-Taiba and several other terrorist groups have enjoyed long-standing ties with the Pakistani military, especially with the ISI, which reared them as part of both its covert war in Indian Kashmir and its rearing of the Taliban in Afghanistan. The ubiquitous ISI has an octopus-like reach within Pakistan and is seen as a state within a state. According to the report of the bipartisan 9/11 commission in the United States, the ISI "was in bed with Osama bin Laden”.  

As for stability on the subcontinent, the only occasions when India and Pakistan have come close to peace have been during the brief periods of democratic rule in Islamabad.

In the absence of participatory processes, military rule has helped engender a pressure cooker-type syndrome in Pakistani society. And regionally, such rule has had negative fallout. Because the military has a vested interest in keeping up regional tensions in order to protect its monopoly on power and its special privileges and prerogatives in society, military rule hasn’t helped build stable relations with India. Since Musharraf came to power, Pakistan and India have come twice close to war.  

Like the 2002 referendum on Musharraf’s self-declared presidency, the 2007 election will be primarily aimed at legitimizing this General’s rule. The 2002 referendum was designed to give him a five-year presidential term. The 2007 election will be aimed at further extending his presidency, with the difference that, unlike the referendum, an election has to have more than one candidate. As former ISI Director-General Asad Durrani candidly told a gathering at the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on October 18, 2006, the Pakistan Army has had over the years to rig polls to perpetuate its hold on power.

A key lesson from the rise of international terrorism is that acts of terror spring from religious and political extremism nurtured by autocratic systems and the suppression of democratic voices. Export-oriented jihad structures do not flourish in democratic societies. Terrorism not only threatens the free, secular world but also springs from the rejection of democracy and secularism.   

Helping drain the terrorism-breeding swamps in Pakistan will not be easy task, given the way the culture of jihad is now deeply woven into the national fabric of Pakistan. For instance, some of the thousands of Pakistani madrassas are not just seats of medieval theology but also schools imparting training in arms. What has made this radicalization so difficult to reverse is that it claims the imprimatur of religion.

Yet, the only possible counter to this trend is the development of a robust civil society that can act as a check on deleterious undercurrents. A well-developed civil society, however, can only emerge on the back of sustained democracy.  

Democratization of Pakistan will cause short-term pain, but bring enduring, long-term benefits. Participatory processes, by empowering the masses and allowing issues to be sorted out at the ballot box, will help establish a safety valve in society — a necessary element in initiating the process of de-radicalization.

Pakistan cannot put off for forever its evolution towards a democratic polity. Like Pakistan, South Korea from the beginning was troubled by militarism, which did not allow democracy to take roots. Yet, in a relatively short period, South Korea has made the transition from military rule to democracy, and is building a vibrant civil society. Pakistan can do likewise.  

There is a role for South Africa to play here, in presenting its own evolution as a true democracy since 1994 and how Pakistan can draw the right lessons from that experience. South Africa is one of the few countries in Africa never to have had a coup d’état. In fact, South Africa has shown through its own experiences that democracy is a powerful moderating force in society, blunting the rough edges and marginalizing the hard-line constituencies.

A third point, which flows from the earlier points, is that Pakistan needs to get away from its self-injurious fixation on Kashmir in order to be able to chart a better future for itself. That is necessary for its own good, for the process of nation-building, and for rapidly modernizing its economy.  

Pakistan has paid a heavy price for its fixation on Kashmir, with its Kashmir policy saddling the state with a huge burden that it can neither continue to bear nor easily discard. After all, the Kashmir issue has helped define Pakistan’s identity and served as the glue to keep its fractious society together. Moreover, the issue is central to the agendas of the military and the Islamists. Thanks to those agendas, the whole region has been made to pay a heavy price.

Amin M. Lakhani, a Pakistani-American writer, summed it up in the following words in an article, “Nineteen ‘Kashmirs’ and Counting”, published on September 16, 2002, in the Wall Street Journal: “Pakistan’s singular obsession with Kashmir, subordinating it to all other priorities, has been self-defeating. Domestically, it has thwarted Pakistan’s economic, social and political development. Internationally, this single-minded agenda has diminished the country’s stature and smeared its reputation. Even its spiritual development has been warped by the proliferation, popularization and increase in relative power — post-Partition — of religious groups that represent an intolerant, militant and gender-biased interpretation of Islam. In one word, Pakistan’s obsession with Kashmir has been suicidal, albeit of a time-delayed variety. More importantly, the obsession with Kashmir has prevented the acknowledgement, and hence resolution, of innumerable domestic problems, each more critical and bigger than Kashmir. At a minimum, there are 19 Kashmir-sized problems in Pakistan”.    

Islamabad still asserts its claim over the Indian-administered, Muslim-dominated Kashmir Valley on the basis of religion although there are more Muslims in India now than in the homeland that was created for subcontinental Muslims — Pakistan. The loss of the raison d’être of its very creation has only spurred Pakistan to adopt a more hard-line approach on Kashmir.

Changing the territorial status quo in Kashmir may be dear to the Pakistani military, but preserving the status quo is equally dear to most Indian Muslims opposed to another partition based on religion. India’s future as a secular, united state is very much linked to averting another partition of the country on the basis of religion. As a melting pot of different cultures that is home to all religions (it is home to among the oldest Jewish, Christian and Muslim communities in the world), India celebrates unity in diversity. South Africa, as “The Rainbow Nation” that cherishes its multicultural diversity, will understand that. It will recognize the danger that another partition of India on the basis of religion could unravel the Indian rainbow.  

In a recent commentary posted on the Stimson Center’s website, American analyst Michael Krepon has said: “Every terrorist attack that now occurs … clarifies that the ‘core issue’ on the subcontinent has become terrorism, not Kashmir.  And because of Pakistan’s choice of a Kashmir policy that relies so heavily on proxy violence to leverage India, Islamabad has lost the presumption of innocence whenever horrific acts of well-coordinated terror are directed against India”.

The ugly fact is that Pakistan is the main sanctuary of Al Qaeda and the Taliban, and openly hosts terror groups waging campaigns against India. Consequently there is a presumption of guilt on Pakistan’s part when major acts of terror occur in India, as they have from New Delhi to Bangalore, and from Benares to Mumbai, just since October 2005.  

Indeed, every major terrorist act against India only helps to underscore the vulnerability of the Indo-Pakistan normalization process. The process faces the real prospect that acts of terror every now and then can negate the modest progress that has been made in building better Indo-Pakistan relations. A major new impulse in bilateral relations is difficult to sustain as long as terrorist attacks continue unabated. Yet, there can be no two views about the need to create stable equilibrium in Indo-Pakistan relations.

There is always room for a constructive third-party role for South Africa in this part of the world. Of course, any facilitator has to appreciate the limits of third-party role, lest it burn its hands.  

When an issue is irresolvable, which is the case with Kashmir, then efforts ought to be directed at managing the dispute. The insistence that a Kashmir “solution” be worked out actually makes things more difficult. If the issue were managed well, then it will sort out, one way or the other, in the future.

It needs to be remembered that in the competition between status quoist India and irredentist Pakistan, Kashmir serves merely as the symbol, not the cause, of the subcontinental hostilities, which are rooted in complex factors, including history, religion and the politics of revenge. As Musharraf himself acknowledged in 1999, Pakistan’s low-intensity conflict with India would continue even if a solution to Kashmir were magically found. Since 1990, Pakistan-aided jihadists have ethnically cleansed much of Indian Kashmir of its Hindu minority, with several hundreds of thousands of those ousted continue to live in refugee camps in other parts of India. This ranks as one of the most successful ethnic-cleansing campaigns in modern world history.   

Underscoring the complexity of the issue, one-fifth of the original state of Jammu and Kashmir is under China’s occupation. This includes the areas seized from India by China and the small slice of its own Kashmir that Pakistan ceded to Beijing in 1963 without offering even an explanation till date for the transfer.

 

Against this background, it is easier to talk about than identify a solution to the Kashmir dispute. What solution can there be when it is not possible to undo the division of Kashmir into three parts, with India holding 45%, Pakistan 35% and China 20%? Any compromise has to be shaped within existing realities. Yet it is the commitment to redrawing borders that is the cause of conflict, terrorism and jihad on the subcontinent. A Balkanized India offers the military-dominated Pakistan the only escape from its economic problems stemming from an unsustainably high level of defense spending. The Pakistani military persists with the illusion that if it continues its “war of a thousand cuts”, a bleeding India will let go its sovereignty over the Kashmir Valley.  

A fourth, and important, point is that regional peace and security can only be built on the building blocks of economic and energy cooperation.

While we are discussing in this seminar prospects for growth in bilateral trade and investment between South Africa and Pakistan, the irony is that Islamabad refuses to normalize economic relations with India. How many know that there isn’t even normal trade between Pakistan and India? Before discussing growth in trade with South Africa, shouldn’t Pakistan be looking at establishing normal trade and investment with India?  

Asia has the world’s fastest-growing economies, fastest-rising military expenditures and the most dangerous hotspots. Asia is coming together economically, but not politically.

Yet the good news is that politics does not trump economics in most cases in Asia. Despite the revival of Sino-Japanese historical rivalry, China remains Japan’s largest trading partner. Although China is still pursuing plans for a full-scale invasion of Taiwan, Taiwan remains the single largest investor in mainland China. And despite the underlying strategic dissonance between China and India, China is India’s fastest-growing trading partner, and set to emerge as India’s largest trading partner in five years.  

The bad news is that Pakistan remains the odd state out, refusing to establish even normal trade with India. As a result, India is looking eastwards. After establishing free-trade zones with Sri Lanka and Nepal, India has brought into force a free-trade agreement (FTA) with Thailand and an FTA-like comprehensive accord with Singapore. It has now agreed to conclude an FTA with the whole ASEAN as well as with Japan.

By establishing normal trade with India, Pakistan will be doing a favour not to India but to itself. As shown repeatedly in different parts of the world, the European Union and NAFTA included, smaller economies tend to benefit more from bilateral and regional economic openness. In southern Asia, Sri Lanka has nearly tripled its exports to India since bringing an FTA into force in 2000.  

Islamabad, however, has declined to reciprocate India’s action years ago in granting MFN status to Pakistan. It is even declining to grant India the obligatory trade access to the Pakistani market under the South Asia Free-Trade Area (SAFTA) accord.

Since the MFN became the norm under the rules of the World Trade Organization, the world has changed radically. Now the normal standard in good inter-state relations is not even MFA. Rather it is an FTA plus a strategic partnership. But southern Asia, or least a part of it, is still stuck in the past.  

Pakistan and India need to build a stake in maintaining a peaceful diplomatic environment. Such a stake can be built through economic and energy interdependency, which can help significantly improve regional geopolitics and security and create more regional prosperity.

Despite America’s attempt to inject its own regional pipeline politics, there is tremendous potential to build a regional energy grid in southern Asia involving a matrix of pipelines from Burma, Bangladesh, Turkmenistan and Iran. However, bad economics plus bad politics cannot yield energy cooperation and partnership. A regional energy network has to emerge on the building blocks of greater economic cooperation.  

The states of southern Asia face daunting internal challenges, such as high levels of corruption, environmental and other man-made problems, and wide social and economic disparities. These problems, unless addressed, will act as a drag on regional stability. The increasingly complex regional challenge can be dealt with only by establishing stable political relationships that put the accent on mutually beneficial cooperation.

Interstate cooperation can facilitate the building of regional stability. That makes it more important for regional actors to pursue policies that break free from history and are pragmatic, growth-oriented and forward-looking. An inability to resolve all the disputes and problems should not hold up cooperation on issues that can be addressed. In fact, the catalyzing power of economic and energy cooperation needs to be employed to overcome political obstacles. Only by managing the “bads” (including long-standing disputes and illicit drug, terror and money flows) can states hope to reap the “goods” (including creating prosperity and stability through trade, investment and energy cooperation).

ICBMs: Symbols of Power in International Relations

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If you have it, flaunt it
 
By BRAHMA CHELLANEY

Only the naïve can argue that, in today’s world, strength doesn’t matter and all nations have equal rights. It remains a Hobbesian world, with power coterminous with national security and success.  India can acquire world-power status not by piggy-backing on another great power but by building independent power capabilities to endow itself with undeniable global influence.

            India has yet to face up to the key issues of power — the efficacy of power, the centrality of tenacious expansion of economic and military power, and the exercise of power. Without the country clearly focusing its priorities on erecting the building blocks of comprehensive national power, some Indians fancy a rapidly rising India or hypothesise an emerging tripolar world dominated by the US, China and India.  

Let’s face it: India cannot become a world power on the basis of its size, mere potential or wishful thinking. It will have to meet the traditional measures of great-power status.

            With expansion of the UN Security Council at issue, it is revealing that countries armed with intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) are all veto-holding permanent members of the council, while the aspirants for additional permanent seats strikingly lack such military reach. A country’s international standing is tied to the reach of the weapons in its armoury. Japan has a much larger economy than China but the world courts Beijing and takes Tokyo less importantly because Chinese nuclear missile prowess presents China as a global power. Britain and France, stripped of their submarine-launched ballistic missiles, would become minor powers.

India has found it difficult to break out of the subcontinental straitjacket because its weaponry remains subcontinental in reach. It was only with the Agni-class missiles and overt nuclearisation that India gained greater strategic space and a higher international profile. Years later, however, its nuclear and missile capabilities remain regional in range. In contrast, China developed its first ICBM, the 12,000-km DF-5, when it was still backward in the 1970s. Imagine how an ICBM test would lift India’s international status.

The DRDO announcement last week that “all efforts are being made for the first test by end-2005” of the much-delayed Agni 3 only highlights India’s slow missile progress. Far from developing a military reach to underpin its world-power ambitions, India even lags behind its regional defence needs. Seven years after declaring itself a nuclear-weapons nation, India still does not have the retaliatory capability to strike deep into the Chinese heartland, even as China frenetically expands its missile arsenal. There is a conspicuous gap between India’s power pretensions and the ground realities.

The Agni 3 adds only an additional 1,000 kilometres to the range of the successfully developed, rail-mobile Agni 2, presently India’s main nuclear-delivery vehicle. Both Agni 2 and 3 are solid-fuelled and terminally guided, and, like Agni 1, belong to the intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) family. Yet Agni 3’s maiden test has been repeatedly postponed since 2003. Such deferment is indicative of the lack of political priority to sustained missile advances. Had India made the necessary investments with unflinching resolve, it could by now have progressed from the IRBM to the ICBM stage.

            Single-mindedness, perseverance and long-term vision have not usually been India’s strengths. Rather there is a tendency to be self-congratulatory precipitately. Once the ‘father’ of the Agni programme became a national icon and then President of India, the country blissfully forgot that its minimal nuclear-delivery requirements had yet to be met.

            India has not only allowed its missile gap with China to widen but also fallen behind semi-failed Pakistan in capability. Such reality does not become less unpalatable merely because Pakistan got its Shaheen and Hatf missiles from China and its Ghauri from Beijing’s quasi-ally, North Korea. As the CIA chief told a Senate panel long ago, “Chinese help has enabled Pakistan to move rapidly towards serial production of solid-propellant missiles”. Militarily, however, India can draw little comfort from the alien parentage of the Pakistani missiles. When Pakistan three months ago reportedly tested its longest-range missile, the Shaheen 2, its military dictator haughtily proclaimed, “We have crossed the minimal-deterrent level”.

            India’s defence deficiencies are self-made. Nothing better illustrates this than the Agni programme. After just three flight-tests, the Agni programme was shelved by P.V. Narasimha Rao under US pressure. By 1997, under I.K. Gujral, a malleable India had gone to the extent of affirming that it was not deploying the short-range Prithvi and not proceeding further with the Agni.

            Before power could morally corrupt Vajpayee and company, India was lucky that the new team, in its first weeks in office, tested nuclear warheads and revived the Agni programme. But it didn’t take long for the new office-holders to lose their heads to heady power and begin making compromises with national security. The Agni 2 was ready at its launch site for its maiden flight in January 1999, but Vajpayee just wouldn’t give A.P.J. Abdul Kalam the go-ahead. A downcast Kalam, in several conversations with this writer, wondered when India would develop “a political backbone”.

            The Agni 2 test was held up for several months because Jaswant Singh was holding secret talks with his friend, Strobe Talbott. The talks were centred, as Talbott’s book reveals, on holding India to a set of US benchmarks, including limits on its development and deployment of nuclear weapons and missiles. The idea was to limit the reach of India’s nuclear missile assets to its immediate region.

            That may explain why the Vajpayee government, despite acknowledging in Parliament on November 22, 2000 that “India has the capability to design and develop ICBM”, never undertook an ICBM programme. India remains stuck, by choice, in the IRBM arena. Its missile progress is self-constrained, more due to political factors than to the availability of technical resources. If India wanted, it could (exploiting its impressive space advances) test within three years an ICBM — a pretty old technology that long predates the advent of the Information Age. Can it be anyone’s argument that India cannot develop what China first built a quarter-century ago?

World-power status may be the abiding dream of the Indian elite, but it cannot be realised without taking hard decisions to build hard power. The latest U.S. inducement — “to help India become a major world power in the 21st century” — tantalizingly offers the mirage of a short-cut to global clout. No great power, however, has ever emerged in world history without the strength of its own capabilities. In fact, the US — still reluctant to back India’s bid for a Security Council permanent seat — would be the first to raise a hue and cry if India launched an ICBM programme. Like the way it came to accept a nuclear India, it will regard India as a global power only if New Delhi builds the requisite capabilities.

If India wants to be in the same league as China, let it do even half of what Beijing does. It could, for instance, peg its defence spending to at least half of China’s military outlays. To narrow the gaping missile gap with China, ICBMs in any case offer a more cost-effective route than the present incremental IRBM path. This is more so because of the disadvantage of geography: While Beijing can strike India’s Gangetic heartland from occupied Tibet even with short-range missiles, India needs potent, deep-penetration missiles to reach key Chinese strategic targets. 

ICBMs will stay symbols of power and coercion in international relations. They arm their holders with tremendous political and military leverage. What India needs is a crash ICBM programme, backed of course by “a political backbone”.

Copyright: Hindustan Times

First published: May 27, 2005

 

Two contrasting cases of proliferation: Pakistan & Iran

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Double Standard at the UN

Brahma Chellaney International Herald Tribune

NEW DELHI Nothing better illustrates the way global efforts to halt nuclear proliferation are at the mercy of international politics than the contrasting responses of the United Nations Security Council to the two latest proliferation cases. Iran was handed an excessively harsh diktat to cease doing what it insists is its lawful right, while Pakistan has received exceptionally lenient treatment, despite the discovery of a major nuclear black-market ring run by Pakistani scientists and intelligence and military officials.
 
The uncovering of the illicit Pakistani supply network, which has been operating for at least 16 years, exposed the worst proliferation scandal in history. Yet in response the Security Council passed a resolution that made no reference to Pakistan, or even to the nuclear smuggling ring, but instead urged the entire world to share the responsibility. Resolution 1540 obligates all states to legislate and implement tight domestic controls on materials related to weapons of mass destruction so as to ensure that non-state actors do not get hold of them.
 
In contrast, the Security Council’s tough line on Iran was expressed in a strongly worded resolution passed a month ago that sets a Aug. 31 deadline. To "make mandatory" Iran’s cessation of all nuclear fuel-cycle activity, Resolution 1696 states that the Security Council "demands, in this context, that Iran shall suspend all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities, including research and development, to be verified by the International Atomic Energy Agency."
 
The difference between these approaches is all the more startling given that the Security Council is acting against Tehran on reasonable suspicion but not clinching evidence, while Islamabad has admitted that the Pakistani ring covertly transferred nuclear secrets (including enrichment equipment and nuclear-bomb designs) to Iran, Libya and North Korea. The exporting state has been allowed to escape international scrutiny and censure while the importing state is being put in the doghouse.
 
The latest resolution on Iran acknowledges that the Security Council is acting not on conclusive proof but because there are "a number of outstanding issues and concerns on Iran’s nuclear program, including topics which could have a military nuclear dimension." But the council has refrained from doing the obvious to settle the outstanding issues relating to Iran’s past unlawful imports – empower the International Atomic Energy Agency to investigate the supply chain in Pakistan.
 
Iran has to shoulder much of the blame for the rising concerns over its nuclear program. It was not until an Iranian dissident group blew the whistle in 2002 that Tehran admitted it had built undeclared facilities in Natanz and Arak. To this day, however, technical assessments by the IAEA still affirm there is no "evidence of diversion" of nuclear materials for nonpeaceful purposes by Iran.
 
The Security Council has to act wisely and ensure that it does not follow double standards that undermine its credibility and effectiveness. After allowing Pakistan to get off scot-free, despite having been caught red-handed running the world’s biggest nuclear proliferation ring, the council should not seek to make amends by prematurely penalizing Iran.
 
A certain balance is necessary, or else Iran may emulate Pakistan and go overtly nuclear. In fact, by implicitly condoning Pakistani proliferation while taking a tough line on Iran, the Security Council has already sent a message to Tehran that it pays to be a nuclear-weapons state.
 
In the case of the far-reaching Pakistani network, a single individual, Abdul Qadeer Khan, was conveniently made the scapegoat in a charade that saw Pakistan’s military leader, General Pervez Musharraf, pardon him and then shield him from international investigators by placing him under indefinite house arrest.
 
While Iran is being demonized for certain suspect activities, the world has been made to believe that Khan set up and ran a nuclear Wal-Mart largely on his own.
 
The Security Council needs to rethink the wisdom of a resolution that commands Iran to accept a standard applicable to no other country. The attempt to single out Iran and enforce a discriminatory standard could well prove counterproductive, if it provoked Tehran to withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and kick out IAEA inspectors.
 
What is needed is a new global consensus on standards governing fissile-material production, not an arbitrary regime that divides the nonnuclear world into fuel-cycle possessors and a single fuel-cycle abstainer. It is not helpful when the Security Council acts as if the military regime in Islamabad is on the right side of international politics but the clerical regime in Tehran is detestable and thus presumed guilty.
 
At present, Iran is years away from acquiring a nuclear- weapons capability. Through prudent diplomacy backed by stringent IAEA inspections, the Security Council can still ensure that Iran will remain free of nuclear weapons.
 
Brahma Chellaney is a professor of strategic studies at the privately funded Center for Policy Research in New Delhi.
 
 

India, the Lamb State

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Brahma Chellaney
(c) Rediff.com

Talleyrand, the illustrious foreign minister of Napoleon and the Bourbons, prescribed one basic rule for pragmatic foreign policy: by no means show too much zeal. In India’s case, gushy expectations, self-deluding hype, and oozing zealousness have blighted foreign policy since Independence, constituting the most enduring aspect of the Nehruvian legacy, other than the hold of the Nehru family dynasty over the Congress party and the continued strength of Indian democracy.

Zeal is to Indian diplomacy what strategy is to major powers. India has rushed to believe what it wanted to believe. Consequently, India is the only known country in modern history to have repeatedly cried betrayal, not by friends but by adversaries in whom it had reposed trust.

Reflecting India’s decline in its own eyes, however, while one ‘betrayal’ in 1962 hastened the death of Jawaharlal Nehru, another in 1999 kept Atal Bihari Vajpayee going as if it did not happen despite his public admission that his ‘bus to Lahore got hijacked to Kargil.’ It was finally the voters who decided they had had enough of Vajpayee.

Earlier, in 1972, even the strategist Indira Gandhi slipped up at Simla by trusting her opponent’s word on Kashmir.

Also Read: The Errors of Simla

The strength of any nation’s foreign policy depends on the health of its institutional processes of policy-making, on realistic goals, strategies, and tactics, and on the timely exploitation of opportunities thrown up by external conditions. Indian foreign policy, regrettably, has been characterised by too much ad hocism, risk aversion, and post facto rationalisations.

Institutional processes are operationally weak and there is no tradition of strategy papers to aid political decision-making. An uncritical media only encourages a political proclivity for off-the-cuff decisions.

In the absence of a set of clear, long-term goals backed by political resolve, Indian foreign policy has not been organised around a distinct strategic doctrine. Without realistic, goal-oriented statecraft, the propensity to act in haste and repent at leisure has run deep in Indian foreign policy ever since Nehru hurriedly took the Kashmir issue to the UN Security Council without realising that the Security Council, as the seat of international power politics, has little room for fair dealing.

From the Rediff Archives: ‘Jawaharlal, do you want Kashmir, or do you want to give it away?’

The India-China territorial dispute is another problem bequeathed by Nehru to future generations of Indians. Nehru’s first blunder was to shut his eyes to the impending fall of Tibet even when Sardar Patel had repeatedly cautioned him in 1949 that the Chinese Communists would annex that historical buffer as soon as they had installed themselves in power in Beijing. An overconfident Nehru, who ran foreign policy as if it were personal policy, went to the extent of telling Patel by letter that it would be a ‘foolish adventure’ for the Chinese Communists to try and gobble up Tibet — a possibility that ‘may not arise at all’ as it was, he claimed, geographically impracticable!

In 1962, Nehru, however, had to admit he had been living in a fool’s paradise. ‘We were getting out of touch with reality in the modern world and we were living in an artificial atmosphere of our creation,’ he said in a national address after the Chinese aggression.

Nehru had ignored India’s military needs despite the Chinese surreptitiously occupying Indian areas on the basis of Tibet’s putative historical ties with them and also establishing a land corridor with Pakistan-occupied Kashmir through Aksai Chin. Although Indian military commanders after the 1959 border clashes began saying that they lacked adequate manpower and weapons to fend off the People’s Liberation Army, Nehru ordered the creation of forward posts to prevent the loss of further Indian territory without taking the required concomitant steps to beef up Indian military strength, including through arms imports. Nehru had convinced himself grievously that China only intended to carry out further furtive encroachments on Indian territory, not launch a full-fledged major aggression.

In fact, Nehru accepted the Chinese annexation of Tibet in a 1954 agreement without settling the Indo-Tibetan border. While Nehru thought he had bought peace with China by accepting Chinese rule over Tibet on the basis of the five principles of peaceful co-existence, Mao and his team read this as a sign of India’s weakness and a licence to encroach on strategically important areas of Ladakh.

So betrayed was Nehru by the 1962 attack that he had this to say on the day the Chinese invaded: ‘Perhaps there are not many instances in history where one country has gone out of her way to be friendly and co-operative with the government and people of another country and to plead their cause in the councils of the world, and then that country returns evil for good.’

Also Read: Remembering the China War

Four decades after Nehru’s death at the age of 74, the Nehruvian legacy in foreign policy continues to influence Indian policy-making. Much before the recent national election made Sonia Gandhi the most powerful political figure in India, the Nehruvian legacy was intact in Vajpayee’s foreign policy. In fact, nothing pleased Vajpayee more than to be compared with Nehru.

Vajpayee’s foreign policy was in reality an updated, post-Cold War version of Nehruvian diplomacy.

Nehru and Vajpayee mistook casuistry and word games for statecraft, with the latter addicted to parsing and spinning his words. Both valued speech as a substitute for action or camouflage to concession. Vajpayee’s fascination with telling the world about the ‘greatness’ of Indian culture was his rendering of Nehru’s moralistic lectures to the mighty and powerful. Like Nehru, he was so enthralled by his own illusions and desire for international goodwill that he could not deal with ill will from India’s implacable adversaries. Even in war, Vajpayee declined — unlike Lal Bahadur Shastri — to take the fighting to the aggressor’s territory, battling the enemy on the enemy’s terms and relying on the United States to midwife a ‘victory’ in Kargil.

Also Read: The Kargil War

Except for a period under Indira Gandhi, India has found it difficult to kick its ‘hug, then repent’ proclivity. Take the case of the past decade. The 1990s began flamboyantly with the famous I K Gujral hug of Saddam Hussein and ended spectacularly with Jaswant Singh’s hug of the thuggish Taliban, as the then foreign minister chaperoned three freed terrorists to Kandahar. In the midst of the IC-814 hijacking saga, Jaswant Singh fed to the media his hallucinations about driving a wedge between the Taliban and its sponsor, Pakistan.

Also Read: The Hijacking of Flight 814

Until India fully absorbs the fundamentals of international relations, it will continue to get ‘evil for good.’ The fundamentals include leverage, reciprocity, and negotiating strategies that do not give away the bottom line. For five decades, India has put itself on the defensive by publicly articulating its Kashmir bottom line as the starting line — turning the LoC into the international border.

Some nations have a built-in craving for revision or hazardous gain, while others want only the status quo. Randall L Schweller, in his brilliant study Deadly Imbalances, labels the revisionist nations ‘wolves’ and ‘jackals’, while the status quo states are either ‘lambs’ or ‘lions’. India certainly qualifies as a ‘lamb,’ surrounded by ‘wolf’ China and ‘jackal’ Pakistan. The ‘lamb’ status is in keeping with its intrinsic disposition and meek objectives. Although its borders have shrunk since Independence and it is a poor state, India is, lamb-like, content with the status quo.

Only a ‘lamb’ state will make unilateral concessions and deal with invaders and hostage-takers on their terms. Again, only a ‘lamb’ will accept the outside portrayal of Kashmir as a bilateral dispute between India and Pakistan, condoning the third-party role of China, in occupation of one-fifth of J&K. A ‘lamb’ state is wary of traditional friends, but wishes to cuddle up to elusive new buddies or even enemies. Its diffidence makes external affirmation and certification important for its policies. A ‘lamb’ also assumes that others change their beliefs and policies as rapidly as it meanders to a new course.

http://in.rediff.com/news/2004/jun/02spec1.htm

 

Japan’s Political Resurgence

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Japan flexes its foreign-policy muscle

 
By Brahma Chellaney
 
Copyright: The Christian Science Monitor
 
TOKYO

Even before North Korea jolted the world with its nuclear test, it was clear that the Sept. 26 election of Shinzo Abe as postwar-Japan’s youngest prime minister meant more than a change at the helm. Mr. Abe’s ascension not only symbolizes the generational change in Japanese politics, but also the rise of an assertive Japan eager to shape the evolving balance of power in Asia.

Faced immediately with the crisis triggered by Pyongyang’s provocative action, Abe is bound to accelerate the nationalist shift in policy instituted by his predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi.

Such is the international hype about China’s growth that it is frequently forgotten that Japan remains the world’s largest economic powerhouse after the United States, with an economy that is today more than double the size of China’s, with only a tenth of the population.

As Asia’s first modern economic success story, Japan has always inspired other Asian states. Now, with the emergence of new economic tigers and the ascent of China and India, Asia collectively is bouncing back from nearly two centuries of historical decline.

The most far-reaching but least-noticed development in Asia in the new century has been Japan’s political resurgence. With its pride and assertiveness rising, the nationalist impulse has become conspicuous. Tokyo is intent on influencing Asia’s power balance so as to forestall China’s ambition to be the dominant power.

A series of subtle moves has already signaled Japan’s aim to break out of its postwar pacifist cocoon. Abe, the son of a former foreign minister and grandson of a postwar prime minister who had earlier been imprisoned by the Americans as a Class-A war criminal, plans to revise Japan’s US-imposed Constitution within five years, eliminating the military proscription enshrined in Article IX.

In the past decade, Japan, the "Land of the Rising Sun," began feeling threatened by the lengthening shadow of China’s economic modernization. As if to make this threat look real, China’s bellicose anti-Japanese rhetoric shook Tokyo out of its complacency and diffidence, setting in motion Japan’s political rise. Now the North Korean nuclear test provides further justification for Japan to end six decades of pacifism.

Tokyo may not share Beijing’s obsession with measures of national power, but Japan’s military establishment, except in the nuclear sphere, is already the most sophisticated in Asia.

 
Leading edge, not a breeding edge

Economic recovery is a major reason for Japan’s rising confidence. Leading-edge technologies and a commitment to craftsmanship will power its future prosperity, just as they did its past growth.

Last spring, Tokyo unveiled a plan to invest 25 trillion yen ($209 billion) in science and technology in the next five years.

This competitive edge, however, is threatened by the economic and social implications of a declining birthrate and aging population. With a fertility rate of just 1.29 babies per woman – America’s is 2.1 – Japanese deaths surpassed births for the first time ever last year.

One response to this trend is to open its universities and technology centers to foreign researchers. This is no easy task for any of the homogenized societies of East Asia. But just as Japan has come to live with the discomforting fact that today’s top sumo wrestlers are not Japanese, it will have to open its research institutions to foreigners in order to raise productivity through innovation.

Abe will surely build on Mr. Koizumi’s efforts to make Japan’s foreign policy more muscular. He has derisively compared Japan’s past diplomacy to performing "sumo to please foreign countries on a ring they made, abiding by their rules…."

Asian security will be greatly shaped by the relations among the region’s three main powers – Japan, China, and India – and their ties to the United States. Booming trade won’t guarantee better political ties among these players.

 
Relations with China are crucial

Consider China. It is Japan’s largest trade partner, but that has not prevented Beijing from aggressively playing the history card against Tokyo. China is India’s fastest-growing trade partner, but that has not halted its actions against Indian interests.

To maintain the peaceful environment that promotes security and economic growth, Japan and China, and India and China, must build stable political ties.

Sour relations with Beijing would increase Tokyo’s or New Delhi’s need for strategic help from the US. For China, rising tensions with Japan or India would undercut its Asian and international appeal, limiting its geopolitical ambitions.

The emerging Japan is determined to take its rightful place in the world by using its economic clout to raise its political profile. It will stand up to a China that is keen to supplant America as the main player in Asia. With the elevation of Abe, born after the end of US occupation, Japan is now coming out of the postwar era.

• Brahma Chellaney, the author of "Asian Juggernaut: The Rise of China, India and Japan," is a professor at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1016/p09s02-coop.htm

Building Japan-India Partnership

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Japan-India partnership key to bolstering stability in Asia

Brahma Chellaney

NEW DELHI — Japan and India are natural allies because they have no conflict of strategic interests and actually share common goals to build stability, power equilibrium and institutionalized multilateral cooperation in Asia. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Tokyo this week offers an opportunity to the two countries to add real strategic content to their fast-developing relationship.

The ascension of Shinzo Abe as postwar-Japan’s youngest prime minister has symbolized the rise of an assertive, confident Japan eager to shape the evolving balance of power in Asia. Faced immediately with the crisis triggered by North Korea’s provocative nuclear test, Abe has pursued a pragmatic foreign policy while seeking to accelerate the nationalist shift in policy instituted by his predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi.

India, for its part, has moved from doctrinaire nonalignment to geopolitical pragmatism, reflected in the greater realism it displays in its economic and foreign policies. It has come to recognize that it can wield international power only through the accretion of its own economic and military strength. A close strategic and economic partnership with Japan chimes with its vision of a dynamic, multipolar Asia.

Close ties with Japan is an objective dear to Singh, whose host in Tokyo is a friend of India. Abe, in his book, Toward A Beautiful Country, published last July, declares that, “It is of crucial importance to Japan’s national interest that we further strengthen our relations with India.” Indeed, Abe optimistically states that “it will not be a surprise if in another 10 years, Japan-India relations overtake Japan-U.S. and Japan-China relations.”

To realize that scenario, Tokyo and New Delhi have to focus sustained attention on boosting their now-stagnant trade and building a multidimensional political relationship. The two also need to hold closer consultations on Asian economic and political issues, given that neither would like to see the emergence of a Sino-centric Asia.

Such is the international hype about China’s growth that it is frequently forgotten that Japan remains the world’s largest economic powerhouse after the United States, with an economy that is today double the size of China’s, with only a tenth of the population.

Tokyo may not share Beijing’s obsession with measures of national power, but Japan’s military establishment, except in the nuclear sphere, is already the most sophisticated in Asia.

            Encouraged by economic recovery, with a 2% yearly Japanese growth translating into an additional output almost the size of the entire annual gross domestic product of Singapore and the Philippines, Japan is going through a quiet transition from pacifism to being a “normal” state. Today, even as it has reinvigorated military ties with the United States, it is beginning to cautiously shape an independent foreign policy and rethink its security.

            India has also strengthened its relations with America. But from being non-aligned, India is likely to become multi-aligned, even as it preserves the kernel of nonalignment — strategic autonomy.

A key challenge for both Tokyo and New Delhi is to manage their increasingly intricate relationship with an ascendant China determined to emerge as Asia’s dominant power. Yet it makes sense for Japan and India to play down the competitive dynamics of their relationship with Beijing and put the accent on cooperation. This is what Abe and Singh have sought to do.

An emphasis on cooperation also suits China because it is in accord with its larger strategy to advertise its “peaceful rise.” China’s choir book indeed has been built around a nifty theme: its emergence as a great power is unstoppable, and it is thus incumbent on other nations to adjust to that rise.

A strong Japan, a strong China and a strong India need to find ways to reconcile their interests in Asia so that they can peacefully coexist and prosper. Never before in history have all three of these powers been strong at the same time. China’s emergence as a global player, however, is dividing, not uniting, Asia.

The sharpening energy geopolitics in Asia also undergirds the need for a strategic partnership between Japan and India, both heavily dependent on oil imports by sea from the Gulf region. Mercantilist efforts to assert control over energy supplies and transport routes, and strategic plans to assemble a “string of pearls” in the form of listening posts and special naval-access arrangements along vital sea-lanes of communication, certainly risk fueling tensions and discord.

Before the United States and India unveiled plans to build a global strategic partnership, it was Tokyo and New Delhi that agreed in August 2000 during Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori’s visit to develop a “Global Partnership of the 21st Century.” Yet that proposal has moved forward rather slowly, even as India has overtaken China as the largest recipient of Japanese Overseas Development Assistance (ODA).

A recently released global-opinion poll by the Washington-based Pew Research Center showed the high positive rating Japan enjoys in India, and India in Japan, reflecting their close historical and cultural ties.

There is expectation that a true Indo-Japanese strategic partnership will now take off, given the foundation laid by an increasing number of high-level visitors. In the past year alone, Japan’s chief of joint staff as well as the chief of each of the three self-defense forces has visited India, while the Indian defense minister and the navy and air force chiefs have been to Japan.

Their partnership should seek to build greater defense cooperation, intelligence-sharing and joint initiatives on maritime security, counterterrorism, disaster prevention and management, and energy security. To maintain a peaceful environment that promotes security and economic growth, Tokyo and New Delhi need to promote institutional cooperation in Asia.

In that context, Abe’s idea of a four-sided strategic dialogue among Japan, India, Australia and the United States deserves careful reflection. A constellation of democracies tied together by strategic partnerships can help build Asian power equilibrium.

In the emerging Asia, the two major non-Western democracies, Japan and India, are set to become close partners. Their strategic relationship would help adjust balance-of-power equations in Asia and aid long-term stability.

Brahma Chellaney, professor of strategic studies at the privately funded Center for Policy Research in New Delhi, is a regular contributor to The Japan Times.

(c) The Japan Times, December 14, 2006.

India-China Power Gap

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Narrowing the Asymmetry

Brahma Chellaney  

© Asian Age March 24, 2007

India and China are not just nation-states but large, ancient civilizations that together represent one-third of humanity today. How their relationship evolves will have an important bearing on Asian geopolitics, international security and globalization. India-China ties thus constitute one of the most important bilateral relationships in the world.

            While both are ascendant powers, enjoying high GDP growth rates, the basis of their rise is different and a pointer to their relative strengths and weaknesses.

            India’s white-collar, services-led economic growth contrasts sharply with China’s blue-collar, manufacturing-driven expansion. More striking is the fact that in India the private sector continues to lead the growth while in China it is a state-driven boom. India does poorly wherever the state is involved, while the strength of the Chinese state as the prime driver of accumulating power carries significant strategic ramifications. In fact, owing to its dynamic centralized economy, China is able to practise a mix of crony capitalism and widespread, state-dispensed patronage.  

            Most startling is the fact that although both states have some similar competitive advantages, such as a large pool of skilled manpower and low wages, China’s ascension has been on the back of an increasing export surge while India’s imports-dependent economy relies primarily on domestic consumption for growth. Indian imports currently exceed exports by as much as 60 per cent. Such dependency on imports sets India apart from the Asian “tiger” economies, which are all export-oriented.

            In contrast to India’s yawning trade deficit, China tripled its trade surplus with the rest of the world just between 2002 and 2005. Given its trade surplus of $201.6 billion with the United States alone in 2005, it is hardly a surprise that Beijing is today sitting on a foreign-exchange hoard of $1 trillion — the world’s largest. It has ploughed more than two-thirds of its foreign-currency reserves into US dollar-denominated investments.

Washington now relies on Chinese surpluses and savings to finance its huge budget and trade deficits, hold down US interest rates and prop up the value of the dollar. Beijing, by financing the US deficits through its purchase of US government bonds, not only buys political clout in Washington but also keeps its currency undervalued so that Chinese exports stay cheap and imports dear. In the face of a rising Sino-US trade imbalance, it sustains the peg it has artificially set between the US dollar and the Chinese yuan by simply recycling its surplus dollars back into the American bond market. 

Beijing shields its currency manipulation through the potential threat to halt financing US deficits and unload its greenbacks. This month’s decision by the Chinese legislature, the National People’s Congress, to set up a new cabinet-led agency for active investment overseas can only help boost China’s international financial clout at a time when its foreign-currency reserves are continuing to soar.

            The India-China contrast is also stark in terms of military capabilities. India’s weaponry remains subcontinental in range, while China’s is intercontinental. Not surprisingly, India has found it difficult to break out of its subcontinental straitjacket. Indeed, far from developing a military reach to underpin its world-power ambitions, India even lags behind its regional-defence needs. Nearly a decade after declaring itself a nuclear-weapons state, India still does not have the retaliatory capability to strike deep into the Chinese heartland.  

            Even when China was poor and backward, it consciously put the accent on building comprehensive national power. It developed its first intercontinental ballistic missile, the 12,000-kilometre DF-5, in the 1970s. New Delhi, in contrast, has yet to start developing its first ICBM, although ICBMs are potent symbols of power and coercion in international relations.

            Today China’s military spending is drawing a lot of international attention for two reasons. Beijing has sustained double-digit increases in such spending for two continuous decades. In that same period, India’s defence expenditure has declined appreciably as a percentage of its GDP. Moreover, China’s military spending has risen the fastest in the world in percentage terms. Its recently unveiled budget, for example, boosted defence outlays by 17.8 per cent even as India announced a modest increase of 7.8 per cent — just above its current inflation rate — in its defence appropriations.

            In absolute terms, however, US military spending has now risen to a level not seen since the Reagan-era buildup. President George W. Bush’s new $622 billion Pentagon budget slips in $40 billion in spending increases. Even without the $142-billion budget component for fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and for countering terrorism, America alone accounts for 50 per cent of the global military spending.

            Even though the official Chinese military budget (which few believe because it hides more than it reveals) is double the Indian defence-spending level, it is not the size but how defence funds are utilized that makes the India-China contrast attention-grabbing.

           China’s priority for decades has been twofold: boosting its indigenous capabilities, especially its conventional and nuclear deterrence, and working to shift the balance of power in Asia in its favour. Today its increasingly sophisticated missile force is at the heart of its military modernization. And even as it imports high-tech conventional weaponry from Russia, it has emerged as one of the biggest arms exporters in the world, with its three biggest arms clients being India’s immediate neighbours — Pakistan, Burma and Bangladesh, in that order. Pakistan’s series of missile tests in recent weeks, including the March 22 test of an extended-range cruise missile, shows that China continues to covertly assist Islamabad in breach of its non-proliferation commitments.

          India, pitiably, relies on arms imports for meeting its basic defence needs. Such is its addiction to the import of major weapons and even small arms that it has kept its domestic armament-production base weak and underdeveloped. While China apportions 28 per cent of its military budget for defence-related research and development, India’s share is less than 6 per cent.

Prevention is always preferable (and cheaper) than cure. India’s defence planning, however, is still geared toward fighting the next conventional war when the country’s interests would be better served through a concerted focus on deterring aggression.

Preventing war demands major investments in and political commitment to systems of deterrence, which have to be developed indigenously. India, however, remains more committed to the soft and spendthrift option — buying weapons off-the-shelf overseas to fight the next conventional war, although such a full-fledged war remains remote 35 years after the last one. The threats India confronts are increasingly unconventional in nature, whether it is trans-border terrorism from Pakistan or China’s new anti-satellite (ASAT) prowess. Yet Indian defence planners remain frozen in a conventional mindset. 

India’s addiction to foreign arms — many of questionable value — has become so acute that it has emerged as the world’s largest weapon importer since 2004. Defence Minister A. K. Antony’s comment last month about $8 billion to 10 billion in potential offsets from arms imports during the 11th Five-Year Plan (which begins April 1) indicates that India intends to buy foreign weapons worth between $27 billion and $33 billion in this period. Such arms imports will not make the nation strong but only eat up its meagre defence resources.

The key difference between India and China is that the latter uses its defence funds wisely and intelligently. Had the situation been the converse, with China spending on the military only what India does today but India’s defence expenditure matching the current Chinese level, it would still have been a matter of concern in the regional context for this very reason — the prudent use of funds by Beijing. A China-level Indian defence budget would have been a delectable bonanza for the major military-industrial complexes overseas.

India, lamentably, has yet to grasp the simple truth that the capacity to defend oneself with one’s own resources is the first test a nation has to pass on the way to becoming a great power. Indeed no state can aspire to be a great power if it allows asymmetry with a regional rival to widen to a point where not only its battlefield vulnerability is exposed but also its strategic space and room for manoeuvre come under growing pressure.

What India needs to do is to declare a moratorium on all arms imports for three years or so. That would help save billions of dollars without compromising its defence. Such action is necessary for it not only to kick its addiction but also to clean up the Augean stables.

          More broadly, given China’s deep-rooted authoritarianism, vibrant state-driven economy, accumulating military might and unconcealed aim to dominate Asia, India needs to narrow the power disparity with Beijing through a steadfast focus on developing and exploiting hard power — economic and military.

It is true that India tends to do well in areas where the state is little involved and that China’s development of hard power, in contrast, is a planned, state-driven exercise. But can India emerge as a great power without the state playing its due role in building comprehensive national power? The Indian state continues to be characterized by ad hoc policymaking. Furthermore, without its emergence as a major international manufacturing hub, India will continue to import more goods than it exports while being unable to alleviate unemployment and income disparities. India also should make increasing use of soft power to underpin its diplomacy and image.

India and China, admittedly, have built a mutual stake in maintaining the peaceful diplomatic environment on which their continued economic modernization and security depend. Both also seek to emphasize cooperation, for different reasons. Yet given their size, ambitions and proximity, competition is inevitable. This is more so because unlike Europe, where the most-powerful state, Germany, is content with being one among equals, Asia has yet to banish the threat of hegemony by a state within.