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Professor, strategic thinker, author and commentator

Asia’s new Great Game

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A Scramble for Asia?

Brahma Chellaney


Project Syndicate, 2010-10-29


Asia’s festering Cold War-era territorial and maritime disputes highlight the fact that securing long-term region-wide peace depends on respect for existing borders. Attempts to disturb Asia’s territorial status quo are an invitation to endemic conflict – a concern that led Asian states to welcome the US and Russia to their annual East Asian Summit.

The recent Sino-Japanese diplomatic spat over disputed islands in the East China Sea – followed, almost instantly, by a Sino-Vietnamese row over similar atolls – has put the spotlight on China and its regional policy. Governments across Asia are concerned that China’s rapidly accumulating power is emboldening it to assert territorial and maritime claims against neighbors stretching from Japan to India. Even against tiny Bhutan, China has stepped up its lands claims through military incursions.

China’s new stridency underscores Asia’s central diplomatic challenge: coming to terms with existing boundaries by shedding the baggage of history that burdens all of the region’s important inter-state relationships. Even as Asia is becoming more interdependent economically, it is becoming more politically divided.

A number of inter-state wars were fought in Asia since 1950, the year that both the Korean War and the annexation of Tibet started. But, whereas the Europe’s bloody wars in the first half of the twentieth century have made war there unthinkable today, the wars in Asia in the second half of the twentieth century, far from settling or ending disputes, only accentuated bitter rivalries.

China, significantly, has been involved in the largest number of military conflicts in Asia. A recent Pentagon report is unsparing: “The history of modern Chinese warfare provides numerous case studies in which China’s leaders have claimed military preemption as a strategically defensive act. For example, China refers to its intervention in the Korean War (1950-1953) as the ‘War to Resist the United States and Aid Korea.’ Similarly, authoritative texts refer to border conflicts against India (1962), the Soviet Union (1969), and Vietnam (1979) as ‘Self-Defense Counter Attacks.’” The seizure of the Paracel Islands from Vietnam in 1974 by Chinese forces was another example of offense as defense.

All these cases of preemption occurred when China was weak, poor, and internally torn. So the growing power of today’s China naturally raises legitimate concerns.

Having earlier preached the gospel of its “peaceful rise,” China no longer is shy about showcasing its military capabilities and asserting itself on multiple fronts. With the Chinese Communist Party increasingly dependent on the military to maintain its monopoly on power and ensure domestic order, senior military officers are overtly influencing foreign policy. The result is a growing territorial assertiveness, which has become a source of new friction along China’s land and sea frontiers. That, in turn, has put China at the center of Asia’s political divides.

Several developments this year underscore China’s more muscular foreign policy, from its inclusion of the South China Sea in its “core” national interests – a move that makes its claims to the disputed Spratly Islands non-negotiable – to its reference to the Yellow Sea as a sort of exclusive Chinese military-operations zone. The US and South Korea should, according to Chinese officials, discontinue holding joint naval exercises there, apparently out of respect for China’s new power.

China also has become more insistent in pressing its territorial claims both to India’s northeastern Arunachal Pradesh state and to the Japanese-controlled Senkaku Islands, with Chinese warships making more frequent forays into Japanese waters. Indian defense officials have reported a sharp increase in Chinese military incursions across the disputed 4,057-kilometer Himalayan frontier and in aggressive patrolling. China also has started questioning Indian sovereignty over the state of Jammu and Kashmir, one-fifth of which it occupied following the Tibet annexation.

Beijing’s 2004 spat with South Korea over the ancient kingdom of Koguryo – triggered by a revised historical claim posted on the Chinese foreign ministry’s Web site that the empire, founded in the Tongge river basin of northern Korea, was Chinese – was seen as an attempt to hedge China’s options vis-à-vis a potentially unified Korea. By signaling that the present China-North Korea border may not be final, Beijing has raised the specter of potential tensions over frontiers in the future.

Against that background, China’s increasingly assertive territorial and maritime claims threaten Asian peace and stability. In fact, the largest real estate China covets is not in the South or East China Seas: India’s Arunachal Pradesh is almost three times larger than Taiwan.

Respect for boundaries is a prerequisite to peace and stability on any continent. Europe has built its peace on that principle, with a number of European states learning to live with boundaries that they don’t like. But the Chinese Communist Party still harps on old grievances to reinforce its claim to legitimacy: full restoration of China’s “dignity” after a century of humiliation at the hands of foreign powers.

Through its overt refusal to accept Asia’s territorial status quo, China only highlights the futility of political negotiations. After all, frontiers are never significantly redrawn at the negotiating table, but only on the battlefield, as China has shown in the past.

Today, whether it is Arunachal Pradesh or Taiwan or the Senkaku Islands or even the Spratlys, China is dangling the threat of force to assert its claims. By picking territorial fights with its neighbors, China is not only reinforcing old rivalries, but is also threatening Asia’s continued economic renaissance – showing that it is not a credible candidate to lead Asia.

It is important for other Asian states and the US – a “resident power” in Asia, in the words of US Defense Secretary Robert Gates – to convey a clear message to China: a peaceful rise and unilateral redrawing of frontiers don’t mix.

Brahma Chellaney is Professor of Strategic Studies at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi and the author of Asian Juggernaut: The Rise of China, India and Japan.

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2010.
http://www.project-syndicate.org

A threat to Asian peace and stability

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Why China isn’t fit to lead Asia

Brahma Chellaney

The Globe and Mail, October 4, 2010

Japan may have created the impression that it buckled under China’s pressure by releasing a Chinese fishing boat captain involved in a collision near islands that both countries claim. But the Japanese action has helped move the spotlight back to China, whose rapidly accumulating power has emboldened it to aggressively assert territorial and maritime claims against neighbours stretching from Japan to India.

Having earlier preached the gospel of its “peaceful rise,” China is no longer shy about showcasing its military capabilities. While Chinese leaders may gloat over Tokyo’s back-pedalling, the episode – far from shifting the Asian balance of power in Beijing’s favour – has only shown that China is at the centre of Asia’s political divides.

China’s new stridency in its disputes with its neighbours has helped highlight Asia’s central challenge to come to terms with existing boundaries by getting rid of the baggage of history that weighs down all important interstate relationships. Even as Asia is becoming more interdependent economically, it’s getting more divided politically.

China has been involved in the largest number of military conflicts in Asia since 1950, the year both the Korean War and the annexation of Tibet began. According to a recent Pentagon report, “China’s leaders have claimed military pre-emption as a strategically defensive act. For example, China refers to its intervention in the Korean War (1950-1953) as the ‘war to resist the United States and aid Korea.’ Similarly, authoritative texts refer to border conflicts against India (1962), the Soviet Union (1969) and Vietnam (1979) as ‘self-defence counterattacks.’ ” All these cases of pre-emption occurred when China was weak, poor and internally torn. So, today, China’s growing power naturally raises legitimate concerns.

Several developments this year alone underline Beijing’s more muscular foreign policy – from its inclusion of the South China Sea in its “core” national interests, an action that makes its claims to the disputed Spratly Islands non-negotiable, to its reference to the Yellow Sea as an exclusive Chinese military zone where Washington and Seoul, respecting the new Chinese power, should discontinue joint naval exercises.

China also has become more insistent in pressing its territorial claims to the Japanese-controlled Senkaku Islands, with Chinese warships making more frequent forays into Japanese waters, and to India’s northeastern Arunachal Pradesh state, with Indian defence officials reporting a sharp spurt in Chinese incursions across the disputed Himalayan frontier and in aggressive patrolling. Beijing also has started questioning New Delhi’s sovereignty over the state of Jammu and Kashmir, one-fifth of which it occupies.

Against that background, China’s increasingly assertive territorial and maritime claims threaten Asian peace and stability. In fact, the largest piece of real estate China covets is not in the South or East China Seas but in India: Arunachal Pradesh is almost three times larger than Taiwan.

Respect for boundaries is a prerequisite to peace and stability on any continent. Europe has built its peace on that principle, with a number of European states learning to live with borders they don’t like. But the Chinese Communist Party still harps on old grievances to reinforce its claim to legitimacy and monopolize power – that only it can fully restore China’s “dignity” after a century of humiliation at the hands of foreign powers.

And through its refusal to accept the territorial status quo, Beijing highlights the futility of political negotiations. Whether it’s Arunachal Pradesh or Taiwan or the Senkaku Islands or even the Spratlys, China is dangling the threat of force to assert its claims. In doing so, it’s helping to reinforce the spectre of a threatening China. By picking territorial fights with its neighbours, Beijing is also threatening Asia’s economic renaissance. More important, China is showing that it isn’t a credible candidate to lead Asia.

It’s important for other Asian states and the U.S. – a “resident power” in Asia, in the words of Defence Secretary Robert Gates – to convey a clear message to Beijing: After six long decades, China’s redrawing of frontiers must end.

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

© 2010 CTVglobemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Changing Asian power equations

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THE ASIAN CENTURY

A New Asian Security Constellation

Brahma Chellaney

PROJECT SYNDICATE 2010-10-01

Leading members of the governments of India and South Korea recently met to begin a new “strategic partnership.” They are not alone in doing so, for across Asia, a new security architecture is being constructed, seemingly piecemeal.

How Asia’s geopolitical landscape will evolve over the coming decades is not easy to foresee. But it is apparent that an increasingly assertive China is unwittingly reinforcing America’s role in Asia, restoring US primacy as the implicit guarantor of security and stability in the region.

There are at least four possible Asian security scenarios for the years and decades ahead. The first is the rise of a Sino-centric Asia. China seeks a multipolar world but a unipolar Asia. By contrast, the US desires a unipolar world but a multipolar Asia.

A second scenario is that the US remains Asia’s principal security anchor, with or without a third possibility: the emergence of a constellation of Asian states with common interests working together to ensure that Asia is not unipolar. Finally, Asia could come to be characterized by several resurgent powers, including Japan, India, Vietnam, Indonesia, and a reunified Korea.

Of the four scenarios, the first has caused the greatest unease. China’s neighbors are increasingly anxious about its growing power and assertiveness. While China’s rulers aspire to shape a Sino-centric Asia, their efforts to intimidate smaller neighbors hardly make China a credible candidate for Asian leadership.

After all, genuine leadership cannot come from raw power, but only from other states’ consent or tacit acceptance. If leadership could be built on brute force, schoolyard bullies would be class presidents.

In any event, China’s power may be vast and rapidly growing, but it lacks the ability to compel. In other words, China does not have the capability to rout any rival militarily, let alone enforce its will on Asia.

That fact has, however, done little to allay fears in the region. With its defense spending having grown almost twice as fast as its GDP, China is now beginning to take the gloves off, confident that it has acquired the necessary muscle.

For example, China now includes the South China Sea in its “core” national interests, on a par with Taiwan and Tibet, in order to stake a virtually exclusive claim to military operations there. China also has increasingly questioned India’s sovereignty over Arunachal Pradesh, the northeastern Indian state that China’s rulers call “Southern Tibet” and claim largely as their own. Indian defense officials have reported a rising number of Chinese military incursions across the 4,057-kilometer Himalayan border.

As China seeks to translate its economic clout into major geopolitical advantages in Asia, a country that once boasted of “having friends everywhere” finds that its growing power may be inspiring awe, but that its actions are spurring new concerns and fears. Which states will accept China as Asia’s leader? Six decades of ruthless repression has failed to win China acceptance even in Tibet and Xinjiang, as the Tibetan and Uighur revolts of 2008 and 2009 attested.

Leadership entails more than the possession of enormous economic and military power. It demands the power of ideas that can galvanize others. Such power also serves as the moral veneer to the assertiveness often involved in the pursuit of any particular cause or interest.

The US and its allies won the Cold War, for example, not so much by military means as by spreading the ideas of political freedom and market capitalism to other regions. In the words of the strategic analyst Stanley A. Weiss, this “helped suck the lifeblood out of communism’s global appeal,” making it incapable of meeting the widespread yearning for a better and more open life.

China has shown itself adept at assertively promoting its national interests and playing classical balance-of-power geopolitics. But, in order to displace the US and assume the mantle of leadership in Asia, China must do more than pursue its own interests or contain potential rivals. Most fundamentally, what does China represent in terms of values and ideas?

In the absence of an answer to that question, China’s overly assertive policies have proven a diplomatic boon for the US in strengthening and expanding American security arrangements in Asia. South Korea has tightened its military alliance with the US, Japan has backed away from a move to get the US to move its Marine airbase out of Okinawa, and India, Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines, among others, have drawn closer to the US.

In terms of power-projection force capabilities or the range of military bases and security allies in Asia, no power or combination of powers is likely to match the US in the next quarter-century. But, while America’s continued central role in Asia is safe, the long-term viability of its security arrangements boils down to the credibility of its security assurances to allies and partners. America’s readiness to stand by them when the game gets rough will determine the strength and size of its security-alliance system in Asia in the years ahead.

The third and fourth scenarios can unfold even if the US remains the principal security anchor for Asia. A number of Asian countries have already started building mutually beneficial security cooperation on a bilateral basis, thereby laying the groundwork for a potential web of interlocking strategic partnerships. A constellation of Asian states linked by strategic cooperation, in fact, has become critical to help institute power stability in the region.

Brahma Chellaney is Professor of Strategic Studies at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi and the author of Asian Juggernaut: The Rise of China, India and Japan.

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2010.
http://www.project-syndicate.org

China divides Asia

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The center of Asia’s divide

By BRAHMA CHELLANEY

The Japan Times, October 1, 2010

Japan may have created the impression of having buckled under China’s pressure by releasing the Chinese fishing trawler captain. But the Japanese action helps move the spotlight back to China, whose rapid accumulation of power has emboldened it to aggressively assert territorial and maritime claims against its neighbors, from Japan to India.

Having earlier preached the gospel of its "peaceful rise," China is no longer shy about showcasing its military capabilities and asserting itself on multiple fronts. While the Chinese leadership may gloat after forcing Tokyo to climb down and release the captain, the episode — far from shifting the Asian balance of power in Beijing’s favor — has only shown that China is at the center of Asia’s political divides.

China’s new stridency in its territorial and maritime disputes with its neighbors has helped highlight Asia’s central challenge to come to terms with existing boundaries by getting rid of the baggage of history that weighs down a number of interstate relationships. Even as Asia is becoming more interdependent economically, it is becoming more divided politically.

While the bloody wars in the first half of the 20th century have made war unthinkable today in Europe, wars in Asia during the second half of the 20th century did not resolve matters and have only accentuated bitter rivalries. A number of interstate wars have been fought in Asia since 1950, the year both the Korean War and the annexation of Tibet started. Those wars, far from settling or ending disputes, have only kept disputes lingering.

China, significantly, has been involved in the largest number of military conflicts. A recent Pentagon report has cited examples of how China carried out military preemption in 1950, 1962, 1969 and 1979 in the name of strategic defense. The report states: "The history of modern Chinese warfare provides numerous case studies in which China’s leaders have claimed military preemption as a strategically defensive act.

For example, China refers to its intervention in the Korean War (1950-1953) as the "War to Resist the United States and Aid Korea." Similarly, authoritative texts refer to border conflicts against India (1962), the Soviet Union (1969) and Vietnam (1979) as "self-defense counterattacks." The seizure of Paracel Islands from Vietnam in 1974 by Chinese forces was another example of offense as defense.

All these cases of preemption occurred when China was weak, poor and internally torn. So today, China’s growing power naturally raises legitimate concerns. A stronger, more prosperous China is already beginning to pursue a more muscular foreign policy vis-a-vis its neighbors, as underscored by several developments this year alone — from its inclusion of the South China Sea in its "core" national interests, an action that makes its claims to the disputed Spratly Islands nonnegotiable, to its reference to the Yellow Sea as a sort of exclusive Chinese military-operations zone where the U.S. and South Korea should discontinue holding joint naval exercises.

China also has become more insistent in pressing its territorial claims to the Japanese-controlled Senkaku Islands, with Chinese warships making more frequent forays into Japanese waters.

As if to signal that it is acquiring the military power to enforce its claims, China has since April conducted large-scale naval exercises, first near Japan’s Ryukyu Islands chain — with a Chinese helicopter buzzing a Japanese destroyer — then in the East China Sea and, most recently, in the Yellow Sea.

In Tibet, the official PLA (People’s Liberation Army) Daily has reported several new significant military developments in recent months, including the first-ever major parachute exercise to demonstrate a capability to rapidly insert troops on the world’s highest plateau and an exercise involving "third generation" fighter-jets carrying live ammunition.

In addition, the railroad to Tibet, the world’s highest elevated railway, has now started being used to supply "combat readiness materials for the air force" there. These military developments have to be seen in the context of China’s resurrection since 2006 of its long-dormant claim to India’s northeastern Arunachal Pradesh state and its recent attempts to question Indian sovereignty over the state of Jammu and Kashmir, one-fifth of which it occupies.

Against that background, China’s increasingly assertive territorial and maritime claims threaten Asian peace and stability. In fact, the largest real estate China covets is not in the South or East China Seas but in India: Arunachal Pradesh is almost three times larger than Taiwan. Respect for boundaries is a prerequisite to peace and stability on any continent. Europe has built its peace on that principle, with a number of European states learning to live with boundaries they do not like.

Efforts to redraw territorial and maritime frontiers are an invitation to endemic conflicts in Asia. Through its overt refusal to accept the territorial status quo, Beijing only highlights the futility of political negotiations.

After all, a major redrawing of frontiers has never happened at the negotiating table in world history. Such redrawing can only be achieved on the battlefield, as Beijing has done in the past.

Today, whether it is Arunachal Pradesh or Taiwan or the Senkaku Islands, or even the Spratlys, China is dangling the threat to use force to assert its claims. In doing so, China has helped reinforce the specter of a China threat. By picking territorial fights with its neighbors, China also is threatening Asia’s continued economic renaissance. More significantly, China is showing that it is not a credible candidate to lead Asia.

It is important for other Asian states and the rest of the international community to convey a clear message to Beijing: After six long decades, China’s redrawing of frontiers must now come to an end.

Brahma Chellaney is the author, most recently, of "Asian Juggernaut: The Rise of China, India and Japan" (HarperCollins, 2010).
The Japan Times: Friday, Oct. 1, 2010
(C) All rights reserved

China bolsters U.S. role in Asia

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CHELLANEY: China undercuts its own goals

Aggressive posture drives smaller powers toward the U.S.

By Brahma Chellaney

–

The Washington Times

 
 

September 24, 2010

 

China’s aggressive military moves in recent months have many countries worried about a Sino-centric Asian security future. But such a scenario is unlikely to unfold because the more China flexes its muscles, the more several of its neighbors turn to the United States for help.

 

China has not disguised its desire for a unipolar Asia but multipolar world. But instead of a Sino-centric Asia, China is unwittingly aiding an opposite scenario: America remaining the principal security anchor for Asia. Through its increasing assertiveness, China is reinforcing America’s role in Asia as the implicit guarantor of security and stability.

 

There are two other possible scenarios that can unfold even with a continued central security role for the United States in Asia. One prospect is the emergence of a constellation of Asian states with common interests working together to ensure power equilibrium in Asia. The other possibility is of an Asia characterized by several resurgent powers, including Japan, India, Vietnam, Indonesia and a reunified Korea.

 

Of the four scenarios, the least likely is the first one — a Sino-centric Asia. China’s neighbors increasingly are uneasy about its growing power and assertiveness. China’s actions, in fact, hardly make it a credible candidate for leading Asia.

 

Raw power cannot buy leadership. After all, leadership can come not from overbearing power, but from other states’ consent or tacit acceptance. In any event, China’s power may be vast and rapidly growing, yet it lacks the capability to militarily rout or compel any rival, let alone enforce its writ on Asia.

 

As China seeks to translate its economic clout into major geopolitical advantage in Asia, a nation that once boasted of "having friends everywhere" finds that its accumulating power might inspire awe, but its actions are spurring new concerns and fears.

 

Leadership rests not just on material power, but also on normative power. It demands the power of ideas that can galvanize others. Such power also serves as the moral veneer to the assertiveness often involved in the pursuit of any particular cause or interest.

 

The Cold War, for example, was won by the United States and its allies not so much by military means as by spreading the ideas of political freedom and market capitalism to other regions that undercut communism’s global appeal and made it incapable of meeting the widespread yearning for a better and more open life.

 

China has shown itself good at assertive promotion of national interests and in playing classical balance-of-power geopolitics. But to assume the mantle of leadership in Asia by displacing the United States, it must do more than just pursue its own interests or contain potential peer rivals. More fundamentally, what does China represent in terms of values and ideas?

 

With its defense spending having grown almost twice as fast as its gross domestic product (GDP), China is now beginning to take the gloves off, confident that it has acquired the necessary muscle.

 

This has been exemplified by several developments — from China’s inclusion of the South China Sea in its "core" national interests to its efforts to present the Yellow Sea as its virtually exclusive military-operation zone. Add to the picture the large-scale Chinese naval exercises in recent months, first off Japan’s Ryukyu Islands, then in the South China Sea and most recently in the Yellow Sea.

 

China also has increasingly questioned India’s sovereignty over Arunachal Pradesh, the northeastern Indian state that Beijing calls "Southern Tibet" and claims largely as its own. Indian defense officials have reported a rising number of Chinese military incursions across the 2,521-mile Himalayan border.

 

The official PLA Daily has reported several significant military developments in Tibet in recent months, including the first-ever major parachute exercise to demonstrate China’s capability to rapidly insert troops on the world’s highest and largest plateau, Tibet. The new railroad to Tibet is now being used to supply "combat-readiness materials" to the Chinese air force stationed along the Himalayan belt.

 

China’s actions indeed are proving a strategic boon for Washington in strengthening and expanding U.S. security arrangements in Asia. In terms of power-projection force capabilities or the range of military bases and security allies in Asia, no power or combination of powers is likely to match the United States in the next quarter of a century.

 

While America’s continued central role in Asia is safe, the long-term viability of its security arrangements boils down to one word: Credibility. The credibility of America’s security assurances to allies and partners, and its readiness to stand by them when it comes to the crunch, will determine the future strength and size of its security-alliance system in Asia.

 

A combination of the second and third scenarios seems the most plausible prospect. A constellation of Asian states linked by strategic cooperation and with close ties to the United States has become critical to help institute power stability in Asia. But such a security constellation demands forward-looking policies in Washington, Tokyo, New Delhi, Seoul, Hanoi, Jakarta, Canberra and elsewhere.

 

Brahma Chellaney is the author of "Asian Juggernaut: The Rise of China, India and Japan" (HarperCollins, 2010).

© Copyright 2010 The Washington Times, LLC.

China hardly a credible candidate to lead Asia

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The Japan Times, September 22, 2010

A Sino-centric Asia unlikely

How Asia’s geopolitical landscape will evolve over the next couple of decades is not easy to foresee. But it is apparent that an increasingly assertive China is unwittingly reinforcing America’s role in Asia as the implicit guarantor of security and stability.

There are at least four possible Asian security scenarios. The first is the rise of a Sino-centric Asia, as desired by Beijing. China seeks a multipolar world but a unipolar Asia. By contrast, the United States desires a unipolar world but a multipolar Asia. A second scenario is of the U.S. remaining Asia’s principal security anchor. A third possibility is the emergence of a constellation of Asian states with common interests working together to ensure both power equilibrium and an Asia that is not unipolar. A fourth scenario is of an Asia characterized by several resurgent powers, including Japan, India, Vietnam, Indonesia and a reunified Korea.

Of the four scenarios, the least likely is the first one. China’s neighbors increasingly are uneasy about its growing power and assertiveness. While Beijing aspires to shape a Sino-centric Asia, its actions hardly make it a credible candidate for Asian leadership.

Brute power cannot buy leadership. After all, leadership can come not from untrammeled power, but from other states’ consent or tacit acceptance. If leadership could be built on brute force, schoolyard bullies would be class presidents.

In any event, China’s power may be vast and rapidly growing, yet it lacks the power of compulsion. In other words, China does not have the capability to militarily rout or compel any rival, let alone enforce its will on Asia.

As China seeks to translate its economic clout into major geopolitical advantage in Asia, a nation that once boasted of "having friends everywhere" finds that its accumulating power might inspire awe, but its actions are spurring new concerns and fears. Which states will accept China as Asia’s leader? Six decades of ruthless repression has failed to win China acceptance even in Tibet and Xinjiang, as the Tibetan and Uighur revolts of 2008 and 2009 attested.

Leadership involves much more than the possession of enormous economic and military power. It demands the power of ideas that can galvanize others. Such power also serves as the moral veneer to the assertiveness often involved in the pursuit of any particular cause.

The Cold War, for example, was won by the U.S. and its allies not so much by military means as by spreading the ideas of political freedom and market capitalism to other regions that, in the words of strategic thinker Stanley A. Weiss, "helped suck the lifeblood out of communism’s global appeal," making it incapable of meeting the widespread yearning for a better and more-open life.

China has shown itself good at assertive promotion of national interests and in playing classical balance-of-power geopolitics. But to assume the mantle of leadership in Asia by displacing the U.S., it must do more than just pursue its own interests or contain potential peer rivals. The overly assertive policies and actions of a next-door rising power make Asian states look to a distant protector. With its defense spending having grown almost twice as fast as its GDP, China is now beginning to take the gloves off, confident that it has acquired the necessary muscle.

This has been exemplified by several developments — from China’s inclusion of the South China Sea in its "core" national interests on a par with Taiwan and Tibet to its efforts to present the Yellow Sea as its virtually exclusive military-operation zone. Add to the picture large-scale naval exercises in recent months first off Japan’s Ryukyu Islands, then in the South China Sea and most recently in the Yellow Sea.

China also has increasingly questioned India’s sovereignty over Arunachal Pradesh, the northeastern Indian state that Beijing calls "Southern Tibet" and claims largely as its own. Indian defense officials have reported a rising number of Chinese military incursions across the 4,057-km Himalayan border.

Through its actions, China indeed has proven a diplomatic boon for Washington in strengthening and expanding U.S. security arrangements in Asia. South Korea has tightened its military alliance with the U.S., Japan has backing away from an effort to get the U.S. to move its marine air base out of Okinawa, and India, Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines, among others, have drawn closer to the U.S.

In terms of power-projection force capabilities or the range of military bases and security allies in Asia, no power or combination of powers is likely to match the U.S. in the next quarter of a century. While America’s continued central role in Asia is safe, the long-term viability of its security arrangements boils down to one word: Credibility. The credibility of America’s security assurances to allies and partners, and its readiness to stand by them when it comes to the crunch, will determine the strength and size of its security-alliance system in Asia in the years ahead. The third and fourth scenarios can unfold even if the U.S. remains the principal security anchor for Asia. A number of Asian countries have already started building mutually beneficial security cooperation on a bilateral basis, thereby laying the groundwork for a potential web of interlocking strategic partnerships.

A combination of the second and third scenarios is a plausible prospect, but it demands forward-looking policies in Washington, Tokyo, New Delhi, Seoul, Hanoi, Jakarta, Canberra and elsewhere. A constellation of Asian states linked by strategic cooperation and with close ties to the U.S. has become critical to help institute power stability in Asia. America’s continued role as a credible guarantor of Asian security, however, is a function not of its military strength but political will in Washington.

Brahma Chellaney is a professor of strategic studies at the Center for Policy Research.

Dealing with China’s increasing assertiveness

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Let the facts speak for themselves

 

India can expect no respite from Chinese strategic pressure, but to adroitly manage its relationship with Beijing, it must let facts speak for themselves, says Brahma Chellaney

 

The Economic Times

September 17, 2010

 

The prime minister has underscored concerns over the perceptible hardening in China’s stance towards India. With its defence spending having grown almost twice as fast as its GDP, China is now beginning to take the gloves off, confident that it has acquired the necessary muscle. Rising power is emboldening Beijing to pursue a more muscular foreign policy not just against India, but also in the region extending from the South China Sea to Northeast Asia.

 

This has been exemplified by several developments — from China’s inclusion of the South China Sea in its “core” national interests, an action that makes its claims to the disputed islands non-negotiable, to its bellicose reaction to the South Korean-US joint anti-submarine exercises in the Sea of Japan. And just the way China has staked its claim to India’s Arunachal Pradesh, it has asserted its sovereignty over Japan’s Senkaku Islands, which were part of Japanese territory all along, even during the US occupation of Japan.

 

Little surprise China’s neighbours are increasingly uneasy about the implications of its growing power. Beijing aspires to shape a Sino-centric Asia, but its actions hardly make it a good candidate for Asian leadership. Leadership can come not from brute force, but from other states’ consent or tacit acceptance.

 

China’s belligerence, significantly, poses a greater threat for India than for any other Asian nation for several reasons. One, China is mounting both direct military intimidation (as underlined by the abnormally high level of continuing cross-border incursions) and proxy threats against India, including by shoring by its longstanding strategic nexus with Pakistan. Two, the largest real estate China covets is in India. Arunachal is almost three times bigger than Taiwan. Three, India has no formal security alliance with any other power and thus must depend on its own defence capabilities. And four, by seeking to badger India on multiple fronts, China is signalling that its real, long-term contest is more with India than with the US. The countries around India have become battlegrounds for China’s moves to encircle India. By assiduously courting these countries as proxies in its geopolitical competition with India, China has managed to make deep inroads into India’s strategic backyard — from Sri Lanka to Bangladesh, and Nepal to Burma.

 

Yet, the world knows more about China’s moves in the South China Sea and East Asia than its actions against India. At international conferences, even some experts on Asia are surprised when told simple facts, such as China’s increasingly assertive claim to an entire Indian state and its cross-border military incursions.

 

It is now a year since the Indian government put a lid even on the domestic press coverage of the Himalayan border situation. It was in September 2009 that senior government figures, from the PM down, spoke out against the strident Indian media reporting on Chinese border incursions. Since then, sources of information have dried up and newspapers and television networks have carried little news. It is not that the Chinese cross-border forays have ended or even abated. It is just that Indian media organizations have little information to report, even though the incidence of Chinese incursions remains high.

 

Suppressing news on the border situation serves no interests other China’s. It suits the Chinese agenda that the border situation is kept under wraps.

 

Even in the pre-1962 period, India had made the same mistake by playing down China’s aggressive moves along the border. In fact, there are important parallels between the situation pre-1962 and the situation now. Border talks have regressed, Chinese claims on Indian territories are becoming publicly assertive and Chinese cross-border incursions are common. In fact, commentaries in military journals suggest that some in China believe that a swift, 1962-style victory in a border war with India is attainable to cut to size a peer rival.

 

Take another example: It was in June that the Chinese notified their refusal to allow the Indian northern army command chief to visit Beijing. But the Indian side leaked it to the press only in late August. It is still unclear what has been India’s response to the snub. Beijing has said flatly that it “has received no word that India has stopped military exchanges between the two countries.”

 

In the midst of such developments, the Indian foreign minister gratuitously reiterated on August 21 that Tibet is “part of China.” That the Tibet issue remains at the core of the India-China divide is being underlined by Beijing itself by laying claim to additional Indian territories on the basis of alleged Tibetan ecclesial or tutelary links to them, not any professed Han connection. There is absolutely no need for India to periodically renew its commitment to a “one China” policy when China not only declines to reciprocally make a one-India pledge, but also mocks at India’s territorial integrity openly. Little thought has been given that by bringing India’s Tibet stance in complete alignment with China’s demand, New Delhi has undercut its own leverage while boosting China’s.

 

Without contributing to the rising tensions with China, India has to gently allow facts to speak for themselves — whether on the border situation, or Tibet’s centrality, or China’s overt refusal to accept the territorial status quo. Facts indeed are an anathema even to schoolyard bullies. By not hiding its intent to further redraw the frontiers, Beijing only highlights the futility of political negotiations. After all, a major redrawing of frontiers has never happened at the negotiating table in world history.

 

India should learn how Vietnam has managed to turn the diplomatic tables on China by not shying away from spotlighting the latter’s aggressive designs. In the process, China stood isolated at the last ASEAN Regional Forum meeting.

 

A stable equation with China is more likely to be realized if India puts premium on leveraged diplomacy and avoids a trans-Himalayan military imbalance. More broadly, China’s trajectory will depend on how its neighbours and distant countries like the US manage its growing power. Such management — independently and in partnership — will determine if Chinese power does not slide into arrogance.

 

Brahma Chellaney is the author of Asian Juggernaut (HarperCollins USA, 2010).

Politics lags economics in Asia

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Economics isn’t everything
Improved geopolitics should have been as much of a priority as greater economic interdependence.
By Brahma Chellaney, JoongAng Daily, September 06, 2010
Brahma Chellaney

The dissimilarities between Asia and Europe are striking. Consider the following:

– While Europe has achieved equilibrium between and among its main powers, Asia is far from evolving any sort of equilibrium among its important players. The present situation in Asia, in fact, can be characterized as a case of power disequilibrium.

– In Europe, the largest state and economy, Germany, does not aspire for dominance in Europe. Rather, in respect to the other European powers, it has learned and accepted to be one among equals. In Asia, the situation is quite the opposite.

– Many Asian states are today distinguished by wide and growing income disparities and social inequalities, as well as by environmental degradation. 

– While democracy has become the norm in Europe, that hardly can be said about Asia. In fact, only a minority of Asian states are really democratic.

To compound matters, there is neither any security architecture in Asia nor a structural framework for regional security. 

That raises the question: Is Asia going to be an arena of old-style, balance-of-power politics and thus crimp its ability to shape the new global order? Or will growing cooperation and interdependence, as well as prospects of shared prosperity and stability, propel Asian states to act as “responsible stakeholders” in the international system and help reform global institutions?

Asia, in fact, has come to symbolize how the global spread of democracy has run out of steam after the successes of the late 1980s and the 1990s. Today, the challenge to the international spread of democratic values comes from a fusion of autocratic politics and crony, state-guided capitalism. As a result, the spread of democracy now is encountering increasingly strong headwinds. The strategy to use market forces to open up tightly centralized political systems hasn’t worked in multiple cases in Asia – the pivot of global strategic change.

Against this background, it is important to ask: How will the new international order be influenced by the return or rise of authoritarian great powers? Will political autocracies show themselves to be compatible with free markets? If so, will the new order, far from being liberal, be centered on classical balance-of-power strategies of the major powers?

Today, the changing global power equations are reflected in new realities. These include the eastward movement of power and influence, once concentrated in the West; the waning relevance of the international structures the United States helped establish after its World War II triumph; and Asia’s growing international profile. While the world is not yet multipolar, it is no longer unipolar, as it had been from the time of the Soviet Union’s collapse to at least the end of the 1990s, a period in which America failed to fashion a new liberal world order under its direction. 

What we have today is a world still in transition. The world, clearly, is at a turning point in its history. The new global challenges and power shifts actually symbolize the birth-pangs of a new world order. Healthy, effective institutions in Asia and the wider world have become critical to building power stability and cooperative approaches. 

If Asia is to seize the new opportunities to play a role on the world stage commensurate with its size and economic clout, it has to develop institutionalized cooperation in different areas to develop strategic stability. On a host of issues, ranging from climate change and world trade talks to reform of international institutions, Asia can play a central role. 

At the same time, we should not forget that Asia, despite the opportunities, also faces important challenges. Asia may be coming together economically, as reflected in the plethora of FTAs in the region. But it is not coming together politically. If anything, it is becoming more divided.

In hindsight, improved geopolitics should have been as much of an Asian priority as greater economic interdependence. In today’s market-driven world, trade is not constrained by political differences, nor is booming trade a guarantee of moderation and restraint between states. We should remember that better politics is as important as better economics.

*Brahma Chellaney is Professor of Strategic Studies at the independent, privately funded Center for Policy Research in New Delhi.

Nuking rights of citizens

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It’s no-risk, all-profit business for four firms

 

Brahma Chellaney

The Economic Times, August 24, 2010

 

It is a reflection of the murky politics in the country that the government was able to cut a deal with the main opposition party on the nuclear-accident liability bill, ignoring concerns that the legislation would weaken nuclear safety and deprive potential Indian victims of accidents the very rights American citizens have.

 

This is not the first time that unscrupulous politics has come to the aid of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s obsessive focus on the nuclear deal with the US. In July 2008, his government survived the “cash-for-votes” scandal over the nuclear deal with the help of the Samajwadi Party.

 

Today, thanks to the shadowy deal with the morally and intellectually bankrupt BJP, the political debate on the accident liability bill has boiled down to a secondary issue — the “right of recourse” of the state operator in India after an accident — while the main issue has been allowed to go by default. The primary issue is whether it is sensible for a poor country like India, where the “operator” of nuclear-power plants will remain the Indian state, to assume all liability on behalf of foreign reactor vendors.

 

What India has set out to do is unparalleled: Without inviting global bids or having first negotiated the price and terms of reactor supply, the government has earmarked a nuclear park exclusively for each of the four foreign vendors, GE, Westinghouse, Areva and Atomstroyexport. It is acquiring land on their behalf at these designated parks, where each vendor is to erect multiple reactors. The government, however, will run the reactors through its state operator, subsidizing the high-priced electricity generated.

 

Now, through the proposed accident-liability law, the suppliers also are being indemnified, with all liability (financial and legal) being channelled to the Indian state. In effect, India is offering no-risk, all-profit business opportunities to the four vendors to build 28 reactors worth some $76 billion.  

 

Given the high liability capacity being assumed — which could entail an average annual premium of nearly $1 million to be paid by the Indian taxpayer for each twin-reactor, foreign-built nuclear plant — foreign insurers are to be invited in. In case India in the future allows private players to also operate nuclear plants, the government has proposed an amendment to its own liability bill for the Indian republic to “assume full liability for a nuclear installation not operated by it.”

 

Yet few questions are being asked as to why the government is in an unseemly rush to pass such legislation and join the Convention on Supplementary Compensation, which hasn’t even come into force.

 

With the fundamental issues having been eclipsed from the debate, the focus has fallen on the right to recourse in the operator’s fiduciary liability policy. The government’s repeated attempts to dilute the right-to-recourse provisions against suppliers have exposed a disturbing dimension of the relationship between the executive branch and Parliament. First, a key word, “and”, was mysteriously added to the parliamentary standing committee’s text to water down those provisions.

 

When a furor greeted that surreptitious insertion, the government simply decided to supplant the committee’s agreed text with a new formulation that sets the right-to-recourse bar so high (“the nuclear incident has resulted as a consequence of an act of supplier or his employees, done with the intent to cause nuclear damage…”) as to render that right infructuous. All this raises troubling questions about the executive branch’s persistent moves to nullify a parliamentary committee’s work.

 

Broadly, the nuclear deal, which was pushed through without building “the broadest possible national consensus” that the PM had promised, has come to symbolize the decline of Indian politics, with self-aggrandizement replacing principles as the guiding philosophy for parties and national interests taking a back seat.

 

 (c) The Economic Times, 2010.

A win-win situation for foreign reactor vendors

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Nuclear Deal: Elusive Benefits, Tangible Costs

Brahma Chellaney
The Hindu newspaper, August 19, 2010

With accident-liability protection constituting another layer of state subsidy to foreign reactor vendors, the spectre of dozens of Enrons in the nuclear-energy sector is real.

The controversial Indo-U.S. nuclear deal was pushed through without building “the broadest possible national consensus” that the prime minister had promised. Certain give-and-take is inevitable in any deal. But this deal has picked up such onerous conditions that it now threatens to cast a perpetual political albatross around India’s neck. To implement the deal, the government is now seeking to burden the Indian taxpayer on multiple counts — from state subsidy in the form of liability protection and acquisition of land on behalf of foreign vendors to guaranteeing subsidised price of electricity from the high-cost foreign reactors to be imported. The result is likely to saddle India with dozens of Enrons in the nuclear-energy sector.

The deal’s energy benefits, in fact, are years away and will come with heavy economic costs. One reminder of the costs is the proposed nuclear-accident liability legislation. The revised bill that has emerged from the parliamentary standing committee increases, not lessens, the load on the taxpayer. The bill actually seeks to enshrine a new principle in international law: Profits are private, accident-related liabilities are all public.

While U.S. law permits “economic channelling,” but not “legal channelling,” of liability, thereby allowing criminal proceedings and other lawsuits against any party in courts, the revised Indian bill channels all financial and legal liability to the Indian state operator, effectively indemnifying foreign reactor vendors. Nuclear safety can hardly be enhanced by freeing foreign suppliers upfront from responsibility for accidents caused by design flaws, pinning liability singly on the state operator, and vesting the right of recourse only with the operator by shutting out victims of accident.

Nuclear parks

A bigger indicator of the energy-related costs, however, has completely escaped public attention. The government has earmarked a nuclear park exclusively for each of the four favoured foreign vendors. GE-Hitachi is to build six reactors at Kovvada (Andhra Pradesh), Westinghouse another six at Mithi Virdi (Gujarat), Areva a further six at Jaitapur (Maharashtra), and Russia’s Atomstroyexport six more at Kudankulam (Tamil Nadu) and an additional four later at Hirapur (West Bengal).

The reservation of a nuclear park for each foreign vendor even before the terms of a reactor contract have been negotiated is anti-competitive and unparalleled. To add to the pampering, India is also acquiring land on behalf of these firms.

Despite an inherently anti-market process, the government contends the contracts will be based on competitive pricing. But by reserving a park solely for each foreign vendor, it has undercut its own bargaining leverage. Just like the arms deals of recent years, the reactor contracts are all set to be signed without open bidding. Indeed, since the deal was unveiled in 2005, India has signed billions of dollars worth of arms contracts with America on a government-to-government basis, although the U.S. has no public sector.

Worse yet, foreign firms are being freed from the task of producing electricity at marketable rates. The reactors will be run by the state operator, with the Indian taxpayer subsidising the high-priced electricity generated. It may take nearly a decade before the first foreign reactor under the nuclear deal comes on line, if one goes by Areva’s record in Finland and Atomstroyexport’s at Kundankulam, where completion of a twin-reactor station is years behind schedule.

Technology controls

Yet another jarring aspect is that despite the deal being in force internationally, India continues to battle major technology sanctions. The deal has not lifted all technology controls even in the civilian nuclear field: In late June, the G-8 countries renewed their ban on sale of civilian enrichment and reprocessing (ENR) technology and equipment, even under international safeguards, to a non-NPT state like India. The Indian foreign secretary has described as “anachronistic” the continuing U.S. export controls against India that extend beyond the nuclear realm to cover advanced technologies and target civilian entities like ISRO. The PM, however, had triumphantly announced in 2008 that the deal “marks the end … of the technology-denial regime against India.”

The idea to build energy “security” by importing foreign fuel-dependent power reactors is nothing but a money-spending boondoggle likely to leave India insecure and buffeted by outside pressures. That spectre has been underscored by the four big “No”s for India embedded in the final deal: No binding fuel-supply guarantee to avert a Tarapur-style fuel cut-off; no irrevocable reprocessing consent; no right to withdraw from its obligations; and no right to conduct a nuclear test ever again.

The government has shied away from discussing even the economics of producing electricity from foreign reactors. India’s heavily-subsidised indigenous nuclear-energy industry is supplying electricity at between 2.70 and 2.90 rupees per kilowatt hour from the reactors built since the 1990s. That price is far higher than the cost of electricity from coal-fired plants. But electricity from foreign-built nuclear reactors will be even dearer. That, in effect, will increase the burden of subsidies on the Indian taxpayer, even as the reactor imports lock India into an external-fuel dependency.

The revised accident-liability bill does well to double the permissible time period for filing accident-related claims against the state operator. Increasing the compensation fund is also welcome, although there is no need realistically for minimum or maximum cap on liability when the Indian state is making itself wholly responsible for damages from an accident. But most other changes that have emerged from the standing committee’s deliberations or from the government’s disingenuous deal-making with the BJP do not address the fundamental concerns, which centre on relieving foreign vendors of direct liability for any accident and abridging the legal rights of victims.

Indemnifying foreign suppliers helps to significantly lower their costs and risks of doing business in India. But in extending such protection, the bill aims to overturn the doctrine of “absolute liability” laid down by the Supreme Court that prevents “enterprises” (including the operator, supplier, builder and owner) from wriggling out of their liability by claiming exemptions, such as alleged sabotage. The Supreme Court held after the Bhopal gas disaster that, “The enterprise is strictly and absolutely liable to compensate all those who are affected by the accident and such liability is not subject to any of the exceptions which operate vis-à-vis the tortious principle of strict liability.” By that standard, foreign reactor vendors would be fully liable for any wilful act or gross negligence that causes a nuclear accident.

The bill, however, casts all liability on the state operator and the federal government. The liability bill thus is a major liability for the Indian taxpayer.

A way out

The sensible course of action in nuclear energy would be for the government to let foreign vendors acquire land on their own at designated sites, build and operate reactors, and sell electricity to distribution companies without the Indian taxpayer in any way being burdened. If foreign firms produce nuclear energy at competitive prices, the benefits for India will be real. Even the cap on accident liability can be arranged by emulating the U.S. example so that the Indian taxpayer is the insurer of last resort, not of first resort. For each major radioactive release, America’s Price-Anderson liability system provides more than $10 billion in total potential compensation through a complex formula that includes insurance coverage carried by the reactor that suffered the accident, “retrospective premiums” from each of the covered reactors in operation in the U.S., and a five per cent surcharge. The liability burden thus falls on the private sector.

The Indian government, however, has no intention to create an open, competitive field because that would unmask and obstruct the generous state subsidies it is offering for nuclear-generated power. It thus told Parliament categorically on August 12 that it “does not intend to change the related provision of the Atomic Energy Act, 1962, for private participation” in nuclear energy.

Creating an artificial market with no-strings subsidies and electricity supply at state-supported rates is no prudent way to meet energy needs. The proposed arrangements actually seek to create a win-win situation for foreign vendors by ensuring there is no downside to their business. By rigging commercial terms in favour of select foreign suppliers, the arrangements, in effect, promote unfair business practices and cartelisation.

( Brahma Chellaney is the author, among others, of Nuclear Proliferation: The U.S.-India Conflict.)