Category Archives: Asian Security

China’s game of chicken

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BY BRAHMA CHELLANEY, The Japan Times

China’s Nov. 23 declaration of an air defense identification zone (ADIZ) extending to territories it does not control is just the latest example of its jurisdictional creep that reflects a larger strategy to supplant the United States as the preeminent power in Asia. Yet U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration has responded to China’s aggression with words of cautious criticism but no castigatory step, not even delaying Vice President Joe Biden’s Beijing visit. China gave no ground to Biden during his Dec. 4-5 visit.

Washington has not explicitly called on China to roll back the ADIZ. Indeed, with its advisory to U.S. airlines to respect China’s new ADIZ, it has opened a rift with ally Japan at a time when the imperative is for presenting a united front against an escalatory action that even Biden admits is “a unilateral attempt to change the status quo in the East China Sea,” causing “significant apprehension in the region.”

Japan has asked its carriers to ignore China’s demand for advance notification of flights even if they are merely transiting the new zone and not heading toward Chinese airspace. This demand, unusual by international ADIZ standards, impinges on the principle of freedom of navigation of the skies.

Washington is signaling that if Beijing backed away from this unusual demand and set up a military hotline with Tokyo to forestall an accidental military flare-up, it may be willing to live with the Chinese ADIZ — a position certain to displease Japan.

Let’s be clear: At stake in the East China Sea are not just some flyspeck islands but regional power balance, a rules-based order, freedom of navigation of the skies and seas, and access to maritime resources, including seabed minerals. If China gets its way, the path to a Sino-centric Asia would open.

As China accumulates economic and military power, it has increasingly taken to flexing its muscles, ratcheting up territorial disputes with multiple neighbors and seeking to alter the status quo in Asia through surprise actions. This is alienating it from its neighbors and further calling into question its “peaceful rise” claim.

The ADIZ establishment was cleverly timed to coincide with the unveiling of the interim Iran nuclear deal in Geneva so as to take advantage of the U.S. and international distraction. Shrewdly timing an action and achieving a major tactical surprise against an opponent are key elements in China’s strategic doctrine.

China’s latest action is a reminder that Obama must turn his attention from the preoccupations of the Middle East to the potentially combustible situation in East Asia. To make the promise of his Asian “pivot” real, he must be willing to assert U.S. leadership in order to help tame China’s belligerence and reassure allies.

Sending two unarmed B-52 bombers on “routine” runs through the Chinese ADIZ was tokenism that cannot obscure the need for crafting a credible response. Unfortunately, Obama seems more interesting in balancing America’s relationships in Asia than in checkmating an aggressive China.

Obama’s Asia policy seeks to reap the benefits of building closer engagement with Asian states — including China, now central to U.S. economic and strategic interests — while charting a course of neutrality on sovereignty disputes. This delicate balancing act, however, implies strategic and moral equivalence, even though the coercion and aggression is largely by China against states that are America’s allies or strategic partners.

For example, in the current geopolitical crisis, Washington is urging restraint also on Japan’s part, lest any escalation force the U.S. to take sides, undermining its policy to manage China’s rise without trying to contain it. Washington is seeking to manage Sino-Japanese tensions, too, by urging both sides to tamp down their nationalistic rhetoric and reduce the risk of escalation or miscalculation through crisis-management and confidence-building measures. This is the message Biden took to Tokyo and Beijing.

Yet the focus on the dual management of China’s rise and Sino-Japanese tensions obfuscates the broader test of power in the Asia-Pacific that Chinese actions represent. It also obscures the then U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ January 2011 warning that China’s long-term goal is to push the United States and its military assets farther out in the Pacific.

In this light, the Obama administration’s stance not to challenge China directly only aids its creeping aggression in Asia.

China is nibbling at territories held by several neighbors, as highlighted by growing Chinese incursions across the long, disputed Himalayan border with India, its success in outwitting the Philippines to gain effective control of the Scarborough Shoal and the Second Thomas Shoal, and its aggressive moves against Vietnam over their unsettled maritime boundary.

Its self-declared ADIZ in the East China Sea even covers the sky over the South Korean-held Leodo Isle (“Suyan Rock” to Beijing), prompting Seoul to expand its own air-defense zone.

China’s ADIZ, while aimed at solidifying its claims to territories held by Japan and South Korea, increases regional tensions and the risks of Sino-Japanese conflict.

Compelling aircraft transiting the zone to accept the new Chinese rules won’t be easy for Beijing, given China’s limited early warning radar and in-flight refueling capabilities and the refusal of some neighboring states, especially Japan, to fall in line. As part of its step-by-step strategy, however, Beijing has no intention to enforce the zone immediately.

Efforts at enforcement will come later when circumstances are more favorable. Right now, the priority of China’s leaders is to prevail in the dangerous game of chicken that they have started.

If China is able to ride out international criticism while holding its ground, it will be emboldened to set up — as Japanese Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera has warned — a similarly expansive air-defense zone in the South China Sea, more than 80 percent of which it now formally claims. A Chinese government spokesman said Nov. 27, according to Xinhua, that “China will set up other ADIZs in due time after completing relevant preparations.”

That is why it is important for the U.S. to draw the line now over China’s territorial creep. Otherwise, China — in the absence of any geopolitical blowback — will continue to subvert the status quo in the East and South China Seas, along its border with India, and even on the cross-border flows of Asia’s major rivers, which originate in the Chinese-annexed Tibetan plateau.

Without a concerted U.S.-led effort to push back against China’s aggression in the East China Sea, it won’t be long before another Chinese encroachment occurs.

Brahma Chellaney, a geostrategist, is the author, most recently, of “Water, Peace, and War” (Rowman & Littlefield, 2013).

(c) The Japan Times, 2013.

Water Woes in Asia

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By Brahma Chellaney, World Policy, Winter 2013/2014

Asia faces a dilemma. The continent has the lowest global per capita freshwater resources, less than half the global annual average of 222,480 cubic feet per head. At the same time, Asia has the fastest growing demand for water in the world. Asia can in no sense remain the engine of global economic growth without addressing its water crisis.

In an increasingly water-stressed Asia, the struggle for water is escalating political tensions and intensifying the impact on eco-systems. The water situation will worsen in the fastest growing Asian economies as well as in less developed countries where fertility rates remain high. In many Asian countries, decisions about where to place new manufacturing or energy plants are increasingly constrained by inadequate local water availability. The World Bank has estimated the economic cost of China’s water shortages at 2.3 percent of its GDP. China, however, is not yet under “water stress”—a term defined as the availability of less than 60,000 cubic feet of water per person per year. But already water-stressed economies, from South Korea to India, are paying a higher price.

It is against this background that water wars are being waged between competing states in several regions. Tactics include building dams on international rivers or, if the country is located downstream, resorting to coercive diplomacy to prevent such construction. In the case of Sino-Indian relations, water is becoming a key security issue and a potential source of serious discord. China, having established hydro-supremacy by annexing the starting places of multiple major international rivers, is now pursuing an increasingly ambitious dam-building program on the Tibetan plateau, which threatens to diminish international river flows into India and other states that share these same upland water sources.

Averting water wars demands rules-based cooperation, water sharing, and dispute settlement mechanisms. China, however, is working to get its hand on Asia’s water tap by constructing an extensive upstream hydro-infrastructure. China does not have a single water-sharing treaty with any of its neighbors.

India, by contrast, has water-sharing treaties with its two downstream neighbors—Pakistan and Bangladesh, covering the Indus and Ganges Rivers and setting new precedents in international water law. In the 1996 Ganges Pact, India guaranteed Bangladesh an equal share of the downstream flows during the difficult dry season. The 1960 Indus Treaty remains the world’s most generous water-sharing arrangement. India agreed to set aside 80 percent of the waters of the six-river Indus system for Pakistan indefinitely, in the hope that it could trade water for peace.

A central issue facing Asia is the need to persuade China’s leaders to institutionalize cooperation with neighboring states on shared resources. Given China’s centrality in Asia’s water map, its rush to build more giant dams promises to upset relations across Asia, imperiling prospects for establishing any rules-based Asian water regime.

Brahma Chellaney is the author of Water, Peace, and War: Confronting the Global Water Crisis (Rowman & Littlefield, 2013) and the earlier book, Water: Asia’s New Battleground, which won the 2012 Bernard Schwartz Award.

(c) World Policy, 2013.

Draw the line now on China’s encroachment

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BRAHMA CHELLANEY, Special to The Globe and Mail, December 05, 2013

China’s declaration of a so-called air defence identification zone (ADIZ) in the East China Sea, extending to territories it does not control, is just the latest example of a jurisdictional creep that reflects a larger Chinese strategy to supplant the United States as the pre-eminent power in Asia. Yet U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration has responded with words of cautious criticism but no castigatory step, not even delaying Vice-President Joe Biden’s visit to Beijing.

Worse still, with its advisory to U.S. airlines to respect the zone, Washington has opened a rift with ally Japan at a time when the imperative is for presenting a united front against an escalatory act that even Mr. Biden admits is “a unilateral attempt to change the status quo in the East China Sea.” Japan has asked its carriers to ignore China’s demand for advance notification of flights even when they are transiting the new zone and not heading toward Chinese airspace. This demand, unusual by international ADIZ standards, impinges on the principle of freedom of navigation of the skies.

Let’s be clear: At stake are not just some flyspeck islands but regional power balance, a rules-based order, freedom of navigation, and access to maritime resources, including seabed minerals. If China gets its way, it will unlock the path to a Sino-centric Asia.

As China accumulates economic and military power, it has increasingly taken to ratcheting up territorial disputes with multiple neighbours. It’s seeking to alter the territorial and maritime status quo.

The ADIZ establishment was cleverly timed to coincide with the unveiling of the interim Iran nuclear deal in Geneva. Shrewdly timing an action and achieving major tactical surprise against an adversary are key elements in China’s strategic doctrine.

It is a reminder that Mr. Obama must turn his attention from the Middle East to the potentially combustible situation in East Asia. To make the promise of his Asian “pivot” real, the President must be willing to assert U.S. leadership in order to help tame China’s belligerence and reassure allies.

Sending two unarmed B-52 bombers on routine runs through the Chinese ADIZ was tokenism that cannot obscure the need for crafting a credible U.S. response. Unfortunately, Mr. Obama seems more interesting in balancing America’s relationships in Asia than in checkmating an aggressive China.

Mr. Obama’s Asia policy seeks to reap the benefits of building closer engagement with Asian states – including China, now central to U.S. economic and strategic interests – while charting a course of neutrality on sovereignty disputes. This delicate balancing act, however, implies strategic and moral equivalence, even though the coercion and aggression is largely by China against states that are U.S. allies or strategic partners.

For example, in the ADIZ crisis, Washington is also urging restraint on Japan’s part, lest any escalation force the U.S. to take sides. Washington is seeking to manage Sino-Japanese tensions by urging both sides to tamp down their nationalistic rhetoric and reduce the risk of escalation or miscalculation through crisis-management and confidence-building measures. This is the message Mr. Biden took to Tokyo and Beijing.

Yet the focus on the dual management of China’s rise and Sino-Japanese tensions obfuscates the broader test of power the Chinese actions represent. It also obscures then U.S. defence secretary Robert Gates’s 2011 warning that China’s long-term goal is to push the United States and its military assets farther out in the Pacific.

In this light, the U.S. position of not challenging China directly only emboldens creeping aggression.

China is nibbling at territories held by several neighbours, as highlighted by its growing incursions across the disputed Himalayan border with India, its success in outwitting the Philippines to gain effective control of the Scarborough Shoal and the Second Thomas Shoal, and its aggressive moves against Vietnam over their unsettled maritime boundary. Its self-declared ADIZ even covers the sky over the South Korean-held Leodo Isle, which Beijing calls the Suyan Rock.

China’s zone, while aimed at solidifying its claims to territories held by Japan and South Korea, increases the risks of Sino-Japanese conflict arising from miscalculation or accident. Compelling aircraft to accept the new Chinese rules won’t be easy for Beijing, given China’s limited early-warning radar and in-flight refuelling capabilities and the refusal of some neighbouring states, especially Japan, to fall in line.

As part of its step-by-step strategy, however, Beijing has no intention of enforcing the zone immediately. Enforcement will come later, when circumstances are more favourable. Right now, the priority of China’s leaders is to prevail in their game of chicken.

If China is able to ride out international criticism while holding its ground, it will be emboldened to set up a similar zone in the South China Sea, more than 80 per cent of which it now formally claims. According to Xinhua, a government spokesman “said China will set up other ADIZs in due time after completing relevant preparations.”

That is why it is important for the United States to draw the line now. Without a concerted effort to push back against aggression, it won’t be long before another encroachment.

Brahma Chellaney, a geostrategist, is the author, most recently, of Water, Peace, and War.

(c) Globe & Mail, 2013.

Creeping China

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By Brahma Chellaney

A Project Syndicate column internationally syndicated

Brahma Chellaney picks apart China’s self-described “cabbage” strategy, designed to secure hegemony in Asia.

DSCF5649China’s growing geopolitical heft is emboldening its territorial creep in Asia. After laying claim formally to more than 80% of the South China Sea, it has just established a so-called air defense identification zone in the East China Sea, raising the odds of armed conflict with Japan and threatening the principle of freedom of navigation of the seas and skies. Meanwhile, the People’s Republic continues to nibble furtively at territory across the long, disputed Himalayan border with India.

Few seem to fathom the logic behind China’s readiness to take on several neighbors simultaneously. China is seeking to alter the status quo gradually as part of a high-stakes effort to extend its control to strategic areas and resources. President Xi Jinping’s promise of national greatness — embodied in the catchphrase “China dream” — is tied as much to achieving regional hegemony as to internal progress.

China’s approach reflects what the Chinese general Zhang Zhaozhong this year called a “cabbage” strategy: assert a territorial claim and gradually surround the area with multiple layers of security, thus denying access to a rival. The strategy relies on a steady progression of steps to outwit opponents and create new facts on the ground.

This approach severely limits rival states’ options by confounding their deterrence plans and making it difficult for them to devise proportionate or effective counter-measures. This is partly because the strategy — while bearing all the hallmarks of modern Chinese brinkmanship, including reliance on stealth, surprise, and a disregard for the risks of military escalation — seeks to ensure that the initiative remains with China.

The pattern has become familiar: construct a dispute, initiate a jurisdictional claim through periodic incursions, and then increase the frequency and duration of such intrusions, thereby establishing a military presence or pressuring a rival to cut a deal on China’s terms. What is ours is ours, the Chinese invariably claim, and what is yours is negotiable. For example, China says “no foundation for dialogue” with Japan exists unless the Japanese accept the existence of a territorial dispute over the uninhabited Senkaku Islands.

Here, as elsewhere, China has painted its rival as the obstructionist party. As Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi put it, “Japan needs to recognize that there is such a dispute. The whole world knows that there is a dispute.” But there is a dispute only because China has succeeded in shaking the status quo in recent years by popularizing the islands’ Chinese name (“Diaoyu”) and staging incursions into their territorial waters and airspace.

After steadily increasing the frequency of those incursions since September 2012, China has recently begun increasing their duration. The establishment of a new air defense identification zone extending over the islands is its latest cabbage-style security “layer” — a unilateral power grab that US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel quickly branded “a destabilizing attempt to alter the status quo in the region.” The zone even covers the sky over the Leodo (Suyan) Reef, a submerged rock that both South Korea and China claim. As China escalates its campaign of attrition against a resolute Japan, it increases the risk of armed conflict, whether by accident or miscalculation.

China’s strategy has had more success — without provoking serious risks — against the weaker Philippines. This is apparent from China’s effective seizure last year of Scarborough Shoal, located well within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone, and the controlling presence of Chinese vessels this year around the Second Thomas Shoal, part of the disputed Spratly Islands. China has not yet tried to evict the eight Filipino marines still living on the Second Thomas Shoal, but Zhang has included this shoal in the country’s “series of achievements” in the South China Sea.

China is not aiming for control of just a few shoals or other tiny outcroppings; it seeks to dominate the South and East China Seas strategically and corner maritime resources, including seabed minerals. The combined land area of the Senkaku and Spratly Islands amounts to barely 11 square kilometers; but the islands are surrounded by rich hydrocarbon reserves. While seeking to enlarge incrementally its military footprint in the more than 80% of the South China Sea that it claims, China’s aim in the East China Sea is to break out of the so-called “first island chain,” a string of archipelagos along the East Asian coast that includes the Senkaku Islands and Taiwan.

By contrast, vast tracts of disputed land are at stake in the resource-rich Himalayan region. Here, too, China’s incursions, after increasing in frequency, are now being staged intermittently for longer periods.

Make no mistake: China’s territorial creep is contributing to Asian insecurity, fueling political tension, and turning the world’s economically most vibrant continent into a potentially global hot spot.

To be sure, China is careful to avoid any dramatic action that could become a casus belli by itself. Indeed, it has repeatedly shown a knack for disaggregating its strategy into multiple parts and then pursuing each element separately in such a manner as to allow the different pieces to fall into place with minimal resistance.

This shrewdness not only keeps opponents off balance; it also undercuts the relevance of US security assurances to allies and the value of building countervailing strategic partnerships in Asia. In fact, by camouflaging offense as defense, China casts the burden of starting a war on an opponent, while it seeks to lay the foundation — brick by brick  — of a hegemonic Middle Kingdom. Chinese leaders’ stated desire to resolve territorial disputes peacefully simply means achieving a position strong enough to get their way without having to fire a shot.

Brahma Chellaney, Professor of Strategic Studies at the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research, is the author of Asian Juggernaut; Water: Asia’s New Battleground; and Water, Peace, and War: Confronting the Global Water Crisis.

(c) Project Syndicate, 2013.

Irredentist China Ups The Ante

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Brahma Chellaney, Forbes

China’s territorial creep is now on open display: After laying a formal claim to more than 80 percent of the South China Sea, it has established in the East China Sea a so-called air defense identification zone that encompasses Japanese-controlled islands. China has also ratcheted up territorial tensions with the Philippines, Vietnam, and India. For example, it persists with efforts to disturb the status quo along the long, disputed Himalayan border by repeatedly sending military patrols into Indian territory.

China’s behavior in the South and East China Seas reflects its conduct along the land borders it disputes — a strategy to assert its claims by incrementally changing facts on the ground, with little regard for international norms and rules.

Its incremental encroachments into neighbors’ borderlands can be described as a “salami-slice” strategy — or what Maj. Gen. Zhang Zhaozhong of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) last May called a “cabbage” strategy. This involves asserting a claim, launching furtive incursions into the coveted territory, and erecting — one at a time — cabbage-style multiple layers of security around a contested area so as deny access to a rival. The establishment of an expansive air-defense zone in the East China Sea is its latest cabbage-style security layer move.

By moving quietly and gradually to achieve a strategic transformation in its favor, China undercuts both the relevance of U.S. security assurances to allies like Japan and the Philippines and the value of building countervailing strategic partnerships between and among Asian states and the United States.

The pace at which China’s bit-by-bit strategy proceeds depends on the extent to which the opponents marshal political will and capability to resist it. The strategy, for example, has run into stiffer obstacles vis-à-vis a resolute Japan than with a weak Philippines.

Let’s be clear: Changing the territorial status quo has been the unfinished business of the People’s Republic of China since its founding in 1949, when it set out to forcibly absorb the sprawling Xinjiang and Tibetan plateau — actions that increased the landmass of China by 44 percent.

An emboldened China then went on to seize the Switzerland-size Aksai Chin plateau of the original princely state of Jammu and Kashmir in the 1950s, the Paracel Islands in 1974, the Johnson South Reef in 1988, the Mischief Reef in 1995 and, most recently, the Scarborough Shoal (2012) and the Second Thomas Shoal (2013). Propelled by its growing military might, China is still working to redraw political boundaries.

Along land frontiers, rodent-style surreptitious attacks usually precede its salami slicing. The aim is to start eating into enemy land like giant rodents and thereby facilitate the slicing. The use of this strategy is becoming increasingly apparent along the Himalayan border with India, the world’s longest disputed frontier.

Here one form of attacks has involved the Chinese military bringing ethnic Han pastoralists to the valleys along the Himalayan line of control and giving them cover to range across it, in the process driving Indian herdsmen from their traditional pasturelands and opening the path to land grab. This strategy, which can also begin with the Chinese army directly nibbling at an unprotected border area, has been especially employed in the two highly strategic Buddhist regions located on opposite ends of the Himalayan frontier — Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh.

While the Chinese army flexes its muscles in the mountainous borderlands with India, China’s navy and new coast guard assert territorial and maritime claims in the South and East China Seas.

In the East China Sea, China has employed paramilitary agencies, such as the Maritime Safety Administration, the Fisheries Law Enforcement Command, and the State Oceanic Administration, in a campaign of attrition against Japan over the Senkaku Islands — a campaign that has already succeeded in shaking the status quo by making the rest of the world accept that a dispute exists.

This has emboldened Beijing to step up the frequency and duration of its incursions into the uninhabited islands’ territorial waters and to violate the airspace over them. The November 23 establishment of an air-defense zone extending to the Senkakus (which it calls the Diaoyu Islands) is just the latest example of its jurisdictional creep and increasingly muscular approach.

Taking on Japan, its former occupier and historical rival, is part of Beijing’s larger search for new seabed resources and for strategic ascendancy in the western Pacific by breaking out of what it perceives to be “first island chain” — a string of islands and atolls extending along China’s eastern periphery that includes the Senkakus, Taiwan, and the Paracel and Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. Its longer-term objective is to push U.S. military assets to the “second island chain,” farther out to the Pacific.

In the South China Sea, China aims to gradually legitimize its presence in the more than 80 percent of the sea it now claims formally. Through repeated and growing acts, China is etching a lasting presence in the claimed areas.

Among the ways Beijing has sought to establish new facts on the ground in the South China Sea is to lease hydrocarbon and fishing blocks inside other disputant states’ 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zones (EEZs), as defined by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Such leases are designed to limit the UNCLOS-granted economic rights of the other claimant states while expanding China’s control of the region’s resource wealth, including hydrocarbon reserves.

China has even established “Sansha City” on Woody Island in the Paracels as its administrative base for the South China Sea, setting up a local civilian government and a military garrison there to oversee the entire region. And in its latest effort to present a fait accompli over its occupation of the Paracels, it has started tourist cruises to those disputed islands.

To be sure, Beijing, as a skillful salami slicer, is usually careful to slice very thinly so as to avoid any dramatic action that could become a casus belli by itself. China proceeds in ways not only to undercut its opponents’ deterrence strategy but also to cast the burden of starting a war on them.

Any targeted state is presented with a strategic Hobson’s choice: either put up with China’s territorial creep or face a dangerous and costly war. This is the choice, for example, Manila has faced over China’s 2012 seizure of the Scarborough Shoal, located well within the Philippines’ EEZ, and the controlling presence of Chinese vessels this year near Second Thomas Shoal, part of the Spratly Islands.

China’s strategic aim is not to merely gain control of some shoals (essentially rocks) but to dominate the South China Sea, a critical waterway linking East Asia with the Indian Ocean region and beyond to the Persian Gulf and Europe. In the East China Sea, too, the issue at stake is who will exercise influence over the vast region.

Against this background, China’s tactics and strategy pose an increasing challenge to several of its neighbors, who face a deepening dilemma over how to thwart its expansionism. China’s strategy of constant outward pressure on its borders also threatens to destabilize the economically vibrant but politically volatile Asia.

China’s neighbors must overcome their differences and collaborate strategically.  Separately, they are outclassed by China but, collectively, they have the potential means to rein in China and defend their territorial and economic rights against its expansionism.

(c) Forbes.com, 2013.

Border-talks charade

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Why India risks repeating its Himalayan territorial blunder vis-à-vis China

Brahma Chellaney, Mail Today, November 29, 2013

An Indian soldier stands guard at the ancient Nathu La border crossing between India and Chinese-ruled Tibet.

India has held regular border-settlement negotiations with China since 1981 in what is the longest such continuous process between any two nations in post-World War II history.  The negotiations, which began as “senior-level talks”, were rechristened first in 1988 as “joint working group” talks and then in 2003 as talks between “special representatives”. Yet, after 32 years of border-related talks, India has failed to persuade China to agree to the bare minimum — a mutually defined line of control — even as the two sides continue to farcically call their disputed frontline the “Line of Actual Control”, or LAC.

In fact, China has strengthened its leverage against India by upping the ante, both by hardening its stance in the negotiations and by stepping up military pressure, including nibbling at Indian territory through stealthy incursions. The pattern to disturb the status quo little by little and mount increased pressure is in keeping with China’s preferred approach to territorial disputes: What is ours is ours and what is yours is negotiable.

Having annexed the Switzerland-size Aksai Chin plateau in the western Himalayas, China has focused its attention on the Austria-size Arunachal Pradesh in the east, aggressively laying its claim since 2006 to that rugged Indian state, which borders Bhutan and Myanmar and is almost three times larger than Taiwan. In a clever ploy to turn Arunachal into an internationally recognized dispute, China has started calling it “South Tibet”, a term that was unknown before it invented it in 2006. Yet a timid India has retreated to an increasingly defensive position in the border talks.

The spotlight now is on China’s Tibet-linked claim to Arunachal rather than on Tibet’s status itself. China’s revival of its claim to Arunachal, in fact, drew encouragement from the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s 2003 recognition of Tibet as part of the People’s Republic. Beijing’s success in securing that recognition has helped narrow the dispute to what it claims. As a result, a politically adrift India has been left to fend off China’s increasingly assertive territorial demands.

What does India gain by persisting with the border-talks charade? By staying put in a barren and counterproductive process, India only aids China’s containment-behind-engagement strategy. As long as India remains directionless, China will continue to press its claims by whatever means — fair or foul — it deems advantageous. And as India gets sucked into a 1950s-style trap, history is in danger of repeating itself.

The issue then was Aksai Chin; the issue now is Arunachal. As a result, whenever an Indian president or prime minister visits Arunachal — which is once in several years — Beijing rakes up its territorial demand by publicly condemning the trip. China feels emboldened to up the ante because of Indian pusillanimity. For example, when President Pranab Mukherjee visited Arunachal in November 2013 — the first visit by an Indian president to the state in more than five years — he avoided going to Arunachal’s Tibetan Buddhism pilgrimage valley of Tawang, just like Prime Minister Manmohan Singh did during his visits to that state in 2008 and 2009. Singh’s predecessor, the self-styled nationalist Atal Bihari Vajpayee, didn’t even set foot in Arunachal.

The Dalai Lama has repudiated the Chinese claim that Arunachal, or even just the Tawang Valley, was historically part of Tibet. China, however, insists on securing at least the Tawang Valley — the gateway to the Dalai Lama’s 1959 escape from his homeland — so as to complete its assimilation of traditional Tibetan-inhabited lands and obliterate the remaining evidence of Tibet’s historical status as an independent entity. The strategic Tawang Valley is a critical corridor between Lhasa, Tibet’s capital, and the Assam plains because it can militarily open the way for China to throttle India’s hold on its entire northeastern region.

Brahma Chellaney is a geostrategist and author.

(c) Mail Today, 2013.

Asia’s new strategic allies

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For a politically rising Japan that is beginning to shed its pacifist blinkers, India is central to both its economic-revival and security-building strategies.

Brahma Chellaney, The Hindu newsaper, November 27, 2013

Asia’s balance of power will be determined principally by events in East Asia and the Indian Ocean. In this light, the emerging Indo-Japanese entente is likely to help shape Asia’s strategic future as much as China’s ascent or America’s Asian “pivot.” Japan and India, as Asia’s natural-born allies, have a pivotal role to play in preserving stability and helping to safeguard vital sea-lanes in the wider Indo-Pacific region — a region defined not only by the confluence of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, but also by its significance as the global trade and energy-supply hub.

LANDMARK EVENT

The India visit of Japan’s Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko from November 30 promises to be a landmark event in the already fast-developing partnership between Asia’s two leading democracies, which are strategically located on opposite flanks of the continent. In the more than 2,600-year history of the Japanese monarchy — the world’s oldest continuous hereditary royalty — no emperor has been to India, although India has traditionally been referred to in Japan as Tenjiku, or the heavenly country.

Customarily, the Japanese Emperor’s visit to any country is highly significant because it symbolises a watershed in relations with that nation. It was in recognition of the momentous nature of the royal trip that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh appointed Ashwini Kumar as his special envoy with Cabinet rank in August to “prepare for the upcoming visit” of the imperial couple, and for Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s visit early next year. Indeed, the India tour could be the last overseas visit of Emperor Akihito, who has undergone coronary and prostate-cancer surgeries in the past decade and will turn 80 a couple of weeks after he returns home from Chennai.

India has been specially chosen for an imperial visit to signal Japan’s commitment to forge closer ties. Japan is already doing more for India than any other economic partner of this country: it is the largest source of aid, and is playing a key role in helping India to improve its poor infrastructure, as illustrated by the Japanese-financed Western Freight Corridor, the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor, and the Bangalore Metro Rail Project. Tokyo is also keen to add concrete strategic content to the bilateral ties.

The relationship, remarkably free of any strategic dissonance or bilateral dispute, traces its roots to the introduction of Buddhism in Japan in the 6th century CE. The Todaiji Temple in the ancient capital city of Nara is home to Japan’s most famous and biggest statue — a great gilt bronze image of Lord Buddha. The statue’s allegorical eyes-opening ceremony in 752 CE was conducted by a priest from India in the presence of Emperor Shômu, who declared himself a servant of the “Three Treasures” — the Buddha, the Buddhist law, and the monastic order. Japan’s cultural heritage from India via China extends to Sanskrit influence on the Japanese language.

Japanese still bless a newly married couple by reciting an ancient proverb that they are the best bride and bridegroom across the three kingdoms of Kara (China), Tenjiku (India) and Hinomoto (Japan). Akihito is not unfamiliar with India: A year and a half after marrying Michiko — the daughter of a wealthy businessman — he came to India in 1960 as the crown prince, along with his wife. During that visit, he laid the cornerstone of New Delhi’s India International Centre and planted a sapling at the Japanese Embassy that has grown into a huge tree.

Today, the contrast between the disciplined Japanese society and tumultuous India could not be more striking. India has the world’s largest youthful population, while Japan is ageing more rapidly than any other developed country. And whereas India has always valued strategic autonomy, Japan remains a model U.S. ally that hosts not only a large U.S. troop presence but also pays generously for the upkeep of the American forces on its soil.

Yet, the dissimilarities between the two countries increase the potential for close collaboration. Japan’s heavy-manufacturing base and India’s services-led growth — as well as their contrasting age structures — make their economies complementary, opening the path to generating strong synergies. India’s human capital and Japan’s financial and technological power can be a good match to help drive India’s infrastructure development and great-power aspirations, and catalyse Japan’s revival as a world power.

‘NATURAL AND INDISPENSABLE’

For India, Japan is a critical source of capital and commercial technology. Indeed, there cannot be a better partner for India’s development than the country that was the first non-western society to modernise and emerge as a world power, spearheading Asia’s industrial and technological advances since the 19th century. Dr. Singh has underscored the importance of also building security collaboration with it, saying Indians “see Japan as a natural and indispensable partner in our quest for stability and peace in the vast” Indo-Pacific region.

For a politically rising Japan that is beginning to shed its pacifist blinkers, India is central to both its economic-revival and security-building strategies. After prolonged economic stagnation, Japan faces difficult challenges, including a shrinking population, a spiralling public debt, a fundamentally deflationary environment, and a security dilemma compounded by constraints arising from the U.S.-imposed, post-war Constitution. However, Mr. Abe’s dynamic leadership and control of both houses of parliament is aiding his moves to place Japan on the right track.

Japan and India, as energy-poor countries heavily reliant on oil imports from the unstable Persian Gulf region, are seriously concerned over mercantilist efforts to assert control over energy supplies and the transport routes for them. So the maintenance of a peaceful and lawful maritime domain, including unimpeded freedom of navigation, is critical to their security and economic well-being. That is why they have moved from emphasising shared values to seeking to protect shared interests, including by holding joint naval exercises.

These facts explain why India and Japan boast the fastest-growing bilateral relationship in Asia today. Since they unveiled a “strategic and global partnership” in 2006, their political and economic engagement has deepened at a remarkable pace. Their free-trade pact, formally known as the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA), came into force in 2011. They have even established an alliance to jointly develop rare-earth minerals so as to reduce their dependence on China.

The level and frequency of India-Japan official engagement have become extraordinary. In addition to holding an annual Prime Minister-level summit, the two also conduct several yearly ministerial dialogues: A strategic dialogue between their Foreign Ministers; a security dialogue between their Defence Ministers; a policy dialogue between India’s Commerce Minister and Japan’s Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry; and separate ministerial-level energy and economic dialogues. And, to top it off, they also hold a trilateral strategic dialogue with the United States.

According to Dr. Singh, “India and Japan have a shared vision of a rising Asia.” Translating that vision into practice demands strengthening their still-fledgling strategic cooperation and working together to ensure a pluralistic, stable Asian order.

Japan, in keeping with its pacifist Constitution, does not possess offensive systems, such as nuclear submarines, large aircraft carriers, and long-range missiles. But with the world’s sixth largest defence budget, it has a formidable defensive capability, an impressive armament-production base, and Asia’s largest naval fleet, including top-of-the-line conventional subs, large helicopter-carrying destroyers, and Aegis-equipped cruisers capable of shooting down ballistic missiles.

India — the world’s largest arms importer that desperately needs to develop an indigenous arms-production capability — must forge closer defence ties with Japan, including co-developing weapon systems and working together on missile defence. The most stable economic partnerships in the world, such as the Atlantic community and the Japan-U.S. partnership, have been built on the bedrock of security collaboration. Economic ties that lack the underpinning of strategic partnerships tend to be less stable and even volatile, as is apparent from China’s economic relationships with India, Japan and the U.S. Through close strategic collaboration, Japan and India must lead the effort to build freedom, prosperity and stability in the Indo-Pacific region.

Against this background, the Emperor’s visit promises to live up to Mr. Abe’s hope of being a “historic event.” It is likely to herald an enduring Indo-Japanese strategic partnership.

(Brahma Chellaney, a geostrategist, is the author, most recently, of Water, Peace, and War)

(c) The Hindu, 2013.

The Emperor’s New Goal

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BY BRAHMA CHELLANEY

Photo of Brahma ChellaneyBrahma Chellaney, Professor of Strategic Studies at the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research, is the author of Asian Juggernaut; Water: Asia’s New Battleground; and Water, Peace, and War: Confronting the Global Water Crisis.

A Project Syndicate column internationally syndicated

Japanese Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko, in a rare overseas trip, are scheduled to begin a tour of the Indian cities of New Delhi and Chennai on November 30. The imperial couple’s weeklong visit is likely to mark a defining moment in Indo-Japanese relations, fostering closer economic and security ties between Asia’s two leading democracies as they seek a pluralistic, stable Asian order.

Traditionally, a visit from the Japanese emperor – except for a coronation or royal anniversary celebration – signified a turning point in a bilateral relationship. While the emperor is merely the “symbol of the state” under Japan’s US-imposed postwar constitution, he retains significant influence, owing to Japanese veneration of the imperial dynasty – the world’s oldest continuous hereditary monarchy, the origins of which can be traced to 660 BC. Indeed, the emperor’s overseas visits remain deeply political, setting the tone – if not the agenda – for Japan’s foreign policy.

Consider Akihito’s 1992 visit to China – the first such visit by any Japanese emperor. Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping’s government – grateful for Japan’s reluctance to maintain punitive sanctions over the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre and eager for international recognition, not to mention Japanese capital and commercial technologies – had extended seven invitations over two years.

Akihito’s trip, which came at the height of Japan’s pro-China foreign policy, was followed by increased Japanese aid, investment, and technology transfer, thereby cementing Japan’s role in China’s economic rise. The improved diplomatic relationship lasted until the recent flare-up of territorial and other bilateral disputes.

Although no Japanese emperor has visited India before, the bilateral relationship runs deep. In traditional Japanese culture, India is Tenjiku (the country of heaven). Today, Japan is India’s largest source of aid and has secured a key role in supporting infrastructure development, financing projects like the Western Dedicated Freight Corridor, the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor, and the Bangalore Metro Rail Project.

With these natural allies seeking to add strategic bulk to their rapidly multiplying ties, Akihito’s tour is the most significant visit to India by any foreign leader in recent years. Indeed, it is expected to be one of the last foreign trips for the 79-year-old emperor, who has undergone several major surgeries in the past decade.

Akihito’s travel schedule contrasts sharply with that of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Despite having had open-heart surgery during his first term, India’s 81-year-old leader has sought to offset his low domestic political stock by flying more than one million kilometers on overseas trips – including visits to Japan, China, Indonesia, Russia, Thailand, and the United States in the last six months alone.

The paradox of Akihito’s tour – for which Singh has appointed a special envoy with ministerial rank to oversee preparations – is that Japan is investing substantial political capital to build a strong, long-term partnership with India’s government at a time when India is gripped by policy paralysis. Japan’s leaders are perhaps counting on the continuity of India’s strategic policies, which would require the Indian government that emerges from next year’s general election to sustain the momentum of cooperation.

But, more important, Japan is adjusting to meet the challenges of a rapidly changing regional environment, characterized by rising geopolitical competition with China. In a historical reversal, Japan has found itself on the defensive against the increasingly muscular foreign policy of its former colony and old rival.

This situation is forcing the Japanese government to reconsider its postwar pacifism, revise its defense strategy, and increase its military spending. In this context, Japan knows that a deeper strategic collaboration with India – which is also seeking to blunt increasing military pressure from China – is its best move.

In modern history, Japan has had the distinction of consistently staying ahead of the rest of Asia. During the Meiji era, in the second half of the nineteenth century, it became the first Asian country to modernize. It was also the first Asian country to emerge as a world power, defeating Manchu-ruled China and Czarist Russia in separate wars. And after its defeat in World War II, Japan rose from the ashes to become Asia’s first global economic powerhouse.

With per capita GDP of more than $37,000, Japan still ranks among the world’s richest countries, specializing in the highest-value links of global supply chains. And income inequality in Japan ranks among the lowest in Asia.

Nonetheless, almost two decades of economic stagnation have eroded Japan’s regional clout. This raises the question of whether Japan’s current problems –sluggish growth, high public debt, and rapid population aging – presage a similar trend across East Asia. Similar problems are already appearing in South Korea, while China has been driven to loosen its one-child policy and unveil plans for economic reforms aimed at reviving growth.

For India, Japan is indispensable as both an economic and a security partner. It is central to India’s “Look East” policy, which has evolved into more of an “Act East” policy, whereby the original strategy’s economic logic has been amplified by the larger geopolitical objective of ensuring Asian stability and a regional balance of power. It is in this light that Akihito’s historic visit should be viewed.

Hug first, repent at leisure

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Singh returned from Beijing with a sham river-waters accord and a China-dictated border pact that crimps Indian military response to any incursion by the PLA

Brahma Chellaney, India Today, November 25, 2013, Upfront Column, Page 12

Diplomacy, to be effective, must be backed by leverage and cross-linkages to minimize the weaker side’s disadvantages and help maintain a degree of equilibrium in a bilateral relationship. The Indian leadership, however, has ignored that imperative, embracing diplomatic showmanship. Its engagement with China is bereft of even the first principle of diplomacy—reciprocity—thus allowing Beijing to reap a soaring trade surplus even as it undermines Indian interests. Showcasing the “success” of a bilateral summit takes precedence over safeguarding national interest—a “hug first, repent at leisure” approach.

Clipboard01Nothing can illustrate this better than the recent Beijing visit of Manmohan Singh, India’s most-travelled prime minister ever. He returned with a completely hollow river-waters accord that effectively hands China a propaganda tool to blunt any Indian criticism of its dam-building spree in Tibet. Rarely before have two major countries signed an accord so steeped in empty rhetoric as this memorandum of understanding unveiled during Singh’s visit. The accord, incorporating not a single Chinese commitment or anything tangible, seeks to pull the wool over the Indian public’s eyes.

It is just a public-relations text with only platitudes—that the “two sides recognized that trans-border rivers and related natural resources and the environment are assets of immense value”; that they “agreed that cooperation on trans-border rivers will further enhance mutual strategic trust and communication”; and that they also “agreed to further strengthen cooperation on trans-border rivers” and “exchange views on other issues of mutual interest”. As if to add insult to injury, the accord extracts India’s “appreciation to China” for selling “flood-season hydrological data”, although India provides such data free to downstream Pakistan and Bangladesh year-round.

Another much-trumpeted accord signed during the visit—the Chinese-dictated Border Defence Cooperation Agreement (BDCA)—contains nothing to halt the increasingly frequent Chinese border incursions or prevent a Depsang-style deep encroachment again. Defence Minister A.K. Anthony has admitted this, saying the accord “does not mean nothing will happen” on the frontier. Beijing wanted a new accord to wipe the slate clean over its breaches of the border-peace agreements signed in 1993, 1996 and 2005. But why did India accede to the violator’s demand for new border rules?

BDCA’s provisions are so vaguely worded as to allow China—a master at reinterpreting texts—to cast the burden of compliance mainly on India. For example, Article II, without elaboration, calls for exchange of “information about military exercises, aircrafts, demolition operations and unmarked mines”. Does this mean that India must inform China about its military-cargo flights to forward landing strips such as Daulat Beg Oldi and its demolition work to build Himalayan road tunnels?

Or take Article VI, which says minimally: “The two sides agree that they shall not follow or tail patrols of the other side in areas where there is no common understanding of the line of actual control (LAC)”. The Home Ministry-administered Assam Rifles and Indo-Tibetan Border Police (not regular army troops) that India timorously deploys to fend off the aggressive People’s Liberation Army (PLA) have a defensive mindset and are in no position to tail the Chinese. But if PLA troops intrude and pitch tents, claiming they are on Chinese land, Beijing is likely to interpret this provision as barring Indian patrols from encircling them or setting up their own Depsang-style camp to keep an eye on the raiders. The provision indeed will constrain Indian border guards from attempting to drive back any intruding Chinese patrol.

Given China’s claims on Indian territories and its refusal to even clarify the LAC, Article VI, in effect, ties only India’s hands. No less suspect is Article VII, which gives either side the right to seek “clarification” from the other if “any activity” occurs in “areas where there is no common understanding” of the LAC. If India were to seek clarification over a Chinese penetration, it would likely get the stock reply that the “Chinese troops are on Chinese soil”. Contrary to the pre-visit claim, BDCA contains no commitment to set up a hotline between the Indian and Chinese military headquarters; it only says the two sides “may consider” doing that.

Any Chinese leader combines an India stopover with a visit to his country’s “all-weather ally”, Pakistan, but a meek Singh declined to club his China visit with a trip to Japan or Vietnam. Singh, in fact, was in Beijing at the same time as the Russian and Mongolian premiers, with Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev beginning his Beijing trip while Singh was cooling his heels in Moscow on an official visit.

Yet, with the help of the planeload of journalists he takes with him on any overseas visit, Singh marketed his China trip as a major success. In truth, as the two accords attest, he wilfully played into China’s hands.

Brahma Chellaney is a geostrategist and author.

(c) India Today, 2013.

Arming the Elephant

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BRAHMA CHELLANEY

A column internationally syndicated by Project Syndicate

The rise in US arms sales to India is being widely cited as evidence of the two countries’ deepening defense relationship. But the long-term sustainability of the relationship, in which India is more a client than a partner, remains a deep concern for Indians. Does the recently issued Joint Declaration on Defense Cooperation, which establishes intent to move beyond weapons sales to the co-production of military hardware,mark a turning point, or is it merely a contrivance to placate India?

The factors driving the strategic relationship’s development are obvious. Since 2006, bilateral trade has quadrupled, reaching roughly $100 billion this year. And, over the last decade, US defense exports to India have skyrocketed from just $100 million to billions of dollars annually.

With US military spending slowing and other export markets remaining tight, American defense firms are eager to expand sales to India, which is now the world’s largest arms importer. And the political environment is amenable to their plans: India now conducts more joint military exercises with the US than with any other country.

For the US, displacing Russia as India’s leading arms supplier was a major diplomatic triumph, akin to Egypt’s decision during the Cold War to shift its allegiance – and its arms supplier – from the Soviet Union to America. The difference is that India can actually pay for the weapons that it acquires.

And the bills are substantial. In recent years, India has ordered American arms worth roughly $9 billion. It is now purchasing additional US weapons systems – 22 Apache attack helicopters, six C-130J turbo military transport aircraft, 15 Chinook heavy-lift helicopters, and 145 M-777 ultra-light howitzers – worth $5 billion. The value of India’s arms contracts with US firms exceeds that of American military aid to any country except Israel.

Nirupama Rao, India’s ambassador to the US, has called such defense transactions “the new frontier” in US-India relations and “a very promising one at that.” But, while it is certainly a positive development for the US, for India, it represents a new frontier of dependency.

The problem is that India’s defense sector has virtually nothing that it can sell to the US. The country has yet to develop a credible armament-production base like that of, say, Japan, which is co-developing advanced weapons systems with the US. In fact, India depends on imports – not only from major suppliers like the US and Russia, but also from Israel, the world’s sixth-largest arms exporter – to meet even basic defense needs.

Moreover, India’s leaders have not leveraged the bargaining power afforded by its massive arms purchases to advance national interests. They could, for example, try to persuade the US to stop selling arms to Pakistan, or secure better access to the American market for India’s highly competitive IT and pharmaceutical sectors, which are facing new US non-tariff barriers.

Applying the recent declaration on defense cooperation will not be easy. For example, efforts to identify specific opportunities for collaborative weapons-related projects are to be pursued in accordance with “national policies and procedures.” But the two sides cannot truly “place each other at the same level as their closest partners” unless national policies and procedures – especially in the US – evolve sufficiently.

Similarly, the declaration merely reiterates America’s position that it supports India’s “full membership” in the four US-led technology-control regimes: the Wassenaar Arrangement, the Nuclear Suppliers Group, the Missile Technology Control Regime, and the Australia Group. Given that US policy is to deny sensitive technologies to those outside these regimes, India’s admission would make all the difference in facilitating technology sharing. But the declaration does not include any commitment from the US to expedite India’s admission.

All of this suggests that the US is pandering to India’s desire for a more equal defense relationship. It is willing to co-produce with India some smaller defensive systems, such as Javelin anti-tank missiles, in order to pave the way for more multi-billion-dollar deals for US-made systems. The Indian media are doing their part to strengthen the illusion of progress, latching onto the phrase “closest partners” in their acclaim for the agreement.

The irony is that, while America’s pursuit of a stronger defense relationship with India is aimed largely at offsetting an increasingly assertive China, US President Barack Obama has charted a neutral course in Sino-Indian disputes. For example, the US has declined to hold joint military exercises in the northeastern Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, which China has claimed as “South Tibet” since 2006.

As it stands, the US sells mainly defensive weapons systems to India, while Russia, for example, offers India offensive weapons, including strategic bombers, an aircraft carrier, and a lease on a nuclear submarine. Would the US be willing to sell India offensive weapons – including high-precision conventional arms, anti-submarine systems, and long-range air- and sea-launched cruise missiles – that could help to deter Chinese military preemption?

As US-India defense cooperation broadens, this question will loom ever larger.

(c) Project Syndicate, 2013.