Category Archives: Asian Security

Lamaistic Drama and Intrigue on the Himalayas

Posted on by

Is the Karmapa Lama an agent of Beijing or a political scapegoat?

Chinese cash seized from the monastery of one of the most important figures in Tibetan Buddhism has stirred fresh intrigue
The Karmapa Lama at his monastery in Dharamsala, India, where large sums of Chinese cash were seized in a police raid
Brahma Chellaney
The Guardian
guardian.co.uk, 10 February 2011

The seizure by police of large sums of Chinese currency from the Indian monastery of the Karmapa Lama – one of the most important figures in Tibetan Buddhism – has revived old suspicions about his continuing links with China and forced him to deny that he is an “agent of Beijing”.

The Dalai Lama, the Panchen Lama, and the Karmapa Lama are the three highest figures in Tibetan Buddhism, representing parallel institutions that have intermittently been at odds with each other throughout their history. And China, seeking to tighten its grip on Tibet, has worked to control the traditional process of finding the reincarnation of any senior lama that passes away.

Thus, in 1992, China helped select the seven-year-old Ogyen Trinley Dorje as the 17th Karmapa Lama, installing him at Tibet’s Tsurphu monastery – the Karmapas’ ancestral abode, which was almost destroyed during the cultural revolution. He became the first reincarnated “living Buddha” to be recognised and ratified by Communist China.

But then, in 1999, Dorje staged a stunning escape to India via Nepal, attracting the world’s attention, but also deep suspicion, because of the apparent ease with which he and his entourage managed to flee. The Dalai Lama has hosted him at the Gyuto monastery in Dharamsala, India, ever since.

Earlier, in 1995, China installed its own Panchen Lama after its security services abducted the Tibetans’ six-year-old appointee, who has simply disappeared, along with his family.

Now, China is waiting for the current Dalai Lama – who is over 75 and has had bouts of ill health in recent years – to pass away, so that it can anoint his successor, too. But the Dalai Lama, the charismatic face of the Tibetan movement, has made it clear that his successor will come from the “free world”, thereby excluding Chinese-ruled Tibet. This has set the stage for the emergence of two rival Dalai Lamas, one chosen by China and the other by the Tibetan exile movement.

In fact, the Chinese-appointed Karmapa Lama has a doppelganger Karmapa, who has set up shop in New Delhi. With both the Karmapas in India, the Indian government has sought to maintain peace by barring the contenders from the sacred Rumtek monastery in the Indian Himalayan state of Sikkim.

Against this background, the discovery of large sums of Chinese and other foreign currency has ignited a fresh controversy over Dorje. While his supporters have staged protests against the police raid and interrogation of their leader, Indian officials have expressed apprehension that China may be funding Dorje as part of a plan to influence the Karmapa’s Kagyu sect, which controls important monasteries along the militarised Indo-Tibetan border.

According to Xu Zhitao, an official at the Chinese Communist party central committee’s united front work department, the allegation that “the Karmapa [may be] a Chinese agent or spy shows that India is keeping its mistrustful attitude toward China”. But such an attitude seems warranted: Xu’s Tibet division is tasked with overseeing monastic institutions, inculcating “patriotic” norms among monks and nuns – through re-education when necessary – and infiltrating the Tibetan resistance movement and Tibetan Buddhist monasteries on both sides of the Indo-Tibetan frontier.

Communities in the Himalayan region have historically been closely integrated. But, with Tibet locked behind an iron curtain since the 1951 Chinese annexation, the economies and cultures of the entire Himalayan region have weakened. Tibetan Buddhism, however, still serves as the common link, with the Karmapa’s Kagyu sect a powerful force on the Indian side.

The cash haul has reopened the question that arose in 1999: Was China behind Dorje’s flight to India, or is he a genuine defector who simply got fed up with living in a gilded Chinese cage?

China had several possible motives for staging his “escape”, including a desire to strengthen his claim to the title at a time when the rival contender (backed by important interests in India, Bhutan and Taiwan) appeared to be gaining ground. Had Dorje remained in Tibet, he could have lost out to his rival, because the 280-year-old Rumtek monastery, the Kagyu school’s holiest institution, is where the sect’s all-powerful “black hat”, the symbolic crown of the Karmapa – believed to be woven from the hair of female deities – is located.

China would also have drawn comfort from the fact that, within the murky world of intra-Tibetan politics, its anointed Karmapa, oddly, had the Dalai Lama’s backing. Historically, the Dalai Lamas and Karmapa Lamas vied with each other for influence until the Dalai Lama’s Gelug school gained ascendancy over the Kagyu order. According to Tibetan tradition, however, the Dalai Lama has no role in selecting or endorsing a Karmapa. The Dalai Lama in this case gave his approval for purely political reasons.

The previous Karmapa Lama died in 1981, and the controversy over his successor that has raged ever since also epitomises a struggle for control of the $1.5bn in assets held by the Kagyu order, the richest in Tibetan Buddhism. With control of the Rumtek monastery embroiled in rival lawsuits, the New Delhi-based Karmapa has, not surprisingly, greeted the recent cash seizure as “exposing” his Chinese-appointed rival.

Significantly, in contrast to its increasingly vituperative attacks on the Dalai Lama, China has not denounced (or de-recognised) its Karmapa, despite his flight to India signalling its failure to retain the loyalty of a supposed puppet. The Mandarin-speaking Ogyen Trinley Dorje, now 25, occasionally criticises the Chinese government, including its efforts “to create this ethnic conflict” in Tibet. Nevertheless, China has refrained from attacking him, making clear that it wants him to return eventually.

And the ongoing Karmapa saga, with its shadowy politics and intrigue, could turn out to be only the opening act – a foretaste of what may come when two duelling Dalai Lamas emerge after the incumbent passes from the scene.

China’s challenges in the Year of the Rabbit

Posted on by
Reply

Brahma Chellaney
The Economic Times, February 4, 2011

The Lunar New Year couldn’t have begun on a more edgy note for China’s rulers, who have been quick to add words like “Cairo” and “Egypt” to their list of words banned on the Internet. Haunted by the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, China’s leaders are nervously watching the rise of people’s power against some Arab dictatorships. If Egyptians could rise up, despite enjoying a per-capita income three times higher than the Chinese, China certainly risks the same contagion.

China actually lived up to the Year of the Tiger that 2010 represented in its astrology by roaring at its neighbours and picking territorial fights with them. Now in the Year of the Rabbit which started on Thursday, will China emulate that burrowing animal? Will it mean more tunnels being burrowed in the Himalayas for river diversion and other strategic projects? And “carrots” (rabbit’s favourite) being demanded from neighbours and the rest of the world for eschewing irascible behaviour?

If the Chinese leadership were forward-looking, it would utilize the Year of the Rabbit to loosen its political reign and make up for the diplomatic imprudence of 2010 that left an isolated China counting only the problems states of North Korea, Pakistan and Myanmar as its allies. But the military’s growing political clout and the sharpening power struggle in the run-up to the major leadership changes scheduled to take place from next year raise concerns that the world will likely see more of what made 2010 a particularly tiger-like year when China frontally discarded Deng Xiaoping’s dictum, tao guang yang hui (conceal ambitions and hide claws).

A tiger’s claws are retractable, but China has taken pride more in baring them than in drawing them in. While manipulating patriotic sentiment, it has pursued hardline policies at home, tightening its controls on the Internet and media and stepping up repression in Tibet and Xinjiang. On a host of issues — from diplomacy and territorial claims to trade and currency — China spent 2010 staking out a more-muscular role that only helped heighten international concerns about its rapidly accumulating power and unbridled ambition.

But nothing fanned international unease and alarm more than Beijing’s disproportionate response to the Japanese detention of a fishing-trawler captain last September. While Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan’s standing at home took a beating for his meek capitulation to Chinese coercive pressure, the real loser was China, in spite of having speedily secured the captain’s release.

Japan’s passivity in the face of belligerence helped magnify Beijing’s hysterical and menacing reaction. In the process, China not only undercut its international interests by presenting itself as a bully, but it also precipitately exposed the cards it is likely to bring into play when faced with a diplomatic or military crisis next — from employing its trade muscle to help inflict commercial pain to exploiting its monopoly on the global production of a vital resource, rare-earth minerals.

Its resort to economic warfare, even in the face of an insignificant provocation, has given other major states advance notice to find ways to offset its leverage, including by avoiding any commercial dependency and reducing their reliance on imports of Chinese rare earths.

At issue is not China’s rise but its selective acceptance of norms and rules, as well as its efforts to protect or enlarge unfair advantage in trade, resource, security, currency and other issues.

The gap between its words and actualities is also widening. For example, China persisted with its unannounced rare-earth embargo against Japan for weeks while continuing to blithely claim the opposite in public — that no export restriction had been imposed. Like its denials last year on two other subjects — the deployment of Chinese troops in Pakistan-held Kashmir to build strategic projects and its use of Chinese convicts as labourers on projects in some countries too poor and weak to protest — China has demonstrated a troubling propensity to obscure the truth.

Despite the battering to its international image — which has sunk to its lowest point since after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre of pro-democracy protestors — there is little prospect of 2011becoming a course-correction year for Beijing. The high turnover of leaders scheduled to occur at different levels in China during 2012-13 has set in motion within the Communist Party an intense jockeying for promotion, with senior functionaries engaged in competitive pandering to nationalistic sentiment.

But with the party increasingly dependent on the military to maintain its monopoly on power and ensure domestic order, senior military officers are overtly influencing foreign policy. Is China becoming a militaristic state where the government’s oversight over the armed forces exists only in name?

In truth, the more overtly China has embraced capitalism, the more indigenized it has become ideologically. By gradually turning its back on Marxist dogma — imported from the West — the country’s oligarchy has made Chinese nationalism the legitimating credo of its hold on power. The new crop of leaders, including President Hu Jintao’s putative successor, Xi Jinping, will bear a distinct nationalistic imprint.

As the present leadership prepares for the 18th party congress next year, it may find it difficult to resist flaunting the country’s newfound power, in a bid to play to the public gallery at home. A reminder of the domestic challenges was a recent viral video produced by a Beijing animation firm that showed the masses, portrayed as rabbits, rising up in anger against corruption and repression and killing party cadres.

The challenges could prompt China to go for the home run in 2012, the Year of the Dragon — the monster that has been universal since before biblical times. As the 50th year of China’s military attack on India, 2012 will be especially important in Asia, because the declared intent of that war — “to teach a lesson” — was repeated in the 1979 Chinese aggression against Vietnam and appeared to guide Beijing’s top-heavy response in the more-recent boat incident with Japan.

(c) The Economic Times, 2011

Greater turbulence in the Sino-Indian relationship

Posted on by
Reply
Japan Times, Dec. 29, 2010 http://bit.ly/dHlDnD

 

Troubling China-India Ties

 

A Tibetan woman in traditional costume

A Tibetan woman in traditional costume

The already fraught China-India relationship appears headed for more turbulent times as a result of the two giants’ failure to make progress on resolving any of the issues that divide them. Earlier this month, during the first visit in more than four years of a Chinese leader to India, the two sides decided to kick all contentious issues down the road. Instead, Premier Wen Jiabao and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh agreed to expand bilateral trade by two-thirds over the next five years.

But the trade relationship is anything but flattering for India, which is largely exporting primary commodities to China and importing finished products, as if it were the raw-material appendage of a neocolonial Chinese economy. To make matters worse, India confronts a ballooning trade deficit with China and the dumping of Chinese goods that is systematically killing local manufacturing.

The focus on trade even as political disputes fester only plays into the Chinese agenda to gain bigger commercial benefits in India while being free to inflict greater strategic wounds on that country.

India-China relations have entered a particularly frosty spell, with New Delhi’s warming relationship with Washington emboldening Beijing to up the ante through border provocations, resurrection of its long-dormant claim to the northeastern Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, and diplomatic needling. After initially seeking greater cooperation to help dissuade New Delhi from moving closer to the U.S., Beijing shifted to a more-coercive approach following the mid-2005 U.S.-India defense framework agreement and nuclear deal.

Last year relations sank to their lowest political point in more than two decades when Beijing unleashed a psychological war, employing its state-run media and nationalistic Web sites to warn of another armed conflict. The coarse rhetoric of the period leading up to the 1962 Chinese military attack also returned, with the Chinese Communist Party’s broadsheet, People’s Daily, for example, berating India for “recklessness and arrogance” and asking it to weigh “the consequences of a potential confrontation with China.”

Since then, Beijing has picked territorial fights with other neighbors as well, kindling fears of an expansionist China across Asia.

The only area where India-China relations have thrived is commerce. But the rapidly growing trade, far from helping to turn the page on old rifts, has been accompanied by greater Sino-Indian geopolitical rivalry and military tensions, resulting in India beefing up defenses. Tibet remains at the core of the Sino-Indian divide. While Chinese damming of international rivers has helped link water with land disputes, the 30-year-long negotiations to settle territorial feuds have hit a wall and gone off on a tangent.

Little surprise a 20-fold increase in trade in the past decade to $60 billion has yielded a more muscular Chinese policy. In fact, the more China’s trade surplus with India has swelled — jumping from $2 billion in 2002 to almost $20 billion this year — the greater has been its condescension toward India.

Trade in today’s market-driven world is not constrained by political disputes or even strained ties, unless artificial political barriers have been erected, such as through sanctions. The China-India relations actually demonstrate that booming trade is no guarantee of moderation or restraint between states. Unless estranged neighbors fix their political relations, economics alone will not be enough to create good will or stabilize their relationship.

Yet ignoring that lesson, China and India have left their political rows to future diplomacy to clear up, with Wen bluntly stating that sorting out the border disputes “will take a fairly long period of time.” On the eve of his visit, Zhang Yan, the Chinese ambassador to India, publicly acknowledged that, “China-India relations are very fragile and very easy to be damaged and very difficult to repair.”

Even as old rifts remain, new issues are roiling relations, including Chinese strategic projects and military presence in Pakistani-held Kashmir and a new policy by China (which occupies one-fifth of the original princely state of Jammu and Kashmir) to depict the Indian-administered portion of that state as de facto independent. It thus has been issuing visas to residents there on a separate leaf, not on their Indian passport. It also has stopped counting its 1,600-km border with Indian Kashmir as part of the frontier it shares with India.

In less than five years, China has gone from reviving the Arunachal Pradesh card to honing the Kashmir card against India. Thanks to China’s growing strategic footprint in Pakistani-held Kashmir, India now faces Chinese troops on both flanks of its portion of Kashmir. Indeed, the deepening China-Pakistan nexus presents India with a two-front theater in the event of a war with either country.

China is unwilling to accept the territorial status quo, or enter into a river waters-sharing treaty as India has done with downriver Bangladesh and Pakistan. Yet it wants to focus relations increasingly on commerce, even pushing for a free-trade agreement. With the Western and Japanese markets racked by economic troubles, the Chinese export juggernaut needs a larger market share in India, the world’s second fastest-growing economy.

But the current lopsided trade pattern — presenting a rising India as an African-style raw material source — is just not sustainable. China’s proven iron-ore deposits, according to various international estimates, are more than 2 1/2 times that of India. Yet China is conserving its own reserves and importing iron ore in a major way from India, to which, in return, it exports value-added steel products. As India ramps up its own steel-producing capacity over the next five years, China will have dwindling access to Indian iron ore.

At present, China maintains nontrade barriers and other mechanisms that keep out higher-value Indian exports, such as information technology and pharmaceutical products; it exports to India double of what it imports in value; it continues to blithely undercut Indian manufacturing despite a record number of antidumping cases against it by India in the World Trade Organization; and its foreign direct investment in India is so minuscule ($52 million in the past decade) as to be undetectable. Such ties amount to lose-lose for India and win-win for China.

As if to underline that such unequal commerce cannot override political concerns, India has refused to reaffirm its support for Beijing’s sovereignty over Tibet and Taiwan. India had been periodically renewing its commitment to a “one China” policy, even as Beijing not only declined to make a reciprocal one-India pledge. But in a sign of the growing strains in ties, Wen left for his country’s “all-weather” ally, Pakistan, with a joint communique in which India’s one-China commitment was conspicuously missing.

Growing Chinese provocations have left New Delhi with little choice but to play hardball with Beijing.

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

 The Japan Times: Wednesday, Dec. 29, 2010

(C) All rights reserved

For China, a win-win outcome of Premier Wen’s India visit

Posted on by
Reply

Only area where ties are doing well is commerce

 

Brahma Chellaney

The Economic Times, December 16, 2010

http://bit.ly/esBt8I

 

The first visit of a major Chinese leader in more than four years has yielded a bland joint communiqué skirting core Indian concerns but incorporating a commitment to rapidly expand a lopsided trade relationship that has already turned India into the raw-material appendage of a neo-colonial Chinese economy. Premier Wen Jiabao leaves India for Pakistan content with a visit whose outcome helps reinforce the aim of China’s current strategy: Gain bigger commercial benefits in India while being free to inflict greater strategic wounds on that country.

 

Wen must also be pleased that the Indian side leaned over backward to cloak or underplay the contentious issues and put a positive gloss on the current relationship. Wen didn’t have to take any question from the media because the Indians did all the talking, including on China’s behalf, with a heavy emphasis on spin. Asked pointedly if she agreed with the Chinese ambassador’s view that the Sino-Indian relationship is very fragile and difficult to repair, the Indian foreign secretary responded not by seeking greater stability in increasingly fraught ties, but by debunking the envoy’s assessment with expressions like “robustness.”

 

But no amount of casuistry can hide the new strains that have appeared in the relationship from the growing Chinese assertiveness on multiple fronts. The 29-year-old bilateral talks to settle the border, for example, are now deadlocked and, in fact, have gone off on a tangent, turning into a strategic dialogue on bilateral, regional and international issues.

 

The only area where bilateral ties are doing well is commerce, as underlined by the 20-fold increase in trade in the past decade to $60 billion. However, the trade relationship is uncomplimentary for India, which is largely exporting primary commodities and importing finished products. China’s proven iron-ore deposits, according to various international estimates, are more than two-and-half times that of India. Yet China is conserving its own reserves and importing iron ore in a major way from India, to which, in return, it exports value-added steel products. Such a pattern of trade is just not sustainable, especially as India ramps up its own steel-producing capacity.

 

India also faces a ballooning trade deficit with China, with Chinese exports to India now almost double of India’s exports to China. Although India’s trade deficit with China totalled  $16 billion in the first 10 months of this year, the joint communiqué offers only the following for a more balanced trade: “support for Indian participation in China’s national and regional trade fairs, advancing of trade facilitation, enhancing exchange and cooperation of pharmaceutical supervision, stronger relationships between Chinese enterprises and Indian IT industry, and speedier completion of phyto-sanitary negotiations on agro products.”

 

A third area of concern in commerce is the dumping of Chinese goods in India that is systematically killing local manufacturing. Such dumping indeed continues blithely despite India’s lodging of a record number of anti-dumping cases against China in the World Trade Organization.

 

Yet Wen came with a huge trade delegation of more than 300 businessmen to strengthen the asymmetrical trade relationship.  Cash-rich China’s foreign direct investment (FDI) in India has been minuscule — just $52 million in the past decade — even as it seeks greater access to the Indian market for its goods and services.

 

What the Sino-Indian commerce demonstrates is that trade in today’s market-driven world is not constrained by political disputes or strained ties. More importantly, it shows that booming bilateral trade does not serve as a guarantee of moderation and restraint between states.

 

The 20-fold increase in bilateral trade in the past decade, far from softening China’s approach toward India, has only resulted in a perceptible hardening in its attitude and policy. Today, with the Western and Japanese markets roiled by national economic troubles, China has a greater need to enlarge its share of the market in India, the second fastest-growing economy in the world after its own. That is why Wen’s visit agenda was so heavily weighted in favour of expanded trade.

 

Unwilling to make any political concessions, China hopes to focus relations increasingly on commerce — a win-win proposition for itself. It is even pushing for a free-trade agreement with India. But if it continues to use India primarily as a raw-material source, to undercut Indian manufacturing through dumping of goods, and to maintain a large trade surplus, India will have little incentive to negotiate a free-trade agreement.

 

India has to take a larger strategic view of the trade relationship with China. For Beijing, the business with New Delhi is now business while it continues its strategy of regional containment of India.

 

India and China, economically, are a study in contrast, with India’s private sector-led growth standing out against the central role and power of state-owned enterprises in China’s success story. The strategic intentions of state-owned Chinese enterprises often dovetail with Beijing’s foreign-policy objectives. To build a more equal and balanced trade relationship, India must demand the dismantling of China’s non-trade barriers and other mechanisms that are keeping out higher-value Indian exports, such as information technology and pharmaceutical products.

 

For a number of years, India has felt obliged to periodically renew its commitment to a “one China” policy, even as China not only declines to make a one-India pledge, but also mocks India’s territorial integrity overtly. But in a sign of greater realism in India’s China policy, the latest joint communiqué contains no Indian commitment to a “one China” policy.

 
(The author is professor of Strategic Studies at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi.)


(c) The Economic Times, 2010.

National-security costs of mega-corruption

Posted on by
Reply

Perils of becoming a republic of scandals

 

Corruption, the No. 1 national-security threat, is eating into the vitals of the state, enfeebling internal security and crimping foreign policy

 

Brahma Chellaney

The Hindu newspaper, December 7, 2010

 

India confronts several pressing national-security challenges. But only one of them — political corruption — poses an existential threat to the Indian state, which in reality has degenerated into a republic of mega-scandals. The pervasive misuse of public office for private gain is an evil eating into the vitals of the state, sapping India’s strength. When important decisions, from arms procurement to policy changes, are often tainted by corrupt considerations, it is inevitable that national security will get compromised.  If India today is widely seen as a soft state, much of the blame must be pinned on the corrupt and the compromised that lead it. Such ‘softening’ of India has made the country a tempting target for those seeking to undermine its security.

 

India’s situation is best explained by an ancient proverb, “A fish rots from the head down.” When the head is putrid, the body politic cannot be healthy. And when those at the helm remain wedded to grand corruption, clerks or traffic police cannot be singled out for taking small bribes. In fact, it is the self-perpetuating cycle of corruption at all government levels — federal, state and local — that has turned internal security into India’s Achilles’ heel. As the then chief justice of India pointed out last year, the plastic explosives employed in the deadly 1993 Bombay bombings were smuggled into the country due to local corrupt practices.

 

But it is the institutionalized corruption in high office that is eviscerating the Indian republic. When domestic policy is seriously stained by corruption, foreign policy can hardly be dynamic and proactive.

 

Such is the weakening of the state that India did a better job warding off regional-security threats when it was economically weak — like during Indira Gandhi’s reign — than it is able to do today, despite nearly two decades of impressive GDP growth. Economic liberalization, paradoxically, has whetted personal greed and brought in an era of big-bucks corruption, even as a system of arbitrary environmental stoppages and clearances has taken the place of the old “license-permit raj.”

 

India now is witnessing not mere corruption but national plunder. The consequence is that India is getting feebler institutionally. Yet scandals remain so recurrent that public ire with any malfeasance is short-lived. Indeed, one strategy often employed to ease public anger over revelations of a new mega-scandal is to start targeting second-tier corruption selectively. The misuse of government agencies remains rampant.

 

Corruption scandals now actually resemble television soaps, with engrossing but diversionary plots. To deflect public attention, the focus in the immediate aftermath is always on government processes related to probing a scandal, not on opening judicial paths to identify the real beneficiaries and quickly recover the loot. The latest scandal over the government’s second-generation allotment of telecom spectrum in 2008 falls in the same category, although the putative loss to the national treasury has been estimated at $39 billion, or 14.3 percent of India’s total current external debt. The sheer scale of this kickback scandal indicates that multiple political interests must have had a hand in the till. If there is any good news, it is the belated appointment of a clean professional as the telecom minister.

 

Make no mistake: The spiriting away of billions of dollars to international financial safe havens constitutes more than criminal wrongdoing. When economic contracts are signed or policy decisions taken so as to net handsome kickbacks, it constitutes a flagrant assault on national interest. India ranks among the top countries whose stolen national wealth is stashed in Swiss bank accounts. Yet no Indian politician has ever been convicted and hanged for waging such war on the state.

 

Let’s be clear: Corruption stalls development, undermines social progress, undercuts the confidence of citizens in the fairness and impartiality of public administration, impedes good governance, erodes the rule of law, distorts competitive conditions in business transactions, discourages domestic and foreign investment, fosters a black-market economy, and raises new security threats. In sum, corruption obstructs a country from realizing its goals and undercuts national security.

 

The cancer of corruption in India has alarmingly spread to elements within the two institutions that are central to the country’s future — the judiciary and the armed forces. Recent revelations have highlighted the deep corporate penetration of the major political parties and the manner big business influences policymaking and media coverage. The rot in the media — the nation’s supposed watchdog — stands exposed.  Even the integrity of national awards has been badly vitiated, with a Padma award no longer a badge of honour to flaunt.

 

But nothing illustrates the corrosive effects of the culture of corruption better than the palpable decay of state capacity. India’s economic dynamism is rooted in its private sector-led growth. But in stark contrast to China, India does poorly wherever the state is involved. The deterioration of the state is the principal constraint on India’s ability to secure its interests. That underscores the national-security costs of widespread corruption.

 

Today, a self-advertised “incredible India” has no articulated national-security strategy, or a defined defence policy, or a declared counterterrorism doctrine, yet it is the world’s only large country dependent on other powers to meet basic defence needs. Instead of seeking to build a first-rate military with strategic reach and an independent deterrent, India has allowed itself to become a money-spinning dumping ground for weapons it can do without. As a result, India has emerged as the world’s top arms importer in the past decade, even as its capacity to decisively win a war erodes.

 

The defence of India indeed has turned into an unending scandal. Even indictments by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) have made little difference to the manner arms continue to be procured from overseas. Such imports, often clinched without transparency or open bidding, are a major source of political corruption.

 

India shows that the more corrupt a system, the greater is its corrupting power. A corrupt system quickly corrupts those who enter it, fixating them on the lure of kickbacks and on amassing pelf. Such metastasizing corruption cannot be controlled simply through public funding of political parties. After all, much of the big-bucks corruption is designed to line one’s own pockets, with no seeming limit to personal greed.  In fact, the series of scandals during the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led government — from bribery-influenced arms imports and $1-billion urea contract with Oman to the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars to the state in allowing private mobile telephone operators to switch from fixed license fees to revenue sharing — served as a reminder of the growing concentration of powers in a few hands and the consequent disdain for integrated, holistic policymaking.

 

As in other national-security challenges, the principal causes of rampant corruption are leadership deficit and governance deficit. The only way corruption can be contained is through integrity of leadership; improved governance; measures to ensure fiscal transparency; strengthened anti-bribery enforcement; government accountability; and active public involvement. The independence of investigative agencies is a prerequisite to developing an anti-corruption culture in politics and business. Yet in India, these agencies are controlled by those whom they are supposed to keep in check or investigate when a scandal unfolds.

 

With corruption, nepotism and cronyism now endemic, Indian politics has become the safe, fast track to wealth. India freed itself from British colonialism only to come in the grip of an indigenous political class ruling the country on colonial-style principles and still functioning from colonial-era structures. It may take a second war of independence for India to gain true freedom from exploitation and pillage.

 

Brahma Chellaney is the author, most recently, of “Asian Juggernaut” (HarperCollins USA, 2010).

Changing power dynamics in Asia

Posted on by
Reply

Asia After Obama

Brahma Chellaney

Project Syndicate  2010-11-19


US President Barack Obama’s 10-day Asian tour and the consecutive summit meetings of the East Asian Summit (EAS), the G-20, and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) have helped shine a spotlight on Asia’s challenges at a time when tensions between an increasingly ambitious China and its neighbors permeate the region’s geopolitical landscape.

Significantly, Obama restricted his tour to Asia’s leading democracies – India, Indonesia, Japan, and South Korea – which surround China and are central to managing its rise. Yet he spent all of last year assiduously courting the government in Beijing in the hope that he could make China a global partner on issues ranging from climate change to trade and financial regulation. The catchphrase coined by US Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg in relation to China, “strategic reassurance,” actually signaled America’s intent to be more accommodating toward China’s ambitions.

Now, with his China strategy falling apart, Obama is seeking to do exactly what his predecessor attempted – to line up partners as an insurance policy in case China’s rising power slides into arrogance. Other players on the grand chessboard of Asian geopolitics also are seeking to formulate new equations, as they concurrently pursue strategies of hedging, balancing, and bandwagoning.

A fast-rising Asia has, moreover, become the fulcrum of global geopolitical change. Asian policies and challenges now help shape the international economy and security environment.

But major power shifts within Asia are challenging the continent’s own peace and stability. With the specter of strategic disequilibrium looming large in Asia, investments to help build geopolitical stability have become imperative.

China’s lengthening shadow has prompted a number of Asian countries to start building security cooperation on a bilateral basis, thereby laying the groundwork for a potential web of interlocking strategic partnerships. Such cooperation reflects a quiet desire to influence China’s behavior positively, so that it does not cross well-defined red lines or go against the self-touted gospel of its “peaceful rise.”

But building genuine partnerships is a slow process, because it demands major accommodation and adjustment on both sides. The US, for example, has worked hard in recent years to co-opt India in a “soft alliance” shorn of treaty obligations. Yet, despite a rapidly warming bilateral rapport and Obama’s recent statement calling India the “cornerstone of America’s engagement in Asia,” conflicting expectations and interests often surface.

The US is now courting Vietnam as well, and the two countries are even negotiating a civilian nuclear deal. The Cold War legacy, however, continues to weigh down thinking in Hanoi and Washington to some extent.

Within Vietnam’s ruling Communist Party, there are deep divisions over the country’s relations with the US. Even as Vietnam moves closer to the US as a hedge against China’s muscular strategy, some Vietnamese leaders fear that the Americans remain committed to regime change.

After all, despite Burma’s strategic importance vis-à-vis China and Aung San Suu Kyi’s release from house detention, the US continues to enforce stringent sanctions against that country, with the aim of toppling its government. In the process, Burma has become more dependent than ever on China.

The US-China relationship itself is likely to remain uneasy, but overt competition or confrontation suits neither side. For the US, China’s rising power actually helps validate American forward military deployments in the Asian theater. The China factor also helps the US to retain existing allies and attract new ones, thereby enlarging its strategic footprint in Asia.

While the US is thus likely to remain a key factor in influencing Asia’s strategic landscape, the role of the major Asian powers will be no less important. If China, India, and Japan constitute a scalene strategic triangle in Asia, with China representing the longest side, side A, the sum of side B (India) and side C (Japan) will always be greater than A. Not surprisingly, the fastest-growing relationship in Asia today is probably between Japan and India.

If this triangle turned into a quadrangle with the addition of Russia, China would be boxed in from virtually all sides. Japan plus Russia plus India, with the US lending a helpful hand, would not only extinguish any prospect of a Sino-centric Asia, but would create the ultimate strategic nightmare for China. As recent developments show, however, a Russian-Japanese rapprochement remains far off.

Against this geopolitical background, Asia’s power dynamics are likely to remain fluid, with new or shifting alliances and strengthened military capabilities continuing to challenge the prevailing order.

That befits the year of the tiger in Chinese astrology – a year in which China roared by ratcheting up tensions with neighbors from Japan to India by escalating territorial feuds. In fact, 2010 will be remembered as the year that Chinese leaders undercut their country’s own interests by kindling fears of an expansionist China, thereby facilitating America’s return to center stage in Asia.

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

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

You might also like to read more from Brahma Chellaney or return to our home page.

Reprinting material from this website without written consent from Project Syndicate is a violation of international copyright law. To secure permission, please contact distribution@project-syndicate.org.

Asia’s new Great Game

Posted on by
Reply

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

Posted on by
Reply

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.

China hardly a credible candidate to lead Asia

Posted on by
Reply

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.

Politics lags economics in Asia

Posted on by
Reply

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.