Category Archives: Asian Security

Obama’s China-centric Asia policy

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Courting The Dragon

Washington’s Asia policy gives Beijing pride of place

 

Brahma Chellaney

The Times of India, July 2, 2009

 

The key reason why India ranks lower in the policy profile of the Barack Obama administration than it did under President George W Bush is that America’s Asia policy is no longer guided by an overarching geopolitical framework. In fact, after nearly six months in office, Obama’s approach on Asia lacks a distinct strategic imprint and thus appears fragmented. His administration may have a policy approach towards each major Asian country and issue, but still lacks a strategy on how to build an enduring power equilibrium in Asia.

The result is that Washington is again looking at India primarily through the Pakistan prism. That translates into a US focus on India-Pakistan engagement, revived attention on the Kashmir issue and counter insurgency in the Af-Pak region, including implications for U.S. homeland security. For instance, not content with making Islamabad the largest recipient of U.S. aid in the world, Obama wants victim India to come to the aid of terror-exporting Pakistan, including by offering new "peace" talks and redeploying troops, even if it means more terrorist infiltration.

In a recent Asia-policy speech in Tokyo to a small group, of which this writer was a member, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg did not mention India even in passing — as if India wasn’t part of Asia. Whether one agreed or differed with Bush’s foreign policy, at least its Asia component was driven by a larger geopolitical blueprint. By contrast, the best that can be said about Obama’s Asia policy is that it seeks to nurture key bilateral relationships — with China at the core of Washington’s present courtship — and establish, where possible, trilateral relationships.

The upshot is that the Obama team has just unveiled a new trilateral security framework in Asia involving the United States, China and Japan. While announcing this initiative, Washington failed to acknowledge another trilateral — the one involving the U.S., India and Japan. It is as if that trilateral has fallen out of favour with the new U.S. administration, just as the broader US-Australia-India-Japan "Quadrilateral Initiative" — founded on the concept of democratic peace — ran aground after the late-2007 election of the Sinophile Kevin Rudd as the Australian prime minister.

At a time when Asia is in transition, with the spectre of power disequilibrium looming large, it has become imperative to invest in institution-building to help underpin long-term stability. After all, Asia is not only becoming the pivot of global geopolitical change, but also Asian challenges are playing into international strategic challenges. But the Obama administration is fixated on the very country whose rapidly accumulating power and muscle-flexing threaten Asian stability.

This is not to decry deeper U.S. engagement with China at a time when Washington’s dependence on Beijing to bankroll American debt has only grown. From being allies of convenience in the second half of the Cold War, the U.S. and China now have emerged as partners tied by such close interdependence that economic historians Niall Ferguson and Moritz Schularick have coined the term, ‘Chimerica’ — a fusion like the less-convincing ‘Chindia’. An article in China’s Liaowang magazine describes the relationship as one of "complex interdependence" in which America and China "compete and consult" with each other.

But China’s expanding naval role and maritime claims threaten to collide with U.S. interests, including Washington’s traditional emphasis on the freedom of the seas. U.S.-China economic ties also would stay uneasy: America saves too little and borrows too much from China, while China sells too much to the U.S. and buys too little. Yet, such is its indulgence towards China that Washington holds Moscow to higher standards than Beijing on human rights and other issues, even though it is China that is likely to mount a credible challenge to America’s global pre-eminence.

The new U.S.-China-Japan trilateral re-emphasises Washington’s focus on China as the key player to engage on Asian issues. Slated to begin modestly with dialogue on non-traditional security issues before moving on to hard security matters, the latest trilateral already is being billed as the centrepiece of Obama’s Asia policy. Such is its wider significance that it is touted as offering a new framework for deliberations on North Korea to compensate for the eroding utility of the present six-party mechanism.

Despite its China-centric Asia policy, the Obama team, however, has not thought of a U.S.-China-India trilateral, even as it currently explores a U.S.-China-South Korea trilateral. That is because Washington now is looking at India not through the Asian geopolitical prism but the regional, or Af-Pak, lens — a reality unlikely to be changed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s forthcoming stop in New Delhi more than five months after she paid obeisance in Beijing. While re-hyphenating India with Pakistan and outsourcing its North Korea and Burma policies to Beijing, the U.S. wants China to expand its geopolitical role through greater involvement even in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The point is that India’s role will not diminish in Asia just because the Obama administration fails to appreciate its larger strategic importance.

The writer is professor, Centre for Policy Research.

 

(c) The Times of India, 2009.

Obama’s China itch

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Dancing with the dragon

By BRAHMA CHELLANEY

The Japan Times

Nearly six months after U.S. President Barack Obama entered the White House, it is apparent that America’s Asia policy is no longer guided by an overarching geopolitical framework as it had been under President George W. Bush. Indeed, Washington’s Asia policy today appears fragmented. The Obama administration has developed a policy approach toward each major Asian subregion and issue, but still has no strategy on how to build enduring power equilibrium in Asia — the pivot of global geopolitical change

China, India and Japan, Asia’s three main powers, constitute a unique strategic triangle. The Obama administration has declared that America’s "most important bilateral relationship in the world" is with China, going to the extent of demoting human rights to put the accent on security, financial, trade and environmental issues with Beijing.

But it has yet to fashion a well-defined Japan policy or India policy. While a narrow East Asia policy framework now guides U.S. ties with Japan, Washington is again looking at India primarily through the Pakistan prism. That translates into a renewed U.S. focus on India-Pakistan engagement, resurrection of the Kashmir issue and preoccupation with counterinsurgency in the "Afpak" region, including implications for American homeland security.

Obama’s choice of ambassadors says it all. While Obama named John Huntsman — the Utah state governor and a rising Republican star seen even as a potential 2012 rival to the president — as his ambassador to China, he picked obscure former Congressman Timothy Roemer as envoy to India and a low-profile Internet and biotechnology lawyer, John Roos, as ambassador to Japan. Obama underlined China’s centrality in his foreign policy by personally announcing his choice of Huntsman. In contrast, Roemer and Roos were among a slew of ambassadors named in an official news release.

Huntsman has old ties with China, but Roemer and Roos hardly know the countries to which they have been named as ambassadors. Having served on the 9/11 investigation commission, Roemer, though, fits with the Afpak and homeland-security policy frame in which India is being viewed by the Obama team.

Whether one agreed with the Bush foreign policy or not, at least its Asia component was driven by a larger geopolitical blueprint. By contrast, the best can be said about Obama’s Asia policy is that it seeks to nurture key bilateral relationships — with China at the core of Washington’s present courtship — and establish, where possible, trilateral relationships.

The upshot of this is that the Obama team has just unveiled a new trilateral security-cooperation framework in Asia involving the United States, China and Japan. While announcing this initiative, the Obama administration has failed to acknowledge another trilateral — the one involving the U.S., Japan and India.

It is as if the U.S.-Japan-India trilateral has fallen out of favor with the new U.S. administration, just as the broader U.S.-India-Japan-Australia "Quadrilateral Initiative" — founded on the concept of democratic peace and conceived by then Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe — ran aground after the late-2007 election of Kevin Rudd as the Australian prime minister. Without forewarning New Delhi or Tokyo, the Sinophile Rudd publicly pulled the plug on that nascent initiative, which had held only one meeting.

Now the Obama administration seems intent to bring down the U.S.-Japan-India trilateral. While announcing the new U.S.-China-Japan trilateral, it did not forget to cite the U.S.-Australia-Japan and U.S.-Japan-South Korea trilaterals. But there was no mention of the U.S.-Japan-India trilateral, as if that Bush-endorsed enterprise had become history like Bush.

At a time when Asia is in transition, with the specter of power disequilibrium looming large, it has become imperative to invest in institution-building to help underpin long-term power stability and engagement. After all, Asian challenges are playing into global strategic challenges. But the Obama administration is fixated on the very country whose rapidly accumulating power and muscle-flexing threaten Asian stability.

The U.S., of course, has every reason to engage China more deeply at a time when its dependence on Beijing to bankroll American debt has only grown. Just as America and the Soviet Union achieved mutually assured destruction (MAD), America and China are now locked in MAD — but in economic terms. The two today are so tied in a mutually dependent relationship for their economic well-being that attempts to snap those ties would amount to mutually assured financial destruction. Just as the beleaguered U.S. economy cannot do without continuing capital inflows from China, the American market is the lifeline of the Chinese export juggernaut.

From being allies of convenience in the second half of the Cold War, the U.S. and China now have emerged as partners tied by such interdependence that economic historians Niall Ferguson and Moritz Schularick have coined the term, "Chimerica." An article in China’s Liaowang magazine describes the relationship as one of "complex interdependence" in which America and China "compete and consult" with each other. Together, the two countries make up 31 percent of global GDP and a quarter of world trade.

But China’s expanding naval role and maritime claims threaten to collide with U.S. interests, including Washington’s traditional emphasis on the freedom of the seas. U.S.-China economic ties also are likely to remain uneasy: America saves too little and borrows too much from China, while Beijing sells too much to the U.S. and buys too little. Yet, such is its indulgence toward Beijing that Washington seeks to hold Moscow to higher standards than Beijing on human rights and other issues, even though it is China that is likely to mount a credible challenge to America’s global pre-eminence.

The new U.S.-China-Japan trilateral re-emphasizes Washington’s focus on China as the key player to engage on Asian issues. Slated to begin modestly with dialogue on nontraditional security issues before moving on to hard security matters, this latest trilateral is being billed as the centerpiece of Obama’s Asia policy. Such is its wider significance that it is also touted as offering a new framework for deliberations on North Korea to compensate for the stalled six-party talks.

Despite its China-centric Asia policy, the Obama team, however, has not thought of a U.S.-China-India trilateral, even as it currently explores a U.S.-China-South Korea trilateral. That is because Washington now is looking at India not through the Asian geopolitical framework but the subregional lens — a reality unlikely to be changed by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s forthcoming stop in New Delhi six months after she paid obeisance in Beijing. While re-hyphenating India with Pakistan and outsourcing its North Korea and Burma policies to Beijing, Washington wants China to expand its geopolitical role through greater involvement even in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

It is shortsighted of the Obama team to lower the profile of India and Japan in America’s Asia policy. Tokyo may be ceding political capital and influence in Asia to Beijing, and India’s power might not equal China’s, but Japan and India together can prove more than a match. The Japan-India strategic congruence with the U.S. is based as much on shared interests as on shared principles.

Brahma Chellaney is professor of strategic studies at the privately funded Center for Policy Research in New Delhi.
 
The Japan Times: June 25, 2009
(C) All rights reserved

India’s increasingly combustible neighborhood

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The Tyranny of India’s Geography

            Strategic
Imperative/Brahma Chellaney

Covert magazine,
June 1-14, 2009

The arc of failing or troubled states in which India is wedged is becoming more
combustible than ever. To India’s
west, the situation in the Afghanistan-Pakistan belt is getting from bad to
worse. Rapid Talibanization and spreading militancy threaten to devour Pakistan.
To compound matters, the political border between Afghanistan
and Pakistan
has now ceased to exist in practice. The so-called Durand Line, in any event,
was a British-colonial invention that left the large Pashtun community divided
into two. Today, that line exists only in maps. On the ground, it has little
political, ethnic and economic relevance. Its disappearance seems irreversible.
The international reluctance to come to terms with this reality is because of
the fundamental, far-reaching issues such action would throw open. It is
simpler to just keep up the pretense of wanting to stabilize Pakistan and Afghanistan within their existing
political frontiers.

To India’s east are the problem states of Burma and
Bangladesh — the first facing a humanitarian disaster in the face of widening
U.S.-led sanctions and the ruthlessness of its military regime, and the second
in danger of becoming another Pakistan owing to a rising tide of Islamic
fundamentalism there. Bangladesh is not a Brunei
or a Bhutan
but the world’s seventh most populous nation. In addition to the
millions of Bangladeshis that already have settled in India illegally, many Bangladeshis have moved
internally from rural areas to Dhaka as “climate refugees,” driven out by
floods, cyclones and saltwater incursion from the Bay of
Bengal. India
is likely to get not only more economic refugees from Bangladesh, but also an influx of
climate refugees due to global warming.

For India, the ethnic expansion of Bangladesh beyond its
political borders not only sets up enduring trans-border links but it also
makes New Delhi’s already-complex task of border management more onerous. As highlighted
by Indian census figures, Indian districts bordering Bangladesh have become
Bangladeshi-majority areas. It is perhaps the first time in modern history that
a country has expanded its ethnic frontiers without expanding its political
borders.

The troubled situation in Burma
has brought thousands of political and ethnic refugees to India, now an important hub of the
pro-democracy campaign by exiles. Even as the junta has scheduled national
elections in 2010, Burma
remains one of the world’s most isolated and sanctioned nations. The U.S.-led
sanctions approach is actually pushing Burma
into the strategic lap of China,
which values that country as an entryway to the Bay of Bengal and Indian Ocean. Having strategically penetrated
resource-rich Burma, Beijing is busy completing the Irrawaddy Corridor
involving road, river, rail and energy-transport links between its Yunnan province and Burmese
ports. For India,
such links constitute strategic pressure on the eastern flank.

To India’s
south, the Sri Lankan military’s bloody triumph over the Tamil Tigers has left
an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe. Even amid military success, Colombo seems unable to
define peace or outline a political solution to the Tamils’ long-standing
cultural and political grievances. India can hardly overlook the fact
that what tilted the military balance in favour of Sri Lankan forces was the
infusion of Chinese weapon systems — from Jian-7 fighterjets to anti-aircraft
guns. For China, a major quid pro quo to such arms supplies has been the
contract for Hambantota, the billion-dollar port Chinese engineers are building
on Sri Lanka’s southeast. In fact, with Chinese encouragement, Pakistan — despite its own faltering economy —
has boosted its annual military assistance loans to Sri Lanka to nearly $100 million.

To India’s
north, Nepal
remains internally torn and, consequently, a happy hunting ground for Pakistani
and Chinese intelligence. Nepal
is not just another neighbour for India but a symbiotically linked
state with close cultural affinity and open borders that permit passport-free
passage. The Indo-Nepal equation is deeper than between any two European Union
members. Indeed, ever since the Chinese annexation of Tibet eliminated the outer buffer, Nepal has served as an inner buffer between India and China. The fall of the Maoist-led
government is just the latest chapter in a blemished and rocky experiment since
1990 to build democracy in Nepal.

Given such a troubled neighborhood, it is hardly a surprise
that India’s
internal security is coming under growing pressure.

Belittling India

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From Bush love to Obama autograph

 

Brahma Chellaney

Covert magazine, April 15-30, 2009

 

West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya has said he has “great respect” for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh but differs “with his policies, particularly his special love for America.” The way Singh rode roughshod over national institutions, including Parliament, and rammed the controversial Indo-U.S. nuclear deal down the country’s throat did create an impression, however specious, that he was beholden to Washington. In fact, Singh has made not a single statement on the deal — not even to Parliament — even since the much-vaunted deal came to fruition in October 2008.

 

That silence has to do with the fact that the conditions and riders the U.S. Congress attached while ratifying the deal demolished the solemn assurances Singh had made to Parliament. What may be even more painful for Singh is that the geopolitical advantages the deal was trumpeted to help usher in — including greater U.S. support for India vis-à-vis China and Pakistan — have been belied by the events since, especially the change of administration in Washington. Consequently, as Singh’s term in office ends, there isn’t much of a legacy he can boast of.

 

Actually, Buddhadeb Bhattacharya would have been more accurate had he referred to Singh’s “special love” for the U.S. president, whoever the incumbent. That personal foible has been highlighted both by Singh’s April 2 meeting with Barack Obama in London, on the sidelines of the G-20 summit, and by his September 25, 2008 joint news conference at the White House with George W. Bush. In London, to the surprise of the Americans present, Singh began his bilateral meeting by asking for Obama’s autograph for his daughter on a book authored by Obama. Addressing Obama, Singh quoted his daughter as saying: “I would cherish [it] if you could get Mr. Obama to autograph the book.” Singh went on to tell Obama: “You are much loved and respected in India.”

 

Later that day, when Obama was asked straightforwardly at a news conference what “America is doing to help India tackle terrorism emanating from Pakistan,” he began by calling Singh “a wonderful man” and then disclosed that he and Singh had discussed terrorism “not simply in terms of terrorism emanating from Pakistan… But we spoke about it more broadly…” Here is Obama showering Pakistan with billions of dollars in additional U.S. aid. But Singh, rather than focus on the Pakistani-scripted terror attacks in India, discusses the terrorism challenge “more broadly,” and indeed begins his meeting by seeking Obama’s autograph for his daughter. What happens if Obama’s Pakistan gamble doesn’t pay off?

 

Now consider Singh’s September 25, 2008 news conference with Bush. Singh started by reading a prepared statement. Almost every paragraph in that ended with a schmaltzy tribute to Bush:

 

·                           “And the last four-and-a-half years that I have been prime minister I have been the recipient of your generosity, your affection, your friendship. It means a lot to me and to the people of India.”

 

·                           “In these last four-and-a-half years, there has been a massive transformation of India-United States relations. And Mr. President, you have played a most-important role in making all this happen.”

 

·                           “And when history is written I think it will be recorded that President George W. Bush made an historic goal in bringing our two democracies closer to each other.” 

 

·                           “And when this restrictive regime ends I think a great deal of credit will go to President Bush. And for this I am very grateful to you, Mr. President.” 

 

·                           “So, Mr. President, this may be my last visit to you during your presidency, and let me say, Thank you very much. The people of India deeply love you…”

 

               This will go down in history easily as the most-fawning statement ever made by an Indian prime minister about a foreign leader. America and India, the world’s most-powerful and most-populous democracies, need to build close strategic ties, founded on shared political values and mutual respect and understanding. Singh’s record, however, shows he was unable to pursue such an objective without conducting himself in a manner belittling India, even if inadvertently.

 

(c) Covert, 2009.

For Barack Obama, ignorance is bliss when it comes to the Afpak region

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India’s re-hyphenation with Pakistan returns in US policy

 

From Obama’s call for Indo-Pakistan dialogue to Holbrooke’s second visit in seven weeks, US policy has returned to its traditional position of looking at India through the subcontinental prism while ignoring its security concerns

 

Brahma Chellaney

Asian Age, April 8, 2009

Despite America’s broken policy on Pakistan, President Barack Obama has unveiled the largest-ever US aid package for that country. Indeed, Islamabad is being made the biggest recipient of US aid in the world. If military, non-military and counterinsurgency aid and reimbursements to the Pakistani military were totalled, Pakistan — under Obama’s latest proposals — would overtake Israel and Egypt as the single largest recipient of American aid.

To supposedly mend a wrecked policy, Obama is doing more of what helped create the failure — dispensing rewards upfront. He has decided to shower billions of dollars in additional aid on Pakistan without even defining benchmarks for judging progress.

Worse yet, the Obama administration has neither acknowledged Pakistan’s role in staging terrorist strikes in India nor made the slightest effort to help bring the Pakistan-based planners of the unparalleled Mumbai attacks to justice. In the detailed, inter-agency “Afpak” policy unveiled by Obama, there is not even a passing mention of Pakistan’s use of proxies to wage a terror war against India. In other words, when Washington refuses to even recognize the problem, can New Delhi really expect the US to be of any help?

 

In fact, Washington is doing the opposite — making light of Indian concerns vis-à-vis Pakistan by asking New Delhi to adopt a flexible approach toward Islamabad so that the US can win greater Pakistani military cooperation on the Afghan front. Put simply, Washington is making short shrift of India’s interests in order to pursue its narrow regional agenda, centred on Obama’s resolve to extricate the US from the war in Afghanistan.

 

But make no mistake: Obama, through his rewards-in-advance policy, is only emboldening the Pakistani military establishment to continue its war by terror against the Indian republic.

 

Asked bluntly at his G-20 London summit news conference what “America is doing to help India tackle terrorism emanating from Pakistan”, Obama’s reply, while evasively long-winded, was revealing. He began by calling Prime Minister Manmohan Singh “a wonderful man”, just as he had described his French counterpart, Nicolas Sarkozy, as “marvellous”. But unlike Sarkozy, Singh had begun his bilateral meeting by asking for Obama’s autograph.

Obama then disclosed that he and Singh had discussed terrorism “not simply in terms of terrorism emanating from Pakistan… But we spoke about it more broadly…” Obama went on to say that “at a time when perhaps the greatest enemy of both India and Pakistan should be poverty, that it may make sense to create a more effective dialogue between India and Pakistan.”

This was before he meandered into a professorial sermon on energy efficiency and “reducing our carbon footprint”.

So the question he was asked went unanswered. The truth is that Obama has no intent to help pull India’s chestnuts out of the Pakistan-kindled fire; rather he wants India’s help on his misbegotten Afpak policy. Indeed, that policy is set to make things more difficult for India by reinforcing America’s dependence on the terror-procreating Pakistani military establishment — not only for the transport of the extra war supplies to meet the US military “surge” in Afghanistan, but also for help to negotiate with and co-opt the Afghan Taliban leadership that the Pakistani intelligence has long sheltered in the Quetta area.

How blind Obama and his special representative, Richard Holbrooke, are to the realities on the ground is evident from their separate claims that the hub of terrorism is Pakistan’s border region with Afghanistan. Little surprise the Afpak policy paper concludes by saying “the international community must work with Pakistan to disrupt the threats to security along Pakistan’s western border”. Holbrooke, ingenuously, has even linked terror attacks in India to elements operating from that ungoverned border area.

It is past time the Obama team faced up to the fact that the real problem is not at the Pakistani frontiers with Afghanistan. Rather it is the sanctuaries deep inside Pakistan that continue to breed and export terrorism. None of the 10 terrorists who attacked Mumbai last November came from Pakistan’s tribal belt. India is being targeted by Punjabi terror groups, like the Lashkar-e-Taiba, operating from Pakistan’s heartland with the military’s connivance.

Yet the naïveté in Washington is astonishing. Almost every Obama policy assumption has an Alice in Wonderland ring to it.

Take, for example, the decision to disburse $3 billion in additional military aid to Islamabad in the name of a “Pakistani Counterinsurgency Capability Fund”. The attempt to get the Pakistani military to focus on counterinsurgency misses the point that what the Obama administration calls insurgents remain prized proxies for the Pakistani generals.

Or take the Obama policy premise that the “surge” can be used, Iraq-style, as a show of force to cut deals with the “good” terrorists. This surge-and-bribe assumption overlooks the fact that the Afghan militants, with cosy sanctuaries across the borders, have more leeway than their Iraqi counterparts.

Also, the new rewards being doled out disregard the reality that the Pakistani generals have little incentive to lend genuine cooperation at a time when Obama has barely disguised his exit strategy. The generals and their surrogates — the Taliban — just need to patiently wait out the American exit to reclaim Afghanistan.

Through his policy contradictions, Obama has tied himself up in knots. His policy rejects his predecessor’s institution-building approach in Afghanistan as an attempt to create “some sort of Central Asian Valhalla”. Yet it proposes $7.5 billion in civilian aid for an increasingly Talibanized Pakistan to win hearts and minds there — a Valhalla even more distant.

The upshot of Obama’s blinkered approach is India’s re-hyphenation with Pakistan in US policy. This is so evident from Holbrooke’s recurring visits to New Delhi and American calls — from the president down — that India reopen dialogue with Islamabad, even if it has to countenance more Pakistan-scripted terror attacks.

For long, Washington has realized that the best way to handle India is to massage its ego. It was thus claimed that in deference to India’s sensitivities, Kashmir had been removed from Holbrooke’s job description and that his mission would stay restricted to the Afpak belt.

 

In reality, Washington took India and Kashmir out of Holbrooke’s agenda only publicly. As Holbrooke has shown by coming to New Delhi twice in seven weeks — this time with the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman — India is very much part of his mandate. In fact, Washington’s proposals for troop reductions and de-escalation clearly bring in the Kashmir dispute.

 

Obama’s aides contend it is impossible to disentangle Kashmir from any effort to win Pakistani cooperation. So the way forward, they argue, is to work on Kashmir behind the scenes while pretending the issue is not on the agenda.

 

Still, asked by a Senate committee about tension reduction in Kashmir, Centcom chief, General David Petraeus, admitted last week: “Together with my great diplomatic wing man, Ambassador Holbrooke, this effort actually has started”. And National Security Adviser James Jones, while keeping up the pretence that there is no problem on Pakistan’s eastern side, earlier declared “we do intend to help both countries … build more trust and confidence so that Pakistan can address the issues that it confronts on the western side”.

 

When India is deeply immersed in an election process, why has Holbrooke come a second time in quick succession, knowing New Delhi is anything but happy about his visit? The reason is that he is using this interregnum to show his turf includes India. But more than a turf-defining mission, what Holbrooke desperately needs is a primer on the roots of terrorism, lest he continue to betray his abysmal ignorance.

 

(c) The Asian Age, 2009.

Dalai Lama: China’s nemesis

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China’s brute power toils against the Dalai Lama’s soft power

Brahma Chellaney

The Japan Times

On the 50th anniversary of his escape to India, the exiled 14th Dalai Lama stands as a bigger challenge than ever for China, as underscored by Beijing’s stepped-up vilification campaign against him and its admission that it is now locked in a “life and death struggle” over Tibet.

 

Travelling incognito, the Dalai Lama, then 24, crossed over into India on March 30, 1959, after a harrowing, 13-day trek through the Tibetan highlands with a small band of aides and family members. His arrival became public only the following day. Since then, he has come to symbolize one of the longest and most-powerful resistance movements in modern world history. Chinese rule over Tibet has created, as he put it recently, “hell on Earth.”

 

Little surprise Beijing now treats the iconic Dalai Lama as its Enemy No. 1, with its public references to him matching the crudeness and callousness of its policies in Tibet, where it has tried everything — from Tibet’s cartographic dismemberment and rewriting history, to ethnically drowning Tibetans through large-scale Han migration and systematically undermining Tibetan institutions.

 

Unnerved that the Dalai Lama’s soft power has stood up to its untrammeled power, China today has taken to haranguing propaganda while enforcing a security lockdown across an increasingly restive Tibetan region, half of which it has hived off from Tibet and merged with Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan and Yunnan provinces.

 

With the Dalai Lama having parlayed his international moral standing into an indomitable influence over global public opinion, a desperate Beijing has had to fall back more and more on Cultural Revolution language. Consider one of China’s recent outbursts against its nemesis: “A jackal in Buddhist monk’s robes, an evil spirit with a human face and the heart of a beast. We are engaged in a fierce battle of blood and fire with the Dalai clique.”

 

The Dalai Lama gave up his demand for Tibet’s independence more than two decades ago, yet the Chinese propaganda machine still brands him a “splittist” and Premier Wen Jiabao demands he renounce separatist activities, as if China holds a historically and legally incontestable entitlement to Tibet.

 

The more Beijing has sought to isolate the Dalai Lama internationally, the deeper a thorn he has become in its side. Recently, China bullied its largest African trading partner, South Africa, into barring the Dalai Lama from attending a peace conference in Johannesburg. Yet it faced major embarrassment when the European Parliament and the US House of Representatives passed separate resolutions on Tibet, with the former calling for “real autonomy for Tibet” and the latter demanding Beijing “lift immediately the harsh policies imposed on Tibetans.” Both legislatures backed the Dalai Lama’s initiative for a durable political solution to the Tibet issue.

 

The Dalai Lama was lucky he fled Tibet in the nick of time before China made him a prisoner. In 1956, when he had travelled to India to participate in the celebrations on the 2,500th anniversary of the Buddha’s Enlightenment, the Sinophile Indian prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, convinced him to return to Lhasa, although the Dalai Lama’s advisers feared for his safety. But after his return, conditions in Tibet began to deteriorate relentlessly.

Had he not escaped from the Chinese-guarded Norbulingka Palace in Lhasa on the night of March 17, 1959, disguised as a Tibetan soldier, the Dalai Lama may have met the same fate as the 11th Panchen Lama, who disappeared in 1995 soon after he was anointed at the age of six. The March 10, 1959, Tibetan mass uprising indeed was triggered by popular fears that the Dalai Lama would be kidnapped after he was asked to come to a Chinese army-camp event without bodyguards.

The uprising was harshly suppressed in a year-long bloodbath. And in the period since, more than more than a million Tibetans reportedly have lost their lives due to official Chinese policies.

In exile, the Dalai Lama has helped keep the Tibetan movement alive and preserved Tibetan language and culture by establishing a network of schools. The transition of the Tibetan government-in-exile to democratically elected executive and legislative branches ought to serve as an example for the autocrats in Beijing. Instead, having turned Tibetans into state serfs under its rule, the communist dictatorship observed a national holiday last Saturday for belatedly discovering that it “emancipated” Tibetans from serfdom through Tibet’s conquest.

 

Had the Dalai Lama not managed to slip away in 1959, China would have installed an imposter Dalai Lama long ago, in the same way it has instated its own Panchen Lama in place of the official appointee it abducted. But now it has no choice but to wait for the exiled Dalai Lama to pass away before it can orchestrate any sham. To frustrate Beijing’s plans, the present Dalai Lama needs to publicly lay down clear rules on succession.

 

In fact, it was the long, 17-year gap between the 1933 death of the 13th Dalai Lama and the November 1950 assumption of full temporal powers by the present incumbent at the age of 15, after the Chinese invasion already had started, that cost Tibet its freedom. The hurried installation of the Dalai Lama in political office could not stop China from completing its conquest of Tibet. Because of its protracted power vacuum, Tibet had not sought to reinforce its independence by becoming a United Nations member in the propitious, pre-1949 period when China was politically torn.

 

A similar long gap in succession and grooming now could strike a devastating blow to the Tibetan cause to regain autonomy. That is why it has become imperative to clarify the rules to choose the 15th Dalai Lama, including whether he is to be discovered in the free world and not in Chinese-controlled Tibet, as the current incumbent had earlier suggested. Another issue that needs to be sorted out is whether the present Karmapa Lama, the third-ranking Tibetan spiritual leader who fled to India in late 1999, can fill in as an unofficial, transitional successor to the Dalai Lama. 

 

For India, Tibet is the core issue with China, which became its neighbor owing not to geography but to guns — by gobbling up the traditional buffer.

 

The recent congressional resolution recognized India for its “generosity” in playing host to the Dalai Lama and Tibetan refugees. But this is more than just munificence: The Dalai Lama is India’s biggest strategic asset because without him, the country would be poorer by several military divisions against China. India thus has a major stake in the succession issue, including in overseeing the training and education of the heir. For now, though, given the stepped-up Chinese intelligence activities — from cyber to land — Indian security agencies must beware of any plot to assassinate the present incumbent.

 

The writer, professor of strategic studies at the privately funded Center for Policy Research in New Delhi, is the author, most recently, of “Asian Juggernaut: The Rise of China, India and Japan.”

 

The Japan Times: Wednesday, April 1, 2009

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China’s eventful year of anniversaries

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Year of big anniversaries: Defining moment for China

 

Just when China’s internal challenges are being highlighted by major anniversaries this year, a growing U.S. reliance on Chinese capital inflows has prompted Washington to demote human rights

 

By Brahma Chellaney

Japan Times

Large parts of the Tibetan plateau today have been turned into militarized zones and made off-limits to foreigners. De facto martial law prevails on much of the plateau after the largest troop deployment since the March 2008 Tibetan upheaval.
 
Yet the more ruthless China is, the more resilient (and innovative) the Tibetan resistance to Chinese rule becomes.
 

The latest Chinese clampdown began in response to a grassroots Tibetan campaign to boycott celebrations of Losar, the Tibetan New Year, and to use the holiday period from Feb. 25 instead to mourn Tibetans who were killed by troops last March and express concern for those arrested or tortured. That a refusal to celebrate a joyous Tibetan event can become a tool of mass protest rattled the autocrats in Beijing, who responded by pouring in troops.

The security lockdown in Tibet also has been prompted by the 50th anniversaries this month of the Tibetan national uprising against the Chinese occupation and the Dalai Lama’s consequent flight to India. On March 17, 1959, the then 24-year-old Dalai Lama escaped from the Chinese-guarded Norbulingka Palace in Lhasa. After a harrowing trek through inhospitable terrain, he arrived on March 30 in India, where he has lived in exile ever since.

It was the 49th anniversary of the March 10 revolt that became the trigger for last year’s Tibetan protests — the largest in territorial scale since 1959. This year, thanks to a deliberate Chinese provocation, another anniversary threatens to incite Tibetan disturbances, thus necessitating continued Chinese military presence in full force across the Tibetan plateau.

Like waving a red rag at a bull, China has decided to mark March 28 — the 50th anniversary of its action dissolving the Tibetan government and declaring direct rule over Tibet — as "Serf Emancipation Day," as if China just realized it liberated Tibetans from serfdom 50 years ago.

That anniversary is now to be celebrated every year for bringing — believe it or not — "democratic reform" to Tibet. But what about bringing democratic reform to Han China? That issue will haunt the communist dictatorship in the runup to another anniversary this year — the June 4, 1989, Tiananmen Square massacre of student-led, prodemocracy demonstrators.

China’s leaders are devoted to celebrating anniversaries to help glorify communist actions. So besides the March 28 celebrations, they have planned a mammoth military parade — the largest ever — along with a repeat of some of the Beijing Olympics glitz at the 60th anniversary of the communist revolution on Oct. 1.

But anniversaries are also precious for the suppressed to catalyze grassroots action and inspire a popular awakening. Luckily for China’s oppressed, it’s raining anniversaries this year. For example, July 22 will mark 10 years since the communist rulers, perceiving a threat even from a nonviolent spiritual movement, banned Falun Gong and set out to arrest and torture thousands of its Han followers, with an undetermined number dying in police custody.

The Chinese Communist Party’s visceral antagonism toward Falun Gong and the brutal official crackdown arose from the movement’s attempt to offer Chinese a spiritual alternative to the state-dispensed religion: communism.

The communist fear of nonviolent ideas is also mirrored in Beijing’s vile attacks against the Dalai Lama, as though he were China’s enemy No. 1. For long, Beijing had denounced the Dalai Lama as a "splittist," as if China has an indisputable ownership over Tibet. But since last year, it has been hurling juicier epithets at him — "a wolf wrapped in monk’s robes," "an evil spirit with a human face and the heart of a beast," and a "serial liar."

Such foul language against the Tibetan god-king comes from a party and system responsible for the death of tens of millions of Chinese during the "Great Leap Forward," "Cultural Revolution" and other state-induced disasters. The greatest genocide in modern history was not the Holocaust but the Great Leap Forward, a misguided charge toward industrialization that left 36 million people dead, according to Tombstone, a recent book by longtime Chinese communist Yang Jisheng.

Nothing scares those wedded to violence more than ideas of peace, reconciliation and nonviolent dissent. Little surprise the party has been unnerved by Tibetans turning the Losar festival into a dirge to memorialize those killed by Chinese forces.

At a critical juncture, unfortunately, the United States, out of strategic compulsion, is willing to turn a blind eye to growing Chinese human-rights abuses. With U.S. President Barack Obama’s stimulus package making America even more reliant on its banker, China, to finance a budget deficit now officially set to reach $1.75 trillion, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has made it easy for Chinese repression to continue by publicly demoting human rights.

While thanking China for underscoring the "intertwined" nature of the U.S. and Chinese economies through continued purchases of U.S. government debt, she went out of her way during her recent Beijing visit to demote human rights and emphasize economic, environmental and security relations. With Japan no longer buying U.S. Treasury bills, whose 10-year yield currently is just 2.84 percent, China has emerged as America’s main creditor.

U.S. foreign policy indeed is veering to the view that Asian stability and China’s own rise can best be managed by building a stronger cooperative relationship with Beijing and respecting Chinese sensitivities.

A more indulgent U.S. policy can help mitigate international pressures on Beijing. But China’s internal challenges are set to grow. And 2009 is fraught with politically treacherous anniversaries for a nominally communist party that seeks to perpetuate its political monopoly in an explosively capitalist country.

Even the leadership’s plan to re-enact Olympic-style celebrations at the Oct. 1 anniversary of the establishment of communist China threatens to renew some of the controversies that plagued the Beijing Games and stir up protests and security-related concerns. Such grand revelry risks provoking critics.

The 90th anniversary on May 4 of the 1919 student-led revolt against imperial rule is symbolically important, too, because it is a potent reminder to the present leadership that people can turn against their rulers when they become impervious to popular concerns. After all, the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests were modeled on the 1919 movement.

Add to the picture Beijing’s attempt to incite Tibetans by observing as "Serf Emancipation Day" the date when Tibetans lost even the pretense of autonomy. By seeking to turn into a national celebration an anniversary that actually marks China’s formal betrayal of its May 1951, postinvasion "17 Pacts" promising autonomy to Tibet, the leadership has sought to provoke Tibetans at a time when the wounds from last year’s bloody events are still to heal.

This underlines the propensity of a power-drunk leadership to pursue counterproductive policies — the very predisposition that could unravel the world’s oldest autocracy in Beijing.

After China’s 2008 coming-out party, this year of anniversaries could prove a turning point in Chinese history, with even the state-run Outlook magazine warning of "a peak period for mass incidents." Little surprise a high-powered special committee constituted by President Hu Jintao to prevent disorder is known as Committee 6521, an order of numbers representing this year’s 60th, 50th, 20th and 10th anniversaries of big events. The economic slowdown, rising unemployment and social tensions, and new signs of restiveness threaten to trigger events whose own anniversaries may become major occasions of observance.

Brahma Chellaney, a professor of strategic studies at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi, is the author of "Asian Juggernaut: The Rise of China, India and Japan."
 
The Japan Times: March 12, 2009
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Sri Lankan bloody crescendo

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Dangerous games

Brahma Chellaney

DNA newspaper, March 9, 2009

The 26-year civil war in Sri Lanka has built up to a bloody crescendo. Yet the killing of a growing number of non-combatants and the plight of large numbers of displaced or trapped Tamils has generated a muted international response.One country, however, continues to make hay while Asia’s longest civil war rages on little-noticed battlefields.

In Sri Lanka, as in Burma, Uzbekistan, North Korea, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Zambia and elsewhere, China has been an abettor of human-rights abuses. Chinese military and financial support has made possible Colombo’s no-holds-barred campaign to score a decisive military victory over the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

But with secretary of state Hillary Clinton publicly emphasising that the global financial, climate and security crises are more pressing priorities for US policy than China’s human-rights record, Beijing has little reason to stop facilitating overseas what it practices at home –repression.

Sri Lanka is just the latest case underlining China’s blindness to the consequences of its aggressive pursuit of strategic interests. No sooner had the US ended direct military aid to Sri Lanka last year over its deteriorating human-rights record than China stepped in to fill the breach — a breach widened by India’s hands-off approach towards Sri Lanka since a disastrous 1987-90 peace-keeping operation there. Beijing started selling larger quantities of arms, and dramatically boosted its aid fivefold since 2008 to almost $1 billion to emerge as Sri Lanka’s largest donor.

In recent months, Chinese Jian-7 fighterjets, anti-aircraft guns, JY-11 3D air surveillance radars and other supplied weapons have played a central role in the Sri Lankan military successes against the Tamil Tigers. Beijing has even got its ally Pakistan actively involved in Sri Lanka.

At Beijing’s prodding, Pakistan –despite its own faltering economy and internal disorder — has boosted its annual military assistance loans to Sri Lanka to nearly $100 million while supplying Chinese-origin small arms and training Sri Lankan air force personnel in precision guided attacks.

China has become an enabler of repression in a number of developing nations as it seeks to gain access to oil and mineral resources to market its goods and to step up investment. Still officially a communist state, its support for brutal regimes is driven by capitalist considerations. But while exploiting commercial opportunities, it also tries to make strategic inroads.

Little surprise thus that China’s best friends are pariah or other human rights-abusing states. Indeed, with its ability to provide political protection through its UN Security Council veto power, Beijing has signed tens of billions of dollars worth of energy and arms contracts in recent years with such problem states — from Burma and Iran to Sudan and Venezuela.

In the case of Sri Lanka, China has been particularly attracted by that country’s vantage location in the centre of the Indian Ocean — a crucial international passageway for trade and oil. Hambantota — the billion-dollar port Chinese engineers are now building on Sri Lanka’s southeast — is the latest "pearl" in China’s strategy to control vital sea-lanes of communication between the Indian and Pacific Oceans by assembling a "string of pearls" in the form of listening posts, special naval arrangements and access to ports.

While Beijing has aggressively moved in recent years to construct or modernise ports in the Indian Ocean rim, none of the port-building projects it has bagged in recent years can match the strategic value of Hambantota, which sits astride the great trade arteries.
China’s generous military aid to Sri Lanka has tilted the military balance in favour of government forces, enabling them to unravel the de facto state the Tigers had run for years.

After losing more than 5,600 square kilometres of territory, the Tigers now are boxed into a sliver of jungle area in the northeast. But despite the battlefield triumphs, the government is unable to define peace or outline a political solution to the Tamils’ long-standing grievances. The Tigers, after being routed in the conventional war, are gearing up to return to their roots and become guerrilla fighters again.

With an ever-larger, Chinese-aided war machine, the conflict is set to grind on, making civil society the main loser. That is why international diplomatic intervention has become imperative.

India, with its geostrategic advantage and trade and investment clout over a war-hemorrhagic Sri Lankan economy that is in search of an international bailout package, must use its leverage deftly to promote political and ethnic reconciliation rooted in federalism and genuine inter-ethnic equality.

More broadly, the US, European Union, Japan and other important players need to exert leverage to press Beijing to moderate its unsettling role and to make Colombo accept a ceasefire.

The writer is a strategic affairs expert.

http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?newsid=1237549

Beijing’s blindness to consequences of aggressive pursuit of strategic interests

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China fuels Sri Lankan war

By BRAHMA CHELLANEY
The Japan Times March 4, 2009
 

Sri Lanka, the once self-trumpeted "island of paradise," turned into the island of bloodshed more than a quarter-century ago. But even by its long, gory record, the bloodletting since last year is unprecedented. The United Nations estimates that some 1,200 noncombatants are getting killed each month in a civil war that continues to evoke a muted international response even as hundreds of thousands of minority Tamils have fled their homes or remain trapped behind the front line.

With the world preoccupied by pressing challenges, President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his brother, Defense Minister Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, a naturalized U.S. citizen, press on with their brutal military campaign with impunity. The offensive bears a distinct family imprint, with another brother the president’s top adviser.

Chinese military and financial support — as in Sudan, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Uzbekistan, North Korea, Burma and elsewhere — has directly aided government excesses and human rights abuses in Sri Lanka. But with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton publicly emphasizing that the global financial, climate and security crises are more pressing priorities for U.S. policy than China’s human rights record, which by her own department’s recent admission has "remained poor and worsened in some areas," Beijing has little reason to stop facilitating overseas what it practices at home — repression.

Still, the more China insists that it doesn’t mix business with politics in its foreign relations, the more evidence it provides of cynically contributing to violence and repression in internally torn states. Sri Lanka is just the latest case demonstrating Beijing’s blindness to the consequences of its aggressive pursuit of strategic interests.

No sooner had the United States ended direct military aid to Sri Lanka last year over its deteriorating human rights record than China blithely stepped in to fill the breach — a breach widened by India’s hands-off approach toward Sri Lanka since a disastrous 1987-90 peacekeeping operation in that island-nation.

Beijing began selling larger quantities of arms, and dramatically boosted its aid fivefold in the past year to almost $1 billion to emerge as Sri Lanka’s largest donor. Chinese Jian-7 fighter jets, antiaircraft guns, JY-11 3D air surveillance radars and other supplied weapons have played a central role in the Sri Lankan military successes against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (or "Tamil Tigers"), seeking to carve out an independent homeland for the ethnic Tamils in the island’s north and east.

Beijing even got its ally Pakistan actively involved in Sri Lanka. With Chinese encouragement, Pakistan — despite its own faltering economy and rising Islamist challenge — has boosted its annual military assistance loans to Sri Lanka to nearly $100 million while supplying Chinese-origin small arms and training Sri Lankan air force personnel in precision guided attacks.

China has become an enabler of repression in a number of developing nations as it seeks to gain access to oil and mineral resources, to market its goods and to step up investment. Still officially a communist state, its support for brutal regimes is driven by capitalist considerations. But while exploiting commercial opportunities, it also tries to make strategic inroads. Little surprise thus that China’s best friends are pariah or other states that abuse human rights.

Indeed, with its ability to provide political protection through its U.N. Security Council veto power, Beijing has signed tens of billions of dollars worth of energy and arms contracts in recent years with such problem states — from Burma and Iran to Sudan and Venezuela.

In the case of Sri Lanka, China has been particularly attracted by that country’s vantage location in the center of the Indian Ocean — a crucial international passageway for trade and oil. Hambantota — the billion-dollar port Chinese engineers are now building on Sri Lanka’s southeast — is the latest "pearl" in China’s strategy to control vital sea-lanes of communication between the Indian and Pacific Oceans by assembling a "string of pearls" in the form of listening posts, special naval arrangements and access to ports.

China indeed has aggressively moved in recent years to build ports in the Indian Ocean rim, including in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Burma. Besides eyeing Pakistan’s Chinese-built port-cum-naval base of Gwadar as a possible anchor for its navy, Beijing has sought naval and commercial links with the Maldives, Seychelles, Mauritius and Madagascar. However, none of the port-building projects it has bagged in recent years can match the strategic value of Hambantota, which sits astride the great trade arteries.

China’s generous military aid to Sri Lanka has tilted the military balance in favor of government forces, enabling them in recent months to unravel the de facto state the Tamil Tigers had run for years. After losing more than 5,594 square km of territory, the Tigers now are boxed into a 85-square-km sliver of wooded land in the northeast.

But despite the government’s battlefield triumphs, Asia’s longest civil war triggered by the bloody 1983 anti-Tamil riots is unlikely to end anytime soon. Not only is the government unable to define peace or outline a political solution to the Tamils’ long-standing cultural and political grievances, the rebels are gearing up to return to their roots and become guerrilla fighters again after being routed in the conventional war.

While unable to buy peace, Chinese aid has helped weaken and scar civil society. Emboldened by the unstinted Chinese support, the government has set in motion the militarization of society and employed control of information as an instrument of war, illustrated by the muzzling of the media and murders of several independent-minded journalists. It has been frenetically swelling the ranks of the military by one-fifth a year through large-scale recruitment, even as it establishes village-level civilian militias, especially in conflict-hit areas.

With an ever-larger, Chinese-aided war machine, the conflict is set to grind on, making civil society the main loser. That is why international diplomatic intervention has become imperative. India, with its geostrategic advantage and trade and investment clout over a war-hemorrhagic Sri Lankan economy that is in search of an international bailout package, must use its leverage deftly to promote political and ethnic reconciliation rooted in federalism and genuine interethnic equality. More broadly, the U.S., European Union, Japan and other important players need to exert leverage to stop the Rajapaksa brothers from rebuffing ceasefire calls and press Beijing to moderate its unsettling role.

Brahma Chellaney is professor of strategic studies at the privately funded Center for Policy Research in New Delhi.
 
The Japan Times: Wednesday, March 4, 2009
(C) All rights reserved

Sri Lanka’s elusive peace

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In Asia’s longest civil war, peace more elusive than ever

With the world engrossed by pressing challenges and India marginalized, Colombo has displaced large numbers of Tamils with a brutal military campaign aided by Chinese and Pakistani arms supplies and media curbs

Brahma Chellaney

Asian Age, February 25, 2009

Sri Lanka, the once self-trumpeted “island of paradise,” turned into the island of bloodshed more than a quarter century ago. But even by its long, gory record, the bloodletting since last year is unprecedented, with the United Nations estimating that about 40 non-combatants are now getting killed each day, or 1,200 every month. Such is the humanitarian crisis that hundreds of thousands of civilians have fled their homes or remain trapped behind the front line.

Yet, with the world preoccupied by pressing challenges and India more marginalized than ever, President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his brother, Defence Minister Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, a naturalized U.S. citizen, press on with a brutal military campaign with impunity. There is no real international pressure on Colombo over an offensive that bears a distinct family imprint, with another brother the president’s top adviser.

Indeed, Chinese military and financial support — as in Sudan, Zimbabwe, Zambia, North Korea, Burma and elsewhere — has directly aided government excesses and human-rights abuses in Sri Lanka. The more Beijing insists that it doesn’t mix business with politics in its foreign relations, the more evidence it provides of cynically contributing to violence and repression in internally torn states. Sri Lanka is just the latest case demonstrating China’s blindness to the consequences of its aggressive pursuit of strategic interests.

No sooner had the U.S. ended direct military aid to Sri Lanka last year over its deteriorating human-rights record than China blithely stepped in to fill the breach. It began selling larger quantities of arms, and dramatically boosted its aid fivefold in the past year to almost $1 billion to emerge as Colombo’s largest donor. Its Jian-7 fighters, anti-aircraft guns, JY-11 3D air surveillance radars and other supplied weapons have played a central role in the Sri Lankan military successes against the Tamil Tigers.

The manner India has ceded strategic space in its backyard is evident from its declining role in states that traditionally have been in its sphere of influence. Bhutan now remains its only pocket of influence. In Sri Lanka, India has allowed itself to become a marginal player despite its geostrategic advantage and trade and investment clout over a cash-strapped economy that today is in search of an international bailout, with the war costing some $2 billion annually.

 

More than two decades after it militarily intervened in Sri Lanka at Colombo’s request to disarm the Tamil Tigers, only to make an ignominious exit after losing nearly three times the number of troops it did in the subsequent Kargil war, India today has to jostle for influence in that island-nation with other players, including archrivals China and Pakistan. Hambantota — the billion-dollar port Chinese engineers are building on Sri Lanka’s southeast — is China’s latest “pearl” in its strategy to control vital sea-lanes of communication between the Indian and Pacific Oceans by assembling a “string of pearls.”

 

Pakistan, too, has become actively involved in Sri Lanka, supplying multi-barrel rocket launchers and varied small arms and training Sri Lankan air force personnel in precision guided attacks. Such attacks have been critical to the recent battlefield triumphs. Pakistan’s sharply rising annual military assistance loans to Sri Lanka now total nearly $100 million.

 

In hindsight, the 1987-1990 peacekeeping operation in Sri Lanka cost India dearly, alienating Sinhalese and Tamils alike and undermining Indian interests. The disastrous foray into the civil war of another country also instilled a hands-off approach in Indian policy toward Sri Lanka. While other powers seek to advance commercial or strategic objectives in the country they intervene in, such as to gain access to oil and mineral resources or to effect regime change or to set up a strategic base, the Rajiv Gandhi government ingenuously intervened in Sri Lanka and the Maldives for altruistic reasons — and to earn goodwill.

Today, New Delhi itself advertises its waning influence in Sri Lanka through its unwillingness to exert leverage over a looming humanitarian catastrophe and its muted voice over the plight of Tamils trapped in the fighting or held incommunicado in evacuee camps — camps the New York-based Human Rights Watch calls “internment centres masquerading as ‘welfare villages’ … where entire families detained in these military-controlled, barbed-wire camps are denied their liberty and freedom of movement.”

Spurred on by the DMK threat to withdraw support to the UPA government, Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee did visit Colombo late last month. But other than a 48-hour civilian safe-passage ploy, his discussions with President Rajapaksa yielded little to arrest a worsening situation. A barren outcome also greeted National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan when he went to Colombo last year to voice concern that growing Chinese and Pakistani arms sales and strategic involvement could make Sri Lanka a springboard for anti-India manoeuvres.

 

Narayanan’s plea that Colombo rely on the main regional power, India, for its legitimate defence requirements was laughed off. After all, it is by turning to India’s enemies for weapons and training that Colombo unravelled the de facto state run by a group originally armed by the Indira Gandhi government.

Strangely, the more Colombo plays hardball, the more New Delhi seems willing to pander to it. Echoing the Rajapaksa brothers’ line, Mukherjee told the Lok Sabha last week that after “years of conflict, there is today a political opportunity to restore life to normalcy in the Northern Province and throughout Sri Lanka.” Actually, normalcy and peace are more elusive than ever, as Colombo wages a dual struggle to wipe out the Tamil Tigers and stay solvent in the face of a sinking economy.

With foreign-currency reserves that are, according to the last official disclosure, sufficient to fund just over seven weeks of imports, Colombo has no resources to take on the onerous task of post-conflict reconstruction. In development, the minority regions of the north and east lag the Sinhalese areas by several decades. There can be no enduring peace without addressing this gap and the Tamils’ genuine grievances.

But even amid military triumphs, Colombo is unable to define peace. Indeed, it is not even making an attempt to outline a political solution to the Tamils’ long-standing cultural and political grievances.

That is why Asia’s longest civil war is unlikely to end anytime soon. The Tigers’ retransformation from a conventional force to a guerrilla force seems inevitable, even if their chief gets killed.

The Rajapaksas’ military campaign is set to produce more than a new phase of protracted guerrilla warfare. A severely weakened and scarred civil society already is emerging. While abandoning the ceasefire in 2006 and the Norwegian-brokered peace process in early 2008, the brothers set in motion the militarization of society and control of information, best illustrated by the muzzling of the media and government-orchestrated murders of several independent-minded journalists.

While the Tigers have forced every Tamil family to send at least one member into battle, the government busily has been setting up village-level militias, especially in conflict-hit areas. Besides already training and arming 45,000 mostly Sinhalese villagers, the government is frenetically swelling the ranks of the military by one-fifth a year. With some 1,630 recruits now being added every week, the rate of army “surge” will further accelerate this year.

The Rajapaksas have shown the will to wage war but not to make peace. Through their hubris and an ever-larger war machine, they actually are girding Sri Lanka to be at war indefinitely.

(c) Asian Age, 2009.