The West’s strategic overreach vis-à-vis Russia is not only alienating much of the rest of the world, but also providing a windfall for its real rival, China. Unless it changes course, the West is likely to lose its global supremacy, including its hold on the international financial architecture.

BRAHMA CHELLANEY, Project Syndicate

MUNICH – Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than two years ago, the West has desperately sought ways to punish Russia without harming itself in the process. It has mostly failed.

So far, not even unprecedented sanctions have derailed Russia’s economy, let alone compelled the Kremlin to change its behavior. Instead, Russia has pivoted to a war economy: it now produces nearly three times as many munitions as NATO, including more missiles than it was producing before the war began.

Much of the West, by contrast, is facing economic stagnation, owing not least to the switch away from cheap Russian energy to costlier supplies from elsewhere. The United Kingdom is officially in recession, and there has been no growth in the eurozone since the third quarter of 2022, when gas prices surged, leading the European Central Bank to start raising interest rates to stem runaway inflation. Higher fuel prices have helped turn former economic powerhouse Germany into the worst-performing developed economy.

European growth is not the only casualty of Western sanctions against Russia. The US dollar – which was already facing “stealth erosion” before the Ukraine war – appears to have lost some of its global influence, even in oil markets, as countries pursue alternatives to the greenback in response to the West’s decision to weaponize finance. Meanwhile, rising gold purchases by central banks in China, Turkey, India, Kazakhstan, and Eastern Europe, coupled with greater geopolitical uncertainty, have helped drive prices to a record high.

The European Commission’s move to seize the profits generated by frozen Russian central-bank assets would reinforce these trends. Given the centrality of central banks in the global financial system, their assets have historically been considered sacrosanct. But Russia’s assets – over two-thirds of which are held by the Brussels-based clearing house Euroclear – were frozen unilaterally by Western governments, without authorization from the International Court of Justice or the United Nations Security Council, as required by international law.

Now, with “Ukraine fatigue” weakening Western support for continued military and financial aid, the European Commission wants to start tapping the €3.25 billion ($3.45 billion) in annual accrued interest on the frozen assets. Under its current proposal, most of the revenues would be channeled through the European Peace Facility, which refunds EU states for sending arms to Ukraine, with the rest going to the EU’s central budget, to be used to strengthen Ukraine’s weapons-manufacturing capacity.

But such a move would be unlikely to help turn the tide in the Ukraine war. What Ukraine really needs more than weapons and funds are new recruits to replenish the ranks of its exhausted and depleted forces. Here, its options are limited: not even draconian conscription practices have been able to offset the growing troop shortfall.

What seizing Russia’s earnings would do is set a dangerous precedent in international law and deal a blow to Europe’s credibility as a champion of a rules-based world order; the Commission’s proposed “legal pathway” amounts to lawfare, pure and simple. It would also signal to other countries that their money is not safe in the West, thereby strengthening further their incentive to seek alternatives to Western institutions and currencies. If this trend continues, the West’s financial-sanctions arsenal will be weakened considerably. Already, the West’s routine use of sanctions is reducing their impact.

Not only do Western sanctions fail to change the behavior of the government being targeted, whether Russia, Iran, Myanmar, or Syria; they also almost invariably advance China’s commercial and strategic interests. In fact, no country is profiting more from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – and the West’s response to it – than China.

Beyond expanding the international use of the renminbi, Western sanctions against Russia created an opportunity for China to secure greater cheap supplies of Russian oil, gas, and grains. Transported along secure overland routes, these supplies would likely continue being delivered even in the event of a war with the West, easing a major source of anxiety for China over its designs on Taiwan.

Moreover, China has more than doubled its nuclear-weapons arsenal since 2020, and it is expanding its conventional forces faster than any other country has since World War II. Yet the West is so fixated on punishing Russia that China has managed to avoid much scrutiny, let alone pushback. US President Joe Biden, for example, is now attempting to “manage competition” with China by laying greater stress on diplomacy than on deterrence, with his latest budget woefully underfunding key enabling capabilities for the Indo-Pacific and even slashing the production target for Virginia-class submarines from two per year to just one. Small wonder that China is quietly oiling the Kremlin’s war machine. For China, the longer the West stays distracted, the better.

Make no mistake: China poses a far greater threat to Western interests and the rules-based world order than Russia. Whereas Russia’s designs are largely confined to its neighborhood, China has the ambition to supplant the US as the preeminent global power. It may well also have the means: China’s population and economy are about ten times larger than Russia’s, and China spends some four times as much as Russia on its military.

The West, which accounts for just 12% of the global population, should not underestimate the potential consequences of simultaneously enabling China’s increasingly aggressive rise and alienating the rest of the world. Unless it abandons its strategic overreach vis-à-vis Russia and turns its attention to its real rival, China, the West is likely to lose its global supremacy, including its hold on the international financial architecture.

Brahma Chellaney, Professor of Strategic Studies at the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research and Fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin, is the author of nine books, including Water: Asia’s New Battleground (Georgetown University Press, 2011), for which he won the 2012 Asia Society Bernard Schwartz Book Award.

© Project Syndicate, 2024.

When US President Joe Biden was asked last September whether American forces would defend Taiwan from a Chinese attack, he replied in the affirmative, but included a caveat: “if, in fact, there was an unprecedented attack.” But an “unprecedented attack” is precisely what Chinese President Xi Jinping is likely to avoid.

BRAHMA CHELLANEY, Project Syndicate

The more US President Joe Biden’s administration has sought to ease tensions with China through high-level dialogue, the more brazenly Chinese President Xi Jinping has applied coercive pressure to Taiwan. Never was this pattern more obvious than late last month, when China sent 33 warplanes and seven combat ships toward Taiwan, just as Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan were holding talks in Bangkok. Fears that Xi will soon launch an even more overt push for “reunification” with Taiwan are rising. 

Taiwan was never part of the People’s Republic of China. It is a self-governing island that, for most of its history, had no relationship with China and has remained fully outside Chinese control for the last 129 years. Even so, Xi has made no secret of his intention to enforce China’s claim to the island. In fact, Xi has called “reunification” with Taiwan his “historic mission.” 

Xi reportedly reaffirmed his intentions to Biden at their recent summit in San Francisco, noting that the only matter left to be decided is when to take over the island. And there are good reasons to believe that the time might be near. With the wars in Ukraine and Gaza claiming America’s attention and resources, and the world undergoing a broader geopolitical reconfiguration, Xi might see a window of opportunity. And Taiwanese voters’ delivery of a third consecutive presidential term to the pro-sovereignty Democratic Progressive Party has likely bolstered Xi’s motivation to assert control over the island. 

Already, Xi has been stepping up intrusions into Taiwan’s air-defense zone and encircling the island with warships. China has also fired missiles into the waters around the island and carried out large-scale war gamessimulating attacks on it. According to a recent survey by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, two-thirds of US experts now believe that a Taiwan Strait crisis is likely this year. In November, the bipartisan US-China Economic and Security Review Commission warned that China is preparing to wage war over Taiwan – and position itself to launch cyberattacks against the United States that would “wreak havoc” during such a conflict. 

One might expect the Biden administration to respond to such developments by strengthening deterrence, by both bolstering Taiwan’s defenses and stating unambiguously that the US has the strategic intent and political will to defend the island against a Chinese attack. Yet there is a $14 billion backlog in US military sales to Taiwan, with weapons deals announced as long ago as 2017 still unfulfilled. And Biden has repeatedly declared that the US is “not looking for conflict” with China. 

Although Biden’s policy of engagement with China – including two face-to-face meetings and five virtual talks or phone calls with Xi since 2021 – has so far yielded no dividends, his administration apparently is unwilling to change course. The result is a paradox: the stronger established power, in attempting to preserve the status quo, is seeking to appease the revisionist power, which continues to expand its frontiers. In the South China Sea, China has turned its contrived historical claims into reality without incurring any international costs. 

The ineffectiveness of US-led sanctions against Russia has probably emboldened Xi yet further. If unprecedented Western sanctions cannot bring down Russia’s economy, they certainly cannot destroy China’s, especially given Chinese countermeasures. Even if the West could crush China economically, doing so would amount to shooting itself in the foot. China’s central position in the global economy may well explain why the country has faced no meaningful Western sanctions for maintaining its Xinjiang gulag, where it is holding more than one million Muslim detainees, or for snuffing out Hong Kong’s autonomy. 

To be sure, when Biden was asked last September whether US forces would defend Taiwan from a Chinese attack, he replied in the affirmative. But he added a caveat: “if, in fact, there was an unprecedented attack.” And an “unprecedented attack” is precisely what Xi is likely to avoid. Not only does China probably lack the amphibious-assault capability to seize all of Taiwan; a full-scale attack, akin to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, would also be out of character for the country, which has typically preferred quieter, more gradual aggression anchored in stealth, deception, and surprise. 

Just as China has made great strides in the South China Sea and the Himalayas with this strategy of incremental expansionism, it will probably use hybrid warfare to squeeze Taiwan. The Chinese military has already simulated the imposition of a quarantine or blockade on the island. China could also announce the “lawful” closure of the Taiwan Strait to foreign vessels or periodically block shipping routes to choke the Taiwanese economy. 

As former US Defense Secretary Robert Gates has warned, such measures could, over time, “bring Taiwan to its knees and create huge incentives for Taiwan to have a very different attitude toward China.” But the measures are also subtle enough that they are unlikely to elicit a concerted US-led response until it is too late. 

A majority of Taiwanese believe that, in the face of a Chinese invasion, the US would abandon them, just as it did in 1979, when it terminated bilateral diplomatic relations and a mutual defense treaty with the island, in order to restore ties with China. If the US were to forsake Taiwan again, the international credibility of US security assurances would lie in tatters, effectively ending America’s global preeminence.

Brahma Chellaney, Professor of Strategic Studies at the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research and Fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin, is the author of nine books, including Water: Asia’s New Battleground (Georgetown University Press, 2011), for which he won the 2012 Asia Society Bernard Schwartz Book Award.

© Project Syndicate, 2024.

Strategy of aiding China’s rise has come back to bite Washington and its allies

Brahma Chellaney, Nikkei Asia

Henry Kissinger’s biggest diplomatic achievement — orchestrating America’s opening to China — led to a 45-year U.S. policy of aiding Beijing’s economic rise which, in turn, created the greatest strategic adversary Washington has ever faced.

The costs of this approach included empowering a more aggressive and expansionist China and perpetuating Communist Party rule.

When strongman Deng Xiaoping brutally crushed a student-led, pro-democracy movement in Beijing in 1989 through the military assault that came to be known as the Tiananmen Square massacre, Kissinger opposed imposing sanctions on China.

“China remains too important to U.S. national security to risk the relationship on emotions of the moment,” the former secretary of state wrote in a Washington Post op-ed. “The U.S. needs China as a possible counterweight to Soviet aspirations in Asia, and needs China to remain relevant in Japanese eyes as a key shaper of Asian events.” He added a prediction: “China will exercise a moderating influence in Asia and not challenge America in other areas of the world.”

By that point, Kissinger had accumulated not just influence with the Chinese leadership but also personal financial interests.

Shortly before the fateful events of June 4, 1989, he had established a $75 million investment fund together with Chinese state-owned group CITIC. In addition, his private advisory company, Kissinger Associates, had already then been working in China on behalf of American businesses for seven years.

More fundamentally, the flawed policy initiated by Kissinger led the U.S. to continue strengthening China even after the Cold War had ended with the Soviet Union’s disintegration in 1991. By the time the U.S. began reversing course during the presidency of Donald Trump, its relative decline had already set in.

Kissinger’s foreign policy was based on the rampant exercise of American power but was devoid of concern for human lives. Across large sections of Asia, Kissinger’s legacy still rankles because of disastrous decisions that resulted in the deaths of countless numbers of people and destruction across vast regions.

As national security adviser to then-President Richard Nixon, Kissinger extended the Vietnam War by derailing a planned peace conference and ordered the carpet-bombing of Cambodia and Laos. The U.S. dropped more than7.5 million tons of bombs on Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, twice the amount dropped around Europe and Asia during World War II.

Under the following administration of President Gerald Ford, Kissinger aided Indonesia’s bloody invasion and occupation of East Timor as secretary of state.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, right, and U.S. President Joe Biden in June: Despite an improved relationship, U.S. strategic objectives still diverge from core Indian interests. © Reuters

The corrosive legacy of this modern Machiavelli has long weighed on U.S. policy in Asia. Nowhere is this truer than in America’s relations with India, the world’s largest democracy.

Developments during 1971 had a profound impact on the bilateral relationship and India’s strategic calculus. That year, the Pakistani military brutally resisted Bangladeshi efforts to seek independence, slaughtering up to 3 million people, holding 200,000 women in rape camps and forcing 10 million to flee to India.

Kissinger and Nixon were more than complicit in the Pakistani military’s rampage. They provided political cover for then-military dictator Gen. Yahya Khan to continue the massacres. With the help of Khan’s regime, Kissinger then made a secret trip from Pakistan to China in July 1971, paving the way for a Sino-U.S. rapprochement.

The opening to China thus came at a fatal cost to untold numbers of Bengalis while others were forced to flee to India. But that was not all. To try to prevent Bangladesh from breaking away from Pakistan, Nixon and Kissinger even urged China to take military action against India.

In December 1971, after the massive refugee influx led India to intervene in the final stage of the nine-month independence conflict, the U.S. deployed a nuclear-capable naval task force led by the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise off the southern tip of India in a show of force.

Anticipating Sino-U.S. collusion, India’s then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had concluded a friendship treaty with the Soviet Union barely four months before Indian forces midwifed the birth of Bangladesh. The friendship treaty signed with Moscow in August 1971 helped deter China from military action against India.

The developments of that year cast a long shadow over U.S.-India ties. The U.S. tilt toward Pakistan and its opening to China not only spawned Indo-Soviet strategic cooperation, but America’s gunboat diplomacy also spurred India into conducting its first underground nuclear test just two and a half years later. This, in turn, led the U.S. and China to help Pakistan build its own nuclear bomb.

For the following quarter century, India remained under U.S.-led technology sanctions, as America cozied up to China and Pakistan, New Delhi’s regional adversaries.

The U.S.-India relationship has been dramatically transformed in this century. But Kissinger’s legacy has not been fully purged from the relationship.

In India’s neighborhood, U.S. strategic objectives continue to diverge from core Indian interests, especially in regard to Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar and counterterrorism.

The U.S. maintains close ties with Pakistan’s domineering military, condoning its current indirect rule over the country. Under a $450 million deal, it is modernizing the cash-strapped country’s fleet of Lockheed Martin F-16 fighter jets, which will make the aircraft more lethal to India.

There may be a greater convergence now of U.S. and Indian interests on China. Yet Kissinger’s China fantasies, to some extent, persist in U.S. policy, complicating the pursuit of a clear-eyed strategy to deter Chinese President Xi Jinping from moving against Taiwan.

For over 42 months, Indian and Chinese troops have been locked in a standoff along the two countries’ Himalayan frontier, but U.S. President Joe Biden has yet to utter a word about the confrontation, despite fatal clashes. This is a reminder that a lingering Kissingerian mindset still crimps U.S. policy toward an increasingly muscular China.

With the Kissinger-initiated rapprochement with Beijing having paved the way for China’s rise to dominance over parts of Asia, only India and Japan are today in a position to forestall Beijing’s hegemony across the continent. It did not have to be this way.

Brahma Chellaney is professor emeritus of strategic studies at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi and a former adviser to India’s National Security Council. He is the author of nine books, including “Water: Asia’s New Battleground.”

BRAHMA CHELLANEY, SPECIAL TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL

Canada and India are friends, not foes. But Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, by countenancing the rising anti-India activities of extremist Sikh groups in Canada, has brought relations with New Delhi under increasing strain during his term in office. Now, with his statement in the House of Commons on Monday, he has created an unusual diplomatic crisis between two major democracies.

Mr. Trudeau’s extraordinary statement was not about Canadian security agencies finding evidence of India’s involvement in the killing of a Canadian Sikh extremist, Hardeep Singh Nijjar. Rather, his statement was only about “allegations,” which he called credible, of a “potential” India “link” to the murder. More than three months after Mr. Nijjar’s killing, homicide investigators have not arrested a single suspect in connection with the shooting.

In this light, why would Mr. Trudeau air such allegations at this stage, knowing that doing so would hold serious implications for Canada’s relations with India? It has already sparked tit-for-tat expulsions of diplomats and plunged Canada-India relations to their lowest ebb.

A wiser approach would have been to charge all the suspects and present evidence of any Indian government involvement in a court of law. But with no arrests, let alone evidence, Mr. Trudeau has dealt a major blow to Ottawa’s bilateral relationship with New Delhi by echoing the allegations of Canadian Sikh extremists who have held India responsible from the day Mr. Nijjar was shot.

India has never been accused of carrying out an assassination on Western soil, even though it has long been the target of major international terrorist attacks. India’s concerns about the operations of Sikh and Kashmiri terrorists from Anglosphere countries go back to the 1980s, when an Indian diplomat was murdered in Birmingham in Britain and a bomb downed an Air India flight from Toronto, killing all 329 people on board.

Assassinating dissidents abroad is what authoritarian regimes do. India is the world’s largest democracy, and it has not taken down even the United Nations-designated, Pakistan-based terrorists wanted for horrific attacks such as the 2008 Mumbai massacre. Mr. Nijjar, allegedly associated with a small Sikh militant group in Canada, was not on India’s list of most-wanted terrorists.

Significantly, Mr. Trudeau’s allegation came just days after he was chastised by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the G20 summit for being soft on Sikh terrorists. Mr. Modi conveyed to the Canadian Prime Minister that New Delhi had “strong concerns about continuing anti-India activities of extremist elements in Canada. They are promoting secessionism and inciting violence … The nexus of such forces with organized crime, drug syndicates and human trafficking should be a concern for Canada as well.”

India, which accused Mr. Trudeau on Tuesday of sheltering Sikh “terrorists and extremists,” has been rankled by what appear to be increasing threats against Indian diplomatic missions and diplomats in Canada. Mr. Trudeau’s minority government depends on support from the New Democratic Party leader Jagmeet Singh, who in the past has participated in events where Sikh extremists have demanded the creation of Khalistan, or a Sikh homeland carved out of India. At one such event in 2016, a speaker endorsed the use of political violence as a “legitimate form of resistance” to achieve Khalistan.

The Khalistan movement, however, has little support among Sikhs in India. Even in Canada and other English-speaking countries, such separatists make up a minority of the Sikh diaspora. But what the secessionists lack in numbers, they make up through a pitched campaign that, disturbingly, often glorifies political violence.

To be sure, rising Sikh separatist activity in Canada is not the only issue that has caused bad blood between Mr. Trudeau and Mr. Modi. In 2020, Mr. Trudeau cheered on largely Sikh farmers blockading highways near New Delhi. But while defending protesters’ rights half a world away, Mr. Trudeau declared a federal emergency in Canada last year to quash blockades of Canadians protesting his COVID-19 vaccination policy. The stunning hypocrisy has not been forgotten in New Delhi.

At a time when a major global geopolitical reordering is under way, Canada and India, which have no major clash of strategic interest, should be close partners. Indeed, their shared goals, including universal adherence to international law, make them natural allies. Against this backdrop, Mr. Trudeau’s evidence-free claim against India is not just astounding; it threatens to further corrode Canada’s relations with the world’s fastest-growing major economy.

Repairing the damage to the bilateral relationship may take time but it must begin in earnest after the present diplomatic crisis is over. This may only happen after a change of government in Ottawa.

Brahma Chellaney is the author of nine books on international geopolitics, a professor of strategic studies at the independent Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi, and a Richard von Weizsäcker Fellow of the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin.

BY BRAHMA CHELLANEY, The Hill

As the war in Ukraine drags on despite the unprecedented U.S.-led sanctions against Russia, “Ukraine fatigue” in the West is beginning to set in. Most Americans now oppose Congress authorizing further military and economic aid for Kyiv, according to a new CNN-SSRS poll. 

It is easier to keep funding and arming a country when things are going well. But Ukraine’s counteroffensive against the entrenched Russian invaders is floundering, despite the West training and equipping Ukrainian formations with tens of billions of dollars’ worth of new weapons. 

After the much-hyped counteroffensive began in early June, Ukraine lost as much as 20% of the newly-supplied weaponry in just the first two weeks. The stalled counteroffensive has dashed NATO’s hopes of a major military breakthrough against Russia, which still occupies nearly a fifth of Ukraine. 

The counteroffensive’s lack of headway, meanwhile, places President Joe Biden in a tight spot. But instead of rethinking his strategy, he is just throwing good money after bad and hoping for a miracle — an eventual battlefield breakthrough against Russian forces or political upheaval in Moscow.

Only dialogue and diplomacy can halt the war, which, unlike the previous military invasions of sovereign states by foreign powers, is having a global impact in the form of higher food and fuel prices and increased inflation. This is largely because the conflict has shaped up as a kind of proxy war between the great powers, pitting Russia against the American-led bloc.

Biden, while keeping the door to diplomacy with Russia shut, has been beseeching China to stabilize the Sino-American relationship through direct talks. The president has sent a string of senior officials to Beijing this summer, including CIA Director Bill Burns, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and “climate czar” John Kerry. The lack of concrete results from these fence-mending visits led to an unannounced trip to Beijing by Henry Kissinger, the 100-year-old former secretary of state who has encouraged the Biden administration to adopt a more conciliatory approach to China. 

The fact is that the more the United States has deepened its involvement in the Ukraine war, the more Biden has sought to appease China in the hope of forestalling a Sino-Russian axis against America. 

The American-led sanctions against Russia, however, are helping to advance China’s commercial and strategic interests, without reining in the Kremlin’s war machine or pushing Russian President Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table. A report from the Washington-based Free Russia Foundation has called China the “biggest winner” from the Western punitive measures against Moscow. 

More ominously, the failure of the world’s toughest-ever sanctions regime to bring Russia to heel could embolden China’s expansionist designs against Taiwan, especially since similar sanctions against Beijing would have even less impact. After all, China’s economy is about 10 times larger than Russia’s. Just as Putin was clear about his plans for invading Ukraine, so has Chinese President Xi Jinping been explicit about eventually absorbing Taiwan.

Yet the U.S. is still not giving sufficient priority to deterring a Chinese attack on Taiwan. The overall $1.65 trillion spending package passed by Congress late last year included $45 billion in additional aid for Ukraine but just $2 billion for Taiwan. The assistance for Taiwan was in loans, not grants. 

Meanwhile, the grinding nature of the Ukraine war shows that it has reached a stalemate on the battlefield, with neither side in a position to make significant advances, let alone achieve total victory.

Deepening America’s involvement in what is now an attritional war can only drain Western military resources. It would sap America’s strength at a time of growing security challenges in the Indo-Pacific region. Indeed, the flood of American weapons to Ukraine is already weakening U.S. military muscle in Asia.

The war, for its part, is exposing some key Western military limitations. The U.S. set out to bleed Russia in Ukraine but it is America, not Russia, that is running out of critical munitions. Biden, in a recent CNN interview, admitted that, “This is a war relating to munitions. And they [Ukraine] are running out of that ammunition, and we’re low on it.” So, he said, he was left with no choice but to send Ukraine cluster bombs. 

Diplomatic efforts to reach a ceasefire agreement ought to be a natural corollary to the current military gridlock in Ukraine. The 1950-53 Korean War was deadlocked for two years before an armistice agreement was concluded. A similar long delay in reaching a ceasefire agreement in the current war would bring greater devastation to Ukraine. 

It is true that the U.S. committed to restoring Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. However, with little hope of forcing Russia to retreat from the territories it has occupied in Ukraine’s east and south, a protracted war is not in America’s interest. 

Just like the Cold War created an East and West Germany, a North and South Vietnam, and a still-existing North and South Korea, the likely outcome of the present war — however unpalatable it may seem — would be a Russian-held Ukrainian segment that serves as Moscow’s strategic buffer against NATO and a rump Ukraine aligned with (but not part of) NATO. 

Brahma Chellaney is a geostrategist and the author of nine books, including the award-winning “Water: Asia’s New Battleground.”

BRAHMA CHELLANEY, SPECIAL TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL

The international focus on the war in Ukraine has helped obscure the China-India military confrontation, which has led to rival force build-ups and intermittent clashes. For more than three years, the two Asian giants have been locked in a tense military standoff along their disputed Himalayan frontier.

The risk of this confrontation escalating to intense bloody clashes or even a limited border war can no longer be discounted, given the large-scale forward military deployments by both sides.

An opposite scenario is also conceivable. If Chinese President Xi Jinping were to visit New Delhi for the Group of Twenty (G20) summit in September, the trip could catalyze efforts to defuse the dangerous confrontation, which was triggered by China’s stealth territorial encroachments into the northernmost Indian territory of Ladakh in April-May 2020.

India failed to foresee the Chinese aggression largely because Prime Minister Narendra Modi had been focused on appeasing Beijing in order to chip away at the China-Pakistan axis. Mr. Xi, though, seriously miscalculated that China would be able to impose the changed territorial status quo on India as a fait accompli, without inviting a robust military response.

India has locked horns with China by more than matching Chinese force deployments. Even at the risk of sparking a full-scale war, India is openly challenging Chinese power and capability in a way that no other country has done in this century.

Discomfited by the strong Indian military challenge, Mr. Xi’s regime has sought to exert greater pressure on India by deploying more Chinese forces in offensive positions, constructing new warfare infrastructure along the frontier, and mounting infowar and psychological operations.

All this, however, risks making a permanent enemy of India, including driving it closer to the United States. Such a scenario is antithetical to China’s long-term interests. U.S. President Joe Biden’s courtship of India, and the pomp and attention he recently lavished on Mr. Modi during a state visit to the U.S., have increased Beijing’s suspicion that New Delhi is drawing closer to Washington to help blunt China.

After China’s border aggression began, New Delhi concluded the last of four foundational defence-related agreements that Washington regularly puts in place with military allies. India has also more closely integrated into the Quad arrangement with Washington, Tokyo and Canberra. And the India-initiated annual Malabar naval war games now include all the Quad partners.

The military standoff with India, meanwhile, leaves Mr. Xi with less room to accomplish what he has called a “historic mission” – the incorporation of Taiwan. India is aiding Taiwan’s defence by tying down a complete Chinese theatre force, which could otherwise be employed against that island democracy.

As Admiral Michael Gilday, the U.S. Navy’s chief of naval operations, put it last year, the standoff presents China with a “two-front” problem: “They [Indians] now force China to not only look east, toward the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait, but they now have to be looking over their shoulder at India.”

More fundamentally, Mr. Xi has picked a border fight with India that China cannot win. While the Chinese military relies heavily on conscripts, India, with an all-volunteer force, has the world’s most-experienced troops for mountain warfare.

A war between the two nuclear-armed demographic titans would likely end in a bloody stalemate, which would be seen internationally as a defeat for the stronger side, China. That would seriously damage Mr. Xi’s image.

So, if the confrontation with India were to escalate, Mr. Xi could risk being hoisted with his own petard.

Against this backdrop, would Mr. Xi be willing to find ways to defuse the military crisis with India?

The Sept. 9-10 G20 summit will bring together world leaders, including U.S. President Joe Biden, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and possibly Russian President Vladimir Putin. However, at a time when tens of thousands of troops on each side are facing off on the Himalayan massif, it would be odd if Mr. Xi visited New Delhi without seeking to defuse the border confrontation.

At the past G20 summit in Bali, Mr. Xi and Mr. Modi briefly interacted at a cultural event in front of television cameras, but did not hold a private meeting, as each did with other leaders.

The only way to end the military standoff is through a deal to implement a sequential process of disengagement, de-escalation and de-induction of rival forces. The details of such a deal could be hammered out through military-to-military talks.

Mr. Xi, however, seems caught in a military crisis of his own making. He may want to resolve the crisis, but without losing face. His efforts to compel India to buckle have come a cropper. This means that any compromise settlement would require that Mr. Xi climb down to some extent.

Brahma Chellaney is a professor of strategic studies at the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research.

Plenty of skeptics in the West believe that US efforts to cement ties with India will disappoint, not least because of India’s longstanding policy of non-alignment. But the US and India are united by shared strategic interests, beginning with the maintenance of a rules-based Indo-Pacific free of coercion.

BRAHMA CHELLANEY, Project Syndicate

No bilateral relationship has deepened and strengthened more rapidly over the last two decades than the one between the United States and India. In fact, Narendra Modi’s upcoming visit to the US will be his eighth as India’s prime minister, and his second since US President Joe Biden took office. The US has at least as much to gain from the growing closeness as India does.

India just overtook China in population size, and although its economy remains smaller, it is growing faster. In fact, India is now the world’s fastest-growing major economy, with GDP having already surpassed that of the United Kingdom and on track to overtake that of Germany. India thus represents a major export market for the US, including for weapons.

But commercial opportunities are just the beginning. In an era of sharpening geopolitical competition, the US is seeking partners to help it counter the growing influence – and assertiveness – of China (and its increasingly close ally Russia). India is an obvious partner for its fellow democracies in the West, though what it really represents is a critical “swing state” in the struggle to shape the future of the Indo-Pacific and the world order more broadly. The US cannot afford for it to swing toward the emerging Russia-China alliance.

Consider America’s quest to bolster supply-chain resilience through so-called friend-shoring. As Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has explained, India is among the “trusted trading partners” with which the US is “proactively deepening economic integration,” as it attempts to diversify its trade “away from countries that present geopolitical and security risks” to its supply chain.

India is also integral to maintaining peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific. Its military standoff with China – now entering its 38th month – is a case in point. By refusing to back down, India is openly challenging Chinese expansionism, while making it more difficult for China to make a move on Taiwan. Biden has not commented on the confrontation, but he is certainly paying attention. It is telling that both Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan visited New Delhi this month.

Already, India holds more military exercises with the US than any other power, and as of 2020, it had signed all four of the “foundational” agreements that the US maintains with all its allies. This means that the two countries, among other things, provide reciprocal access to each other’s military facilities and share geospatial data from airborne and satellite sensors. Meanwhile, India’s involvement in the Quad – along with the US, Australia, and Japan – has lent the grouping much-needed strategic heft.

Fortifying the strategic relationship with India is one of the rare issues eliciting bipartisan consensus in the US. The latest invitation to Modi to address the US Congress – he is the first Indian leader to do so twice – came from Democratic and Republican leaders alike.

Nonetheless, plenty of skeptics in the West believe that US efforts to cement strategic ties with India will disappoint. For example, one commentator recently declared that India will never be an ally of the US, and another argued that treating India as a key partner will not help the US in its geopolitical competition with China.

A key concern is India’s commitment to retaining its strategic independence. While India has rarely mentioned non-alignment since Modi came to power, in practice, it has been multi-aligned. As it has deepened its partnerships with democratic powers, it has also maintained its traditionally close relationship with Russia.

But India’s relationships with the US and Russia seem to be moving in opposite directions. India is building a broad and multifaceted partnership with the US – covering everything from cooperation on human spaceflight to the construction of resilient semiconductor supply chains – whereas its relationship with Russia now seems limited almost exclusively to defense and energy.

Nonetheless, India is not prepared to shun Russia, as the West has since the invasion of Ukraine, not least because India still views Russia as a valuable counterweight to China. In India’s view, China and Russia are not natural allies at all, but natural competitors that have been forced together by US policy. A Sino-Russian strategic axis serves neither India’s nor America’s interests, yet, much to India’s frustration, the US appears to have little interest in rethinking its policy.

This is not the only area where India believes that US policy undermines Indian security interests. India also takes issue with America’s insistence on maintaining severe sanctions on Myanmar and Iran, while coddling Pakistan, where mass arrests, disappearances, and torture have become the norm. The US is now threatening visa sanctions against officials of Bangladesh’s secular government – which is locked in a battle against Islamist forces – if it believes they are undermining elections that are due early next year.

The US is not accustomed to being challenged by its partners. Its traditional, Cold War-style alliances position the US as the “hub” and its allies as the “spokes.” But this will never work with India. As the White House’s Asia policy czar, Kurt Campbell, has acknowledged, “India has a unique strategic character,” and “a desire to be an independent, powerful state.” Far from a US client, India “will be another great power.”

Campbell is right. But that does not mean that the skeptics are also right. While a traditional treaty-based alliance with India would not work, the kind of soft alliance the US is pursuing, which requires no pact but does include, as Campbell also underlined, “people-to-people ties” and cooperation on “technology and the like,” can benefit both sides.

The US and India are united by shared strategic interests, not least in maintaining a rules-based Indo-Pacific free of coercion. As long as China remains on its current course, so will the Indo-American relationship.

Brahma Chellaney, Professor of Strategic Studies at the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research and Fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin, is the author of nine books, including Asian Juggernaut; Water: Asia’s New Battleground; and Water, Peace, and War: Confronting the Global Water Crisis.

© Project Syndicate, 2023.