Category Archives: Diplomacy

Obama visit to India

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A strategically significant visit that will benefit both countries

 
Brahma Chellaney
GUEST COLUMN: The Economic Times, October 31, 2010

THE US-India relationship has picked up momentum that is independent of the two governments. US President Barack Obama’s impending visit will do little more than symbolically strengthen an already warming relationship with India. His predecessor had declared in his valedictory speech that, “We opened a new historic and strategic partnership with India.” Since then, despite a growing congruence of US and Indian interests on larger geostrategic issues, significant strategic content has yet to be added to a relationship that is largely being driven by the business community, which is spurred on by the expanding commercial opportunities in the Indian civilian and defence sectors. 


    The very fact that Obama is visiting India as part of a tour of Asia’s four leading democracies—the others being Japan, Indonesia and South Korea—is significant. Although Obama has already been to China once, the symbolism of a tour restricted to Asia’s major democracies cannot be lost on Beijing at a time when Chinese assertiveness on exchange rates, trade and security issues has upset US calculations. 


    In fact, the Obama administration spent last year assiduously courting China. The catchphrase coined by Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg in relation to China, “strategic reassurance,” signalled an American intent to be more accommodative of China’s ambitions — a message reinforced earlier by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton when she went out of her way to downgrade human rights in America’s China policy during a visit to Beijing. Obama, for his part, declared that America’s “most important bilateral relationship in the world” is with China. 


    Today, with his China strategy falling apart, Obama is seeking to do exactly what his predecessor attempted — to line up partners. Still, for several reasons, that is unlikely to significantly elevate India’s importance in his foreign policy. 


    First, he is coming to India when his presidency is likely to be weakened by reverses in congressional elections. With his approval ratings plummeting, Obama could end up as a one-term president.
 
    Second, on key regional issues, especially Afghanistan-Pakistan, Iran and Myanmar, his administration sees Indian policy as not in sync with US strategy. That is particularly conspicuous on Pakistan. 


    The Obama administration, not content with

turning Pakistan into the largest recipient of US aid in the world, has just unveiled fresh military assistance of $2.3 billion to that country. Such aid will further fatten the Pakistani military and intelligence—the very institutions controlling the country’s foreign policy and nurturing terror groups. 


    With Obama determined to end the US-led war in Afghanistan, the US needs the Pakistani military and intelligence for its exit strategy in much the same way it relied on them to start and sustain the war. 


    Third, despite the more-recent erosion in trust and confidence between the US and China, Washington is unlikely to try and contain a country with which its economic and political linkages are likely to remain deeper than with India. 


    Indeed, since Obama came to office, the US has sought to abjure elements in its ties with New Delhi that could rile China, including a joint military drill of any type in Arunachal Pradesh or a 2007-style naval exercise involving the US, India, Australia, Japan and Singapore. Even trilateral US naval manoeuvres with India and Japan now are out so as not to raise China’s hackles. Washington has actually chartered a course of tacit neutrality on the Arunachal issue. 


    On the two key issues— China and counter-terrorism—that were supposed to help shape the US-India strategic partnership, the reality has turned out to be different. The David Headley case, for example, has belied expectations of close counter-terrorism cooperation. Moreover, despite the nuclear deal, the US has yet to ease export controls against India. 


    Still, the US and India have never been closer than they are now. Their multifaceted cooperation will continue to grow, irrespective of policy differences on some regional issues. The billions of dollars worth of arms the Obama administration has contracted to sell India symbolise the new partnership.

 

(c) The Economic Times.

China divides Asia

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The center of Asia’s divide

By BRAHMA CHELLANEY

The Japan Times, October 1, 2010

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brahma Chellaney is the author, most recently, of "Asian Juggernaut: The Rise of China, India and Japan" (HarperCollins, 2010).
The Japan Times: Friday, Oct. 1, 2010
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China’s laogai system of forced prison labor follows its international investments

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China’s newest export: convicts

The use of convict labourers on overseas projects is damaging China’s international reputation

China has devised a novel strategy to relieve pressure on its overcrowded prisons: employ convicts as labourers on overseas projects in the developing world. The practice has exposed another facet of China’s egregious human rights record which, when it comes to the overseas operations of Chinese companies, includes the government’s failure to enforce its own regulations.

China executes three times as many people every year as the rest of the world combined. Amnesty International has estimated that, in 2007, China secretly executed on average "around 22 prisoners every day".

In addition to being the world’s leading executioner, China has one of its largest prison populations. The 2009 world prison population listcompiled by the International Centre for Prison Studies at King’s College London, put the total number of inmates in Chinese jails at 1.57 million – larger than the population of Estonia, Guinea-Bissau, Mauritius, Swaziland, Trinidad & Tobago, Fiji or Qatar.

The forced dispatch of prisoners to work on overseas infrastructure projects raises new issues regarding China’s human rights record. It also adds a new element – the dumping of convicts – to its trade and investment policy, which has been much criticised for dumping goods.

Thousands of Chinese convicts, for example, have been pressed into service on projects undertaken by state-run Chinese companies in Sri Lanka, a strategically important country for China as it seeks to enhance its regional position in the Indian Ocean. After providing Sri Lanka’s government with offensive weapon systems that helped end the country’s decades-long civil war, China has been rewarded with port-building, railroad, and other infrastructure projects.

Chinese convicts also have been dispatched to the Maldives, where the Chinese government is building 4,000 houses on several different islands as a government-to-government "gift" to win influence. So far, however, China has failed to persuade the country’s president to lease it one of the 700 uninhabited Maldivian islands for use as a small base for the Chinese navy.

Chinese companies’ operating practice for overseas projects, including in Africa, is to keep the number of local workers to a bare minimum and to bring in much of the workforce from China, some of which comprises convicts "freed" on parole for project-related overseas work. Convict labourers, like the rest of the Chinese workforce on such projects, are housed near the project site. That way, if any convict worker escaped, he would be easy to find in an alien setting.

In theory, such practices run counter to regulations promulgated by the Chinese commerce ministry in August 2006, in response to a backlash against Chinese businesses in Zambia following the death of 51 Zambian workers in an explosion at a Chinese-owned copper mine. These regulations called for "localisation," including hiring local workers, respecting local customs, and adhering to safety norms. During an eight-nation 2007 African tour, Chinese President Hu Jintao made a point of meeting with Chinese businesses to stress the importance of corporate responsibility in their local dealings.

Moreover, in October 2006, the state council – China’s cabinet – issued nine directives ordering that Chinese overseas businesses, among other things, "pay attention to environmental protection", "support local community and people’s livelihood cause" and "preserve China’s good image and its good corporate reputation".

But Chinese regulations are sometimes promulgated simply to blunt external criticism, and thus are seldom enforced, except when a case attracts international attention. For example, in 2003 China enacted a law on environmental-impact assessments, which was followed in 2008 by "provisional measures" to permit public participation in such assessments. Yet Chinese leaders remain more zealous about promoting exports and economic growth than in protecting the country’s air and water.

Similarly, the state council’s 2006 nine directives to Chinese overseas companies have been subordinated to the drive for exports and growth, even when it imposes environmental and social costs on local communities abroad. Indeed, as part of the government’s "going global" policy, Chinese companies are offered major incentives and rewards for bagging overseas contracts and boosting exports.

The use of convict labourers adds a disturbing new dimension to this strategy. But even before convicts became part of China’s overseas development effort, some Chinese projects, especially dam-building schemes, were embroiled in disputes with local communities in Botswana, Burma, Pakistan, Ghana and Sudan. In fact, several small bombs exploded less than three months ago at the site of Burma’s Myitsone dam, whose construction by a Chinese company in insurgency-torn Kachin state is displacing thousands of subsistence farmers and fishermen by flooding a wide swath of land.

Chinese companies cannot get thousands of prisoners released on their own, let alone secure passports and exit permits for them. It is obvious that the practice of pressing convicts into service on overseas projects has been instituted at the instance of the Chinese government.

Until the Chinese government’s treatment of its own citizens and those of other countries is guided by respect for basic human rights and the rule of law, China is unlikely to command the respect that it seeks on the world stage.

• Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2010.

ASEM process: Two continents seek one vision

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Don’t underestimate ASEM

The Japan Times, July 21, 2010
 

One of the less-noticed initiatives in the world is the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM), designed to foster closer cooperation between the old economic giants of Europe and the new economic powers of Asia — the two diverse but culturally rich continents that together represent half of the world’s GDP and about 60 percent of the global population and international trade.
 

Heads of state or government from 46 Asian and European countries will gather in Brussels in early October for the eighth ASEM summit to discuss key international challenges and ways to strengthen political, economic and cultural ties between the two continents. They will include leaders from Russia, Australia and New Zealand, which are set to shortly join the ASEM initiative.

 

As a runup to the summit meeting, the ASEM Public Conference on Europe-Asia Inter-Regional Relations, held in Brussels from July 12 and 13, examined the regional institutional architectures in Asia and Europe, security concerns in both continents, global economic and financial challenges and prospects for building closer Asian-European collaborations.

 

ASEM has the potential to play an important role on the world stage. Indeed, Europe has developed an important stake in Asia’s continued economic growth and peace: Its trade with Asia totaled 750 billion euro in 2009. European foreign direct investment in Asia is estimated at 350 billion euro, with some 40 billion euro invested in 2008 alone.

 

In addition, according to analyst Dr. Fraser Cameron, the European Union, as an institution, expends 800 million euro on development assistance in Asia — a figure that rises to over 3 billion euro when bilateral development aid from the EU member-states in included.

 

At the last ASEM summit meeting in Beijing in 2008, discussions began on reforming international institutions, whose structure has remained static since the 1940s even though the world has changed fundamentally. In response to the growing Asian pressure, the World Bank agreed three months ago on a 3.13 percent shift in voting power to give emerging and developing nations greater influence.

 

Reaching a deal on such a change, however modest, became a test case in Asia-Europe relations because the European economies were reluctant to give up some of their voting shares, especially as the United States was intent on holding on to its veto power. The biggest beneficiary of this reform is China, whose voting power at the World Bank now ranks third behind the U.S and Japan.

 

Group of 20 leaders last month pledged to push for a similar agreement in the International Monetary Fund to transfer up to 5 percent of the voting power to emerging economic powers by the next G20 summit in Seoul in early November.

 

Some 14 years after its establishment, ASEM remains an ambitious initiative. It is difficult to lump Europe and Asia together, especially at a time when Asia has become the world’s largest creditor and the main economic locomotive and Europe’s financial crisis has turned its focus inward. Asia has done a much better job than Europe and the U.S. in coping with the international financial crisis. The EU entered the 21st century on a confident note after introducing the euro and then expanding to become a 27-nation institution. But in more recent years, discord over institutional changes and the impact of the financial crisis have stalled its momentum.

 

Still, Asia’s rise is often exaggerated, just as there tends to be an unnecessarily gloomy view about Europe, as if it were under irreversible decline.

 

Asia’s rise has been looked at from a single index: GDP growth. But the concept of development is not one-dimensional. It is broad-based and comprises multiple indexes, including low-income disparity, respect for human rights and the rule of law, robust civil society, social equity, public transparency and accountability, gender equality, environmental protection, and secularism.

 

When such broader benchmarks are considered, Europe emerges as an example for Asia to emulate. That is underlined by the UNDP’s annual Human Development Reports, which show disparities in Asia are growing, along with environmental degradation. Such trends hold ominous implications for intrastate stability in Asia.

 

As far as larger security is concerned, there is a clear overlap between European and Asian interests. That is best symbolized by the Afpak belt, with NATO spearheading the Afghan war, in which forces of a number of European countries are involved. It is also symbolized by the presence of European and Asian navies in the western rim of the Indian Ocean to combat ocean piracy, especially off the coast of Somalia.

 

With 21 EU member-states in NATO, the military involvement of European countries in the Afghan war shows how Asian security issues can impinge on European interests.

 

Both Europe and Asia actually face important security challenges. For Europe, defining the relationship with NATO, including the scope for closer cooperation, is important for further developing the EU’s Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP), formerly known as the European Security and Defense Policy.

 

Compared to Europe, Asia’s security challenges are far more pressing. Asia has not only the world’s fastest-growing economies, but also the world’s fastest- rising military expenditures, the most dangerous hot spots and the fiercest resource competition, both for energy and for water.

 

Asia may be coming together economically, as reflected in the plethora of free trade agreements in the region. But it is not coming together politically. If anything, it is becoming more divided.

 

To compound matters, there is neither any security architecture in Asia nor a structural framework for regional security. The regional consultation mechanisms remain weak, even though Asia needs to cope with entrenched territorial disputes, sharpening competition over scarce resources, maritime-security threats, expanding national military capabilities, increasingly fervent nationalism and the rise of religious extremism. Differences persist over whether a security architecture should extend across Asia or just be confined to an ill-defined regional construct, East Asia. China favors the latter, and the U.S., Japan, India and several other Asian states the former.

 

For its part, Europe has made slow progress in strengthening its security architecture or giving concrete shape to the CSDP. But the Asian challenges raise an important question: Is Asia going to be an arena of old-style, balance-of-power politics and thus crimp its ability to shape the new global order? Or will growing cooperation and economic interdependence, as well as prospects of shared prosperity and stability, propel Asian states to act as "responsible stakeholders" in the international system and help reform global institutions?

 

Brahma Chellaney is professor of strategic studies at the privately funded Center for Policy Research in New Delhi.

 

The Japan Times: Wednesday, July 21, 2010

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India’s “graduated” approach to talks with Pakistan

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Can’t Take Eyes Off Reality

Brahma Chellaney

The Economic Times, February 26, 1010

NORMALLY, diplomatic talks between any two neighbouring countries should be routine. But with the Pakistani military establishment continuing to sponsor crossborder terrorism in India behind a nuclear shield — a situation unparalleled in the world — Indo-Pakistan talks are anything but normal.

The renewed talks between the Indian and Pakistani foreign secretaries have attracted attention for eight reasons. The first reason is the U-turn in Indian policy. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had said “some Pakistani official agencies must have supported” the November 2008 Mumbai terror attacks. His surprise decision to renew talks was greeted in Pakistan as a major diplomatic climbdown by India.

A second reason is that the shift in the Indian position occurred without the government so much as offering a reasoned explanation to the public for the switch. Indeed, the shift occurred at a time when, as the PM has admitted, the level of crossborder infiltration by terrorists is increasing.

A third reason is a disturbing one: No sooner had India announced its decision to resume talks with Pakistan than a major terrorist strike in Pune happened. And a day after the foreign secretaries met in New Delhi, terrorists killed nine Indians, including two army doctors, in an attack on two Kabul guesthouses. That attack is believed to be the handiwork of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, which earlier was behind the July 2008 bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul.

What the Pune and Kabul attacks highlight was that when Pakistan is kept under pressure, with the threat of Indian retaliation hanging like a sword over its head, it is able to rein in terrorist elements and prevent any terror attack occurring in India. But the moment the pressure is lifted against it and an air of triumphalism begins to reign in Islamabad, terrorist attacks against Indian targets are orchestrated, breaking a 14-month lull. Yet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh says, “There is no alternative to dialogue to resolve the issues that divide us.”

This proves that the terrorist elements, far from being autonomous, are very much under the control of the Pakistani military establishment, which is able to use them at will.

The fourth reason is that the Indian decision seemed designed to aid America’s Af-Pak strategy. The publicly acknowledged U.S. strategy to reconcile with the Pakistan-backed Afghan Taliban has only increased U.S. reliance on the Pakistani military and intelligence. That strategy indeed received international imprimatur at the London conference.

At a critical time when the U.S. is seeking greater Pakistani military and intelligence assistance to build pressure on the Afghan Taliban commanders and bring them to the negotiating table, Washington has advised New Delhi to lend a helping hand by placating Islamabad through a resumption of talks.

As the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, has admitted, the aim of the American military surge is to bring the Afghan Taliban to the negotiating table, not to beat back the insurgency. The “surge first, then negotiate” U.S. strategy seeks to strike a political deal with the enemy from a position of strength.

For the talks with the Afghan Taliban to be successful, the U.S. intends to squeeze the Taliban first. Towards that end, the U.S. military’s ongoing Marjah offensive in Afghanistan represents a show of force.

After persuading the Indians to agree to resume talks with Islamabad, the U.S. not only launched the Marjah offensive, but also got Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to assist in the “capture” of several Afghan Taliban leaders. They include Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Afghan Taliban’s alleged operations chief; Mullah Abdul Kabir, a deputy prime minister in the former Taliban regime; Mullah Abdul Salam, an alleged Taliban shadow governor for Afghanistan’s Kunduz province; and Mullah Mohammad of Baghlan province.

The stage-managed arrests of these mullahs from Pakistani cities, including Karachi and Nowshera, showed that Afghan Taliban leaders are operating from urban centres in the heartland of Pakistan, not from mountain caves along the Af-Pak frontier.

A fifth reason is that India has not only dovetailed its Pakistan policy to America’s Af-Pak strategy, but also outsourced it to Washington. Instead of applying direct leverage against Pakistan, India is depending on the U.S. to lean on Islamabad.

India has been loath to use economic and security levers against Pakistan. Its decision to resume talks with Pakistan shows it also is reluctant to employ the diplomatic card.

Yet Indian reliance on the U.S. carries high risk. After all, American policy in southern Asia is being driven by narrow, politically expedient considerations, as illustrated by the manner the Obama administration is propping up Pakistan through generous aid and lethal-arms transfers. As U.S. ex-senator, Larry Pressler, has warned, “When the U.S. leaves Afghanistan, India will have a Pakistan ‘on steroids’ next door and a Taliban state to deal with in Afghanistan.”

The sixth reason is that the Indian government has sought to pull the wool over the eyes of the Indian public by claiming that the resumed dialogue process is centred on terrorism when in reality it is about the usual issues, including Kashmir. Nothing better illustrates this than the fact that New Delhi bent backwards to arrange a meeting between the visiting Pakistani foreign secretary and Hurriyet leaders, including Syed Ali Shah Geelani. In fact, the Pakistani foreign secretary came to New Delhi for two sets of dialogue: One with the Indian government, and the other with Geelani and his fellow Hurriyet leaders. What did the Pakistani foreign secretary convey to Geelani and company? The answer: Pakistan has not given up its plans to further shrink India’s frontiers.

The seventh reason is that New Delhi is engaging not the actors that wield real power in Pakistan — the military establishment — but a civilian government that neither is responsible for the terror attacks against India nor in a position to stop them. Yet, New Delhi has begun a “graduated” process of talks with the Pakistani government, effectively giving the Pakistani military a carte blanche to continue to wage its war by terror. With External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna telling Parliament that the foreign secretary-level talks were an “encouraging step” towards restoring full discourse, New Delhi is headed toward resuming the composite-dialogue process before long.

The eighth and final reason is that such talks only reinforce the India-Pakistan pairing when the need is for India to de-hyphenate itself from the quasi-failed, terror-exporting Pakistan, which is a crucible of extremism and fundamentalism. More than Washington it is New Delhi’s unimaginative diplomacy that is responsible for the continued India-Pakistan hyphenation internationally. 

The author is professor of strategic studies at the Centre for Policy Research.

India’s strategic partners

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A system of Asian partnerships

India must pursue multiple relationships that can build on each other, as the region’s balance of power changes

Brahma Chellaney

Mint newspaper, January 13, 2010

Asia today is the pivot of global geopolitical change, but its myriad challenges are playing into international strategic challenges. With the world’s fastest growing economies, fastest rising military expenditures, most volatile hot spots and the fiercest resource competition, a resurgent Asia actually holds the key to the future global order.

The reordering of power under way in Asia is apparent from several developments: China’s increasing assertiveness, underscored by a new muscular confidence and penchant for regional brinkmanship; the new Japanese government’s demand for a more equal alliance with the US and its interest in creating an East Asian community extending up to India and Australia; the sharpening China-India rivalry that has led to renewed Himalayan frontier tensions, but which New Delhi has sought to publicly muffle by cutting off all information on the border situation since last September; and the constraints in the US’ Asia policy arising from a growing interdependence with Beijing, with the Barack Obama administration’s catchphrase “strategic reassurance” signalling a US intent to be more accommodative of China’s ambitions.

Illustration: Jayachandran / Mint

Such developments are a reminder of the need for like-minded countries to help underpin the power equilibrium in Asia by forming a web of bilateral or triangular strategic partnerships that feed into each other. After all, China’s own trajectory will depend on how its neighbours and other players such as the US manage its growing power. Such management—independently and in partnership—will determine if China stays on the positive side of the ledger, without its power sliding into authoritarian arrogance.

A multi-aligned India pursuing omnidirectional cooperation for mutual benefit with key countries is best positioned to advance its interests in a fluid Asia. Advancing strategic partnerships indeed was a key issue in the summit meetings of the past two months: with Australia on 12 November; the US on 24 November; Russia on 7 December; and with Japan on 29 December.

The Indo-Australian summit resulted in a decision to elevate the relationship to a formal strategic partnership, with a new security agreement being unveiled. A close India-Australia strategic relationship is a critical link in the larger Asia-Pacific picture, given the common security interests that bind the two democracies in several spheres.

To help underline the significance of their new accord, India and Australia have agreed to “policy coordination” on Asian affairs and long-term international issues, and to work together in initiatives such as the East Asia Summit and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) Regional Forum. They are instituting regular defence policy talks, including consultations between their national security advisers, and setting up a joint working group on counterterrorism. They also have agreed to cooperate on maritime and aviation security and participate in military exercises and other service-to-service exchanges.

In New Delhi, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd contended disingenuously, though, that his refusal to sell India uranium is “not targeted at any individual country”—though India is the only country affected by his policy. Worse still, he proffered a specious justification—India’s non-membership in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). That treaty has no explicit or implicit injunction against civil nuclear cooperation with a non-signatory. Rather, it enjoins its parties to positively facilitate “the fullest possible exchange of equipment, materials and scientific and technological information for the peaceful uses of nuclear energy”, so long as safeguards are in place.

Any restriction is not in NPT but in the revised 1992 rules of the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group that, paradoxically, were changed with Australian support in 2008 to exempt India. So, Canberra is likely to come round eventually to selling India uranium.

The Indo-US summit, highlighted by the first state dinner of Obama’s presidency, received intense media attention—but yielded little, partly because the US-India strategic partnership already is on a firm footing. That partnership, founded on the June 2005 defence framework accord and the July 2005 civil nuclear deal, has resulted in growing cooperation in various spheres. However, differences in some areas persist, and New Delhi is dissatisfied with US counterterrorism assistance and its tacit neutrality on the Arunachal Pradesh border issue with China.

With little room for any dramatic breakthrough, the Indo-US summit received attention either for the wrong reason (the manner three persons managed to “crash” into the White House dinner), or for being light on substance but heavy on symbolism. The state dinner, clearly, was intended to pander to India’s collective ego, which had sensed a Sino-centric tilt to US policy ever since Obama became President. But the summit’s lack of tangible result left an unwelcome impression that, while China gets respect from the US and Pakistan gets billions of dollars in annual US assistance, India gets just a sumptuous dinner.

That impression needs to be dispelled through greater cooperation on common areas of interest. The apparent crisis facing the US-Japan alliance, with some in Washington seeking to play hardball with Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s government, has made further progress in the US-India partnership vital for Asian strategic stability and to hedge against the danger that a more-powerful China might turn aggressive.

The third recent summit centred on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Russia, which he had once called a “tried and tested friend” of India. Russia, with its vantage location in Eurasia and matching strategic concerns, is a natural ally of India. A robust relationship with Moscow will help New Delhi to leverage its ties with both Beijing and Washington.

In their summit declaration, Russia and India pledged to “raise their strategic partnership to the next level”. But this won’t be easy, given the three problems that plague that partnership. The first is that Indo-Russian trade, like the Indo-Japanese trade, is low, even as Sino-Russian, Sino-Indian and Sino-Japanese trade continues to gallop.

This, of course, shows that booming trade in today’s market-driven world does not necessarily connote political cosiness, and that close strategic bonds can go hand-in-hand with low trade levels. Still, the new target to boost Indo-Russian trade from $7.5 billion to $20 billion by 2015 is unlikely to be met, partly because of Russia’s own economic woes.

The second problem is the lopsided nature of the partnership, with military hardware sales and co-production constituting the dominant element. A robust partnership demands multifaceted collaboration and interdependence that can help underpin a mutual stake. The broadening of the Indo-Russian partnership also is being necessitated by India’s increasing purchases of US and Israeli arms. In 2008 alone, according to the Indian ambassador to the US, India placed orders worth a staggering $3.5 billion to buy American arms.

The third problem the partnership faces is that, for Russia, India principally is a client, even if a privileged one. A true strategic partnership has to break free from the patron-client framework—a challenge also confronting the US-India partnership. After all, the US values India more as a market for its goods and services than as a collaborator on pressing strategic issues.

As China’s immediate neighbours, India and Russia do share common concerns about that country’s rapidly accumulating power. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin famously described the Soviet collapse as the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the 20th century. But by eliminating a menacing empire and opening the way for Beijing to rapidly increase strategic space globally, that event left China as the biggest beneficiary. Furthermore, Russia’s decline in the 1990s became China’s gain. Today, the Sino-Russian dissonance may not be as eye-catching as the India-China rivalry. But the Sino-Russian honeymoon has given way to suspicion and competition.

The fourth summit at the year end was like a toast to the New Year, with India and Japan unveiling an “action plan” with specific measures to implement their 2008 security agreement. Hatoyama’s visit, intended to fulfil a 2006 bilateral commitment to hold an annual summit meeting, indicated that Japan will maintain its priority on closer engagement with India, despite the sea change in Japanese politics. Hatoyama’s election was even more historic than Obama’s because his Democratic Party of Japan ousted the Liberal Democratic Party that had held power almost without interruption for more than five decades.

India’s security relationship with Japan is one of the fastest growing, with the two countries holding an annual strategic dialogue between their foreign ministers, an annual defence ministerial meeting and other service-to-service dialogues. Now under their otherwise modest “action plan”, they have agreed to an annual senior-level 2+2 dialogue involving foreign and defence ministry officials together on both sides.

Economic ties also are taking off, with India overtaking China as the magnet for the largest Japanese foreign direct investment since 2008. The highlight of the Indian Prime Minister’s Tokyo visit this year could be the signing of a free trade agreement, if the remaining differences are sorted out in the ongoing negotiations.

The Indo-Japanese security agreement actually was modelled on the 2007 Australia-Japan defence accord. Now, the new India-Australia security accord mirrors the structure and large parts of the content of the Indo-Japanese and Australian-Japanese agreements. All three are in the form of a joint declaration on security cooperation and obligate their signatories to work together on security in Asia, while recognizing a common commitment to democracy, freedom, human rights and the rule of law.

These bilateral accords open the possibility of strategic triangles working in concert with each other—India-Japan-US, India-Australia-US, India-Japan-Australia and Australia-Japan-US. An India-Russia-Japan strategic triangle also can greatly contribute to Asian stability, but so long as Japanese-Russian ties remain hostage to history there is little hope of such a configuration. Last year’s Russia-Japan nuclear deal, though, offered a glimmer of hope.

The changing Asian balance of power underscores the imperative for India to forge closer strategic partnerships with varied countries to pursue a variety of interests in different settings and equations. A strategic partnership, however, cannot mean an exclusive relationship. The US, for example, is not allowing its new partnership with India or its long-standing alliance with Japan to come in the way of its growing strategic cooperation with China. Pragmatism in foreign policy demands multiple partnerships with interlocking interests, thereby guaranteeing mutual benefit and one’s own strategic autonomy.

Strategic partnerships are an aid, not a substitute to a nation discharging its primary duty to secure its frontiers and economic interests. Inadequate capabilities to deter an armed attack or an undue security dependency on a third party can easily negate the value of multiple strategic partnerships. Thus, to pre-empt aggression, a nation must have its own requisite strength and clout.

Brahma Chellaney is professor of strategic studies at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi. Comments are welcome at theirview@livemint.com

India must break out of Nehruvian straitjacket

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From nonalignment to a pragmatic foreign policy

 

COMMENTARY

Brahma Chellaney

Mail Today, January 12, 2010

 

The world has changed fundamentally in the past quarter-century since the advent of the Information Age and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Yet there are some in India who still want the country to hew to the half-century-old traditions of the Nehruvian foreign policy. Fortunately, India has progressed from doctrinaire nonalignment to geopolitical pragmatism, with its foreign, economic and others policies reflecting growing realism.

 

The very essence of a forward-thinking, effective foreign policy is dynamism. A static foreign policy attached to an old school of thought — even if that school was associated with a great personality — can hardly advance a country’s interests.

 

Actually, the struggle between realism and idealism has been a constant phenomenon in independent India, starting from the contrasting approaches of the first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and his deputy prime minister, Sardar Patel. That struggle still manifests itself in policymaking.

 

While important countries have pursued strategies of “balance of power”, “balance of threat” or “balance of interest”, Indian foreign policy has not been organized around a distinct strategic doctrine, except for a period under Indira Gandhi.  It is not uncommon for Indian policymakers to feed to the nation dreams sold to them by others. Nor are flip-flops uncommon in Indian foreign policy. Despite imbibing greater realism, India has yet to strategically pursue its wider interests with the requisite unflinching resolve.

 

In the absence of goal-oriented statecraft, the propensity to act in haste and repent at leisure still runs deep in Indian foreign policy.  It has ignored the sound advice of Talleyrand: “By no means show too much zeal”.

 

The blunt fact is that India is still in transition from the practices of Nehruvian diplomacy to a post-Nehruvian approach to world affairs. India, for example, has given up the Nehruvian didactic approach, or at least tried to. But it hasn’t as yet fully embraced realpolitik. Nor is it an assertive pursuer of self-interest, in the way China is.

 

Indeed, India — home to more than one-sixth of the human race — continues to punch far below its weight. Internationally, it is a rule-taker, not a rule-maker. Yet, in the past decade, India’s growing geopolitical importance, high GDP growth rate and abundant market opportunities have helped increase its international profile. As a “swing” geopolitical factor, India has the potential to play a constructive role by promoting collaborative international approaches.  

 

Its foreign policy seems headed in the right direction. Through dynamic diplomacy, India — the world’s most-assimilative civilization — can truly play the role of a bridge between the East and the West, including a link between the competing demands of the developed and developing worlds.

 

In the coming years, India will increasingly be aligned with the West economically. But, strategically, it can avail of multiple options, even as it moves from the Nehruvian mindset and attitudes to a contemporary, globalized practicality.

 

In keeping with its long-standing preference for policy independence, India is correctly pursuing the option to forge different partnerships with varied players to pursue a variety of interests in diverse settings. That course means that from being non-aligned, it is likely to become multialigned, while tilting more towards Washington, even as it preserves the core element of nonalignment — strategic autonomy. Put simply, India is likely to continue to chart its own destiny and make its own major decisions.

 

A multialigned India pursuing omnidirectional cooperation for mutual benefit with key players will be best positioned to advance its interests in the changed world.

 

Brahma Chellaney is professor of strategic studies at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi.

Obama should speak up for India in Beijing

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Obama should stop China from provoking India

By Brahma Chellaney

Financial Times, November 13 2009

The economic rise of China and India draws ever more attention. But the world has taken little notice of the rising border tensions and increasingly visible differences between the two giants.

With Barack Obama, US president, headed to Beijing and the Dalai Lama’s tour of the remote north-eastern Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh provoking an angry Chinese response, the China-India-US triangle and Tibet have emerged at the centre of escalating tensions.

China has resurrected its long-dormant claim to Arunachal Pradesh – almost three times as large as Taiwan – and stepped up military pressure along the 4,057km frontier with India through frequent incursions.

Beijing seems to be drawing the analogy that Arunachal is the new Taiwan that must be “reunified” with the Chinese state.

Tibet, however, has always been the core issue in Sino-Indian relations. China became India’s neighbour not by geography but guns – by annexing buffer Tibet in 1951. Today, Beijing is ready to whip up spats with western nations that extend hospitality to the Dalai Lama. But India remains the base of the Tibetan leader and his government-in-exile.

The key cause of the more muscular Chinese stance towards India is the US-Indian tie-up, unveiled in 2005.

Since then, the official Chinese media has started regurgitating the coarse anti-India rhetoric of the Mao Zedong era, with one commentator this week warning New Delhi not to forget 1962, when China humiliated India in a 32-day, two-front war.

Yet the Obama administration is reluctant to take New Delhi’s side in its disputes with Beijing. Washington has also shied away from cautioning Beijing against attempts to change the territorial status quo forcibly.

Mr Obama is committed to the partnership with India as part of which New Delhi has placed arms-purchase orders worth $3.5bn last year alone. But he has also signalled that any relationship will not be at the expense of fast-growing ties with Beijing.

Washington now intends to abandon elements in its ties with New Delhi that could rile China, including a joint military drill in Arunachal or a 2007-style naval exercise involving the US, India, Australia, Japan and Singapore. Even US naval manoeuvres with India and Japan are out. Washington is charting a course of tacit neutrality on the Arunachal issue.

As his secretary of state did in February, Mr Obama has started his Asia tour in Japan and will end in China – the high spot – while skipping India. But playing to India’s well-known weakness for flattery, he will honour it with his presidency’s first state dinner later this month.

Left to fend for itself, New Delhi has steered clear of confrontation with Beijing. It has sought to damp down military tensions and cut off all information to the media on the Himalayan border situation, including Chinese intrusions.

But faced with attacks at home for being “soft” on China, the government has asserted itself politically. It rebuffed repeated Chinese diplomatic appeals and allowed the Dalai Lama to travel to Arunachal. It also announced an end to the practice of Chinese companies bringing thousands of workers from China to work on projects in India.

But India cannot afford to be isolated. With Mr Obama pursuing a Sino-centric Asia policy, and with China-friendly heads of government in Australia, Japan and Taiwan, New Delhi’s diplomatic calculations have gone awry. But the hardline Chinese approach reinforces the Indian thinking that engendered Chinese belligerence: that India has little option other than to align with the US.

New Delhi has to manage its relationships with Beijing and Washington wisely so it does not lose out. Meanwhile, the US cannot ignore the pattern of Sino-Indian border provocations and new force deployments similar to what happened 47 years ago when China, taking advantage of the Cuban missile crisis, routed the Indian military in a surprise invasion.

When Mr Obama is in Beijing, his message should be that any military adventure will prove costly and trigger the rise of a militaristic, anti-China India. Mr Obama should propose a US-China-India initiative and encourage his hosts to begin a process of reconciliation and healing in Tibet.

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

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009. Print a single copy of this article for personal use. Contact us if you wish to print more to distribute to others.

After the Berlin Wall’s fall, Asia gained salience

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As the Wall fell, Asia rose

The Berlin Wall’s collapse changed many things, but it also helped shift the balance of power towards Asia

 

Brahma Chellaney

Mint newspaper, November 9, 2009

 

On its 20th anniversary, the fall of the Berlin Wall stands out as the most momentous event in post-World War II history. By triggering the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, it helped transform global geopolitics. It also set in motion developments that helped significantly raise Asia’s profile in international relations, with the two demographic titans — China and India — benefiting in important but different ways.

 

Globally, some nations lost out, but many others gained. The events arising from the Berlin Wall’s fall transformed Europe’s political and military landscape. But no continent benefited more than Asia, as has been epitomized by its dramatic economic rise — the speed and scale of which has no parallel in world history.

Illustration: Jayachandran / Mint

At a time when tectonic global power shifts are challenging strategic stability, Asia has become the world’s main creditor and economic locomotive. With the world’s fastest growing markets, fastest rising military expenditures and most volatile hot spots, a resurgent Asia today holds the key to the future global order. The Asian economic renaissance has been accompanied by a growing international recognition of Asia’s soft power, as symbolized by its arts, fashion and cuisine. Even so, Asia faces complex security, energy and developmental challenges in this era of globalization and greater interstate competition.

An important post-1989 development was the shift from the primacy of military power to a greater role for economic power in shaping international geopolitics. That helped promote not only an economic boom in Asia, but also led to an eastward movement of global power and influence, with Asia emerging as an important player on the world stage.

Global power shifts, as symbolized by Asia’s ascent, are now being spurred not by military triumphs or geopolitical realignments but by a factor unique to our contemporary world—rapid economic growth. Rapid economic growth also was witnessed during the Industrial Revolution and in the post-World War II period. But in the post-Cold War period, rapid economic growth by itself has contributed to qualitatively altering global power equations. So, economic power is now playing a unique role in instigating contemporary power shifts, even as the United Nations Security Council’s permanent-membership structure continues to undergird the importance of military power.

Another defining event in 1989 was the Tiananmen Square massacre of pro-democracy protesters in Beijing. But for the end of the Cold War, the West would not have let China off the hook over those killings.

The Cold War’s end, however, facilitated the West’s pragmatic approach to shun trade sanctions and help integrate China with global institutions through the liberalizing influence of foreign investment and trade. Had the United States and its allies pursued the opposite approach centred on punitive sanctions, like they are still doing against Cuba and Burma, the result would have been a less-prosperous, less-open and a potentially destabilizing China. 

 

China’s phenomenal economic success — illustrated by its emergence with the world’s biggest trade surplus, largest foreign-currency reserves and highest steel production — thus owes a lot to the West’s decision not to sustain trade sanctions after Tiananmen Square. Without the expansion in U.S.-Chinese trade and financial relations, China’s growth would have been much harder. Today, having vaulted past Germany to become the world’s biggest exporter, China is set to displace Japan as the world’s No. 2 economy. Yet, for the foreseeable future, Japan — with its nearly $5-trillion economy, impressive high-technology skills, Asia’s largest navy and a per-capita income more than 10 times that of China — is likely to stay a strong nation.

 

India’s rise as a new economic giant also is linked to the post-1989 events. India was so much into barter trade with the Soviet Union and its communist allies in Eastern Europe that when the East bloc began to unravel, India had to start paying for imports in harsh cash. That rapidly depleted its modest foreign-exchange reserves, triggering a severe balance-of-payments crisis in 1991. The financial crisis, in turn, compelled India to embark on radical economic reforms, which laid the foundation for India’s economic rise.

 

More broadly, the emblematic defeat of Marxism in 1989 allowed Asian countries, including China and India, to overtly pursue capitalist policies. Although China’s economic-modernization programme already had begun under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese Communist Party, after 1989, was able to publicly subordinate ideology to wealth creation. That example, in turn, had a constructive influence on surviving communist parties in Asia and beyond.

 

Geopolitically, the post-1989 gains extended far beyond the West. China and India were both beneficiaries. For China, the Soviet Union’s sudden collapse came as a great strategic boon, eliminating a menacing empire and opening the way to rapidly increase strategic space globally. Russia’s decline in the 1990s became China’s gain.

 

For India, the end of the Cold War triggered a foreign-policy crisis by eliminating the country’s most reliable partner, the Soviet Union. But as in the economic realm, that crisis had a positive outcome: It led to a revamped foreign policy.

 

The crisis compelled India to overcome its didactically quixotic traditions and inject greater realism and pragmatism into its foreign policy — a process still on. Post-Cold War India began pursuing mutually beneficial strategic partnerships with all key players in Asia and the wider world, including European powers and Japan. The new Indo-U.S. “global strategic partnership” — a defining feature of this decade — was made possible by the post-1989 shifts in Indian policy thinking.

 

As India has moved from Jawaharlal Nehru’s nonalignment to a contemporary, globalized practicality, it is becoming multialigned, while tilting more towards the West. But it intends to preserves the core element of nonalignment — strategic autonomy. A multialigned India pursuing omnidirectional cooperation for mutual benefit with key players, clearly, is better positioned to advance its interests in the changed world.

 

In that light, it is hardly a surprise that Russia remains India’s “tried and tested friend” — a relationship whose value for both sides is being reinforced by the China factor. By contrast, the escalating India-China rivalry and tensions over the Himalayan territorial disputes run counter to the U.S. interest to build closer ties with both sides and not to overtly side with New Delhi. It is not an accident that Washington, locked in deepening symbiosis with Beijing, is today quietly charting a course of tacit neutrality on the Arunachal dispute.

 

To be sure, not all developments post-1989 were positive. For instance, the phenomenon of failing states, which has affected Asian security the most, is a direct consequence of the end of the Cold War. While the Cold War raged, weak states were propped up by one bloc or the other. But with the disappearance of the Soviet Union, the U.S. got out of that game.

 

That is the reason why, suddenly, dysfunctional or failing states emerged in the 1990s — a phenomenon that has since contributed to making such nations a threat to regional and international security because they are home to transnational pirates (Somalia) or transnational terrorists (Pakistan and Afghanistan), or they defy global norms (such as North Korea and Iran). Asia has suffered more casualties from the post-Cold War rise of international terrorism than any other region.

 

Between 1988 and 1990, as the Cold War was winding down, pro-democracy protests broke out in several parts of the world — from China and Burma to Eastern Europe. The protests helped spread political freedoms in Eastern Europe and inspired popular movements elsewhere that overturned dictatorships in countries as disparate as Indonesia, South Korea, Taiwan and Chile. After the Soviet disintegration, even Russia emerged as a credible candidate for democratic reform.

 

Although the overthrow of a number of totalitarian or autocratic regimes did shift the global balance of power in favour of democratic forces, not all the pro-democracy movements were successful. Indeed, the subsequent “colour revolutions” only instilled greater caution among the surviving authoritarian regimes, prompting them to set up measures to counter foreign-inspired democratization initiatives.

 

Two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the spread of democracy unmistakably has stalled. Aside from the feared retreat of democracy in Russia, China — now the world’s oldest and largest autocracy — is demonstrating that when authoritarianism is deeply entrenched, a marketplace of goods and services can stymie the marketplace of political ideas. A new model, authoritarian capitalism — now well-established in Asian countries as different as Singapore, Malaysia and Kazakhstan — has emerged as the leading challenger to the international spread of democratic values.

 

Brahma Chellaney is professor of strategic studies at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi.

(c) Mint, 2009

Why shoot the messenger?

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To China’s
delight, India
reins in its media

The Indian government doesn’t deny recurrent Chinese cross-frontier
border incursions, yet it has unfairly accused the media of overplaying such
border provocations, says Brahma Chellaney

India Abroad and Rediff.com
http://ow.ly/tzWe

At a time
when border tensions with China
have risen, the Indian government has tried to pull the veil over the
Himalayan-frontier situation by targeting the media for allegedly overplaying
Chinese cross-border incursions. Note: No one in the government has denied such
incursions are occurring. Yet the media is being accused of hyping such
incursions, even as a tight-lipped government remains reluctant to come clean
on the actual extent and frequency of the Chinese intrusions.

To
the delight of the autocrats in Beijing, who
tightly control the flow of information in their country, including through
online censors, New Delhi
has reined in its home media. In response to the governmental intervention at the highest level,
Indian news organizations essentially have clamped down on further reporting of
the Chinese incursions. The message this sends to Beijing, however
inadvertently, is that when the world’s biggest autocracy builds up pressure,
the world’s largest democracy is willing to tame its media coverage, even if it
entails dispensing half-truths and flogging distortions.

Beijing is sure to be emboldened by the precedent that
has been set. Next time when it is unhappy with Indian media coverage of another
issue sensitive to its interests, it simply will issue a diplomatic demarche to
New Delhi to
discipline its media the way it did on the border tensions.

Given Beijing’s
growing hardline stance towards India
since 2006, New Delhi’s
attempt to sweep serious issues under the rug is baffling. The facts, even if unpalatable, should be allowed to
speak for themselves. New Delhi’s
oft-repeated line in recent weeks has been that Chinese incursions are at last
year’s level, so there is no need to worry. But 2008 brought a record number of
incursions, with the Indian defence establishment reporting that the number of
such intrusions went from 140 in 2007 to 270 last year, or almost double. In
addition, there were 2,285 reported instances of “aggressive border patrolling”
by Chinese forces in 2008. This summer, as the army chief publicly said, there were “21
incursions in June, 20 in July and 24 in August.”

The key point to note is that
China has opened pressure points against India across the Himalayas, with border incidents occurring in all the four sectors — Ladakh,
Uttarakhand-Himachal, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh. Yet, such is the Indian government’s continuing
opacity that it is loath to clarify the actual border situation, even as it
conveniently blames the media for overplaying the incursions, although the
information about them has been coming from official channels.

If the threat from an increasingly assertive and ambitious China is to be contained, India must have
an honest and open debate on its diplomatic and military options, including how
gaps in its defenses can be plugged and what it will take to build a credible
deterrent. The media has a crucial role to play in such a debate, both by
bringing out the facts and providing a platform for discussion.

Still,
New Delhi has
sought to make its home media the scapegoat. Even more odd is that it has taken
its cue from Beijing.
It was the Chinese foreign ministry which first accused Indian media of
stirring up tensions. “I have noted that some Indian media are
releasing inaccurate information; I wonder what their aim is,” spokeswoman
Jiang Yu had said. Soon thereafter, Beijing
discreetly began exerting diplomatic pressure on New Delhi to domesticate its media.

In response, Indian
government functionaries have rushed, one by one, to make light of the Chinese
incursions, although the Chinese leadership has
studiously kept mum on border-related developments. Not a word has come from
any Chinese leader. By contrast, the almost entire Indian security leadership from
the prime minister down has gone public — not to clarify what is happening
along the border, but to claim there is no cause for alarm. But by being
disturbingly opaque, New Delhi
only adds to the public unease.

The Indian public
indeed has been offered mostly one-line statements from government
functionaries. Here’s a sample:

■ In
September’s first week, the neophyte external affairs minister offered this
one-liner: ‘‘Let me go on record to say that this
has been one of the most peaceful boundaries that we have had as compared to
boundary lines with other countries.” From the Maurya Sheraton’s presidential
suite, where S.M. Krishna was ensconced for more than 100 days, everything
looks “most peaceful,” not just the India-China border.

■ In the
following week, the foreign secretary claimed there has been “no significant
increase” in Chinese incursions. That suggests the incursions have increased
but not significantly. But who is to judge whether any increase is significant
or insignificant if those in authority divulge no information?

■ The foreign secretary was followed by the prime
minister, who laconically indicated he was in touch with the “highest levels”
of the Chinese government while implicitly acknowledging that a better flow of
government information was necessary to improve media reporting.

■ A day
later, the army chief was asked to speak up. “The
Prime Minister has just made a statement that there has not been any more
incursions or transgressions as compared to last year. They are at the same
level. So there is no cause of worry or concern,” Gen. Deepak Kapoor declared
on September 19. If the level of intrusions remains at last year’s level, that
should be a cause for concern because it shows China
is keeping India
under unremitting pressure.

■ Then came
the national security adviser, who was loquacious but not enlightening in a TV
interview. “Almost all the so-called incursions
which have taken place have taken place in areas which in a sense are viewed as
being disputed by one side or the other,” said M.K. Narayanan. Really? What
about Sikkim, whose border
with Tibet is formally
recognized by China?
And what about Uttarakhand —  the middle
sector — where the line of control was clarified through an exchange of maps
with China
in 2001? More fundamentally, why should New Delhi offer explanations or
justifications for the Chinese incursions? If such intrusions really are due to
differing perceptions about the line of control, let the Chinese say that. But
note: Beijing
hasn’t proffered that excuse.

Significantly, the NSA admitted the Chinese have started intruding a
“little deeper” than before, even as he maintained the government’s
now-familiar line that there has been “hardly any increase” in Chinese
cross-frontier forays. He went on to say, “China certainly sees us as a rival. They wish to be numero uno in this part of the world.”
Yet he complacently concluded, “I don’t think there is any reason for us to
feel particularly concerned as to what’s happening.” Didn’t such smugness bring
the surprise 1962 invasion?

Unfortunately, even while denying any media
report, New Delhi
tends to be so economical with words that it leaves questions hanging. For
example, the government has yet to categorically deny that Chinese forces
opened fire across the settled Sikkim
border in late August. It merely described as “factually inaccurate” a
September 15 newspaper report that two Indo-Tibetan Border Police soldiers were
wounded in such firing. But another national newspaper had earlier front-paged
on August 28 the trading of cross-border fire in the same Sikkim area — Kerang.

If New Delhi
wants to ensure Himalayan peace, pulling the wool on public eyes is certainly not the way. It is the government’s responsibility to keep the public
informed through media of new security threats and the steps it is taking to
effectively defend the borders.

Journalists seeking
information from the government on the Himalayan frontier complain they get the
runaround. Rather than stonewall or obfuscate, the
government ought to readily disseminate information. Not all information
released in the public domain can be venomous to diplomacy.

Good public diplomacy, at home and abroad,
indeed can complement official diplomacy and defense preparedness. Indian
opacity on Chinese-triggered border incidents only helps bolster China’s projection of its “peaceful
rise."

By trying to mask the actual border situation, New Delhi seriously risks playing into Beijing’s hands and spurring on greater
Chinese belligerence.

Brahma Chellaney,
professor of strategic studies at the independent, privately funded Centre for
Policy Research, is the author, most recently, of “Asian Juggernaut: The Rise
of China, India and Japan.”