Tibet exposes China’s Achilles heel

Posted on March 31, 2008 by Chellaney

Repression May Unravel China’s Monocracy

Beijing faces moment of truth on its brutal occupation of the vast Tibetan
plateau

Brahma Chellaney

Asian Age,
March 29, 2008

Growing authoritarianism
more often than not rebounds. The monk-led Tibetan uprising, which has spread
across Tibet and beyond to
the traditional Tibetan areas forcibly incorporated in Han provinces, marks a
turning point in communist China’s
history. It comes as a rude jolt to the world’s biggest and longest-surviving
autocracy, highlighting the signal failure of state-driven efforts to pacify Tibet through
more than half a century of ruthless repression, in which as many as a million
Tibetans reportedly have lost their lives.

The
open backlash against the Tibetans’ economic marginalization, the rising Han
influx and the state assault on Tibetan religion and ecology constitutes, in
terms of its spread, the largest rebellion in Tibet
since 1959, when the Dalai Lama and his followers were forced to flee to India. Even in
1989, when the last major Tibetan uprising was suppressed through brute force,
the unrest had not spread beyond the central plateau, or what Beijing since 1965 calls the Tibet Autonomous
Region. Now, the state’s intensifying brutal crackdown across the Tibetan
plateau — an area more than two-thirds the size of Western Europe — dwarfs
other international human-rights problems like Burma
and Darfur, Sudan.

Indeed,
the latest revolt is a challenge to China’s totalitarian system in a
year when the Beijing Olympics are supposed to showcase the autocracy’s
remarkable economic achievements. It is a defining moment for a system that has
managed to entrench itself for 59 long years and yet faces gnawing questions
about its ability to survive by reconciling China’s contradictory paths of market
capitalism and political monocracy. The longest any autocratic system has
survived in modern history was 74 years in the Soviet
Union.

The recent events have laid bare the strength of the Tibetan grassroots
resistance despite decades of oppression, including the demolition of
monasteries, the jailing of independent-minded monks and nuns, the state’s
wanton interference in the mechanics of Tibetan Buddhism, and the forced
political re-education of Tibetan youth and monks. Tibet’s rapid Sinicization today
threatens to obliterate the Tibetan culture in ways the previous decades of
repression could not. That threat has only sharpened the Tibetan sense of
identity and yearning for freedom.

For President Hu Jintao, who owes his swift rise to the top of the party
hierarchy to his martial-law crackdown in Tibet in 1989, the chickens have
come home to roost. The fresh uprising, coinciding with Hu’s re-election as
president, epitomizes the counterproductive nature of the Hu-backed policies —
from seeking to change the demographic realities on the ground through the “Go
West” Han-migration campaign, to draconian curbs on Tibetan farmland and
monastic life. The Tibetans’ feelings of subjugation and loss have been
deepened as they have been pushed to the margins of society, with their
distinct culture being reduced to a mere showpiece to draw tourists and boost
the Han-benefiting local economy.

Tibetans
also have been incensed by atheistic China’s growing intrusion into their
religious affairs, as exemplified by Beijing’s 2007 proclamation making itself
the sole authority to anoint lamas — traditionally a divine process to select a
young boy as a Buddha incarnation. Having captured the institution of the
Panchen Lama, the second-ranking figure in Tibetan Buddhism, Beijing is preparing the ground to install
its own puppet Dalai Lama after the present aging incumbent passes away. So
short-sighted is this approach that the rulers in Beijing
don’t realize that such a scenario will surely radicalize Tibetan youth and
kill prospect of a peaceful settlement of the Tibet issue, thereby spawning an
enduring violent campaign.

The
ongoing Chinese crackdown, behind the cover of a Tibet
that has been cut off from the outside world, symbolizes what the communist
leadership itself admits is a “life and death struggle” over Tibet. The
likely further hardening of the leadership’s stance on Tibet, as a
consequence of the uprising, will only help mask a serious challenge that
carries wider political implications for the Chinese state. In the Tibetan
plateau — about half of which has been hived off from Tibet and merged with Qinghai,
Gansu, Sichuan and Yunnan provinces — the crackdown by a regime wedded to the
unbridled exercise of state power promises to exacerbate the situation on the
ground.

The tepid global response thus far to the bloodletting and arbitrary
arrests in Tibet is a reflection of China’s growing international clout,
underscored by its burgeoning external trade, rising military power and
unrivalled $1.5 trillion foreign-exchange reserves, largely invested in U.S.
dollar-denominated assets. Given that even the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre did not
trigger lasting international trade sanctions, the lack of any attempt to
penalize China for its
continuing human-rights violations in Tibet should not come as a
surprise.

But Tibet’s future
will be determined not so much by the international response as by developments
within China.
After all, the only occasions in history when Tibet
was clearly part of China
was under non-Han dynasties — that is, when China itself had been conquered by
outsiders: the Mongol Yuan dynasty, from 1279 to 1368, and the Manchu Qing
dynasty, from 1644 to 1912. It was only when the Qing dynasty began to unravel
that Tibet
once again became an independent political entity.

What Beijing today asserts are regions
“integral” to its territorial integrity are really imperial spoils of earlier
foreign dynastic rule in China.
Yet, revisionist history under communist rule has helped indoctrinate Chinese to think of the Yang and Qing empires as Han, with
the result that educated Chinese have come to feel a false sense of ownership
about every territory that was part of those dynasties.

The truth is that the once-idyllic Tibet
came under direct Han rule for the first time in history following the 1949
communist takeover in China.
Just as the politically cataclysmic developments of 1949 led to Tibet’s loss of its independent status, it is
likely to take another momentous event in Chinese history for Tibet to regain
its sovereignty.

That event could be the unravelling of the present xenophobic
dictatorship and the synthetic homogeneity it has implanted, not just in
institutional structures but also in the national thought process. Today, the
Chinese autocrats are able to fan ultra-nationalism as a substitute to their
waning communist ideology because the central tenet of the communists’
political philosophy is uniformity, with Hu’s slogan of a “harmonious society”
designed to underline the theme of conformity with the republic. The Manchu
assimilation into Han society and the swamping of the natives in Inner Mongolia have left only the Tibetans and
Turkic-speaking Muslim ethnic groups in Xinjiang as the holdouts.

With 60 per cent of its present landmass comprising homelands of ethnic
minorities, modern China has come a long way in history since the time the
Great Wall represented the Han empire’s outer security perimeter.
Territorially, Han power is at its pinnacle today. Yet, driven by
self-cultivated myths, the state fuels territorial nationalism, centred on
issues like Tibet and Taiwan, and its claims in the East and South China Seas
and on India’s Arunachal Pradesh state — nearly thrice the size of Taiwan. Few
realize that China occupies
one-fifth of the original state of Jammu
and Kashmir.

Tibet, however, is a reminder that
attempts at forcible assimilation can backfire. That was also the lesson from Yugoslavia, a
model of forced integration of nationalities. But once its central autocratic
structure corroded, Yugoslavia
violently fell apart. It will require a similar collapse or loosening of the
central political authority in China
for Tibet
to reclaim independence. Until then, the Tibetans’ best hope is to strive for
the kind of autonomy Beijing has granted Hong
Kong and Macao.

Those who gloomily see the battle for Tibetan independence as
irretrievably lost forget that history has a way of wreaking vengeance on
artificially created empires. The Central Asian states got independence on a
platter, without having to wage a struggle. Who in Central
Asia had dreamt of independence in mid-1991? Yet months later, the
Soviet empire had unravelled. The Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and
Lithuania twice lost their independence to an expanding Russian empire, only to
regain it each time due to a cataclysmic event — World War I, and the 1991
Soviet collapse.

The post-1991 flight of Russians from large parts of Central
Asia is a testament that the Sinicization of the Tibetan region is
not an unalterable process.

The Tibetan struggle, one of the longest and most-powerful resistance
movements in modern world history, exposes China’s Achilles heel. The
reverberations from the latest bloodshed on the land of the pacifist Tibetan
Buddhist culture will be felt long after Chinese security forces have snuffed
out the last protest.

Hu knows that the Tibetan uprising has the potential to embolden Han
citizens in China
to demand political freedoms — a campaign that would sound the death knell of
the single-party rule. The last time he suppressed a Tibetan revolt, his then
boss, Deng Xiaoping, had to borrow a
leaf from Hu’s Tibet book to
crush pro-democracy protestors at Tiananmen Square
two months later. Hundreds were slain.

This year could prove a watershed in Chinese history. Just as the 1936
Berlin Olympics set the stage for Nazi Germany’s collapse, the 2008 Beijing
Games — communist China’s coming-out party, already besmirched by the Tibet
crackdown — may be a spur to radical change in that country. Given that
recurring protests are likely to greet the Olympic torch during its global tour
of 135 cities, 2008 promises to be, at a minimum, the year Tibet came back
into international spotlight.

Rudderless Rudd’s uranium-export decision throws a spanner in Indian goal

Posted on March 15, 2008 by Chellaney

Rudd’s uranium reversal irks India

Bruce Loudon, New Delhi | March 03, 2008

The Australian

KEVIN Rudd was lashed yesterday by one of India’s most influential foreign affairs commentators over the Prime Minister’s ditching of his predecessor’s pledge to sell uranium to the emerging economic powerhouse.

Brahma Chellaney launched a searing denunciation of Mr Rudd’s "abstruse, retrograde ideology" over his reversal of a decision made last year by John Howard to sell uranium to India.

Mr Chellaney accused Mr Rudd in The Asian Age newspaper of striking "a jarring note amid a growing convergence of strategic interests" between the two countries.

Under the headline "Rudd’s rudderless reversal", Mr Chellaney noted that Mr Rudd was the free world’s first Mandarin-speaking head of government, saying he "has made plain his intent to cosy up to the world’s largest autocracy, China, while nullifying an important decision that his predecessor took to help build a closer rapport with the world’s largest democracy."

The stridency of Mr Chellaney’s attack reflects the widespread annoyance at high levels in New Delhi over the Rudd Government’s reversal on the uranium issue.

The Indian Government was irked when, in January, it sent special prime ministerial envoy Shyam Saran to see Foreign Minister Stephen Smith in Perth and found itself being bluntly told – even though it had not asked – there would be no sale of Australian uranium to India.

Indian sources insist Mr Saran was taken aback by the minister’s forthright stance as he had gone to Perth only to brief Mr Smith on New Delhi’s negotiations with Washington over its civilian nuclear deal and specifically not to ask to buy Australian uranium.

"Chellaney is saying what many of us feel about the Rudd Government’s pathetic hypocrisy on this issue," one highly-placed official told The Australian yesterday.

The criticism of the Rudd Government is in sharp contrast to the significant strides made in Indo-Australian relations in the Howard years, which are praised by Mr Chellaney.

But in overturning the decision to sell uranium to India, Mr Chellaney says, Mr Rudd has been "notably regressive".

"Driven by misplaced non-proliferation zealotry, Rudd not only went ahead with cancelling Howard’s decision, but his Government also continues to parrot the same lame excuse, as if he has not read the Non-Proliferation Treaty text.

"In touting its ideological resolve to uphold the NPT, the Rudd Government wants to be more Catholic than the Pope. Far from the NPT forbidding civil exports to a non-signatory, the treaty indeed encourages the peaceful use of nuclear technology among all states.

"Rudd has no qualms about selling uranium to China but will not export to India, even though the latter is accepting what the former will not brook – stringent, internationally verifiable safeguards against diversion of material to weapons use."

Mr Rudd’s office would not be drawn on claims his Government had mishandled Australia’s relationship with India.

A spokesman for the Prime Minister said only that it remained government policy not to sell uranium to countries who had not signed the NPT.

Shadow foreign minister Andrew Robb said the Government’s handling of the relationship with India had been "clumsy".

Additional reporting: Paul Maley

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23308272-2702,00.html

Australia-India-Japan-U.S. Quadrilateral Initiative: An idea that will survive the current vicissitudes

Posted on February 21, 2008 by Chellaney

Obstacles to overcome in the development of a concert of Asia-Pacific democracies

By BRAHMA CHELLANEY

The Japan Times, February 20, 2008

The new Australian government is signaling a wish to turn its back on an initiative bringing four major democracies of the Asia-Pacific together, even as U.S. Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has vowed to institutionalize that venture.

Whatever its future, the nascent Australia-India-Japan-U.S. “Quadrilateral Initiative” symbolizes the likely geopolitical lineup in the coming years.

At a time when a qualitative reordering of power is reshaping international equations, major players in the Asia-Pacific are playing down the risk that contrasting political systems could come to constitute the main geopolitical dividing line, potentially pitting a China-led axis of autocracies against a constellation of democracies. The refrain of the players is that pragmatism, not political values, would guide their foreign-policy strategy. Yet the new Great Game under way plays up regime character as a key driver.

Ordinarily, the readiness to play by international rules ought to matter more than regime form. But regime character often makes playing by the rules difficult.

For example, as revealed by a new book, “China’s Great Leap,” edited by Minky Worden, China won the right to host the 2008 Olympics on the plea that awarding the Games would help it improve its human-rights record. Instead, Beijing has let loose new political repression in the runup to the Games. But just as the 1936 Berlin Olympics set the stage for Nazi Germany’s collapse, the 2008 Games could help trigger radical change in China.

It is established that democracies rarely go to war with each other, even though democratic governments may not be more wedded to peace than autocracies.

Today, China’s best friends are fellow autocracies, including pariah states, while those seeking to forestall power disequilibrium in the Asia-Pacific happen to be on the other side of the values-based divide. In that light, political values could easily come to define a new geopolitical divide.

What may seem implausible globally, given America’s lingering tradition of propping up dictators in the Muslim world, is thus conceivable in the Asia-Pacific theater as a natural corollary to the present geopolitics. But for the divergent geopolitical interests at play, the differing political values would not matter so much.

After all, a major challenge in Asia is to banish the threat of hegemony by any single power (as Europe has done) so that greater political understanding and trust could be built. This challenge pits two competing visions.

On one side is the mythical “Middle Kingdom” whose foreign policy seeks to make real the legend that drives its official history — China’s centrality in the world. Its autocrats believe that in their calculus to make China a “world power second to none,” gaining pre-eminence in Asia is an essential step. On the other side is the interest of many Asian nations and outside powers in a cooperative order founded on power equilibrium.

It was China that took the lead in 2001 to form the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) to help unite it with Eurasian strongmen in a geopolitical alliance. Designed originally to bring the Central Asian nations — the so-called Stans — under the Chinese sphere of influence, the SCO is today shaping up as a potential “NATO of the East.”

Yet, when Australia, India, Japan and the United States last year started the Quadrilateral Initiative, Beijing was quick to cry foul and see the apparition of an “Asian NATO.” A Chinese diplomatic protest to each Quad nation followed.

Through sustained diplomatic pressure, mounted on the back of growing economic clout, Beijing has sought to wilt the Quad. A new opening has come with the Mandarin-speaking Kevin Rudd being elected Australia’s prime minister.

Rudd is so mesmerized by his Mandarin fluency that he feels an inexorable itch to cozy up to Beijing.

In a strange spectacle, the Rudd administration has proclaimed it will sell uranium to Beijing (without adequate safeguards against diversion to weapons use) but not to New Delhi, even if the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group (NSG) carves out an exemption for India. The previous John Howard government, which was in office for 11 years, had concluded uranium deals with both China and India.

Rudd’s reason for overturning the decision to export uranium to India is that New Delhi has not signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. As Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith explained at a Feb. 1 news conference in Tokyo, “The current government will not authorize the export of uranium to a country which is not a party to the NPT.”

That rationale is seriously flawed: The NPT has no explicit or implicit injunction against civil cooperation with a non-signatory. The treaty actually encourages the peaceful use of nuclear technology among all states. All it requires is safeguards application, which its Article III (3) stipulates shall not hamper “international cooperation in the field of peaceful nuclear activities, including the international exchange of nuclear material and equipment for the processing, use of production of nuclear material for peaceful purposes in accordance with the provisions of this Article and the principle of safeguarding set forth in the Preamble of the Treaty.”

Any restriction on civil cooperation with a country like India is not in the NPT, but it is in the revised 1992 rules of the U.S.-led NSG, a cartel that was formed outside the framework of international law and the United Nations. The Rudd government, interestingly, has not come out against the proposed NSG exemption for India. On that issue, in Smith’s words, “the Australian government has not come to a concluded view on those matters. We will give consideration to those matters and will do that in an orderly way, having listened to the views of the Indian government and the U.S. government.”

In rushing to abandon uranium exports to India — that too on the pretext of wishing to uphold the NPT — Rudd, however, made no similar effort to go through “an orderly way” and solicit the views of others. Indeed, underscoring a holier-than-thou attitude, Rudd, despite his leftwing political base, sees no contradiction in pledging to keep Australia ensconced under American nuclear and conventional deterrence, yet refusing to accept India’s sovereign right to build nuclear security in a highly troubled neighborhood without any breach of its legal commitments.

With the Australian economic boom being driven by Beijing’s ravenous resource imports — which helped China to overtake Japan and the U.S. as Australia’s largest trading partner in 2007 — the Howard government wasn’t exactly enthused by the Quad proposal when it was first floated. Beijing had already taken a dim view of Canberra’s U.S.-backed bilateral and trilateral defense tie-ups with Tokyo. But Howard was persuaded by the U.S. to take part in the initiative.

Now the Quad’s future has come under a cloud following the Rudd administration’s statements. With the visiting Chinese foreign minister by his side, Smith said in Canberra on Feb. 5: “One of the things which caused China concern last year was a meeting of that strategic dialogue plus India, which China expressed some concern with. And I indicated when I was in Japan that Australia would not be proposing to have a dialogue of that nature.” Smith later called the Quad meeting of last May, held on the sidelines of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) gathering in Manila, “a one-off” affair.

Australia’s growing wariness, admittedly, may be no different from India’s. After having called liberal democracy “the natural order of social and political organization in today’s world,” Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on the eve of his China visit last month that the Quad “never got going.” Even the U.S. has publicly downplayed the initiative, whose real architect, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who had spoken of an “arc of freedom and prosperity” stretching across Asia, was driven out of office last fall.

Yet, it is significant that the Quad staged weeklong war games in the Bay of Bengal five months ago, roping in Singapore. Those war games came close on the heels of major military exercises involving practically all SCO members in Russia’s Chelyabinsk region. The Quad was not intended to be a formal institution. McCain, however, in a recent article published in Foreign Affairs, said: “As president, I will seek to institutionalize the new quadrilateral security partnership among the major Asia-Pacific democracies: Australia, India, Japan and the United States.” McCain also has larger ambitions: “A ‘worldwide League of Democracies’ that could be a “unique handmaiden of freedom.”

The more modest Quad, founded on the historically valid hypothesis of democratic peace, is supposed to serve as an initial framework to promote security dialogue and interlinked partnerships among major Pacific Rim democracies. Such collaboration is already being built.

As an idea, the Quad will not only survive the current vicissitudes, but it also foreshadows what is likely to come. With the Asia-Pacific region becoming more divided in the face of conflicting strategic cultures, major democracies are likely to be increasingly drawn together to help advance political cooperation and stability through a community of values.

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

The Japan Times: Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2008

Global Power Shifts: The Larger Implications

Posted on February 5, 2008 by Chellaney

Geopolitical risks on the rise

By BRAHMA CHELLANEY
The Japan Times, February 4, 2008

DAVOS, Switzerland — At the recent World Economic Forum meeting of top political, business, intellectual and civil-society leaders, the discussions centered on a range of major international challenges — from new threats to the growing strain on water and other resources.

The discussions brought home the point that at a time of ongoing shifts in economic and political power, greater international divisiveness is making it more difficult to build a consensual approach on the pressing challenges.

Indeed, new fault lines are emerging. The changing global equations are reflected in new realities: the eastward movement of power and influence; the lesser relevance of international structures the United States helped established after World War II; and Asia’s rise as the world’s main creditor and economic locomotive. While the world is not yet multipolar, it is no longer unipolar, as it had been after the end of the Cold War.

Tectonic power shifts, as history testifies, are rarely quiet. They usually create volatility in the international system, even if the instability is relatively short-lived. The new international divisiveness may reflect such a reality.

But unlike in past history, the qualitative reordering of power now under way is due not to battlefield victories or military realignments but to a peaceful factor unique to the modern world: rapid economic growth.

The power shifts are linked to Asia’s phenomenal economic rise, the speed and scale of which has no parallel in world history. After making up 60 percent of the world’s GDP in 1820, Asia went into sharp decline over the next 125 years. Now, it is bouncing back and already accounts for 40 percent of global production — a figure likely to rise to 60 percent well within the next quarter-century. This development is helping alter international equations, with the International Monetary Fund in perceptible decline and troubled U.S. and European financial institutions turning to sovereign wealth funds in Asia and the Middle East for bailouts.

Another factor has also contributed to the divisiveness: While we know the world is in transition, we still do not know what the new order will look like. The ongoing shifts signify not only a world characterized by greater distribution of power, but also new uncertainties. Technological forces today are playing a greater role in shaping geopolitics than at any other time in history.

The more the world changes, however, the more it remains the same in some critical aspects. The information age and globalization, despite spurring profound changes in polity, economy and security, have not altered the nature of international relations. In fact, the rapid pace of technological and economic change is itself a consequence of nations competing fiercely and seeking relative advantage in an international system based largely on national security.

The fact is that we live in a Hobbesian world, with power coterminous with national security and success. The present global power structure reflects this reality: Only countries armed with intercontinental-range weaponry, for example, are permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. However, once the economic power structure changes internationally, shifts in military power will follow, even if slowly.

At present, however, the new fault lines signal rising geopolitical risks.

The tensions between internationalism and nationalism in an era of the supposed single "global village," for instance, raise troubling questions about international peace and stability. With greater public awareness from advances in information and communications technologies encouraging individuals and even some states to more clearly define their identity in terms of religion and ethnicity, a divide is emerging between multiculturalism and artificially enforced monoculturalism. The rise of international terrorism indeed shows that the information age is both an integrating and dividing force. The emerging political, economic and security divides are no less invidious.

The world is moving beyond the North-South divide to a four-tier economic division: The prosperous West; rapidly growing economies like those in Asia; countries that have run into stagnation after reaching middle-income nation status; and a forgotten billion people living on the margins of globalization in sub-Saharan Africa.

There is also a resource divide, with the resource-hungry employing aid and arms exports as a diplomatic instrument for commodity outreach. As the specter of resource conflict has grown, the contours of a 21st-century version of the Great Game have emerged in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Also, with the rise of unconventional transnational challenges, a new security divide is mirrored both in the failure to fashion a concerted and effective international response to such threats, including transnational terrorism, and the divisiveness on issues like climate change.

There is clearly a need to improve global geopolitics by building cooperative political approaches that transcend institutions whose structure is rooted in a world that no longer exists. The reality is that just as the Group of Eight, to stay relevant, has initiated the so-called Outreach for dialogue with the emerging powers, the five unelected yet permanent members of the U.N. Security Council can no longer dictate terms to the rest of the world and need to share executive authority with new powers.

Better politics is as important as better economics. That in turn calls for several major steps whose initiation so far has been frustrated: institutional reforms; greater transparency in strategic doctrines and military expenditures; and cooperative approaches on shared concerns. No international mission today can yield enduring results unless it comes with consistency and credibility and is backed by consensus — the three crucial Cs.

Seen against the significant shifts in power and influence, the world order of the past 60 years will have to give way to a truly international order. The new order, unlike the current one founded on the ruins of a world war, will have to be established in an era of international peace and thus be designed to reinforce that peace. That means it will need to be more reflective of the consensual needs of today and have a democratic decision-making structure.

With Davos attracting 27 heads of state, 113 Cabinet ministers, 74 of the top 100 global companies’ CEOs and 2,300 other delegates, this unique forum seems best placed to promote innovative, out-of-box thinking. The central message from Davos is that silo thinking can only increase global geopolitical risks at a time of greater international fluidity and financial volatility.

Brahma Chellaney was on the faculty of the recent World Economic Forum meeting.

The Japan Times: Monday, Feb. 4, 2008

New fault lines in international relations

Posted on January 29, 2008 by Chellaney

Bridge Global Divides

New fault lines signal rising geopolitical risks

Brahma Chellaney

Times of India, January 28, 2008

Davos: In the World Economic Forum meeting of top political, business, intellectual and civil-society leaders, the discussions centred on a range of major international challenges — from new threats to the growing strains on water and other resources. But the discussions also brought home the point that at a time of ongoing shifts in economic and political power, greater international divisiveness is making it more difficult to build a consensual approach on the pressing challenges.

Indeed, new fault lines and global divides are emerging. Major shifts in power, as history testifies, are rarely quiet. They usually create volatility in the international system, even if the instability is relatively short-lived. The new divisiveness may reflect such a reality. But unlike in past history, the qualitative reordering of power now underway is due not to battlefield victories or military realignments but to a factor unique to the modern world: rapid economic growth.

The power shifts are linked to Asia’s phenomenal economic rise, the speed and scale of which has no parallel in history. Asia already has emerged as the world’s main creditor and economic locomotive. That development is helping alter equations, with the IMF in perceptible decline and troubled US and European financial institutions turning to Asia and the Middle East for bailouts.

While we know the world is in transition, we still do not know what the new order would look like. That has also contributed to the divisiveness. The ongoing shifts signify not only a world characterized by greater distribution of power, but also new uncertainties. Technological forces today are playing a greater role in shaping geopolitics than at any other time in history.

For example, the tensions between internationalism and nationalism in an era of a supposed single “global village” raise troubling questions about international peace and stability. With greater public awareness from advances in information and communications technologies encouraging individuals and even some states to more clearly define their identity in terms of religion and ethnicity, a divide is emerging between multiculturalism and artificially enforced monoculturalism. The rise of international terrorism indeed shows that the information age is both an integrating and dividing force.

The emerging political, economic and security divides are no less invidious. The world is moving beyond the North-South divide to a four-tier economic division: the prosperous West; rapidly growing economies like those in Asia; countries that have run into stagnation after reaching middle-income nation status; and a forgotten billion people living on the margins of globalization in sub-Saharan Africa. There is also a resource divide, with the resource-hungry employing aid and arms exports as a diplomatic instrument for commodity outreach. As the spectre of resource conflict has grown, the contours of a 21st-century version of the Great Game have emerged.

In modern history, the fault line between democrats and autocrats has at times been papered over through a common geopolitical interest. But today the failure to build greater political homogeneity by defining shared international objectives carries the risk that, in the years ahead, political values could become the main geopolitical dividing line. Also, with the rise of unconventional transnational challenges, a new security divide is mirrored both in the failure to fashion a concerted and effective international response to such threats, including terrorism, and the divisiveness on issues like climate change.

There is clearly a need to improve global geopolitics by building cooperative political approaches that transcend institutions whose structure is rooted in a world that no longer exists. The reality is that just as the G-8, to stay relevant, has initiated the so-called Outreach for dialogue with the emerging powers, the five unelected yet permanent members of the Security Council can no longer dictate terms to the rest of the world and need to share executive authority with new powers.

It was a mistake to believe that greater economic interdependence by itself would improve geopolitics. In today’s market-driven world, trade is not constrained by political differences, nor is booming trade a guarantee of moderation and restraint between states. Better politics is as important as better economics. That in turn calls for several major steps whose initiation so far has sought to be frustrated: institutional reforms, greater transparency in strategic doctrines and military expenditures, and cooperative approaches on shared concerns. No international mission today can yield enduring results unless it comes with consistency and credibility and is backed by consensus — the three crucial Cs.

With Davos attracting 27 heads of state, 113 cabinet ministers, 74 of the top 100 global companies’ CEOs and 2,300 other delegates this year, the unique forum can help promote innovative thinking. Davos’s central message is that silo thinking can only increase global geopolitical risks at a time of greater fluidity and financial volatility.

The writer was on the faculty of the just-concluded World Economic Forum meeting.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Opinion/Editorial/LEADER_ARTICLE_Bridge_Global_Divides/articleshow/2735918.cms

Burma and Tibet: At the Core of India-China Relations

Posted on January 19, 2008 by Chellaney

Counter China’s Designs

Burma and Tibet
are pivotal to Indian strategy

Brahma
Chellaney

Times of India, January 16, 2008

One issue emblematic of the Sino-Indian
strategic dissonance is Burma.
Indeed, there are several important parallels between Burma and the vast
territory whose annexation brought Han forces to India’s borders for the first
time in history — Tibet. India
and China may be
5,000-year-old civilizations but the two had no experience in dealing with each
other politically until Tibet’s
forcible absorption made them neighbours. In contrast, India has had close historical ties with Tibet and with Burma, part of the British Indian
empire until 1937. The majority people of Burma, the Burmans, are of Tibetan
stock, and the Burman script, like the Tibetan one, was taken from Sanskrit.

Today, Tibet
and Burma
are at the centre of the India-China relationship. Having lost the
traditionally neutral buffer of Tibet,
India sees Burma as a hedge against China’s
authoritarian rise. It is significant that the resistance against repressive
rule in both Tibet and Burma is led by iconic Nobel laureates, one
living in exile in India and
the other with close ties to India
but under house arrest in Rangoon.
Equally remarkable is that the Dalai Lama and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi received the Nobel peace prize in quick
succession for the same reason: For leading a non-violent struggle, in the
style of Mahatma Gandhi.

Yet another parallel is that heavy repression
has failed to break the resistance to autocratic rule in both Tibet and Burma. More than half a century
after Tibet’s
annexation, the Tibetan struggle ranks as one of the longest and most-powerful
resistance movements in modern world history. With no links to violence or
terror, it actually stands out as a model. Similarly, despite detaining Suu Kyi
for nearly 13 of the past 19 years, the junta has failed to suppress the
democracy movement, as last September’s monk-led mass protests showed.

For the autocrats in Beijing, who value Burma
as an entryway to the Bay of Bengal and Indian Ocean,
the demonstration of people’s power in a next-door state was troubling news
because such grassroots protests could inspire popular challenge to their own
authoritarianism. Having strategically penetrated resource-rich Burma, Beijing is
busy completing the Irrawaddy Corridor involving road, river, rail and
energy-transport links between Burmese ports and Yunnan.

For India,
such links constitute strategic pressure on the eastern flank. China is already
building another north-south strategic corridor to the west of India — the
Trans-Karakoram Corridor stretching right up to Pakistan’s Chinese-built Gwadar
port, at the entrance to the Strait of Hormuz — as well as an east-west
strategic corridor in Tibet across India’s northern frontiers. In Burma, Beijing
is also helping construct a 1,500-km highway leading to Arunachal Pradesh.

Such links hold serious implications for India
because they allow Beijing to strategically
meddle in India’s
restive northeast and step up indirect military pressure. Operating through the
plains of Burma in India’s northeast is much easier than having to
operate across the mighty Himalayas. In 1962,
Indian forces found themselves outflanked by the invading People’s Liberation
Army at certain points in Arunachal (then NEFA), spurring speculation that some
Chinese units quietly entered via the Burmese plains, not by climbing the
Himalayas.

The potential for Chinese strategic mischief has to be viewed against
the background that the original tribal insurgencies in the northeast were
instigated by Mao’s China,
which trained and armed the rebels, be it Naga or Mizo guerrillas, partly by
exploiting the Burma
route. During World War II, the allied and axis powers had classified Burma as a “backdoor to India”. Today, India shares a porous 1,378-km border with Burma, with
insurgents operating on both sides through shared ethnicity.

Tibet and Burma are going to stay pivotal to
Indian security. The centrality of the
Tibet issue has been highlighted both by China’s Tibet-linked territorial claim
to Arunachal and by its major inter-basin and inter-river water transfer
projects in the Tibetan plateau, the source of all of Asia’s major rivers
except the Ganges. By damming the Brahmaputra and Sutlej and toying with the
idea of diverting the Brahmaputra waters to the parched Yellow River, Beijing is threatening to fashion water into a weapon
against India.

The junta has run Burma
for 46 years, while the communist party has ruled China for 59 years. Neither model
is sustainable. The longest any autocratic system has survived in modern
history was 74 years in the Soviet Union. But
while Burma has faced
stringent sanctions since the 1988 pro-democracy uprising, the post-Tiananmen
sanctions against China did
not last long on the argument that engagement was a better way to bring about
political change — a principle not applied to impoverished Burma.

India cannot afford to shut itself out of
Burma, or else — with an
increasingly assertive China
to the north, a China-allied Pakistan on the west, a Chinese-influenced Burma
to the east, and growing Chinese
naval interest in the Indian Ocean
— it will get encircled. Just as India has not abandoned the Tibetan cause and
indeed remains the seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile despite doing
business with China, India will continue to support the Burmese democracy
movement and remain home to large numbers of refugees and dissidents despite a
carefully calibrated engagement with the junta aimed at promoting political
reconciliation and stemming the growing Chinese clout.

•
The writer is a strategic affairs analyst.

China adds muscle to its foreign policy

Posted on January 6, 2008 by Chellaney

China’s muscle-flexing diplomacy

Beijing is beginning to take its gloves off, says Brahma
Chellaney

India Abroad, January 4, 2008

Indian Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh’s forthcoming visit to China, close on the heels of a small anti-terrorist
exercise between Chinese and Indian soldiers, cannot obscure a larger reality:
Rising economic and military power is emboldening Beijing to pursue a more
muscular foreign policy. Having earlier preached the gospel of
its “peaceful
rise,” China
is now beginning to take the gloves off, confident of the muscle it has
acquired.

From provocatively seeking
to assert its jurisdiction over islets claimed by Vietnam in the Spratly and Paracel archipelagos, to
whipping up diplomatic spats with Germany,
Canada and the United States over their hospitality to the
Dalai Lama, Beijing
is now demonstrating an increasing propensity to flex its muscles.

Other recent
instances of China’s growing assertiveness include its demolition of a few
unmanned Indian forward posts at the Tibet-Bhutan-Sikkim tri-junction, its
large-scale war game in the South and East China Seas, its public showcasing of
new military hardware like the Jin-class, nuclear-capable submarine, its
strategic moves around India, and its last-minute cancellation of a long-planned
Hong Kong visit by the U.S. carrier, Kitty
Hawk.

Ever since it
surprised the world by successfully carrying out an anti-satellite weapon test
in January 2007, China’s
Communist leadership has been less coy to project national power. It seems
unconcerned that such muscle-flexing has triggered anti-China demonstrations in
Hanoi and Ho
Chi Minh City and spurred unease in other neighboring
states.

For more than a year, Beijing has been signaling a tougher stance on its
territorial disputes with India.
Examples of China’s increasing
hardline stance on India range from
the Chinese ambassador’s Beijing-supported bellicose public statement on
Arunachal Pradesh on the eve of President Hu Jintao’s November 2007 New Delhi visit,
to the Chinese foreign minister’s May 2007 message to his Indian counterpart
that China no longer felt bound by a
2005 agreement that any border-related settlement should not disturb settled
populations. Add to that the October 2007 admission by the chief of India’s
Indo-Tibetan Border Police that there had been 141 Chinese
military incursions in the preceding
12-month period alone.

In that
light, the recent five-day Sino-Indian anti-terrorist maneuver in Yunnan province was
largely symbolic. In fact, barely 100 soldiers from each side were involved in this
practice of urban counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism drills. Yet, given
the new strains in the relationship, the joint exercise was viewed as a welcome
step.

Codenamed
“Hand in Hand,” this exercise was the first between the Indian Army and the
People’s Liberation Army. A Sino-Indian naval maneuver was held last spring, as
part of an Indian effort to placate Beijing over
the first Japan-U.S.-India trilateral naval exercises off the Tokyo Bay.

During Dr. Singh’s
impending visit to Beijing, little progress can
be expected toward resolving the territorial disputes that divide India and China. Yet, if the Sino-Indian
relationship is to become stable, a settlement of those disputes is necessary.

A first step to a settlement of any dispute is clarity on
a line of control or appreciation of
the “no go” areas so that provocative or unfriendly actions can be eschewed.
Protracted India-China negotiations over the past 26 years, however, have
failed to remove the ambiguities plaguing their long line of control. Beijing, seeking to keep India under strategic pressure, has
been loath to clearly define the frontline.

It is often overlooked that India
and China
are old civilizations but new neighbors. It was the 1951 Chinese annexation of the historical buffer, Tibet, that
brought Chinese troops to what is
now the Sino-Indian frontier. Just
11 years later, China
invaded India. Today, both countries have
built a stake in maintaining the peaceful diplomatic environment on which
their economic modernization and security depend. Yet the wounds of the 1962
war have been kept open by China’s publicly
assertive claims to additional Indian territories.

That
China is not a status quo power, at
least territorially, is evident from the way it has placed Taiwan under a
permanent threat of force and asserted land and maritime claims vis-à-vis other
neighbors. Its claims on India,
however, involve the largest chunks
of territory. Arunachal alone is more than double the size of Taiwan.

Through its forceful claims, Beijing
itself highlights that at the core of its disputes with India is Tibet. Having
gobbled up Tibet, Beijing
now lays claim to Indian territories, on the basis not of any purported Han
connection, but of Tibetan Buddhist ecclesiastical influence
or alleged longstanding tutelary
relations with them. Therefore, to focus on Arunachal or even Tawang is not
only to miss the wood for the trees, but also to play into
China’s
attempts at incremental territorial
annexation.

Yet India
has needlessly retreated to a more and more defensive position, bringing
itself under greater Chinese
pressure. Rather than gain leverage
by adopting a nuanced position on Tibet, India
continues to be overcautious in its diplomacy, even when Beijing
acts antagonistically. In recent weeks, for example, New Delhi has bent over backward to play down
aggressive PLA moves along the line of control.

Indeed, New Delhi’s acquiescence to China’s
annexation of Tibet has come to haunt it, as Beijing today seeks to extend the
territorial gains from its Tibet
occupation by pushing a bald principle
in the border negotiations with India: What is ours is ours to keep, but what
is yours must be shared with us. It insists that India
at least cede Tawang, a critical corridor between Lhasa
and the Assam Valley
of immense military import because it overlooks the chicken-neck that connects India with its
northeast.

The
reality is that the trans-Himalayan military equations have altered ever since China opened the railway to Lhasa in July 2006. The railway, which is now being extended southward to Xigatse and then beyond to
the Indian border, not only strengthens China’s hold over Tibet, but also arms Beijing with a rapid military deployment
capability against India. It may
not be a coincidence that China’s
growing hardline
approach has followed its infrastructure
advances on the Tibetan plateau, in the form of the railway and new airfields
and highways. It is now building the
world’s highest airport at Ngari, on the southwestern edge of Tibet.

Given
the creeping conventional military
asymmetry, India’s
need for a reliable nuclear-deterrent capability has never been greater. Not
only are conventional weapons far more expensive, but also India is
heavily dependent on their imports. Yet, through the insidious
nuclear deal with the United States,
New Delhi is willing
to accept fetters on the full-fledged development of its indigenous deterrent,
with the external affairs minister
unabashedly telling Parliament
recently that his government and party are a “strong believer in total nuclear disarmament” and “we do not believe
in nuclear weaponization in a massive way.” This assertion comes when India has yet to build and deploy even a barely
minimal deterrent against China.

In
fact, in his meandering replies in the two Houses of India’s parliament to the
nuclear-deal debate, Pranab Mukherjee actually castigated the predecessor
government for exercising the
nuclear option, claiming that, “When
in 1974 Shrimati Indira Gandhi went
for the nuclear explosion, it was not for indulging in
weaponization… She categorically mentioned: ‘I wanted to have the
technology. I wanted to test the
competence of the Indian scientists, Indian technicians and Indian engineers.’ The purpose was the peaceful use of the
civilian nuclear programme.” Further criticizing the exercise of the option, he
said: “We used to have a pledge from 1974 till 1998, almost quarter of a
century, that we shall keep our options open.”

Mukherjee
also turned India’s publicly enunciated “credible minimal
deterrent” on its head by calling it
“minimum credible deterrent,” which
implies that the deterrent’s credibility would be kept to a minimum — as it has been. “We want minimum credible deterrent, from our security
perspective,” he declared in the
Rajya Sabha, the upper House, on December 5.

While
China
calculatedly bolsters its political and military leverage, Indian leaders continue to send out counterproductive signals. In his
November 29 reply in the Lok Sabha —
the lower House — to the parliamentary debate on the same subject, Mukherjee
was ecstatic about Sonia Gandhi’s visit to China
in late October: “During the visit of chairperson of UPA [United Progressive Alliance], the type
of warmth she felt … is envy of anybody, any world statesman… She was the first
person from outside to visit People’s Republic of China”
after the Chinese Communist Party’s 17th National Congress.

So what if she was the first? The
CPC’s National Congress had no bearing
on Chinese policy toward India. All it
did was to reinforce China’s
totalitarian political system, even as President Hu used the word “democracy”
61 times in his speech to the
Congress. Should she have gone to China at a time when Beijing had
hardened its policy toward India?
After all, she went there not as a private citizen but as the power behind Prime Minister
Singh. The pomp and ceremony with
which she was received reflected her status as India’s most powerful politician.

Such a symbolically potent visit to
an adversarial state cannot be undertaken for personal image-building, or other egotistical purposes, or to promote
politically partisan interests.
Criticism of her party and government for being
pro-U.S. may have prodded her to demonstrate balance by visiting China. But given
the visible toughening of the Chinese stance, the visit was ill-timed. Indeed,
through her visit, she only played into
the hands of Beijing,
whose India
diplomacy emphasizes show over substance so as to provide cover for exerting strategic pressure.

It
is not just New Delhi’s diffidence that
encourages Beijing
to up the ante. Too often in the
past, the personal image-building of
an Indian leader has taken precedence over the unflinching pursuit of the country’s long-term interests.

A
more egregious case than Sonia Gandhi was the sphinx-like
Atal Bihari Vajpayee, whose June 2003 official visit to Beijing
was designed for Machiavellian partisan interests.
By mid-2003, Prime Minister Vajpayee was getting
ready for early national elections, which he wanted to contest on the “India Shining”
plank of having made peace with both
China
and Pakistan.
Having turned his Pakistan policy on its head in April 2003 by publicly extending “a hand of friendship” to the very country he
had isolated since the terrorist
attack on India’s parliament,
he set out less than three months later to befriend Beijing.

His
mollycoddling cost India dear. Beijing wrung
the concession it always wanted from India
— a clear and unambiguous recognition of Tibet
as part of China. To justify
his yielding to the Chinese demand, Vajpayee claimed credit for beginning
“the process by which Sikkim
will cease to be an issue in
India-China relations.” But while he
formally recognized Tibet as
“part of the territory of the People’s Republic of China,” Beijing to this day has not officially
acknowledged Sikkim to be
part of the territory of the Republic
of India. It has only
ceased its cartographic mischief in
depicting Sikkim
as an independent kingdom — a mischief of little consequence for India, as the people of Sikkim, along with the rest of the world, had
accepted Sikkim’s
1975 merger.

Not only was Vajpayee’s linking of troubled Tibet
with a non-issue, Sikkim, inexcusable, but it also stripped India of leverage on the larger territorial
disputes with China. It is no
wonder that Beijing now presents Arunachal as
an outstanding issue that demands
“give and take,” ingeniously putting
the onus on India
to achieve progress.

While one can expect to
hear the same empty platitudes on Sino-Indian relations during Singh’s visit, India can
ill-afford another misstep. In fact, the challenge for Indian diplomacy is to
retrieve lost leverage by gently shining a spotlight on the central issue, Tibet, and building a web of strategic
partnerships with other important democracies in Asia
and elsewhere.

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

_____________________________

This is an official PRC map, showing Arunachal Pradesh and Aksai Chin as part of China and historical Tibet gerrymandered:

Letting Democracy Down

Posted on October 23, 2007 by Chellaney

No two ways about it

Specious distinctions between good and bad autocrats on the basis of international politics have blighted the spread of democracy, writes Brahma Chellaney.

The Hindustan Times

Brahma Chellaney

Email Author

October 24, 2007

Last month’s ruthless suppression of pro-democracy demonstrations by Burma’s junta fittingly drew international outrage. But the indignation and new wave of US-led sanctions also obscure an inconvenient truth: promotion of freedom has become a diplomatic weapon to target weak, unpopular, isolated nations, not a China hewing to a totalitarian political system or a Russia sliding away from democracy. Look at the paradox: the principle that engagement is better than coercion or punitive action to help change state behaviour is applied only to powerful autocratic countries, while sanctions are a favoured tool to try and tame the weak.

In India’s neighbourhood, the diametrically opposite Western approaches toward military-ruled Pakistan and Burma are as jarring as the assiduous courting of the world’s biggest human-rights abuser, China. Such double standards put undue pressure on India, as exemplified by the unwarranted calls that it suspend all ties with Burma (renamed Myanmar by the junta). Should the world’s most populous democracy have one freedom-related standard in foreign policy or a different one for each of its four large autocratically governed neighbours — Bangladesh, Burma, China and Pakistan?

Having depleted their leverage against the Burmese junta, distant powers now advise Burma’s immediate neighbours like India and Thailand to follow their failed sanctions policy. Yet they persist with their own two-facedness on democracy. What stinging sanctions have been slapped on the Thai military council and its leaders for overthrowing Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra last year and for recently extending martial law in parts of Thailand? Which major democracies have winked at emergency rule in Bangladesh and played host last week to its army chief, Gen. Moeen U. Ahmed?

From the one-party, self-styled meritocracy in Singapore to the absolute monocracy in oil-rich Kazakhstan, some Asian states have faced little pressure to build genuine democratic norms and practices by making themselves useful to Western economic and political interests. As a result, we know why a marketplace of goods and services does not necessarily lead to a marketplace of political ideas.

Sanctions, however, are a blunt instrument to promote political freedom. By ignoring humanitarian concerns, they may actually help a regime to instill a sense of victimhood and shore up domestic support. International sanctions after 1988 did drive an isolated Burma into China’s strategic lap. And in more recent years, they have helped fortify the junta’s determination to stand up to Western pressure.

In fact, the more you punish and isolate a weak scofflaw state, the more the big bad countries gain. Nothing better illustrates this than the way Beijing has signed up tens of billions of dollars worth of energy and arms contracts in recent years with pariah regimes stretching from Burma and Iran to Sudan and Venezuela. With its predator-style hunt for opportunities, China eagerly awaits the international isolation of any regime. It then uses its status as a UN Security Council permanent member to provide political protection in return for strategic and commercial favours. Today, the world’s despotic regimes, from Harare to Pyongyang, have one thing in common: they are all defended by China’s UN veto power.

International calls, as on Burma, that urge Beijing to join in on the pressure are ironic. The world’s largest autocracy is exhorted to help promote democracy or, at least, help check political suppression in another state. Is state repression greater in Burma or in China?

China still executes more people every year than all other nations combined, despite its adoption of new rules requiring review of death sentences. When the Burmese regime killed at least 10 demonstrators last month, the outside world could watch some images of brutality, thanks to citizen reporters using the Internet. But China employs tens of thousands of cyberpolice to censor websites, patrol cybercafes, monitor text and video messages from cellular phones, and hunt down Internet activists.

International pressure after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators did not last long in the face of the argument that trade sanctions punished ordinary Chinese. So why should we today turn a blind eye to how sanctions are hurting impoverished Burmese? Even the opening provided by the 2008 Beijing Olympics is not being seized upon to gently warn China to improve its human-rights record or face an international boycott of the Games.

If democracy is to become a truly global norm, greater consistency in approach is not only desirable but also vital. Drawing a specious distinction between good autocrats and bad autocrats on the basis of international politics can hardly advance the cause of democracy.

At the same time as the Burmese junta was quelling demonstrations, another military regime in southern Asia was battling pro-democracy protestors on the streets of Pakistan. But the approach of the world’s most powerful democracy, the US, was one of stark contrast: breathing fire at the generals in Burma while going along with an overtly sham poll to re-elect General Pervez Musharraf as president for another five-year term.

Does Pakistan or Burma pose a greater challenge to international peace and security? In the eight years that the US has helped prop up an increasingly unpopular general in power, Pakistan has sunk deeper into fundamentalism, extremism and terrorism. Yet the US still seeks to retain Musharraf through a power-sharing deal with Benazir Bhutto. Indeed, by selling increasing quantities of lethal, India-directed weapons to Pakistan, it has helped a quasi-failed state to emerge as the world’s largest arms importer.

The result of such contrasting approaches has been to undermine the credibility of democratic values by turning them into a vehicle to promote narrow geopolitical interests. In fact, nothing has blighted the spread of freedom more than America’s invasion and botched occupation of Iraq, where spreading democracy became a convenient raison d’être after the failure to find the promised weapons of mass destruction.

Is it thus any surprise that in the contiguous arc from Jordan to Singapore, India stands out as the only flourishing democracy? With Bangladesh’s tacit addition to the list of ‘good’ autocracies, the retreat of freedom from India’s neighbourhood appears nearing completion. It is as if some powers are determined to repeat their Pakistan mistakes in Bangladesh — and let India bear the brunt yet again. They now also goad India to make its own mistakes on Burma.

Fortunately, New Delhi has no intent to oblige them, having learned a sobering lesson from years of foreign-policy activism on Burma post-1988. Today, with a rapidly rising China to the north, a China-allied Pakistan on the west, a Chinese-influenced Burma to the east, and increasing Chinese naval interest in the Indian Ocean, India does not wish to get encircled by handing Burma on a platter to Beijing and becoming security-dependent on the US. Home to a majority of exiled Burmese dissidents, India correctly believes that engagement, not severance of ties, is the way to promote political reconciliation in Burma, where its sympathies lie with the iconic Aung San Suu Kyi and her democracy movement.

If freedom is to bloom in more countries, it is imperative to fashion a more principled, coherent, forward-looking international approach that relies less on sanctions and more on allowing outside actors to actively influence developments within.

How not to promote the spread of freedom

Posted on October 15, 2007 by Chellaney

Japan Times, Saturday, Oct. 13, 2007

Democracies’ double standard

It’s a paradox how promotion of freedom has become a diplomatic instrument to target not big human-rights abusers like China, but rather weak, isolated states like Burma.

By BRAHMA CHELLANEY

The repression let loose by Burma’s (Myanmar) military junta has fittingly drawn international outrage. But the indignation and new wave of U.S.-led sanctions also obscure an inconvenient truth: Promotion of freedom has become a diplomatic instrument to target not China — the world’s biggest human-rights abuser — or a Russia sliding away from democracy, but rather weak, unpopular and isolated states.

Look at the paradox: The principle that engagement is better than coercion or punitive action to help change state behavior is applied only to powerful autocratic countries, while sanctions are a favored tool to try and tame the weak.

Another irony is that the more you punish and isolate a scofflaw state, the more the big bad states gain strategically and commercially. Nothing better illustrates this than the way Beijing has signed up tens of billions of dollars worth of energy and arms contracts in recent years with pariah regimes stretching from Burma and Iran to Sudan and Venezuela.

With its predator-style hunt for opportunities, China eagerly awaits the international isolation of any regime to step in and help blunt the sanctions effect. It uses its status as a veto-armed permanent member of the United Nations Security Council to provide political protection to despotic regimes in return for strategic and other favors. Today, the world’s renegade regimes, from Harare to Pyongyang, have one thing in common: They are all defended by China’s U.N. veto power.

A third striking contradiction is represented by international calls, as on Burma, that urge Beijing to join in the pressure on the weaker state. Isn’t it odd that the help of the world’s largest autocracy is sought to promote democracy or help check political suppression in another state? Is state repression greater in Burma or in China?

The current spotlight on Burma cannot hide the fact that China still executes more people every year than all other nations combined, despite its adoption of new rules requiring review of death sentences. When the generals in Burma recently cracked down on monks and their prodemocracy supporters in Rangoon, the outside world could watch the images of brutality, thanks to citizen reporters using the Internet. But China employs tens of thousands of cyberpolice to censor Web sites, patrol cybercafes, monitor text and video messages from cellular phones and hunt down Internet activists.

International pressure after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre of prodemocracy demonstrators did not last long in the face of the argument that trade sanctions punished ordinary Chinese. So why should we today turn a blind eye to how sanctions are hurting impoverished Burmese? Even the opening provided by the 2008 Beijing Olympics is not being seized upon to gently warn China to improve its human-rights record or face an international boycott of the Games.

If democracy is to become a truly global norm, greater consistency in approach is not only desirable but also vital.

At the same time as the junta in Burma was quelling demonstrations, another military regime in South Asia was battling prodemocracy protesters on the streets of Pakistan. But the approach of the world’s most powerful democracy, the United States, was one of stark contrast: breathing fire at the generals in Burma while paying lip service to democracy in Pakistan, even as it went along with an overtly sham poll to re-elect Gen. Pervez Musharraf as president for another five-year term.

Which poses a greater challenge to international peace and security, Pakistan or Burma? In the eight years that the U.S. has helped prop up an increasingly unpopular general in power, Pakistan has sunk deeper in extremism, fundamentalism and militarism. Yet Washington is still reluctant to accept that the fight against international terrorism cannot be won without demilitarizing and democratizing Pakistan.

Rewards for some dictatorial regimes on foreign-policy grounds and sticks for other despots can hardly advance the cause of democracy. In fact, drawing a specious distinction between good autocrats and bad autocrats on the basis of international politics is a disservice to the popular struggle against the Burmese military, which has ruled that resource-rich nation for more than 45 years but whose hold today is threatened by the "Saffron Revolution."

More broadly, the effect of the contrasting approaches has been to undermine the credibility of democratic values by turning them into a vehicle for promotion of narrow geopolitical interests. Indeed, nothing has been more damaging to the cause of freedom than America’s war in Iraq, where spreading democracy became a convenient raison d’etre after the failure to find weapons of mass destruction.

Is it thus any surprise that democracy seems to be in retreat in some places, from Russia to Latin America? More troubling is that instead of democracy, it is Islamic revivalism that is spreading.

If the Burmese are to break their military’s viselike grip on power, why has much of the world accepted Burma’s name change to Myanmar by the junta? As was evident from Ceylon’s 1972 renaming as Sri Lanka to give it a distinct Sinhala identity — a move that helped further alienate the Tamil minority and lay the foundation for civil strife — a name change represents powerful symbolism. In order not to unwittingly legitimize the junta’s action, it is important to use the names Burma and Rangoon (not Yangon), as dissidents there do.

It is easy for those who already have burned their bridges with the Burmese regime and thus have nothing more to lose to advise Burma’s immediate neighbors like India and Thailand, and other states like Japan, to further squeeze the junta. Yet those providing such counsel carry on with their double standards on democracy.

What stinging sanctions have been slapped on the Thai military council and its leaders for overthrowing Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra last year and for still enforcing martial law in parts of Thailand? From the one-party meritocracy in Singapore to the absolute monocracy in oil-rich Kazakhstan, some Asian states have faced little pressure to build genuine democratic norms and practices by making themselves useful to Western economic and political interests. As a result, we know why a marketplace of goods and services does not necessarily lead to a marketplace of political ideas.

The world’s largest democracy, India, has had a new neighbor since 1950 — the world’s largest authoritarian state, China — because the international community did nothing to stop the annexation of buffer Tibet. Even today the political oppression in Burma draws more international concern that the continuing systematic Chinese repression in adjacent Tibet that threatens to obliterate the unique Tibetan culture.

Burma was part of the British India Empire until 1937, and Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has her own India connection. When the Burmese military ruthlessly suppressed the 1988 prodemocracy uprising, killing countless, India, with missionary zeal, cut off all contact with the junta and gave sanctuary to Burmese dissidents. Such righteous activism, however, cost India dear. By the mid-1990s, China had strategically penetrated Burma, opening a new flank against India.

Today, with China busily completing the Irrawaddy strategic corridor from its Yunnan province down to the Burmese ports on the Bay of Bengal, the once-bitten-twice-shy India has responded with circumspection to the latest crackdown. Its reaction has underscored a desire to apply the same principle to Burma as to Pakistan: While it would like freedom to spread, it will not make democracy the central plank of its foreign policy toward either country.

In fact, New Delhi can ill-afford to isolate Burma, given China’s more recent public hardening of its claim to India’s Arunachal Pradesh state, located at the junction of the borders with Tibet and Burma. In 1962, when the People’s Liberation Army attacked India from two separate fronts, Indian forces in that state found themselves outflanked at some points, spurring speculation that several Chinese units entered not by climbing over the mighty Himalayas but via the plains of Burma. With its new strategic assets inside Burma giving it access to the Bay of Bengal and India’s northeastern land corridor, China is in a stronger position today.

With a rapidly rising China to the north, a China-allied Pakistan on the west, a Chinese-influenced Burma to the east, and increasing Chinese naval interest in the Indian Ocean, India does not wish to get completely encircled by handing Burma on a platter to Beijing. The China factor also prompted the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to admit Burma in 1997 and, more recently, has encouraged Tokyo to extend assistance.

What role outsiders can play to help democracy take root in a country remains a difficult issue.

Sanctions by themselves do not usually promote political freedom and indeed, by ignoring humanitarian concerns, may help a regime to instill a sense of victimhood and shore up domestic support. International sanctions after 1988 did drive an isolated Burma into China’s strategic lap. And in more recent years, the sanctions have fortified the junta’s determination to stand up to Western pressure.

Nor can just engagement be the answer. The notion that democracy is sure to follow if a country is integrated with the global economy has been disproved by China. The more economic and military power China has accumulated, the more sophisticated it has become in repressing at home, including through electronic surveillance and intimidation.

If freedom is to bloom in more countries, it is imperative to fashion a more principled, coherent, forward-looking international approach that objectively calibrates sanctions and engagement, and allows outside actors to actively influence developments within.

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

The Japan Times

The New Great Game in Asia

Posted on October 5, 2007 by Chellaney

BRIEFING: New world order emerging in resurgent Asia

The Washington Times
September 29, 2007

By Brahma Chellaney

NEW DELHI — A qualitative reordering of power in Asia is challenging strategic stability and reshaping major equations. A new Great Game is under way, centered on building new alliances, ensuring power equilibrium, gaining greater market access and securing a larger share of energy and mineral resources.

From the recent U.S.-India-Japan-Singapore-Australia war games in the Bay of Bengal to the meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the ongoing developments are a reminder of that high-stakes game. With the center of gravity in international relations clearly moving toward the Asia-Pacific, this Great Game could indeed determine the future world order.

Shifts in international power are occurring not because of battlefield victories or military alignments, but because of a factor unique to the modern world — rapid economic growth. Such shifts are most conspicuous in Asia, the world"s largest continent and home to more than half the world’s population.

As underlined by the ascent of China and India, the emergence of other economic tigers and the comeback of Japan — still the world’s second-largest economic powerhouse after the United States — Asia is bouncing back from a relatively short period of decline in history. From making up 60 percent of global production in 1820, Asia’s share plummeted to barely 20 percent by 1945. Seeking to regain its economic pre-eminence, Asia now accounts for two-fifths of the world"s GDP.

Asia now boasts the world’s fastest-growing economies, but it also has the world"s fastest-rising military expenditures and the most-dangerous hot spots. With security institutions nonexistent in Asia and other mechanisms weak, strategic stability has emerged as a key concern.

In fact, Asia faces five distinct challenges, which are at once an invitation to great-power competition and a test of the region’s ability to play a leadership role in keeping with its rising international importance.

The first challenge is how to get rid of the baggage of history, which weighs down all major interstate relationships. Unassuaged historical grievances amplify mistrust and create congenial conditions for the virus of xenophobia to spread in the homogenized societies of East Asia. Sustained efforts are necessary to overcome the harmful historical legacies and the negative stereotyping of a rival state.

A second challenge is to cage the demons of nationalism that have been let loose. Fervent nationalism — the single biggest threat to an Asian renaissance — is being exploited for political resurgence, as by Japan, or as a substitute to an increasingly ineffectual ideology, like in China, or simply to fashion greater national assertiveness.

With Asia yet to define a common identity, a third challenge is to develop shared norms and values, without which no community can be built. Given the divergent political systems in Asia, creating common norms is a daunting task.

A fourth challenge is to improve regional geopolitics by fostering greater interdependence. The good news is that in a market-driven world not constrained by political problems, intra-Asian trade is booming. The bad news is the sharpening Asian competition over energy resources, driven in part by mercantilist attempts to lock up supplies. Without better political relations and institutionalized cooperation, soaring trade alone won’t guarantee stability. For example, China is India’s fastest-growing trade partner, but that has not stopped Beijing from publicly hardening its stance on Himalayan territorial disputes.

The main driver of the new Great Game, however, is the fifth challenge — how to banish the threat of hegemony by any single power (as Europe has done) so that greater political understanding and trust can be built in Asia. With China"s emergence as a global player transforming Asian geopolitics like no other development since Japan rose to world-power status following the 1868 Meiji Restoration, the shadow of hegemony looms so large that unless it is dispersed, an Asian community or even a rules-based regional order is unlikely to emerge.

This challenge pits two competing visions. On one side is the fairy tale Middle Kingdom, China, whose foreign policy seeks to make real the legend that drives its official history — China’s centrality in the world. China believes that without gaining pre-eminence in Asia, it cannot realize its larger ambition to be a "world power second to none."

On the other side is America’s interest in an Asian balance of power. It wants to ensure that China rises peacefully, without becoming an overt threat to U.S. interests. And by deepening Japanese security dependency, it wishes to prevent Japan"s rise as an independent military power.

Add to this complex picture a resurgent Russia’s resolve to use oil and arms exports to carve out greater strategic space for itself. While Beijing and Moscow have fashioned the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to try and keep the U.S. out of oil-rich Central Asia, America is seeking to mold Asian geopolitics through new allies and military tie-ups. One key priority of the United States is to bring within its fold India, an important swing state with which American forces have conducted 50 military exercises in recent years.

China’s rout in the 1895 Sino-Japanese war, which opened the way to Western imperialistic intervention in its affairs, was rooted in the Ching dynasty"s failure to grasp Japan’s dramatic rise. Today, major powers do not wish to make a similar mistake over China"s rapid rise.

All important players are maneuvering for geopolitical advantage through new initiatives and partnerships. With Asia becoming more divided in the face of conflicting strategic cultures, a constellation of democracies tied together through interlinked strategic partnerships could emerge to help advance political cooperation and stability through a community of values.

The new quadrilateral initiative involving Australia, India, Japan and the U.S., despite its teething problems, symbolizes the likely geopolitical lineup in the Asia-Pacific.

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

http://www.washingtontimes.com/article/20070929/FOREIGN/109290039/1003/FOREIGN