Quartet Symbolizes Likely Geopolitical Line-Up In The Future

Posted on July 18, 2007 by Chellaney

This Quartet Has A Future

Despite problems, the new quad signals a concert of democracies

Brahma Chellaney

The newly launched Australia-India-Japan-U.S. “Quadrilateral Initiative”, founded on the concept of democratic peace, has raised China’s hackles but its direction is still undecided owing to differing perceptions within the group. Australia, India and the US have sought to assure Beijing that it constitutes no axis of democracies. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has claimed the quad carries “no security implication”. Australia wants the initiative to be limited to trade, culture and other issues outside the domain of defence and security. If a strategic initiative is to be limited to non-strategic issues, why establish it in the first place?

Australia appears ill at ease in this new grouping, given its desire to build strategic engagement with Beijing. Thanks to China’s ravenous import of resources, Australia has been reaping an unprecedented economic boom. Indeed, Canberra has been at pains to emphasize that neither its recent security agreement with Tokyo nor the launch of the trilateral US-Japan-Australia security dialogue since March 2006 is aimed at China. It an open question, however, how long Australia would be able to juggle a strategic relationship with China with its new security agreement with Japan, while maintaining a robust alliance with the US as the bedrock of Australian security. Would Canberra, for example, be able to sustain warm ties with Beijing while permitting Japanese troops to train in Australia under the new accord?

Washington’s own support to a security-oriented quad is less than unreserved. America’s implicit faith in democratic peace is offset by its desire to pursue what has been its key interest in the Asia-Pacific since 1898 when it took the Philippines as spoils of the naval war with Spain — the maintenance of a balance of power. Today, the US wants to ensure that China rises peacefully, without becoming an overt threat to American interests. At the same time, by deepening Japanese security dependency, it wishes to prevent Japan’s rise as an independent military power. It is also seeking to persuade India to move beyond the current strategic partnership to a military tie-up.

Achieving these varied objectives won’t be easy for US policy. As it is, the strategic underpinnings of the US-Japan security alliance have begun to corrode. While Japan feels increasingly threatened by China’s rapid and wild rise, America regards China neither as a friend nor a foe. In fact, the US and China, from being allies of convenience during the Cold War, have graduated to becoming partners tied by interdependence. America depends on Chinese surpluses and savings to finance its super-sized budget deficits, while Beijing depends on its huge exports to America to sustain its high economic growth and subsidize its military modernization. Politically, the US shares key interests with China, as illustrated by the Beijing-brokered deal on the North Korean nuclear programme that caught Tokyo unawares.

Doubts are surfacing in Japan over whether it can rely on the US nuclear and security umbrella protection in the future, especially if a conflict were to arise with China. Such doubts in turn are instilling security anxiety, which the US has sought to stanch by upgrading the operational elements of the bilateral security arrangements and encouraging Australia to engage Japan in defence measures.

For the US, a security-oriented quad would hold little benefit in relation to Japan or China. Tokyo is already tied to bilateral and trilateral security arrangements. Their expansion to a quadripartite format would do little to advance US objectives vis-à-vis Japan but make it more difficult to win continued cooperation from China, which has been warning against the creation of an “Asian NATO.”

It is also not clear that the US desire to build India as an ally can be advanced through a quadrilateral-security framework. Washington has been gradually expanding military-to-military cooperation with India. India, however, remains loath to enter into too tight a strategic embrace. It wishes to be a strategic partner, not an ally. US progress in building defence cooperation with India thus is likely to remain incremental, with the quad offering little advantage.

New Delhi’s own approach to the quad is low-key — tacitly supportive of building democratic peace but hesitant to do anything that could instigate China to step up direct or surrogate military pressure. Having earlier called for an Asian “arc of advantage and prosperity”, Dr. Singh “explained” to Chinese President Hu Jintao in Germany last month that the quad represents “no ganging up” against China. But does Beijing bother to “explain” any of its actions antithetical to Indian interests? Also, when India can join hands with Russia and China in a Eurasian strategic triangle intended to help promote global power equilibrium, why should it be diffident about seeking democratic peace in Asia?

All this leaves Japan as the only enthusiastic quad member. Indeed, the quad idea was conceived by Shinzo Abe in a book he published a couple of months before becoming prime minister. Given that Abe was born after World War II and his life has been shaped by democracy, the concept of democratic peace holds special appeal for him.

Despite the present Australian, American and Indian tentativeness, the quad symbolizes the likely geopolitical line-up in the Asia-Pacific in the years ahead, with Japan and India coming closer together.

The writer is a strategic affairs analyst

The Quad: Australia-India-Japan-U.S. Strategic Cooperation

Posted on July 2, 2007 by Chellaney

A Concert of Democracies

Brahma Chellaney

© Asian Age, July 3, 2007

In keeping with its growing geopolitical pragmatism, India ought to avail of multiple strategic options in international relations. Its long-standing preference for policy independence indeed demands a web of diverse partnerships with important players to pursue a wide variety of interests.

Having helped found the non-aligned movement, India today is positioning itself to be multi-aligned, while preserving the core element of nonalignment — strategic autonomy. In recent years, India has attempted to forge varied partnerships to pursue different objectives. It has sought multilayered engagement on the world stage — from a “strategic and global partnership” with Japan and a trilateral venture with Brazil and South Africa, to a Eurasian bloc involving Russia and China and an “Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate” with Australia, China, Japan, South Korea and the US.

If India is to be accepted as an important global player, it has to have a broad vision and extensive and active engagement with the world. The various partnerships India is building dovetail well with that imperative and with its security interests.

A new partnership — the Quadrilateral Initiative — is founded on the attractive concept of democratic peace. It is well documented in the international-relations literature that established democracies rarely go to war with each other, even though democratic governments may not be more wedded to peace than autocracies. Leaders in free nations have little political space to wage war against another democracy. This has prompted several scholars to hypothesize that the closest thing we have to a law in international politics is democratic peace.

The quad held its inaugural meeting in confidentiality in Manila on May 25 on the sidelines of the ASEAN Regional Forum gathering. It was this analyst who first unveiled that meeting in a June 2 column. Since then, this Australia-India-Japan-US initiative has hit the headlines. Significantly, the quad’s foundational meeting was preceded by the first-ever U.S.-Japan-India joint naval exercises near Tokyo.

As a concept, democratic peace holds special value in Asia. Democracy may have become the political norm in Europe, but that can hardly be said about Asia. While the community in Europe has been built among democracies, the political systems in Asia are so varied and some even so opaque that it is not going to be easy to build trust. India’s troubled neighbourhood bristles more with failing states than with democracies.

Yet, if Asia is to enjoy durable peace and power equilibrium, the coming together of democracies to promote common norms is necessary. Such a constellation of democracies tied together through interlinked strategic partnerships could be a guarantor of political cooperation and stability founded on a community of values.

No nation thus needs to be apologetic about promoting democratic peace. Yet the quad’s first meeting was unpublicized so as not to raise the hackles of the world’s largest autocratic state, China. Now, some quad members are straining hard to reassure Beijing that this initiative constitutes no axis of democracies.

Such defensiveness is unwarranted, given that what has happened so far is just one inaugural meeting over breakfast. In any event, the quad’s aim is not to establish a military alliance but a political network on shared values and concerns.

India has sought to assuage Beijing, privately and publicly, that it has no intent to work against Chinese interests. China, however, has set up proxy military threats against India, going to the extent of transferring tested nuclear-weapon and missile designs to achieve that objective. While New Delhi certainly has no desire to repay Beijing in the same coin, it is incumbent on the government to ensure that China does not continue to exercise a cost-free containment option.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh revealed last Wednesday that, at the recent G-8 Outreach Summit in Germany, he spoke with Chinese President Hu Jintao about the quad meeting and “explained” that there was “no question of ganging up” against China. The PM went on to deny the undeniable: “There is no security implication in the quadripartite group.”

If India can openly join hands with China and Russia in a Eurasian strategic triangle intended to help promote global power equilibrium, why should it be diffident about partnering other states to seek democratic peace and stability in Asia? When China pursues actions overtly designed to contain India, does it bother to “explain” its actions to New Delhi? Rather, it determinedly presses ahead with steps antithetical to Indian interests, including a “string of pearls” strategy that aims to pin down India.

Take the latest Chinese moves. Has Beijing cared to explain its new hardline stance on territorial disputes or its disinclination to set up what President Hu Jintao had agreed to during his visit to New Delhi last November — an interstate river-waters mechanism? Besides continuing to dam rivers upstream in Tibet without sharing any information with India, Beijing has repudiated a key principle of a 2005 agreement — that the two sides would craft a territorial settlement that safeguards “due interests of their settled populations in the border areas.”

Instead of shedding light on its increasing assertiveness toward India, China has taken to preaching the virtues of transparency, stating that the quad members should be “open and inclusive.” New Delhi certainly can learn from Beijing about an important building block of national power — the capacity to unswervingly pursue clear, long-term goals. But China’s lecturing on the values of openness is like an Al Capone instruction on law and order.

India’s response to such a jarring sermon should be to encourage China to democratize in order to qualify for membership in the evolving concert of democracies in the Asia-Pacific. Today, China’s rulers are reluctant to allow even the development of a civil society, fearful that such growth would unravel their dictatorship. China still executes more people every year than all other nations combined.

India should do what is strategically sound over the long run, not what appears easier in the near term. Despite being defensive on the quad formation, New Delhi has displayed refreshing candour on China’s land-grab strategy, with External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee cautioning recently that “the days of Hitler are over” and making clear that no government can constitutionally cede “any part of our land that sends representatives to the Indian Parliament.”

China has yet to learn that a muscular approach is counterproductive. By setting out to “teach India a lesson” in 1962, China helped lay the foundation of India’s political rise. Beijing has turned a pacifist, China-friendly, aid-doling Japan into a strategic rival in just the past decade. Now, China’s hardline stance on India threatens to achieve what it is seeking to stop: a US-India military tie-up.

An important component of India’s security strategy has to involve cooperation with likeminded states to advance democratic norms and practices in the Asia-Pacific. The democracies of Asia are natural allies. Strategic accommodation and partnership with Japan, for example, will not only materially aid India’s defence interests but also have a profoundly positive bearing on Asian security. Few countries face such implacably hostile neighbours as India and Japan do.

In fact, Tokyo was instrumental in helping expand the US-Japan-Australia security arrangements to include India. The quad idea was proposed by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in his book, Utsukushii Kunihe (Toward A Beautiful Country), published in July 2006, wherein he says: “It would not be a surprise if in another 10 years, Japan-India relations overtake Japan-US and Japan-China ties.” Tokyo also played a key role in frustrating Chinese opposition and getting India into the East Asia Summit (EAS) initiative, which is to fashion an East Asian Community (EAC).

Despite being a rising power, India cannot expect to balance the Asian power situation on its own. It is too reticent and internally engrossed to be a major power player by itself. It needs reliable partners to help build a stable Asian order. A key template in that endeavour would be a constellation of democracies working together to fashion what Dr. Singh calls “an arc of advantage and prosperity,” to which China itself might eventually belong as events from within and from without compel it to politically modernize.

To quote the PM, “If there is an ‘idea of India’ that the world should remember us by and regard us for, it is the idea of an inclusive and open society, a multicultural, multiethnic, multilingual society. All countries of the world will evolve in this direction as we move forward into the 21st century. Liberal democracy is the natural order of social and political organization in today’s world. All alternate systems, authoritarian and majoritarian in varying degrees, are an aberration.” The quad jibes well with the imperative to harness democratic values for strategic goals.

© Asian Age, 2007

PostGlobal Talks to Professor Brahma Chellaney

Posted on June 30, 2007 by Chellaney

(PostGlobal is produced jointly by Newsweek and Washingtonpost.com)

HOW THE WORLD SEES AMERICA

Amar C. Bakshi Talks to America’s Lovers and Haters Round the World

Disappointment on U.S.-India Nuclear Deal

By Amar C. Bakshi

Professor Disappointed by U.S.-India Nuclear Deal

India
is not “America’s ally,” Professor Brahma Chellaney emphasizes, it is
its "strategic partner.” India does not wish to be a client to
America’s patronage.

Watch interview on video at:

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/postglobal/america/

India is not “America’s ally,” Professor Brahma Chellaney
emphasizes, it is its "strategic partner.” After World War II, Japan
and Germany were America’s allies obeying America in a “patron-client”
relationship because “they had no other choice.” That would have worked
in the 20th century, with countries defeated in war and — in the case
of Eastern Europe — running to America after the Cold War, “But in the
21st century…any new friend America makes…is going to seek a
semblance of equality in the relationship. It is important for U.S.
policy-makers to understand a different mindset in a country like India
and respect it.”

And anyway, Chellaney says, America doesn’t need so much
control to achieve its geopolitical objectives. In fact, Washington’s
forceful attitude and "outdated" mindset actually works against it. The
failing India-U.S. nuclear deal is a prime example…

Things
are complicated. Remember, Chellaney says, General Electric built the
first nuclear power plant in India in the 1960s. Yes, India refused to
sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1968, believing it
segregated the world into "nuclear have and have nots” but when India
tested its first nuclear weapon in 1974, at least it was “legal.” The
bomb was even codenamed “Smiling Buddha”
and Prime Minister Indira Gandhi called the test, perhaps
unconvincingly, the “peaceful nuclear explosion.” It’s about
deterrence, Chellaney says.

In response, the U.S. government, “came down with bricks on India”
imposing myriad technology export controls. And this, in Chellaney’s
view, became “the main impediment to developing the [U.S.-India]
relationship to its full potential.”

So when President Bush and Prime Minister Singh signed the nuclear
cooperation agreement removing restrictions on civilian nuclear
technology transfers in July 2005, Chellaney thought "a true global
strategic partnership between the U.S. and India could be formed.”

A disillusioned Chellaney opines in the Asian Age.

“There
was euphoria…in India when the deal was signed….There was a lot of
excitement that finally the U.S. and India would be close buddies.”
That didn’t last long. And today, after months have dragged into years
and many more provisions have bloated the bill in the U.S. Congress,
“people are disillusioned in India.”

Some military and policy elites in Delhi wonder whether America is
actually “using the deal to stymie the Indian nuclear deterrent
program” and “retard India’s nuclear deterrent capabilities vis-à-vis
China. This confuses a lot of Indians.” He explains it by saying the
U.S. has a long-term desire to support non-proliferation objects around
the world and “cap India’s nuclear missile program at the
sub-continental level” so in the years to come “India does not prove a
threat to U.S. security.”

The controlling nature of U.S. policy-makers particularly concerns
Chellaney. He says policy-makers in Washing realize they can use the
deal to gain significant leverage over India to advance U.S. foreign
policy objectives from punishing Iran to constructing gas pipelines
through U.S.-controlled lands in Afghanistan. They’re “milking” the
deal for every last drop, even if those drops have nothing to do with
nuclear power or civilian nuclear cooperation. This, ultimately, makes
Indians distrustful of America’s objectives in the deal. And this
undermines the very strategic partnership and act of good will it was
supposed to foster in the first place.

It’s a perspective worth considering as efforts to push the deal
through drag on. But does everyone think America’s doing this on
purpose, trying to hold India back? More perspectives to come on this
issue and on India’s diplomatic relationship with America the
superpower.

Resource Conflict: The Next Struggle

Posted on June 29, 2007 by Chellaney

Averting Water Wars in Asia

By Brahma Chellaney

International Herald Tribune

June 27, 2007

The sharpening Asian competition over energy resources has obscured another danger: Water shortages in much of Asia are becoming a threat to rapid economic modernization.

Water has emerged as a key issue that could determine if Asia is headed toward cooperation or competition. No country would influence that direction more than China, which controls the Tibetan plateau, the source of most major rivers of Asia.

Tibet’s vast glaciers and high altitude have endowed it with the world’s greatest river systems. Its rivers are a lifeline to the world’s two most-populous states — China and India — as well as to Bangladesh, Burma, Bhutan, Nepal, Cambodia, Pakistan, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam. These countries make up 47 percent of the global population.

Yet Asia is a water-deficient continent. Although home to more than half of the human population, Asia has less fresh water – 3,920 cubic meters per person – than any continent other than the Antarctica.

The looming struggle over water resources in Asia has been underscored by the spread of irrigated farming, water-intensive industries and a growing middle class that wants high water-consuming comforts like washing machines and dishwashers. Household water consumption in Asia is rising rapidly, although several major economies there are acutely water-stressed.

The specter of water wars in Asia is also being highlighted by climate change and environmental degradation in the form of shrinking forests and swamps that foster a cycle of chronic flooding and droughts. The Himalayan snow melt that feeds Asia’s great rivers could be accelerated by global warming.

While intrastate water-sharing disputes have become rife in several Asian countries — from India and Pakistan to Southeast Asia and China — it is the potential interstate conflict over river-water resources that should be of greater concern.

This concern arises from Chinese attempts to dam or redirect the southward flow of river waters from the Tibetan plateau, starting point of the Indus, the Mekong, the Yangtze, the Yellow, the Salween, the Brahmaputra, the Karnali and the Sutlej Rivers. Among Asia’s mighty rivers, only the Ganges starts from the Indian side of the Himalayas.

The uneven availability of water within some nations has given rise to grand ideas — from linking rivers in India to diverting the fast-flowing Brahmaputra northward to feed the arid areas in the Chinese heartland. Interstate conflict, however, will surface only when an idea is translated into action to benefit one country at the expense of a neighboring one.

As water woes have intensified in its north owing to intensive farming, China has increasingly turned its attention to the bounteous water reserves that the Tibetan plateau holds. It has dammed rivers, not just to produce hydropower but also to channel the waters for irrigation and other purposes, and is presently toying with massive inter-basin and inter-river water transfer projects.

After building two dams upstream, China is building at least three more on the Mekong, stirring passions in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Thailand. Several Chinese projects in west-central Tibet have a bearing on river-water flows into India, but Beijing is reluctant to share information.

Having extensively contaminated its own major rivers through unbridled industrialization, China now threatens the ecological viability of river systems tied to South and Southeast Asia in its bid to meet its thirst for water and energy.

The idea of a Great South-North Water Transfer Project diverting river Tibetan waters has the backing of President Hu Jintao, a hydrologist. The first phase of this project calls for building 300 kilometers of tunnels and channels to draw waters from the Jinsha, Yalong and Dadu rivers, on the eastern rim of the Tibetan plateau.

In the second phase, the Brahmaputra waters may be rerouted northward, in what be tantamount to the declaration of water war on lower-riparian India and Bangladesh. In fact, Beijing has identified the bend where the Brahmaputra forms the world’s longest and deepest canyon just before entering India as holding the largest untapped reserves for meeting its water and energy needs.

The future of the Tibetan plateau’s water reserves is tied to ecological conservation. As China’s hunger for primary commodities has grown, so too has its exploitation of Tibet’s resources.

And as water woes have intensified in several major Chinese cities, a group of ex-officials have championed the northward rerouting of the Brahmaputra waters in a book titled, "Tibet’s Waters Will Save China."

Large hydro projects and reckless exploitation of mineral resources already threaten Tibet’s fragile ecosystems, with ore tailings from mining operations beginning to contaminate water sources.

While China seems intent on aggressively pursuing upstream projects on interstate rivers, the forestalling of water wars demands a cooperative Asian framework among basin states to work toward common ownership of the resources.

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."

Copyright: International Herald Tribune, 2007

Water as a Chinese Weapon

Posted on June 28, 2007 by Chellaney

China aims for bigger share of South Asia’s water lifeline

By BRAHMA CHELLANEY
Japan Times

Sharpening Asian competition over energy resources, driven in part by high growth rates in gross domestic product and in part by mercantilist attempts to lock up supplies, has obscured another danger: Water shortages in much of Asia are beginning to threaten rapid economic modernization, prompting the building of upstream projects on international rivers. If water geopolitics were to spur interstate tensions through reduced water flows to neighboring states, the Asian renaissance could stall.

Water has emerged as a key issue that could determine whether Asia is headed toward mutually beneficial cooperation or deleterious interstate competition. No country could influence that direction more than China, which controls the Tibetan plateau — the source of most major rivers of Asia.

Tibet’s vast glaciers and high altitude have endowed it with the world’s greatest river systems. Its river waters are a lifeline to the world’s two most-populous states — China and India — as well as to Bangladesh, Myanmar, Bhutan, Nepal, Cambodia, Pakistan, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam. These countries make up 47 percent of the global population.

Yet Asia is a water-deficient continent. Although home to more than half of the human population, Asia has less fresh water — 3,920 cubic meters per person — than any continent besides Antarctica.

The looming struggle over water resources in Asia has been underscored by the spread of irrigated farming, water-intensive industries (from steel to paper making) and a growing middle class seeking high water-consuming comforts like washing machines and dishwashers. Household water consumption in Asia is rising rapidly, according to a 2006 U.N. report, but such is the water paucity that not many Asians can aspire to the lifestyle of Americans, who daily use 400 liters per person, or more than 2.5 times the average in Asia.

The specter of water wars in Asia is also being highlighted by climate change and environmental degradation in the form of shrinking forests and swamps, which foster a cycle of chronic flooding and droughts through the depletion of nature’s water storage and absorption cover. The Himalayan snow melt that feeds Asia’s great rivers could be damagingly accelerated by global warming.

While intrastate water-sharing disputes have become rife in several Asian countries — from India and Pakistan to Southeast Asia and China — it is the potential interstate conflict over river-water resources that should be of greater concern. This concern arises from Chinese attempts to dam or redirect the southward flow of river waters from the Tibetan plateau, where major rivers originate, including the Indus, the Mekong, the Yangtze, the Yellow, the Salween, the Brahmaputra, the Karnali and the Sutlej. Among Asia’s mighty rivers, only the Ganges starts from the Indian side of the Himalayas.

The lopsided availability of water within some nations (abundant in some areas but deficient in others) has given rise to grand ideas — from linking rivers in India to diverting the fast-flowing Brahmaputra northward to feed the arid areas in the Chinese heartland.

As water woes have been aggravated in its north due to environmentally unsustainable intensive farming, China has increasingly turned its attention to the bounteous water reserves that the Tibetan plateau holds. It has dammed rivers, not just to produce hydropower but also to channel waters for irrigation and other purposes, and is currently toying with massive interbasin and inter-river water-transfer projects.

After building two dams upstream, China is building at least three more on the Mekong, inflaming passions in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Thailand. Several Chinese projects in west-central Tibet bearing on river-water flows into India, but Beijing is loath to share information.

Following flash floods in India’s northern Himachal Pradesh state, however, China agreed in 2005 to supply New Delhi data on any abnormal rise or fall in the upstream level of the Sutlej River, on which it has built a barrage. Discussions are on to persuade it to share flood-control data during the monsoon season on two Brahmaputra tributaries, Lohit and Parlung Zangbo, as it has done since 2002 on the Brahmaputra River, which it has dammed at several places upstream.

The 10 major watersheds formed by the Himalayas and Tibetan highlands spread out river waters far and wide in Asia. Control over the 2.5 million-square-km Tibetan plateau gives China tremendous leverage, besides access to vast natural resources. Having extensively contaminated its own major rivers through unbridled industrialization, China now threatens the ecological viability of river systems tied to South and Southeast Asia in its bid to meet its thirst for water and energy.

Tibet, which existed independently up to 1950, comprises approximately one-fourth of China’s land mass today, having given Han society, for the first time in history, a contiguous frontier with India, Myanmar, Bhutan and Nepal.

Tibet traditionally encompassed the regions of the central plateau, Kham and Amdo. After annexing Tibet, China separated Amdo (the present Dalai Lama’s birthplace) as the new Qinghai province, made the central plateau and eastern Kham the Tibet Autonomous Region, and merged the remaining parts of Tibet into the Chinese provinces of Sichuan, Yunnan and Gansu.

The traditional Tibet is not just a distinct cultural entity but also a natural plateau, the future of whose water reserves is tied to ecological conservation. As China’s hunger for primary commodities has grown, so too has its exploitation of Tibet’s resources. And as water woes have intensified in several major Chinese cities, a group of ex-officials have championed the northward rerouting of the waters of the Brahmaputra in a book enlighteningly titled "Tibet’s Waters Will Save China."

Large hydro projects and reckless exploitation of mineral resources already threaten Tibet’s fragile ecosystems, with ore tailings beginning to contaminate water sources. Unmindful of the environmental impact of such activities in pristine areas, China has now embarked on constructing a 108-km paved road to Mount Everest, located along the Tibet-Nepal frontier. This highway is part of China’s plan to reinforce its claims on Tibet by taking the Olympic torch to the peak of the world’s tallest mountain before the 2008 Beijing Games.

As in the past, no country is going to be more affected by Chinese plans and projects in Tibet than India. The new $ 6.2 billion Gormu-Lhasa railway, for example, has significantly augmented China’s rapid military-deployment capability against India just when Beijing is becoming increasingly assertive in its claims on Indian territories. This hardline stance, in the midst of intense negotiations to resolve the 4,057-km Indo-Tibetan border, is no less incongruous than Beijing’s disinclination to set up, as agreed during its president’s state visit to New Delhi last November, a joint expert-level mechanism on interstate river waters.

Contrast China’s reluctance to establish a mechanism intended for mere "interaction and cooperation" on hydrological data with New Delhi’s consideration toward downstream Pakistan, reflected both in the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty (which reserves 56 percent of the catchment flow for Pakistan) and the more recent acceptance of World Bank arbitration over the Baglihar Dam project in Indian Kashmir. Yet, as if to demonstrate that if you give an inch, it takes a mile, Islamabad has now raised objections to two more Indian hydropower projects — Uri 2 and Kishanganga.

No Indian project has sought to reroute or diminish trans-border water flows, yet Pakistan insists on a say in the structural design of projects upstream in India. New Delhi permits Pakistani officials to inspect such projects. By contrast, Beijing drags its feet on setting up an innocuous interaction mechanism. Would China, under any arrangement, let Indian officials inspect its projects in Tibet or accept, if a dispute arose, third-party adjudication?

If anything, China seems intent on aggressively pursuing projects and employing water as a weapon. The idea of a Great South-North Water Transfer Project diverting river waters cascading from the Tibetan highlands has the backing of President Hu Jintao, a hydrologist who made his name through a brutal martial-law crackdown in Tibet in 1989. In crushing protesters at Tiananmen Square two months later, Deng Xiaoping actually borrowed a leaf from Hu’s Tibet book.

The Chinese ambition to channel the Brahmaputra waters to the parched Yellow River has been whetted by what Beijing touts as its engineering feat in building the giant $ 25 billion Three Gorges Dam project, which has officially displaced a staggering 1.2 million citizens. While China’s water resources minister told a Hong Kong University meeting last October that, in his personal opinion, the idea to divert waters seems not viable, the director of the Yellow River Water Conservancy Committee said publicly that the mega-plan enjoys official sanction and may begin by 2010.

The Brahmaputra (Yarlung Tsangpo to Tibetans) originates near Mount Kailash and, before entering India, flows eastward in Tibet for 2,200 km at an average height of 4,000 meters, making it the world’s highest major river. When two other tributaries merge with it, the Brahmaputra becomes as wide as 10 km in India before flowing into Bangladesh.

The first phase of China’s South-North Project calls for building 300 km of tunnels and channels to draw waters from the Jinsha, Yalong and Dadu rivers, on the eastern rim of the Tibetan plateau. Only in the second phase would the Brahmaputra waters be directed northward. In fact, Beijing has identified the bend where the Brahmaputra forms the world’s longest and deepest canyon just before entering India as holding the largest untapped reserves for meeting its water and energy needs.

While some doubts do persist in Beijing over the economic feasibility of channeling Tibetan waters northward, the mammoth diversion of the Brahmaputra could begin as water shortages become more acute in the Chinese mainland and the current $ 1.2 trillion foreign-exchange hoard brims over. The mega-rerouting would constitute the declaration of a water war on lower-riparian India and Bangladesh.

The Japan Times: Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Chinese Diplomacy: Make Principles to Lull Your Foe

Posted on June 15, 2007 by Chellaney

Unprincipled Principles

Brahma Chellaney

Asian Age, June 16, 2007

One passion of Chinese diplomacy is to go in for numbered policy pronouncements, like the “10-pronged strategy” unveiled in the joint declaration with India during President Hu Jintao’s visit last November. Another fetish is to enunciate diplomatic principles with another state and later, at an opportune time, reinterpret them unilaterally to add force to Chinese claims and ambitions.

Defining high-sounding principles to advance bilateral relations or dispute resolution helps Beijing to hold the other side to basic parameters, including a one-China policy, and foster a belief that the enunciation of cadenced concepts is progress by itself. Yet the idea behind formulating such principles is to bind the other party to them more than oneself. The principles devised are invariably so general and nebulous that Beijing, in any event, has ample room to reinterpret them or emphasize a single principle over the rest.

At times, the Chinese reinterpretation is nuanced, intended to bring the other state under transient pressure, with a particular aim in mind, such as to “correct” its behaviour. At other times, it is designed to be less subtle by signalling a diplomatic breakdown, as happened in the run-up to the 1962 Chinese invasion of India.

Beijing has proven an international past master in such diplomatic play. A fresh reminder of that was the message the new Chinese foreign minister, Yang Jiechi, conveyed to his Indian counterpart Pranab Mukherjee in Hamburg recently that the “mere presence” of settled populations does not affect Chinese claims on Indian territories.

Contrast that with what Premier Wen Jiabao had signed on to just two years ago in New Delhi. One of the six main principles defined in the much-touted “Agreement on the Political Parameters and Guiding Principles for the Settlement of the Boundary Question” mandates that the two sides “safeguard due interests of their settled populations in the border areas.”

While the message signals that Beijing is hardening its stance over the territorial disputes, should India be surprised by the development? The history of Sino-Indian relations, in fact, is largely a cyclic narrative of noble principles being framed, only to lull India into a false sense of complacency.

Consider the famed 1954 Panchsheel Agreement that defined the five principles of peaceful coexistence. Officially titled as the agreement on “trade and intercourse between Tibet Region of China and India,” the accord simplistically identified the following principles, without elaboration:

(i) “mutual respect for each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty;”

(ii) “mutual non-aggression;”

(iii) “mutual non-interference in each other’s internal affairs;”

(iv) “equality and mutual benefit;” and

(v) “peaceful coexistence.”

No sooner had the accord been signed than China began finding new and different meanings in the Panchsheel principles. It laid claim to Indian border areas like Barahoti (located at the Uttarakhand-Tibet-Nepal tri-junction) and then stealthily intruded south of Niti and Shipki mountain passes — all specified border points in that accord. Before long, China began building a highway through India’s Ladakh region to link rebellious Tibet with another vast, occupied region, Xinjiang, home to Turkic-speaking Muslim ethnic groups.

Indeed, even as it started furtively encroaching on Indian territories, Beijing kept asking New Delhi to honour the principles of “mutual respect for each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty” and “mutual non-interference in each other’s internal affairs.” That call only reflected the fact that everything about the Panchsheel Agreement was one-sided.

First, the Panchsheel was the first accord signed by any third party with China recognizing Tibet to be a “region of China”.

Second, the accord involved no give-and-take, only give from India’s side. It incorporated a formal Indian recognition of Chinese control over Tibet, without securing Beijing’s acceptance of the then-existing Indo-Tibetan frontier. When asked about the border having been left undefined, Jawaharlal Nehru blithely said: “All these are high mountains. Nobody lives there. It is not very necessary to define these things.”

Third, India forfeited all its extra-territorial rights and privileges in Tibet. The accord’s operative parts read as if victor China was imposing its will on vanquished India. Consider the following language: India “will be pleased to withdraw completely within six months from date of exchange of the present notes the military escorts now stationed at Yatung and Gyantse in Tibet Region of China;” “will be pleased to hand over to the Government of China at a reasonable price the postal, telegraph and public telephone services together with their equipment operated by the Government of India in Tibet Region of China;” “will be pleased to hand over to the Government of China at a reasonable price the 12 rest houses of the Government of India in Tibet Region of China;” and “will be pleased to return to the Government of China all lands used or occupied by the Government of India…”

Just eight years later, the Panchsheel principles went up in smoke when China invaded India.

Now fast-forward to the 2005 “guiding principles” for a border settlement. In substance, they are a tad less simplistic than the Panchsheel principles. But these six broad principles hardly lay the basis for a frontier settlement:

(i) “a fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable solution through consultations on an equal footing;”

(ii) “meaningful and mutually acceptable adjustments to their respective positions;”

(iii) “due consideration to each other’s strategic and reasonable interests;”

(iv) “take into account, inter alia, historical evidence, national sentiments, practical difficulties and reasonable concerns and sensitivities of both sides, and the actual state of border areas;”

(v) the “boundary should be along well-defined and easily identifiable natural geographical features to be mutually agreed upon;” and

(vi) “safeguard due interests of their settled populations in the border areas.”

Amazingly, it took several rounds of negotiations between the “special representatives” of the two countries to arrive at principles that are actually grist for the Chinese mill. A succession of three Indian national security advisers participated in this exercise in which, as is evident now, India struck a dry well. After 26 years of continuous border-related negotiations, a settlement is still no closer.

After every hardline action, be it the denial of a visa to any Arunachal Pradesh official or a provocative statement in public, like by Chinese Ambassador Sun Yuxi, Beijing repeats a platitudinous line borrowed from the so-called guiding principles: “We hold that the boundary issue be settled fairly and reasonably at an early date through friendly consultations.” When Prime Minister Manmohan Singh urged in his meeting with Hu Jintao in Berlin last week that the two sides adhere to the full set of guiding principles, the Chinese president merely repeated the “fair and reasonable” line.

The mechanical recitation of such bromides highlights that China neither wishes to settle issues with India fairly and reasonably nor seeks result-oriented consultations.

From Panchsheel to the border-related guiding principles, the road is littered with shattered principles. Yet the 1993 agreement to maintain “peace and tranquillity along the Line of Actual Control” — a line that has not been mutually defined up till now — repeated the defiled Panchsheel principles. How can peace and tranquillity be ensured if the frontline remains unclear and Chinese forces aggressively patrol certain sectors to sustain military pressure on India, not hesitating to carry out forays into, for instance, the Sumdorong Chu Valley?

Just as India tried unsuccessfully to persuade China between 1954 and 1962 to live up to the Panchsheel principles, it now seeks to promote the guiding principles. Yet China’s increasingly blunt assertion of claims to Arunachal Pradesh — a state more than twice the size of Taiwan — shows that those principles are already of little guidance.

All this begs a question: Why expend political capital, in the first place, to put together a set of principles, knowing that the strength of Chinese diplomacy is to design vain principles and then translate them in a way to suit Beijing’s convenience? What makes this question more troubling is that India, under Atal Bihari Vajpayee, agreed in 2003 to the diversionary Chinese proposal to shift the focus of the negotiations from the much-needed frontline clarification to the enunciation of principles for a border settlement.

Beijing’s partiality for numbered declarations, similarly, doesn’t mean it respects what it commits to. It continues to drag its feet on setting up what the “10-pronged” joint declaration of last November called for: “an expert-level mechanism to discuss interaction and cooperation on the provision of flood-season hydrological data, emergency management and other issues regarding trans-border rivers.” With China seeking to divert the waters of rivers flowing southward from the Tibetan plateau, a future conflict over the sharing of interstate water resources can no longer be ruled out.

Sardar Vallabhai Patel was the first Indian leader to grasp the enormity of the challenge from China. What he wrote 57 years ago still resonates today: “We have to take note of a thoroughly unscrupulous, unreliable and determined power practically at our doors… Any friendly or appeasing approaches from us would either be mistaken for weakness or be exploited in furtherance of their ultimate aim.”

© Asian Age, 2007

China’s Rising Assertiveness: Lessons for India

Posted on June 7, 2007 by Chellaney

Dragon Fire

1962 war wounds kept open by China’s hardline claims

The Times of India, June 7, 2007

Brahma Chellaney

China is a rising power but also an increasingly truculent state on territorial or maritime disputes with its neighbours, unable to rise above narrow considerations. Having awakened India long ago from its Nehruvian dream that good intentions are sufficient to run foreign policy, Beijing is now helping New Delhi discover how Chinese diplomacy helps underpin assertive claims and ambitions. Even as India has become more accommodating and forbearing in its dealings with China, Beijing has hardened its position on territorial issues.

China’s assertiveness is mirrored in its refusal to grant visa to any official from Arunachal Pradesh and aggressive patrolling of the still-fuzzy Himalayan frontier. In recent days, a flustered New Delhi has had to cancel a China visit by 107 elite civil servants and also respond to charges by two opposition MPs from Arunachal that Chinese forces have been nibbling at Indian territory there. In seeking to deny that claim, New Delhi has made an unusual revelation — that China maintains more than one line of control and sends regular patrols right up to the outer claimed perimeter.

Through its forcefulness on Arunachal, China is signalling that the ongoing negotiations with India cannot centre merely on border demarcation, even if both sides still call them “border talks”. Recent events indeed highlight the lack of real progress in these epic, 26-year-old negotiations.

Sharing one of the world’s longest and most rugged frontiers, India and China are the only two countries whose entire border is in dispute, without a mutually defined line of control separating them. China continues to lay claim to more Indian territories, even as it holds on to Himalayan areas it seized furtively or by conquest in the 1950s and early 1960s. It occupies one-fifth of the original state of Jammu and Kashmir.

India and China are old civilizations but new neighbours. 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 Indian territories. As long as China is unwilling to accept the status quo, it will keep alive the memory of 1962.

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 neighbours. Its claims on India, however, involve the largest chunks of territory. Arunachal alone is more than double the size of Taiwan.

For almost half of the period they have been neighbours, India and China have pursued negotiations to resolve their territorial disputes. Since 1981, the two countries have been engaged in regular border-related talks in what is the longest and most-barren negotiating process in modern world history. Of late, however, China has pugnaciously pressed its claims. A classic instance was last November when the Chinese ambassador — backed by his foreign ministry — publicly renewed China’s claim on Arunachal, stoking an unusual diplomatic spat on the eve of President Hu Jintao’s visit to India.

Sino-Indian negotiations, although rich in symbolism, have yielded little progress for three main reasons. First, China has sought to stretch the talks to keep India under strategic pressure. It has employed negotiations as a diplomatic tool to engage India, not to reach accord. This tactic dovetails with China’s broader strategy to present a friendly face while building up its capabilities to go on the offensive.

Second, China persuaded India in 2003 to shift from the practical task of clarifying the frontline to the abstract mission of developing “principles,” “concepts” and “framework” for an overall border settlement. This shift was intended to release Beijing from its 2001 commitment to exchange maps with India of first the western sector and then of the eastern sector — a pledge it had already breached by missing the mutually agreed deadlines.

The contours of a possible settlement have been known for long — a simple trade-off involving India foregoing its claims to territories it has lost to China, in return for Beijing’s abandonment of its claims to Indian-held areas. But given its hegemonic intent, China is loath to settle on the basis of the status quo.

Third, 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 the core issue of Tibet, India continues to be overcautious in its diplomacy, even when Beijing acts antagonistically. New Delhi’s acquiescence to China’s annexation of Tibet has come to haunt it, as Chinese claims on Indian territories are openly predicated on their alleged historical or ecclesiastical links with Tibet. Seeking to territorially extend the gains from its Tibet annexation, Beijing pushes a bald principle: What is ours is ours to keep, but what is yours must be shared with us.

India can no longer shy away from making hard diplomatic choices. With an overly ambitious and revisionist China on the offensive, India needs to discriminate between appeasement and diplomacy.

The writer is a security affairs analyst.

© Times of India, 2007

Global Power Shifts

Posted on June 7, 2007 by Chellaney

Playing the new Great Game in Asia and beyond

By BRAHMA CHELLANEY

The Japan Times

NEW DELHI — A nifty new enterprise to discuss security dangers in the Asia-Pacific and evolve a coordinated approach — the Quadrilateral Initiative — has kicked off with an unpublicized first meeting. U.S., Japanese, Indian and Australian officials, at the rank of assistant secretary of state, quietly met recently on the sidelines of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) gathering in Manila.

Given the qualitative reordering of power under way, with Asia boasting the world’s fastest-growing economies and fastest-rising military expenditures, it is vital to ensure strategic stability and power equilibrium. The shifts in international power — most conspicuous in Asia — are being spurred by rapid economic growth, not military triumphs.

The rise of any new world power engenders serious challenges, especially when the concerned power is opaque or harbors imperial ambitions. China’s emergence as a global player is transforming geopolitics like no other development since the time Japan rose to world-power status in the late 19th century during the Meiji Restoration. Ironically, it had been China’s failure to grasp the dramatic rise of Japan that led to its rout in 1895 in the Sino-Japanese War, opening the way to Western imperialistic expeditions into China over the subsequent decades.

Today, major powers don’t wish to make a similar mistake over China’s rapid rise. Given the new fluidity, all important players, including China, are maneuvering for strategic advantage through new equations and initiatives. Just as China, for the first time since the Ming Dynasty, is pursuing security interests and seeking allies far from its shores, other powers are working to build new equations and partnerships.

The "quad" is just one of several initiatives currently being developed in the Asia-Pacific. Yet its preliminary first meeting was not made known for fear of raising China’s hackles. If the China-India-Russia "strategic triangle" can hold high-level meetings with fanfare, why should the United States, Japan, India and Australia shy away from announcing a meeting to discuss issues of common interest and concern?

Considering that Asia is coalescing economically but becoming more divided politically, Asian security and prosperity demands cooperative relationships between the major players. This is more so because of Asia’s conflicting political and strategic cultures and weak regional institutions. Initiatives like the 26-nation ARF, the 16-state East Asia Summit (EAS) and the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum are too large and unwieldy to bear enduring results by themselves. They need to be complemented by smaller initiatives that involve the important powers in different permutations.

In that light, the quad is surely a good idea. In fact, Tokyo and New Delhi ought to also explore the establishment of Russia-India-Japan and Japan-China-India triangular initiatives. Both such initiatives, like the quad, could contribute to building strategic stability and understanding rival military doctrines in Asia.

The quad opens the path to greater strategic interaction among four major democracies. Some factors, however, need to be borne in mind. First, how the initiative shapes up will hinge on the resolution of a key issue: Will India be a Japan or an Australia to the U.S. (in other words, an ally), or will it be a strategic partner? An ally must follow the alliance leader, while in a partnership there is at least the semblance of equality.

This question won’t go away easily. Australia and Japan have not only a bilateral security treaty with America but also trilateral security arrangements. With India, the U.S. has worked out only a defense-framework agreement.

New Delhi agreed in the framework accord signed in June 2005 not only to "conclude defense transactions" and share intelligence with America, but also to participate in U.S.-directed "multinational operations" and join the U.S.-led nonproliferation regime. India, however, is going to be reluctant to outsource its security to the U.S. in any way.

It is Tokyo that pushed for India’s inclusion to turn the existing trilateral security arrangements into quadrilateral. Even before becoming Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe proposed the quad idea in his book, "Utsukushii Kunihe" (Toward A Beautiful Country), published in July. The idea was supported by U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney when he visited Japan and Australia earlier this year.

Second, the quad, once it matures, would involve India in activities to which New Delhi is already committed bilaterally with the U.S. — from promotion of democracy and collaboration on homeland security to joint disaster-response operations and building greater interoperability between the armed forces. It is significant that the first quad meeting was preceded by the first-ever U.S.-Japan-India joint naval exercises.

The Indian naval ships actually first went to Okinawa for a joint maneuver with U.S. forces before taking part in the trilateral exercises off Tokyo Bay. The trilateral exercises, interestingly, intersected with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s Tokyo visit. New Delhi, however, had taken care to placate Beijing by dispatching two to three ships to China from Okinawa for a friendly exercise immediately after the bilateral maneuvers with the U.S.

Third, just because Washington, New Delhi, Canberra and Tokyo are coming together to build a four-way arrangement based on shared values and interests doesn’t mean that they intend to jointly countervail China. Such a mechanism, at best, can give the four countries extra leverage with Beijing as part of a common desire to ensure that the fast-rising Chinese power does not slide into arrogance. The fact is that for each quad member, a stable, mutually beneficial relationship with Beijing is critical to national interest.

In reality, the four have still a long way to go before they can synchronize their approaches toward China. Given their geographical proximity to China and the direct impact Chinese power and ambitions hold for them, Japan and India view power equilibrium as a more pressing imperative. In the years ahead, the two are likely to be more in sync with each other than with the U.S. and Australia on how to contend with Beijing. For the present, the growing asymmetry in power with China puts them at a disadvantage while bilaterally dealing with Beijing, making broader initiatives like the quad attractive.

U.S. strategy is geared toward maintaining a calibrated balance between strategic hedging and greater engagement with Beijing. As part of the hedging, the U.S. is interested in co-opting India, an important geopolitical swing state. But such co-option is unlikely to be at the cost of America’s closer engagement with Beijing.

After all, America now relies on Chinese savings and trade surpluses to finance its super-size budget deficits, hold down U.S. interest rates and prop up the value of the dollar. China, indeed, has become an engine for U.S. economic growth. Politically, too, the U.S. depends on Beijing’s assistance on challenges ranging from North Korea’s future to the Iranian nuclear program. Once allies of convenience during the Cold War, the U.S. and China today are partners tied by interdependence.

Australia’s extraordinary economic boom, likewise, is being driven by exports to a resource-hungry China, and Canberra is loath to take sides between Japan and China, or between China and India. Once regarded with distrust, China has gained recognition and respectability in Australia, securing in the process a controversial deal to import Australian uranium for power generation without having accepted verifiable measures of the kind India is ready to embrace against diversion for weapons purposes.

Lastly, the quad doesn’t mean that the U.S. is reversing the strategy it has maintained in the Asia-Pacific since it took the Philippines in 1898 as spoils of the naval war with Spain — counterbalancing one power against the other to reinforce America’s role as the main arbiter. As part of this continuing strategy, the U.S. has in recent years strengthened its bilateral military alliances, reconfigured its forward-deployed military forces, designated Pakistan, Thailand and the Philippines as its major non-NATO allies, and built strategic cooperation with India and Singapore.

America can live with a China that challenges India and Japan, but not one that challenges U.S. pre-eminence. To tie down China regionally, the U.S. is not averse to Japan coming out of its pacifist cocoon as a "normal" military power — but under American tutelage. The revival of the Sino-Japanese historical rivalry indeed can only help the U.S. retain its position as Asia’s strategic pivot.

Similarly, after having penalized New Delhi for more than three decades for its 1974 nuclear test through U.S.-inspired technology controls, Washington is now ready to promote India’s "normalization" as a nuclear power, but at a price: India is to bind its interests to America’s, and accept constraints on the development of its still-nascent nuclear-deterrent capability.

The quad is just one of several new initiatives intended to help shape a new international balance in response to the ongoing power shifts. It seeks not to establish a new security bloc but to evolve common thinking on shared concerns.

Brahma Chellaney, professor of strategic studies at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi, is the author, most recently, of "Asian Juggernaut: The Rise of China, India and Japan."

The Japan Times: Thursday, June 7, 2007

The U.S.-India-Japan-Australia Quadrilateral Initiative

Posted on June 1, 2007 by Chellaney

A New Great Game

Brahma Chellaney

Asian Age, June 2, 2007

A new enterprise focussed on security dangers in the Asia-Pacific — the Quadrilateral Initiative — has kicked off with an unpublicized first meeting. US, Indian, Australian and Japanese officials, at the rank of assistant secretary of state, quietly met last weekend on the sidelines of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) gathering in Manila.

Given the qualitative reordering of power underway, with Asia boasting the world’s fastest-growing economies and fastest-rising military expenditures, strategic stability has become a key challenge. The shifts in international
power — most conspicuous in Asia — are occurring not because of battlefield victories or new military alliances but due to a factor unique to the modern world: rapid economic growth.

A new world power brings with it new challenges, especially if it is opaque or harbours imperial ambitions. China’s emergence as a global player is transforming geopolitics like no other development since the time Japan rose to world-power status during the Meiji Restoration. Ironically, it had been the Qing dynasty’s failure to grasp the dramatic rise of Japan that led to China’s rout in 1895 in the Sino-Japanese war, opening the way to Western imperialistic intervention and China’s quasi-colonization over the subsequent decades.

Today, major powers don’t wish to make a similar mistake over China’s rapid rise. All important players, including China, are manoeuvring for geopolitical advantage through new equations and initiatives. Just as China, for the first time since the Ming dynasty, is pursuing security interests and seeking allies far from its shores, other powers are working to build new equations and partnerships.

The “quad” is just one of several initiatives currently being developed. Yet its preliminary first meeting was not made known for fear of raising China’s hackles. If the China-India-Russia “strategic triangle” can hold high-level meetings with fanfare, why should India, the United States, Australia and Japan shy away from acknowledging discussions on issues of common interest?

With Asia becoming more divided in the face of conflicting strategic cultures and weak regional institutions, the accent has to be on cooperative relationships among the major players. Initiatives like the 26-nation ARF, the
16-state East Asia Summit (EAS) and the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, however, are too large and unwieldy to bear enduring results by themselves. They need to be complemented by smaller initiatives involving important powers in different permutations.

In that light, the “quad” is an appealing idea. In fact, New Delhi ought to also explore the establishment of triangular Russia-India-Japan and Japan-China-India initiatives. Along with the “quad,” they could contribute to building strategic transparency and understanding.

A Russia-India-Japan triangle is of immense strategic import. It can help deter power disequilibrium in Asia. But its formation depends on Tokyo and Moscow settling (or, in the interim, setting aside) their Northern Territories
dispute and fully normalizing bilateral relations, which remain underdeveloped and riven by mutual distrust since the end of World War II.

How the “quad” initiative shapes up will hinge on the resolution of a key issue: will India be a Japan or an Australia to the US (in other words, an ally), or will it be a strategic partner? An ally has to follow the alliance leader, while in a partnership there is at least the semblance of equality.

This question won’t go away easily. Australia and Japan not only have a bilateral security treaty with America but also trilateral security arrangements with Washington. With India, the US has worked out only a
defence-framework agreement. New Delhi agreed in the framework accord signed in June 2005 not only to “conclude defence transactions” and share intelligence with America, but also to participate in US-directed “multinational operations” and join the US-led non-proliferation regime. India,
however, is going to be reluctant to outsource its security in any way or slavishly follow Washington.

It is Tokyo that pushed for India’s inclusion to turn the existing trilateral security arrangements into quadrilateral. Even before becoming Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe had proposed the “quad” idea in his book, Toward A Beautiful Country, published last July. In the book, Abe says, “It is of crucial importance to Japan’s national interest that it further strengthen ties with India,” adding, “It would not be a surprise if in another 10 years, Japan-India relations overtake Japan-US and Japan-China relations.”
The “quad” idea was supported by U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney when he visited Japan and Australia earlier this year.

The “quad” seeks to involve India in activities to which it is already committed bilaterally with the US — from promotion of democracy and collaboration on homeland security to joint disaster-response operations and building greater military interoperability. Significantly, the initial “quad”
meeting was preceded by the first-ever US-India-Japan joint naval exercises.

Indian naval ships first went to Okinawa for a joint manoeuvre with US forces before taking part in the trilateral exercises off the Tokyo Bay. The trilateral exercises, interestingly, intersected with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s Tokyo visit. New Delhi, however, had taken care to placate Beijing by despatching two-three ships to China from Okinawa for a friendly exercise immediately after the bilateral manoeuvre with the US.

Just because Washington, New Delhi, Canberra and Tokyo are coming
together to build a four-way arrangement based on shared values and interests doesn’t mean that they intend to jointly countervail China. Such a mechanism, at best, can give the four democracies extra leverage with Beijing as part of a common desire to ensure that the fast-rising Chinese power does not slide into arrogance. For each “quad” member, a stable,
mutually beneficial relationship with Beijing remains critical to national interest.

In reality, the four have still a long way to go before they can synchronize their approaches toward China. Given their geographical proximity to China and the direct impact Chinese power and ambitions hold for them, Japan and India view power equilibrium as a more pressing imperative. Yet the
growing asymmetry in power with China puts them at a disadvantage while dealing with Beijing just at the bilateral level, making broader security arrangements or initiatives attractive.

US strategy, however, is geared toward maintaining a calibrated balance between strategic hedging and greater engagement with Beijing. The China
factor is so overplayed — as on the much-touted Indo-US nuclear deal — that it obscures the fact that America today has much deeper political and economic engagement with Beijing than with New Delhi.

As part of the hedging, the US is eager to co-opt India, an important geopolitical swing state. But such co-option is unlikely to be at the cost of America’s closer engagement with Beijing. After all, America now relies on Chinese savings and trade surpluses to finance its super-sized budget deficits, hold down US interest rates and prop up the value of the dollar. China indeed has become a locomotive for US economic growth. Politically, the US depends on Chinese assistance on challenges ranging from North Korea’s future to the Iranian nuclear programme. Once allies of convenience during the Cold War, the US and China today are partners tied by interdependence.

Australia’s extraordinary economic boom, likewise, is being driven by exports to a resource-hungry China, and Canberra is loath to take sides between Japan and China, or China and India. Once regarded with distrust, China has gained respectability in Australia, securing a controversial deal to import Australian uranium for power generation without having accepted verifiable measures of the kind India is ready to embrace against diversion
for weapons purposes.

The “quad” also doesn’t mean the US is reversing the Asia-Pacific strategy
it has maintained since it took the Philippines in 1898 as spoils of the naval war with Spain — counterbalancing one power against the other to reinforce America’s role as the main arbiter. To underpin that very strategy, the US has in recent years strengthened its bilateral military alliances, reconfigured its forward-deployed military forces, designated Pakistan,
Thailand and the Philippines as major non-NATO allies, and built strategic cooperation with India and Singapore.

America can live with a China that challenges India and Japan but not one that challenges US pre-eminence. To tie down China regionally, the US is not
averse to Japan coming out of its pacifist cocoon as a “normal” military power — but under American tutelage. The revival of the Sino-Japanese
historical rivalry indeed can only help the US retain its position as Asia’s strategic pivot.

Similarly, after having penalized New Delhi for its 1974 nuclear test through stringent technology controls, Washington is now ready to promote India’s “normalization” as a nuclear power, but at a price: India is to bind its interests to America’s, and accept fetters on its still-nascent nuclear-deterrent capability. Given that a stunted Indian nuclear deterrent equally suits Chinese interests, it is hardly a surprise that Washington has kept Beijing in the loop, with Undersecretary Nicholas Burns declaring that China
would not be an obstacle when the nuclear deal goes before the Nuclear
Suppliers’ Group.

To help preserve US interests and primacy in the long run, American policy seeks to build close security cooperation with friendly democracies and bring them within US strategic influence. India is a prominent case. Yet the US hews to its benighted traditional role as the offshore balancer on the subcontinent. It has not only resumed the rearming of Islamabad with lethal, India-directed weapons, but also is beginning to sell New Delhi the very systems it has transferred to Pakistan. In notifying Congress this week of its intent to sell India six C-130 Hercules military transport aircraft for $1.1 billion, Washington has stressed the sale “will not affect” the subcontinental
military balance.

The “quad” is one of several new initiatives intended to help shape a new international balance in response to the ongoing power shifts. It seeks not to establish a new security bloc but to evolve common thinking on shared concerns. For India, its geopolitical value lies in the opportunity it offers to better understand the strategic outlook of the other three players.

The 123 of U.S.-India Nuclear Discord

Posted on May 29, 2007 by Chellaney

The Hindustan
Times, May 29, 2007

No strategic issue has proven
more divisive in modern India than the nuclear
deal

Fission for Trouble

By BRAHMA CHELLANEY

It has taken the US years of
negotiations to conclude a still-valid nuclear cooperation agreement (NCA) with
any close ally. Yet, as illustrated by President George W. Bush’s telephone
call to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, it has stepped up pressure on India to
conclude an NCA straight away, although the two sides remain poles apart on some key issues after barely five
months of negotiations. Now Undersecretary Nicholas Burns is arriving to press for an agreement at next week’s Bush-Singh meeting
in Germany.

Having been hustled into
signing the nuclear deal in July 2005 without understanding its implications for strategic autonomy, India currently
is being pressed to conclude the follow-up
NCA, despite the draft accord’s one-sidedness or lack of clarity on core
issues. The new formulations proffered by the US
seek to address India’s
concerns more by semantic jugglery than substance.

If the NCA were to
paper over fundamental differences, US-India civil nuclear cooperation could
engender serious discord in the
years ahead. Given that India
would be at the receiving end in any conflict — as happened when the US walked out midway through an earlier 30-year
NCA signed in 1963 — New Delhi cannot accept
equivocation clothed as compromise.

An NCA is required
under Section 123 of the US Atomic Energy Act. Dubbed the ‘123 agreement’, it
is merely a framework accord under US law, setting
the bilateral terms of reference. It does not guarantee that nuclear
cooperation would indeed take place.
This is especially so in relation to
India.

First, the US Congress has retained
the right to stop the deal from taking
effect if it does not meet the long list of conditions established through the new
Hyde Act. A 123 agreement cannot trump those conditions even if it were silent
on any of them. Unlike NCAs with other partner-states, America’s cooperation with India is to be
uniquely governed by this all-embracing,
country-specific Act.

Second, even in the best-case scenario, with the deal in force, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission would
still need to license each nuclear export. And that means public hearings. Every application to license an export would
be an occasion for non-proliferation zealots to turn the NRC into a platform to critically scrutinize India’s
record, as happened whenever the US sought to ship fuel for the
Tarapur power reactors between 1974 and 1980.

India’s nuclear-weapon
and missile programmes are still in
the developmental phase. In light of the Hyde Act’s proviso that the US “seek”
to cap, roll back and eliminate South
Asian nuclear arsenals as well as its requirement for a cyclic report on India’s
“rate of production” of fissile material and nuclear-explosive devices, Indian
developmental plans and actions would spur political pressures through congressional
and NRC hearings.

Third, the US is working
to ensure India
will not be able to avail civil nuclear technology from any other
supplier-state on terms less onerous that those it is imposing. It intends
to make sure the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group guidelines
on India
mirror the congressional conditions, as mandated by the Hyde Act.

For India, the writing on the wall is clear. Instead of the original deal’s promise of “full cooperation” and the
“same benefits and advantages as other leading
countries with advanced nuclear technology, such as the US”, restrictive, conditions-laden cooperation
is on offer today, with the Hyde Act also aiming
to regulate India’s
conduct in areas unrelated to civil
nuclear commerce.

India
thus needs to proceed with caution. It is one thing
for the US to legislate
assorted conditions and limitations on nuclear commerce with India. But if
India itself acquiesced to restricted and restraining cooperation through the means of a bilateral
accord, it would compound its missteps since
July 2005. Political prudence lies in
negotiating as long as it takes to
clear the draft text of unreasonable restrictions, imbalance and prevarication.

In any event, why
should India make haste when the deal’s avowed rationale is anchored in long-term issues of energy? The deal isn’t
pivotal to the growth of Indo-US ties either. Those relations do not need this
deal for traction as their direction has already been set — toward closer
strategic cooperation. If anything,
the deal has infused controversy and
soured the public mood in India.

In fact, no
strategic issue has proven more divisive in
India in modern times than this
nuclear deal. The benchmarks the PM laid down in
Parliament last August 17 — even if they did not succeed in
dissuading the US from enacting a tough law on India — have to hold good at least in the bilateral accord. How would the discerning Singh
justify his government signing a 123
agreement that fell short on his own bottom-line?

A circumspect negotiating stance should aim to fully address India’s core
concerns and ensure no further US shifting
of the goalpost. If not, the deal would attract more grating
conditions as it traverses the next stages. Indeed, the need for two separate
India-specific multinational
clearances — from the 35-nation IAEA board and the 45-state NSG — is going to launch New Delhi into
uncharted international waters.

The US wants an NCA
that reads more like the 123 of how to yoke India. It will arm the US with five unique sets of double
rights.

First, the US will have the right not only to cut off
all cooperation but also the right to secure the return of transferred nuclear
equipment and material if India conducts a nuclear test. The US says it is
entitled to terminate cooperation
retroactively and to bind India to an international pact the Senate rejected in 1999 — the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

Second, the US
will have the right to determine how
much fuel India can stockpile for “reasonable” reactor-operating needs as well as the right to impound such
stocks if New Delhi failed to adhere to the prescribed good behaviour. The claimed
“right to return” negates the very notion of lifetime fuel reserves that the PM
has sought as an insurance against a Tarapur-style fuel cut-off.

Third, the US will enjoy a double right even on the fuel
discharged from reactors. India is to neither ship back the spent fuel to
America without its consent, nor
reprocess it sans prior US approval. By declining to grant long-term
advance consent for reprocessing,
the US is loath to put India on par even with its non-nuclear allies. Worse, its dual veto against India is to hold even if it unilaterally terminated or suspended cooperation. With a lesser right
in the now-expired 1963 NCA, the US
has stopped India to this day from reprocessing
the accumulating Tarapur spent fuel.

Fourth, the US
will have the right to deny India the promised “full cooperation” through continued sanctions on export of civil enrichment, reprocessing
and heavy-water equipment and technology. Yet it will have the right to enforce
India’s “full compliance” with US-led technology-control regimes. Put simply, India
is to be tethered to these cartels while remaining their target.

Fifth, in addition to ensuring
IAEA inspections on all aspects of
India’s civilian nuclear programme, the US will have an unparalleled double
prerogative: the right to statutorily establish its own end-use monitoring, as called for in
the Hyde Act Section 104(d)(5)(B)(i); and the right to institute
“fall-back US safeguards” in case of
“budget or personnel strains
in the IAEA”. The fall-back option
will ensure India is subject to intrusive,
challenge inspections of the type
the IAEA applies in non-nuclear
states.

The unbridled binary
entitlements the US asserts should make India summon the courage and resolve to
hold off on a bilateral accord. Surely, the 123 agreement cannot come ahead of long-term national
interests.