Chinese devilry
The Indian NSC is too sanguine about threats from the Asian great power, says N.V.Subramanian.
By N.V. Subramanian (3 August 2009)
3 August 2009: There has been sketchy newspaper reporting of the recent Indian National Security Council (NSC) meeting chaired by the prime minister, whose primary focus apparently was China. Such sketchy reporting must be excused, because journalists cannot be expected to get details, or out of prudence, not publish the details even if they happen to get them. Equally, on the part of the government, all attempts must be to limit the details to be outed, if outed in the dimmest outlines they have to be to send the right messages to the right quarters. The question is, have those aims -- sending the right messages to the right quarters -- been met? In the view of this writer (even given the sketchy reporting of the NSC meeting), perhaps not.
To quickly sum up the meeting, it discussed China in the main, although also the scare of a ship missing off the Goa coast which could be the Lashkar-e-Toiba's second attempt at a 26/ 11. China tried to block an ADB loan to India because the state it claims, Arunachal Pradesh, was a small beneficiary of that loan. For once, India beat back the Chinese challenge, but China's image as an emerging great power has taken a hit, which may conceivably lead its other regional adversaries, including Vietnam, to take similar liberties with it (or so Beijing may fear), which it cannot countenance. This writer wrote some commentaries ago that China could want to "teach India a lesson", more so that India is building up its ground and air forces in the North East. The NSC meeting still felt the Chinese threat was long- and not short-term.
Two other Chinese actions against India were discussed, but with the same conclusion, that there was no immediate Chinese threat. The first was Chinese attempts to block India's so-called "clean waiver" in the NSG in respect of full nuclear cooperation. The then Bush administration impressed on China not to be obstructive, which was greeted in India as evidence of one hundred per cent US backing for the nuclear deal, although the more inquisitive reporters reported a private US-China deal, that civilian nuclear cooperation would be restricted to non-proliferous reactor exports and leased fuel in limited quantities. If you put that together with the US-pressured G-8 ban on ENR technology exports to NPT holdouts like India, then you realize deeper games were being played at the NSG all along, in which China was a party as long as it hurt India. Anyhow, that opposing Chinese role at the NSG was discussed but not seen as evidence of a short- threat from China. (A threat is a threat. How can a long-term threat arise without short-term threat build-ups?)
The third issue concerns Chinese roadblocks to a UN ban on the Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist leader, Maulana Masood Azhar. Still earlier, it was blocking almost similar action against the LeT founder and principal 26/ 11 accused, Hafeez Mohammed Sayeed. Both Azhar and Sayeed are backed by Pakistan's military-intelligence establishment to "bleed India by a thousand cuts" even as it supports the Afghan Taliban and Al-Qaeda to retake Afghanistan from American-backed nominally democratic regimes in its undiminished quest to get strategic depth against India. China has been with Pakistan's military-intelligence establishment through thick and thin, and it has unwaveringly supported that establishment's wars, proxy wars and terrorist attacks against India. China disputed Pakistan's terrorist role in 26/ 11, blaming it on "Hindu terrorists". It is often lost sight of that when India's economic interests are (sought to be) hurt, such as through 26/ 11-like attacks, China, India's immediate strategic competitor, gains commensurately. If that seems outlandish, how do you explain Chinese nuclear and missile proliferations to Pakistan against India? It went to war with India. Still, in its wisdom, the National Security Council agrees to focus on long-term Chinese threats ignoring its quotidian devilry.
When he first put out his controversial "Clash of Civilizations" thesis in Foreign Affairs magazine in 1993, in major part to counter the "End of History" triumphalism of Francis Fukuyama, Samuel Huntington scented a opportunistic, perhaps temporary, coming together of what he described as Confucian-Islamic states against the West. He highlighted Chinese proliferation to Libya, Iraq, Algeria and Iran. Through its proxies, Pakistan and North Korea (though some of the developments came later), China made further proliferations to Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iran. "A Confucian-Islamic military connection has thus come into being," wrote Huntington, "designed to promote acquisition by its members of the weapons' and weapons' technologies needed to counter the military powers of the West. It may or may not last. At present, however, it is as Dave McCurdy has said, "a renegades' mutual support pact, run by proliferators and their backers"."
The Islamic threat component of Huntington's thesis became instantly controversial, politically incorrect to refer to unless to disparage it (despite the compelling evidence of 9/ 11), but curiously, the "Confucian-Islamic military connection" did not get equal traction, even though more than fifteen years later, the US/ West's confrontation with Iran on its weapons' quest (complete by recent accounts) brings it to surface again, because China is the strongest backer of the hardline Iranian regime. But the West versus Confucian-Islamic states/ civilizations is only one aspect. Sino-Indian differences have also moved China towards the Confucian-Islamic states/ civilizations paradigm, with its no-holds-barred backing to Pakistan against India. Obviously, there are contradictions in this. China has its Uighur-Turkic crisis. Its support to the Afghan so-called mujahideen had a Uighur blowback. Its interests in Pakistan have faced Uighur and fundamentalist opposition. But in all cases, China has successfully contained the Islamic fundamentalist and terrorist threats. The Soviet Union went down in Afghanistan but China next door was by and large insulated. (But not faraway US neither.) This writer naively believed (and skywrite that, if you will) that the Uighur crisis would get out hand (although obviously, he didn't wish for it), with the Al-Qaeda baying for Chinese blood and attacking its interests in Africa and elsewhere. That may still happen, but this writer thinks not. The Confucian-Islamic states/ civilizational linkage remains strong and will likely grow stronger.
In the circumstances, the Indian NSC view to go easy on Chinese short-term threats (as though you can compartmentalize threats) seems irresponsible. To prepare for direct Chinese action is one thing. But you can hardly ignore what Pakistan does at China's behest, or that Pakistan engineers on its own but expects and gets Chinese backing for, like for 26/ 11. Now Burma has thrown a nuclear scare, and its principal backers are again Chinese proxies, North Korea and Pakistan. When does one day go by without the eruption of a Chinese threat in one form or another? The National Security Council could do better protecting India's interests.
N.V.Subramanian is Editor, NewsInsight.net. Har-Anand has published his new second novel, Courtesan of Storms.
Please visit N.V.Subramanian's blog http://courtesanofstorms.blog.com/
N.V.Subramanian is the Editor of www.newsinsight.net.
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