Subject: Bilateral Relations

The article explains the implications of China’s assertive foreign policy for India’s neighbours.

Chinese warning to Bangladesh

• The Chinese ambassador to Bangladesh warned Bangladesh against joining the Quad and added that it will risk “significant damage” to its relationship with Beijing if it warms up to the Quad.
• This came as a surprise as China was warning Bangladesh against joining a club that has no plans to invite new members, let alone Bangladesh.
• China always used tough language when it came to issues of its sovereignty and territorial integrity.
• The aggressive style now covers a much broader range of issues.
• Beijing is conscious that Bangladesh’s impressive economic performance in recent years as well as its location at the top of the Bay of Bengal littoral lends a new strategic salience to Bangladesh.
• China notes India’s growing diplomatic investment in developing a strategic partnership with Bangladesh.
• China is also not blind to the emerging interest in US and Japan to expand cooperation with Dhaka.
• Bangladesh, which supports China’s Belt and Road Initiative, is open to similar infrastructure cooperation with the US, Japan and India.

China’s wolf worrier diplomacy

• The new wolf warrior diplomacy confronts head-on any criticism of China in the public sphere.
• India has been at the receiving end of this policy for a while — especially during the recent crises of Doklam and Ladakh.
• But India’s South Asian neighbours, all of whom enjoy good relations with China, are only now getting a taste of Beijing’s new diplomatic medicine.
• Chinese Ambassador’s public remarks about the Quad were about telling Bangladesh to resist any Indo-Pacific temptation.
• Pre-emption is very much part of Beijing’s strategic culture.

What such assertive diplomacy mean for South Asia

• Delhi has learnt after long that too much diplomatic interference in the Subcontinent has tended to undermine the pursuit of India’s regional objectives.
• China, as the world’s newest superpower, probably bets that its substantive leverages — including economic, diplomatic, and military — will limit the costs while deterring smaller nations from crossing the markers that it lays down.
• South Asian elites have always seethed at India meddling in their internal affairs; they have held up China’s non-interventionist policy as a welcome alternative.
• The controversy in Bangladesh over China’s remark on joining Quad should help update their past images of Beijing
• India is now more circumspect than before about interventions in the region.
• It recognises that avoiding knee-jerk interventions is a sensible policy.
• Our neighbours have always complained about India’s inefficiency in implementing economic projects and contrasted this with China’s speed and purposefulness.
• But they are also discovering the flip side of Chinese economic efficiency — the capacity to set and implement terms of cooperation that are not always in favour of the host nation.
• All the regimes in the region have had access to different sections of the Indian elite and some capacity to shape the discourse on neighbourhood policies.
• They have no political recourse at all in China’s closed political system.

Consider the question “As Beijing becomes ever more assertive in South Asia, the costs of relying on China are likely to become more apparent to South Asia’s smaller nations. Comment.”

Conclusion

Until now, Chinese support against India seemed free of cost. As Beijing becomes ever more assertive in South Asia, the costs of relying on China are likely to become more apparent.

The article highlights the unprecedented engagement among the countries of West Asia even among the rivals and explains its significance.

New diplomatic engagements in West Asia

• Recently, there have been interactions between senior Saudi and Iranian officials, the first since diplomatic ties were broken in January 2016.
• Following the removal of the diplomatic and economic blockade on Qatar that was imposed by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt, Doha has made efforts to mend ties with both Saudi Arabia and Egypt, in tandem with similar initiatives of its doctrinal and political ally, Turkey.
• On May 5, Turkey and Egypt had their first diplomatic meeting in Cairo after they had broken diplomatic ties in 2013.
• The two countries, on opposite sides on almost all regional issues, are now exploring how to address their differences.

Driving force behind these engagements

• The driving force behind these unprecedented engagements is the advent of the Biden administration at the helm of politics in the United States.
• He has taken a tough line on Saudi Arabia, scrutinising its human rights record and opposition to the war in Yemen.
• Besides concerns in West Asian capitals, the broader message is that the U.S. is now likely to be less engaged with the region’s quarrels.
• These signals of new U.S. policies have occurred even as the novel coronavirus pandemic is devastating West Asia.
• Finally, one major factor is the recognition that the ongoing regional conflicts, in Syria, Yemen and Libya, despite the massive death and destruction, have yielded no military outcome and now demand fresh diplomatic approaches.

Long way to go in resolving differences

• Egypt remains uneasy about Turkey’s ties with the Brotherhood and its regional ambitions.
• Saudi Arabia has similar concerns about Turkey’s doctrinal affiliations and its relations with Iran.
• There are difficulties in reshaping Saudi-Iran relations as well.
• Iran may ease the pressure on the kingdom in Yemen and gradually yield ground in Iraq.
• However, Syria will test their diplomatic skills as they explore how to accommodate their competing strategic interests in that devastated country.

Historic period for West Asian diplomacy

• This is truly a historic period for West Asian diplomacy.
• The major states are displaying unprecedented self-confidence in pursuing initiatives without the involvement of western powers that have dominated regional affairs for at least a couple of centuries.
• This has left a pervasive sense of insecurity across West Asia and made the countries dependent on western alliances to ensure their interests.
• This has left a pervasive sense of insecurity across West Asia and made the countries dependent on western alliances to ensure their interests.

Role for India

• Given that regional contentions are inter-connected, third-party facilitators will be needed to promote mutual confidence and prepare the ground for a comprehensive regional security arrangement.
• This will bring together regional and external states with a stake in West Asia security.
• This arrangement will have provisions for participating states to uphold regional peace and promote mutually beneficial cooperation in energy, economic and logistical connectivity areas.
• Given its close ties with all the regional states, India is well-placed to build an association of like-minded states — Japan, Russia, South Korea — to shape and pursue such an initiative for West Asian peace.

Conclusion

These new diplomatic engagements with erstwhile rivals could in time overturn existing regional alignments and possibly end ongoing conflicts.

The article highlights the need for a critical assessment of the stand-off with China last year and offers key lessons in managing the strategic competition with China.

Year after stand-off

• After over a year, the stand-off between Indian and Chinese troops in eastern Ladakh shows no signs of resolution.
• More broadly, the India-China bilateral relationship has ruptured.
• Reversing a long-held policy, India will no longer overlook the problematic border dispute for the sake of a potentially lucrative wider relationship.
• Even if disengagement continues, the relationship will remain vulnerable to destabilising disruptions.
• Therefore, the Ladakh crisis offers India three key lessons in managing the intensifying strategic competition with China.

Three key lessons

1) Military strategy based on denial are more useful

•  Military strategies based on denial are more useful than strategies based on punishment.
•  The Indian military’s standing doctrine calls for deterring adversaries with the threat of massive punitive retaliation for any aggression, capturing enemy territory as bargaining leverage in post-war talks.
• But this did not deter China from launching unprecedented incursions in May 2020.
• In contrast, the Indian military’s high-water mark in the crisis was an act of denial — its occupation of the heights on the Kailash Range on its side of the LAC in late August.
• This action served to deny that key terrain to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA), and gave the Indian Army a stronger defensive position.
• A doctrinal focus on denial will give the Indian military greater capacity to thwart future land grabs across the LAC.
• Over time, improved denial capabilities may allow India to reduce the resource drain of the increased militarisation of the LAC.

2) Political cost matters more

• China is more likely to be deterred or coerced with the threat of political costs, rather than material costs.
• The material burden of the crisis would not disrupt its existing priorities.
• In contrast, India successfully raised the risks of the crisis for China through its threat of a political rupture, not military punishment.
• A permanently hostile India or an accidental escalation to conflict were risks that China, having achieved its tactical goals in the crisis, assessed were an unnecessary additional burden.
• The corollary lesson is that individual powers, even large powers such as India, will probably struggle to shift Beijing’s calculus alone.
• Against the rising behemoth, only coordinated or collective action is likely to be effective.

3) India should accept more risk on LAC

• India should consider accepting more risk on the LAC in exchange for long-term leverage and influence in the Indian Ocean Region.
• From the perspective of long-term strategic competition, the future of the Indian Ocean Region is more consequential and more uncertain than the Himalayan frontier.
• At the land border, the difficult terrain and more even balance of military force means that each side could only eke out minor, strategically modest gains at best.
• In contrast, India has traditionally been the dominant power in the Indian Ocean Region and stands to cede significant political influence and security if it fails to answer the rapid expansion of Chinese military power.

Conclusion

As these three lessons show, the future of the strategic competition is not yet written. If India’s leaders honestly and critically evaluate the crisis, it may yet help to actually brace India’s long-term position against China.