Type: Op-ed

The Galwan incident marked the new low in the India-China relations. Following it, there have been talks of a closer alliance with the U.S. This article analyses the utility, potential and the limitations of this approach.

Exploring the strategic options

• As the border stand-off with China deepens, India will have to think of all possible strategic options that gives it leverage.
• One of the options is new arrangements with other powers.
• This is the right moment to mobilise international opinion on China.
• But can this be translated into concerted global action to exert real pressure on China?

Things India should consider while forming alliance with the US

• International relations are formed in the context of a country’s development paradigm.
• India’s primary aim should be to preserve the maximum space for its development model, if it can actually formulate one.
• India is not unique in this respect.
•  The question for India is not just whether the US has a stake in India’s development, which it might.
• But it is, rather, to ask whether India’s development needs will fit into the emerging US development paradigm.
• Will the very same political economy forces that create a disengagement with China also come in the way of a closer relationship with India?
• Some sections of American big business might favour India.
• But the underlying political economy dynamics in the US are less favourable.
• Will the US give India the room it needs on trade, intellectual property, regulation, agriculture, labour mobility, the very areas where freedom is vital for India’s economy?
• Will a US hell-bent on bringing manufacturing jobs back to the US, easily gel with an “atma nirbhar” Bharat?
• To see what is at stake, we just need to look how the development paradigm is driving tensions on trade, taxation and regulatory issues between the US and EU.

Why India avoided alignment with the US in the past

•  But the drivers of this have often been legitimate differences over development, including climate change.
• It has also been that, at various points, that alignment was against India’s other strategic commitments.
• India was wise to stay out of the war in Iraq, it was wise not to upset Russia.
• It is wise not to throw its weight behind the US’s Iran policy.
• There is more maturity in the US to understand India’s position.

Global reluctance in collective action against China

• It is an odd moment in global affairs, where there is recognition of a common challenge emanating from China.
• But there is no global appetite to take concerted action.
• An interesting example might be the global response to the BRI.
• Many countries are struggling to meet their BRI debt obligations.
• But it is difficult to see the rest of the international community helping all these countries to wean their regimes away from dependence on Chinese finance.
• Similarly, there are now great concerns over frontier areas of conflict like cyber security and space.
• It is difficult to imagine concerted global action to create rules in these area, partly because Great Powers like the US and Russia will always want to maintain their exceptionalism.

Limitations of global alliance and public opinion in solving local conflicts

• 1) The international community has not been very effective in neutralising
•  exercised by some powers.
• This is the tactic Pakistan has used.
• 2) Don’t count on the fact that the world will support an Indian escalation beyond a point.
• The efforts of the international community, in the final analysis, will be to try and throw cold water on the conflict.
• No one has a serious stake in the fate of the terrain India and China are disputing.
• At the end of the day, India has to manage China and Pakistan largely on its own.

Conclusion

Even as we deal with the military situation on the border, the test of India’s resolve will be its ability to return to some first principle thinking about its own power.

The LAC has been exploited by China as leverage against India. And failure on our part to understand long-term strategic aims and objective of China makes the problem hard to solve. This article suggests a three-pronged approach to deal with China.

Incomprehension of aims and objectives

•  There is incomprehension among our decision-makers of the long-term strategic aims and objectives that underpin China’s belligerent conduct.
• We have not devoted adequate intellectual capital, intelligence resources and political attention to acquisition of a clear insight into China and its motivations.
• Even when intelligence is available, analysis and dissemination have fallen short.

What China’s Defence White Papers suggest

• These thematic public documents articulate China’s national security aims, objectives and vital interests and also address the “ends-ways-means” issues related to its armed forces.
• The 11 DWPs issued so far are a model of clarity and vision, and provide many clues to current developments.
• No Indian government since Independence has deemed it necessary to issue a defence white paper, order a defence review or publish a national security strategy.
• Had we done so, it may have prepared us for the unexpected and brought order and alacrity to our crisis-response.

China uses LAC as strategic leverage

• In order to show India its place, China had administered it a “lesson” in 1962.
• And it may, perhaps, be contemplating another one in 2020, with the objective of preventing the rise of a peer competitor.
• For China, the line of actual control or LAC, representing an unsettled border, provides strategic leverage.
• Leverage it can use to keep India on tenterhooks about its next move while repeatedly exposing the latter’s vulnerabilities.

1993 Agreement didn’t benefit India

• Our diplomats derive considerable satisfaction from the 1993 Border Peace & Tranquility Agreement.
• This agreement, according to former foreign secretary, Shivshankar Menon, “…effectively delinked settlement of the boundary from the rest of the relationship”.
• But by failing to use available leverage for 27 years, and not insisting on bilateral exchange of LAC maps, we have created a ticking time-bomb, with the trigger in China’s hands.
• While “disengagement” may soon take place between troops in contact, it is most unlikely that the PLA will pull back or vacate any occupied position in Ladakh or elsewhere.
• In which case, India needs to consider a three-pronged strategy.

What should be India’s three-pronged strategy?

1. Reinforce at ground level

• At the ground-level, we need to visibly reinforce our positions, and move forward to the LAC all along.
• We should enhance the operational-tempo of the three services as a measure of deterrence.
• Indian warships should show heightened presence at the Indian Ocean choke-points.
• Cyber emergency response teams country-wide should remain on high alert.
• We should build-up stocks of weapons, ammunition and spares.
• The Ministry of Defence should seize this opportunity to urgently launch some long-term “atma-nirbharta” schemes in defence-production.

2. At strategic level: Modus vivendi

• At the strategic level, the government should consider sustained process of engagement with China at the highest politico-diplomatic echelons.
• The negotiations should seek multi-dimensional Sino-Indian modus-vivendi; encompassing the full gamut of bilateral issues like trade, territorial disputes, border-management and security.
• Simultaneously, at the grand-strategic level, India should initiate a dialogue for the formation of an “Indo-Pacific Concord for Peace and Tranquility”.
• This Concord should involve inviting four members of the Quad as well as Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines and Malaysia.

3. Political pragmatism

• As a nation, we need to be pragmatic enough to realise that neither conquest nor re-conquest of territory is possible in the 21st century.
• Parliament should, now, resolve to ask the government, “to establish stable, viable and peaceful national boundaries”.

Consider the question “With changing relations with China, India needs to overhaul its strategy on the ground, strategic and political levels in dealing with China”

Conclusion

This three-pronged approach while comprehending the Chines objectives and goals can help India in dealing successfully with the challenge posed by China.

This article calibrates the changes our future engagement with China will experience following the Galwan incident. The first casualty has been the trust between the two countries. And next could be strategic communications between the two countries. So, India’s response to the incident should be based on these changes.

What explains China’s aggression

• Hubris, internal insecurities in China, the COVID-19 pandemic and the complex and confused external environment explains it.
• Challenge posed by India from the ideological, strategic and economic points of view can be the other factor.

Violation of many agreements

• China’s recent military actions in Ladakh clearly violate the signed agreements of 1993, 1996, 2005, etc on maintaining peace and tranquillity along the LAC.
• These actions are in violation also of other signed agreements, including at the highest level.
• It also contradict positions taken by Xi himself at the informal Wuhan and Chennai summits in 2018 and 2019.
• In 2003, two countries signed a Declaration on Principles for Relations and Constructive Cooperation between our two countries.
• The third principle states: “The two countries are not a threat to each other. Neither side shall use or threaten to use force against the other.”
•  This was more than reiterated in the agreement signed in April 2005 on the Political Parameters and Guiding Principles for settlement of the India China boundary question.
• . Article 1 states, inter alia: “Neither side shall use or threaten to use force against the other by any means.”

Doklam and informal summits

• .A qualitative change though occurred in Chinese perceptions after the Doklam face-off.
• That necessitated the first informal summit at Wuhan in April 2018.
• One important outcome of that summit was the agreement to continue to meet at the highest level and to enhance trust and strengthen strategic communication.
• The second informal summit took place between Xi and Narendra Modi in Chennai in October 2019.
• It was in the aftermath of the revocation of Article 370 by India and China’s unnecessary and unsuccessful attempt to raise the issue in the UN Security Council.
• By then, many other developments — both internal and external — had added pressure on China.
• At Chennai, the Chinese undoubtedly drew some red lines.

Which red lines does China feel India has crossed

• One fundamental red line is China’s long-held and strategic interest in parts of Jammu and Kashmir.
• Jammu and Kashmir border Xinjiang and Tibet and allow connectivity between the two.
• It is wrongly argued that it is Pakistan that is the issue in J&K.
• China is as big an issue but has quietly hidden behind Pakistan’s cover.
• That is no longer feasible as democratic India becomes economically and otherwise stronger.

Future of Special Representative process

• The Special Representatives process to address the boundary question seems stalemated and its usefulness needs review.
• The 2005 agreement contains the necessary parameters for a boundary settlement but there is obviously not adequate common ground.
• Some positivity can, however, be brought in if the LAC clarification process is revived and completed in a time-bound manner.
• But this is easier said than done in the prevailing circumstances.
• Patrolling procedures will need to be revised, preferably by mutual agreement.

Unsustainable economic partnership

• The current nature of the economic partnership between India and China is not sustainable.
• India’s annual trade deficit with China in recent years virtually finances a CPEC a year!
• China has still not fulfilled all its commitments to India on joining the WTO in 2001.

What should be our trade policy

• Indian business and industry must stop taking the easy option.
• Some costs will no doubt go up but there can be environmental advantages of switching to other sources of technology and equipment.
• There is more than one available source of financial investments in Indian ventures.

What will be the nature of bilateral dialogue

• Bilateral dialogue mechanisms will continue their desultory course.
• On issues of interest to India such as terrorism, we get no support from China.
• Cooperation on river waters has not evolved.
• On the global agenda, on issues such as climate change, dialogue and cooperation will continue in multilateral fora depending on mutual interest.

What should be the nature of governments response

• The response to China’s recent actions in Ladakh must be an all-of-government one, indeed an all-India one.
• It should be covering all sectors including heightened security and be coordinated, consistent.
• This is not a question of nationalism or patriotism but of self-esteem and self-respect.

Consider the question “What should be the basis of India’s evolving policy response to China’s new approach to the border dispute?”

Conclusion

Bilateral relations between India and China cannot progress unless there is peace on the borders and China recognises that India too has non-negotiable core concerns, aspirations and interests.

This article tracks the faultline in India’s China policy that makes it an enduring tragedy. China never bought into India’s narratives of Asian unity and untied Asian front against the West. Instead, China cultivated its relations with the West and leveraged that for furthering its interests.

Enduring tragedy: India’s China policy

• That tragedy is rooted in persistent political fantasies.
• Refusal to learn from past mistakes.
• And the belief that the US and the West are at the source of India’s problems with China.
• The problem predates independence.
• Each generation has been reluctant to discard the illusions that India’s China policy has nurtured over the last century.

Historical background

•  Tagore went to China in 1924 with the ambition of developing a shared Asian spiritual civilisation.
• He was accused by Chines of diverting Chins’s attention away from the imperatives of modernisation and, yes, westernisation.
•  Jawaharlal Nehru approached China as a modernist and nationalist.
• He met a delegation of Chinese nationalists at Brussels in 1927.
• There he issued a ringing statement on defeating western imperialism and shaping a new Asian and global order.
•  But in Second World War, Congress was unwilling to join hands with China in defeating Japanese imperialism.
• Indian and Chinese nationalists could not come together for they were fighting different imperial powers.

Relations after independence

• As India’s first PM, Nehru campaigned against the western attempt to isolate China.
• Afro-Asian conference in Bandung, Indonesia in 1955 was attended by both.
• Within five years war broke out in 1962.
• Atal Bihari Vajpayee travelled to China in February 1979 to re-engage Beijing.
• Before he could head home, Beijing had launched a war against a fellow communist regime in Vietnam.
• That was an end of hope for Asian solidarity.
• Rajiv Gandhi in 1988 sought to normalise relations with China while continuing to negotiate on the boundary dispute.

Other issues: Trade entanglement

• Amid border dispute, other issues have taken a life of their own.
• For example, the massive annual trade deficits.
• India’s hope that economic cooperation will improve mutual trust will help resolve other issues was also dashed.
• India’s massive trade deficit with China is now a little over half of its total trade deficit.
• India is finding it hard to disentangle the deep economic dependence on imports from China.

Story of political cooperation: From unipolar to bipolar world

• As the Cold War ended, India began political cooperation with China on global issues.
• It was hoped that such cooperation will provide the basis for better bilateral relations.
• It could not have been more wrong.
• P V Narasimha Rao and his successors joined China and Russia in promoting a “multipolar world” [remember the US dominance].
• Delhi is now struggling to cope with the emergence of a “unipolar Asia” — with Beijing as its dominant centre.
• China’s rapid rise has also paved the way for the potential emergence of a “bipolar world” dominated by Washington and Beijing.

Engagement with West

• China never worked with Indian on the ideas of building coalitions against the West.
• While India never stopped arguing with the West, China developed a sustained engagement with the US, Europe and Japan.
• Mao broke with Communist Russia to join forces with the US in the early 1970s.
• Deng Xiaoping promoted massive economic cooperation with the US to transform China and lay the foundations for its rise.

Will staying away from West lead to good relations with China

• China has leveraged the deep relationship with the West to elevate itself in the international system.
• Delhi continues to think that staying away from America is the answer for good relations with Beijing.
• Beijing sees the world through the lens of power.
• Delhi tends to resist that realist prism.
• India has consistently misread China’s interests and ambitions.
• The longer India takes to shed that strategic lassitude, the greater will be its China trouble.

Facts that India needs to come to terms with

• India must also recognise that China, like the great powers before it, wants to redeem its territorial claims.
• China also has the ambition to bend the neighbourhood to its will, reshape the global order to suit its interests.
• China has not hidden these goals and interests, but India has refused to see what is in plain sight.

Consider the question “Acknowledging Beijing’s rise, scale of challenge it presents, are first steps in crafting a new China policy” Comment.

Conclusion

Acknowledging China’s dramatic rise and recognising the scale of the challenge it presents is essential for Delhi in crafting a new China policy.