Going by the limited media reportage, there was nothing in it to measure the success or failure of the Delhi talks recently between Foreign Ministers Sushma Swaraj of India and Wang Yi of China. Even after providing for the time taken by translation, three long hours of talks meant that they have covered all aspects of bilateral ties, and in some detail.
Definitely border talks formed a part of the exchanges. China is India's problem in this. It is not known if the two Ministers discussed larger geo-strategic issues impacting on both and at times in exactly opposite ways. China has been projected as the world's problem in this. A combination of these issues at bilateral talks, if discussed, would have consequences for the two nations and the larger South Asian region and Asia as a whole. If remotely successful, such combination-talks, if they were to happen, can put present-day global geo-strategic perceptions on their head.
India has problems with China and Pakistan, not always in that order. Both are centred on border issues. In the case of Pakistan, it goes beyond that. Pakistan is also a problem in India-China relations. India and the other two, individually, have learnt to do business without getting eternally bogged down in the problems from the past, intermittently hurdled by terrorism from Pakistan and 'border incidents' in the case of both. Indian decisions in this are influenced by democracy. There is little democracy in Pakistan in context and comparison. China never boasts of democracy.
From time-to-time through the last two decades, the world has seen India as an aspiring global power. Western strategic analysts saw India as a credible counter-poise against a raising China on its own. They seem to have changed their calculus over time, to make India part of a multi-polar Asian counter-weight to China. Yet, for India to inch towards global-power status, it has to resolve problems with China. Before that India has to strengthen and stabilise ties with the rest of South Asia. There cannot be a stable South Asia without Pakistan. Without a stable South Asia, India cannot become an all-acknowledged regional power.
Global power-aspirations
By taking the whole of South Asia with it, India can then show what they together can do with or to China. That's not going to happen as long as Pakistan stays out. If Pakistan stays out, China wins - as posited by western scholars. If Pakistan is 'in', all three win. Even at the best of times, India could at best ensure that the
status quo continued. The
status quo does not help India just now. It cannot help India in the foreseeable future - measured not in years but in decades.
India's global-power aspirations will then have to wait. It has to commence with making India's 'national power' look credible and continuous. It takes a lot more than a few statements of intent. It requires a dedicated nation, declared goals and decisive course and course-correction. It is not about winning a future war or losing one, decades ago. It is about India being an economic super-power, a manufacturing super-power. For a population-driven India that is a necessity. Not a luxury. Reforms-centric India has been marketing luxury to Indians who can afford it. India cannot afford it for too long.
In good time, China reached there, looking increasingly inward through the early decades of the 'People's Revolution'. The warped years of 'Cultural Revolution' were an exception, not the rule. In its time, 'Tianamen Square' too has proved to be so. The world does business with 'national power', nation's power - and on the latter's term. What used to be true of the US and the Soviet Union is now true of the US and China. Rather, the US does more and more serious business with China now than it might have done with the Soviet Union in its time - particularly in the department of 'listening'.
Attaining Independence around the same time, India, as part of the historic legacy from the colonial past, spread out the wares globally. It cannot be otherwise now, in this 'globalised village'. We will continue to pay a price for the wrong and wronged priorities. It is a vicious circle. India can keep going round and round without taking the bull by the horns. This ends up as continued geo-strategic and economic dependence on third nations, big and small.
Consensus and cooperation
China and Pakistan provide the clear and often justified cause for India remaining the single largest arms importer in the world. Exact figures for arms import bill may not be readily available as they have kept increasing over the past decade and more. These moneys belong to the poor in India, whose needs have increased with greater and untenable exposure to 'consumerism'. The 'reforms era' India seems to be making more money to buy more arms, in the name of increasing regional presence and global power-projection.
Taking the bull by the horn does not thus mean acrimony and altercation. It can - and has to - mean consensus and cooperation. Pakistan may be shy of acknowledging but it needs India more today than ever before in the past. It needs India more today than any other nation, the US, China, or Russia (which has begun exporting arms to the country for the first time). It is true of India viz China. They share borders, hence problems, too. It's not the case with the non-regional players interested in 'helping' them resolve the issue, but on the latter's terms, if there were one.
When smaller neighbours and other Third World nations said that they needed China for development investment (and UN veto-vote in the case of some), India was sulking. In his last weeks in office, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Government indicated the need for India needing big-ticket Chinese investments. In his early weeks in office, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has indicated as much. He has also said that India should match China in 'scale and speed'. It's a far cry now, and will remain so for some more time to come.
When the US, for instance, was/is talking about Asia-Pacific and Indo-Pacific - there is some confusion over prioritisation just now, it would seem - China was 'laying' the 'maritime Silk Route'. It branded it as such only recently. It is yet to market the idea, convincingly. The US was/is talking about super-power responsibility to protect the world from itself, more in geo-strategic terms. China claims to be taking the development route, instead. Given the historicity of its equations and problems with neighbours - which it has not ceased flagging with less confidence than its emerging super-power status demands - China sounds less convincing and more belligerent. Its 'blue water navy' projections too are set to take the 'maritime Silk Route' - and ports. India has nothing to talk about for itself? It is talking about American and Chinese projects, instead. It's not how global players play the game.
There is more in it for India to feel uncomfortable about than the rest of the world. That includes some of China's 'increasingly disturbed' maritime neighbours. India is not one of them. If China has different or differentiated prescription viz land border with India, it has not made the difference known, including the how and why of it. India cannot expect real-help from them in times of real crises. Words or solace and support are mutual, but neither can expect the other to do more than that. It's mutual, too. Yet, India cannot allow itself to be 'isolated' from the post-Cold War friends on unmentioned promises, whose efficacy at execution too has to be guaranteed. Indians are more suspicious than India. In democracies, it matters.
India has taken the principled stand against third-party intervention in solving bilateral issues with Pakistan and China, through negotiations. That includes possible Chinese facilitation viz Pakistan. Technically, the border dispute with China may not involve Pakistan. But the border dispute with Pakistan involves China, Islamabad having ceded a part of 'occupied Kashmir' to Beijing long ago. How to tackle the technicalities in the final stages even if the three nations are ready to address the issues is a question that they should be equally concerned about. How to address larger issues on the border and otherwise is a question that all three of them would have to think deeply about.
Cautious optimism, still
India has won wars against Pakistan and lost one to China. It's not only that Pakistan will have to take its armed forces along in any political solution to bilateral issues with India. No Indian government can throw caution to wind and hope to succeed, and carry the nation with it. 'Cautious optimism' continues to be the key. It cannot lead to laxity. Nor can it lead to lethargy.
Unlike even a decade back, there is now greater acceptance in India about the events that caused - and cost - the war with China. There has for long been such an acceptance in the Pakistani public mind and mood about continued adversity of their armed forces to India. There is also an ever-increasing realisation that over the medium-term, the ISI has done more harm to Pakistan than to India. To save Pakistan from the ISI, friends of Pakistan have to intercede, purposefully and at times forcefully, but exclusively with Pakistan. Expecting India to help Pakistan to help itself has not helped in the past. It will not help in the future, either.
In the era after the US' exit from the Af-Pak region, China can fit the bill. China can tell Pakistan, tell the ISI and the armed forces - on what not to do. Russia can be a co-underwriter to keep Pakistan stable, whatever it takes to do it, but it will take time. Russia needs to re-establish itself in the post-Ukraine Europe, which is reclaiming its historic and dubious status as the 'global theatre' from the post-World War Asia. The latter did not have to try to win that status. It will be happy to lose it, however.
India's problem with China is border. China's problem with India relates not even to Tibet, which India recognised as a part of the Chinese territory very long ago. Its concerns may be about India recognising an 'independent' Dalai Lama (?) after the incumbent. China may not have to worry on that score. By declaring that he was the last in the line of the Dalai Lama who combined spiritual and temporal powers, the incumbent has created a separate political entity to look after Tibetan affairs. After his time, India by virtue of the limited asylum granted to the incumbent and his people decades ago, may be called upon to review its positions vis a vis the political entity. Again, it is easier said than done. It takes seriousness out of the conversation when Foreign Minister Wang says in India that 'stapled visas' are a 'privilege'.
In context, India will also have to take a call on its political position on the South China Sea and the East China Sea issues. The pot seems to be getting increasingly on to the boil in recent times. Against other neighbours of China, India's problem with China is not on the sea. It is along the land-border. Investments apart, India and China have resolved to increase bilateral trade to $ 100 billion and beyond in the none-too-distant future. With a troubled sea on the China side, they cannot hope to transact business. Resolving the border-dispute between the two nations may literally provide a way out for transporting goods, it would seem.
Yet, India will need to consider global sanctions that have a dirty knack of crippling nations. It can be China if the South China Sea/East China Sea disputes take a turn for the worse. India will also need to think deeply over the wisdom of burning bridges with existing post-Cold War friends and allies while building bridges with China, or Pakistan, or both. Yet, there has to be a fuller realisation that unlike the Soviet era ally of India, the nation's post-Cold War allies cannot even be expected to fight India's war for India. Nor should Indian strategy be based on such whims. The alternative to making friends for the sake of it is to make friends with the adversary with the full and compelling realisation about the 'shared past'.
Hidden advantage
Whatever shape future talks between India and China takes, bilateral problems, including the border dispute, have taken more time than their people can wait, to address leave alone resolve them. A critical problem on the Indian side is the threat of democracy to the elected ruler, who is eternally afraid of the voter's mood, which is as fickle as can be. Unlike any Indian leader since the previous BJP Government of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee initiated the border talks with China, his party successor Narendra Modi commands an absolute majority in Parliament. His charisma and the poor electoral showing of his divided Opposition are expected to help him sail through his first five years in office.
It's true of bilateral disputes with China and/or Pakistan. There are issues with other neighbours, too. Inviting them for PM Modi's inauguration - and their participation -- is one thing. 'Not shying away from raising issues of concerns bilaterally' as President Pranab Mukherjee said in his address to the joint session of Parliament, the first one after PM Modi took over, is a gesture on the reverse. India needs to acknowledge that 'tough talk' has to be backed by 'national power', not just 'supreme national self-interest', if it has to sound serious. In India's case, both go hand in hand. A via media is the only course open in the interim. But the end should see India and the neighbours working with one another and together, it cannot be otherwise.
PM Modi has a hidden advantage in the Congress rival at the national-level. Apart from being mauled in the parliamentary polls, the Congress has made fewer demands on the government of the day while in the Opposition in matters of the nation's 'supreme self-interest'. On that score, Modi's personal contribution and that of his party even more has been less than enviable. Even more, on problems with China and Pakistan, the average Indian will go along with the BJP and PM Modi than the Congress or any other. That is an opportunity India itself cannot miss.
(The writer is a Senior Fellow at Observer Research Foundation, Chennai Chapter)
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