Washington’s focus on Pakistan and economic dependence on China are forcing India to reassess its own place in South Asia, reviving long-standing fears of strategic encirclement by its giant northern neighbor.
Analysts say Indian suspicions about China, suppressed during the boom years by burgeoning trade ties, have been stoked by Chinese involvement in Pakistan and a sense that Beijing has replaced India as the favored friend of the US in the region.
“There is a very strong feeling that China is India’s threat No. 1,” said Subhash Kapila at the South Asia Analysis Group, an Indian think tank.
Under former president George W. Bush, the US forged close ties with India — in part seeing it as a counterweight to growing Chinese power — culminating in a deal effectively recognizing its nuclear-armed status.
India and China also made efforts to mend relations soured by a border war in 1962, while their growing clout in the world economy has earned them the nickname “Chindia.”
But with the financial crisis highlighting US dependence on Beijing to bankroll its debt, India is fretting that while it acquired a friendship, China bought the US economy.
“During the Bush era, US policy was seeking to build India as a counterweight to China,” Brahma Chellaney of India’s Center for Policy Research said at a conference in London.
“As this was going on the Chinese and US economic ties were getting thicker and thicker,” he said. “‘Chimerica’ is more meaningful than ‘Chindia.’”
Long Pakistan’s closest ally, China has been steadily building ties with India’s other neighbors, supplying weapons to Sri Lanka and improving its relationship with Myanmar and Nepal, all stoking Indian fears of strategic encirclement.
“India has been gradually ceding space in its own backyard, especially to China,” Chellaney said.
China has stressed it sees no competition with India, but rather that both can benefit from rising bilateral trade, as well as cooperation on issues where the two countries share similar views, including on the Doha trade talks and climate change.
“Neither of the two poses a threat to the other,” Ma Jiali (馬加力), from China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, told the conference in London.
Until very recently, India shared that view and set aside distrust that lingered after its defeat by China in the 1962 war. At the same time the government also played down alleged incursions along the disputed border to avoid spoiling the mood.
“There was this euphoria that trade is booming,” said Professor Dibyesh Anand at London’s University of Westminster.
That mood is now shifting, with attention turning again to tensions over the 3,500km border, particularly Chinese claims to the northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh.
India’s air force chief said last month that China presented a greater threat than Pakistan because New Delhi knew little about Beijing’s combat capabilities.
“The public mood is very much that Pakistan is the unreformed enemy, China cannot be trusted,” Anand said.
That traditional distrust of India’s two main rivals has been fused together by Washington’s renewed focus on Pakistan.
US President Barack Obama’s administration is not only pouring money into Pakistan, but also looking to China to help put pressure on Islamabad to crack down on the militants.
“Their entire policy revolves around China,” Kapila said.
As well as supplying weapons to Pakistan, China has been expanding its economic interests there, notably through funding the new Gwadar deep-sea port on Pakistan’s Arabian Sea to give it access to Middle East oil supplies.
“Pakistan’s reliance on both the US and China for aid and diplomatic support means that coordinated approaches from Washington and Beijing provide the best chance for impacting Pakistani policies in a way that encourages regional stability,” Lisa Curtis, from the Heritage Foundation think tank, told a Congressional hearing in Washington.
In the meantime, India, which broke off peace talks with Pakistan after last November’s terrorist attack in Mumbai, fears it may come under US pressure to reduce tensions so that Islamabad can focus on fighting the Taliban insurgency.
The newly re-elected Congress-led government has yet to spell out how it plans to navigate a political and economic environment that has changed radically in recent months.
Anand, who described India as suffering “a schizophrenia between arrogance and helplessness,” said the country had no real reason to feel under siege and should welcome the US asking China to help in Pakistan.
He said the government should aim to carve out a long-term foreign policy that managed to rise above the public mood.
With India and China competing overseas for energy and other resources, the foreign policy decisions made by the new government could determine how far New Delhi succeeds in securing supplies to fuel its growing economy.
“They are rivals for a lot of energy projects against each other. Although on occasions they have submitted joint bids; they have tried to cooperate,” said Jasper Becker, a British author based in Beijing.
But according to Anand, projecting Indian influence overseas will require a shift in India’s self-perception that goes beyond seeing itself as a victim of Pakistan and China.
The 75th anniversary summit of NATO was held in Washington from Tuesday to Thursday last week. Its main focus was the reinvigoration and revitalization of NATO, along with its expansion. The shadow of domestic electoral politics could not be avoided. The focus was on whether US President Biden would deliver his speech at the NATO summit cogently. Biden’s fitness to run in the next US presidential election in November was under assessment. NATO is acquiring more coherence and teeth. These were perhaps more evident than Biden’s future. The link to the Biden candidacy is critical for NATO. If Biden loses
Shortly after Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) stepped down as general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 2012, his successor, Xi Jinping (習近平), articulated the “Chinese Dream,” which aims to rejuvenate the nation and restore its historical glory. While defense analysts and media often focus on China’s potential conflict with Taiwan, achieving “rejuvenation” would require Beijing to engage in at least six different conflicts with at least eight countries. These include territories ranging from the South China Sea and East China Sea to Inner Asia, the Himalayas and lands lost to Russia. Conflicts would involve Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia,
Japan and the Philippines on Monday signed a defense agreement that would facilitate joint drills between them. The pact was made “as both face an increasingly assertive China,” and is in line with Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr’s “effort to forge security alliances to bolster the Philippine military’s limited ability to defend its territorial interests in the South China Sea,” The Associated Press (AP) said. The pact also comes on the heels of comments by former US deputy national security adviser Matt Pottinger, who said at a forum on Tuesday last week that China’s recent aggression toward the Philippines in
The Sino-Indian border dispute remains one of the most complex and enduring border issues in the world. Unlike China’s borders with Russia and Vietnam, which have seen conflicts, but eventually led to settled agreements, the border with India, particularly the region of Arunachal Pradesh, remains a point of contention. This op-ed explores the historical and geopolitical nuances that contribute to this unresolved border dispute. The crux of the Sino-Indian border dispute lies in the differing interpretations of historical boundaries. The McMahon Line, established by the 1914 Simla Convention, was accepted by British India and Tibet, but never recognized by China, which