Posted on 05/30/2005 7:32:38 AM PDT by Jeff Head
Sources in Delhi said the recent visit to India of Chinese People’s Liberation Army Chief of Staff General Liang Guangli was aimed at working on an improved protocol described as "confidence building measures" between the two militaries, reports Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin.
This is the first visit of a Chinese chief of staff in seven years. It is assumed by intelligence analysts that the Chinese and Indians are developing a protocol to prevent of accidental use of WMDs.
But what if it is more than that?
The warming of relations between China and India, the world's two biggest nations, is giving intelligence analysts in the West nightmares.
India, whose population is expected to surpass China's 1.2 billion some time in the next decade or two, has stopped eyeing Beijing as enemy No. 1.
In one of his meetings earlier this year with a top Indian official, the Chinese premier, Wen Jiabao, is reported to have remarked: "When we shake hands, the whole world will be watching."
Indeed he was right.
Together, the populations of the two giants equals more than a third of all the people on earth.
Without worrying about a threat from India, China is free to consider expansionist policies including, but not limited to, a move against Taiwan.
Separately, both China and India are becoming economic powerhouses. Together, acting in concert, they can make each other stronger – and the leaders of both nations openly acknowledge their preferences for cooperation rather than confrontation in what is being characterized as the dawn of the "Asian Century."
No, you'll be able to buy Windows Longhorn for $5 at Wal-Mart.
Agreed, 100%.
Wish we would.
Your thoughts regarding the machine guns became a stark reality for the Marines against the Chinese at Chosin Reservoir.
LOL!
"need to take direct steps now to ensure that it is offset with an even stronger relationship between India and us..."
Well, yeah, I agree with that... But I'm not very worried about this. The US and India have strong relations, and they are getting stronger. India realizes how important it is that they have strong relations with the US. They are cozying up to China for the simple reason that they must.
It hasn't been all that long since the Chinese attacked the Indians militarily. The Indians don't trust the Chinese, but they know that they've got to be "friends" with them in order to assure the peace.
And interestingly, China realizes that it must do the same. For some reason, the Chinese have not yet figured out that they also need a good relationship with the US. My suspicion is, though, that if Japan gets the a-bomb, they will suddenly make that realization, but too late.
If we quit pandering to Pakistan, we wouldn't have to worry about this. But we keep sticking our fingers in our allies eyes, so what does one expect?
This is not a "panic" article. It is simply a statement of concern...and one I agree with it. If you don;t...that's find. State as much without the vitriol and insults.
IMHO, se should be concerned and we should ensure that we have offers and agreements on the table that offset whatever influence the ChiComms try and broker with India.
Dismissing those things that are occurring on a more and more frequent basis as "panic" and "pant wetting" certainly don't add to any kind of reasoned discourse. In fact, they lessen your own position in the eyes of people who may be lurking and looking at the information impartially IMHO. But that's just my own opinion.
Agreed.
"Confidence building" measures and military cooperation are time honored gestures of peaceful intent, commonly enacted elements of diplomacy, not the gearing up of an incipient military onslaught. Who are they going to attack?
It is in India's as well as China's interests right now to do this, but to infer an incipient threat against the US seems a reach. India is wise enough to know their future flourishes with friendly relations with the West as well as the East. In the absence of a rigid Cold War, these are not mutually exclusive goals, nor are they necessarily a revival of the cynical "nonaligned movement" of Nehru.
No friend of China here, nor do I trust their ulterior motives, but these actions appear to me to be simply rational steps of international relations. Each nation is better off with the other a cooperative friend than a rival. If something ominous evolves out of this, we'll know it soon enough.
If China were a republic, where the will of the people kept their government in check, I would tend to agree whole heartidly. But they are not, and their rapid military expansion and their current belligerence and threats as tregards Taiwan, coupled with their past actions against their own people and in places like Tibet, makes it clear that there is much greater chance for their motives to be ulterior than not.
That's my point. We must counter such "friendly" ties with stronger ties of our own as regards India. Just my own opinion on the matter.
How long before China collapses of it's own disparity of wealth and privilege?
BLACKWILL: 'I killed snakes of anti-India US ayatollahs'
The Indian Express | Tuesday, May 24, 2005 at 1052 hours IST | The Press Trust of India
Posted on 05/25/2005 6:39:32 AM EDT by CarrotAndStick
Washington, May 24: No bilateral relationship during US President George W. Bush's first term improved as much as that between the US and India, former US ambassador to India Robert D. Blackwill has said.
"From the beginning, the President saw India as an answer to some of America's major geopolitical problems, rather than, as did his immediate predecessor, as a persistent non-proliferation problem that required an American-imposed solution," he wrote in an article India, our natural ally in leading American quarterly The National Interest.
Some attribute this expansion in relations to the impact of 9/11. But this is not the case, he said.
Blackwill said President Bush and his (then) National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice perceived India as a strategic opportunity for the United States and not a constantly irritating recalcitrant.
Right from the start, beginning with the transition, the White House developed a strategy to invigorate US-India ties and decided to stop hectoring India about its nuclear weapons.
"We began to speak about transforming the US-India relationship," he said.
For most of the President's first four years, Blackwill reveals, this strategic objective produced a constant struggle with two entrenches forces in the bureaucracy of the US government.
"The first were the non-proliferation 'ayatollahs,' as the Indians call them, who, despite the fact that the White House was intentionally redefining our relationship, sought to maintain without essential change all of the non-proliferation approaches towards India that had been pursued in the Clinton administration," he wrote.
"During the first year of the Bush presidency, I vividly recall receiving routine instructions in New Delhi from the State Department all the counterproductive language from the Clinton administration's approach to India's nuclear weapons programme," Blackwill said.
"These nagging nannies were alive and well in that State Department labyrinth. I, of course, did not implement those instructions. It took me months and many calls to the White House to finally cut off the head of this snake back home."
The second, says Blackwill, is related to what he would call the "hyphenators," those within the US government who would view India only through a Pakistan-India perspective.
With respect to their public statements during these years, if one does a search using the word "India," one will find invariably that the word "Pakistan" appears in the same sentence or the following sentences, or both.
The former envoy said while the intellectual basis for transforming the US-Indian relationship was firmly in place in the first term, the implementation was sometimes halting because of constant bureaucratic combat.
The visit of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to New Delhi in March demonstrated that the US-Indian relationship is now being rapidly accelerated.
"In my view the US should now integrate India into the evolving global non-proliferation regime as a friendly nuclear weapons state. We should end constraints on assistance to and cooperation with India's civil nuclear industry and high-tech trade, changing laws and policy whe/bn necessary. We should sell civil nuclear reactors to India, both to reduce the demand for Persian Gulf energy and to ease the environmental impact of India's vibrant economic growth.
& who exactly helped Pakistan out with it's N-programme??Who was & has remained Pakistan's largest arms supplier for the past 40 years?Which nation mobilised 7 odd divisions on it's borders with India to help out Pakistani troops who were being slaughtered in Bangladesh in 1971??Who is supplying Pakistan with hundreds of Al Khalid tanks,FC-1 fighters,4 frigates & BVR-AAMs & is also building a strategically vital deepwater port on Pakistan's Makran coast????It certainly ain't the US of A.
Once you figured out the answer to that question,you will realise that this article is a piece of thrash which soundly ignores reality so that it presents everything in black & white.
PS-there's no pact between India & China.These joint military "exercises" are lolipop confidence building measures,not simulations of realistic combat scenarios.
Civil reasoned discourse on FR is a rare bird indeed. All one has to do is read posts to your original. Sad commentary.
"In my view the US should now integrate India into the evolving global non-proliferation regime as a friendly nuclear weapons state. We should end constraints on assistance to and cooperation with India's civil nuclear industry and high-tech trade, changing laws and policy when necessary. We should sell civil nuclear reactors to India, both to reduce the demand for Persian Gulf energy and to ease the environmental impact of India's vibrant economic growth.
...and, IMHO, this is exactly the type of thing we should be doing. Clearly, the Bush administration recognizes the need and is moving on it. Now, if following administrations will do the same and show the Indians that this is a national goal and desire, with long term potential, then we will be much, much better of and in a position to counter anything the Chinese do.
India has military exercises with a host of countries including Singapore, China, France, UK and the US. Military exercises mean nothing. India is aware of China propping up Pakistan and Bangladesh as a counter to India, Indo-China alliance can never happen.
Indeed, wonder what the Indians could be thinking...have they forgotten China's rape of Northern India so soon?
Pinging for Indian perspective...
An Indo-Chinese alliance will never happen, but an Indo-Chinese "alliance" may. After all, foreign policy is rarely what it appears to be.
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