Posted on 11/14/2009 6:58:16 AM PST by libh8er
NEW DELHI — The India-China relationship has entered choppy waters due to a perceptible hardening in the Chinese stance. Anti-India rhetoric in the state-run Chinese media has intensified, even as China has stepped up military pressure along the disputed Himalayan frontier through cross-border incursions. Beijing also has resurrected its long-dormant claim to the northeastern Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, nearly three times as large as Taiwan.
The more muscular Chinese stance clearly is tied to the new U.S.-India strategic partnership, symbolized by the nuclear deal and deepening military cooperation. As President George W. Bush declared in his valedictory speech, "We opened a new historic and strategic partnership with India."
The Obama administration, although committed to promoting that strategic partnership, has been reluctant to take New Delhi's side in any of its disputes with Beijing. This has emboldened China to up the ante against India, with the Chinese Foreign Ministry employing language like "we demand" in a recent statement that labeled the Indian prime minister's visit to Arunachal Pradesh a "disturbance."
New Delhi has hit back by permitting the Dalai Lama to tour Arunachal Pradesh and announcing an end to the practice of letting Chinese companies bring thousands of workers from China to work on projects in India. And in a public riposte to Beijing's raising of objections to multilateral funding of any project in Arunachal, India has asked China to cease its infrastructure and military projects in another disputed region — Pakistan-held Kashmir.
The present pattern of border provocations, new force deployments and mutual recriminations is redolent of the situation that prevailed 47 years ago when China routed the unprepared Indian military in a surprise two-front aggression. Today, amid rising tensions, the danger of border skirmishes, if not a limited war, looks real.
Such tensions have been rising since 2006. Until 2005, China actually was eschewing anti-India rhetoric and pursuing a policy of active engagement with India, even as it continued to expand its strategic space in southern Asia, to New Delhi's detriment. In fact, when Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao visited India in April 2005, the two countries unveiled six broad principles to help settle their festering border dispute. But after the Indo-U.S. defense-framework accord and nuclear deal were unveiled in quick succession in subsequent months, the mood in Beijing perceptibly changed.
That gave rise to a pattern that now has become commonplace: Chinese newspapers, individual bloggers, security think tanks and even officially blessed Web sites ratcheting up an "India threat" scenario. A U.S.-India military alliance has always been a strategic nightmare for the Chinese, and the ballyhooed Indo-U.S. global strategic partnership triggered alarm bells in Beijing.
The partnership, though, falls short of a formal military alliance. Still, the high-pitched Indian and American rhetoric that the new partnership represented a tectonic shift in geopolitical alignments apparently made Chinese policymakers believe that India was being groomed as a new Japan or Australia to America — a perception reinforced by subsequent arrangements and Indian orders for U.S. arms worth $3.5 billion in just the past year.
Clearly, New Delhi failed to foresee that its rush to forge close strategic bonds with Washington could provoke greater Chinese pressure and that, in such a situation, the U.S. actually would offer little comfort. Consequently, India finds itself in a spot today.
For one, Beijing calculatedly has sought to pressure India on multiple fronts — military, diplomatic and multilateral. For another, the U.S. — far from coming to India's support — has shied away from even cautioning Beijing against any attempt to forcibly change the territorial status quo. Indeed, on a host of issues — from the Dalai Lama to the Arunachal dispute — Washington has chosen not to antagonize Beijing. That, in effect, has left India on its own.
The spectacle of the president of the most powerful country in the world seeking to curry favor with a rights-abusing China by shunning the Dalai Lama during the Tibetan leader's Washington visit cannot but embolden the Chinese leadership to step up pressure on India, the seat of the Tibetan government in exile.
U.S. President Barack Obama also has signaled that America's strategic relationship with India will not be at the expense of the fast-growing U.S. ties with Beijing. The Obama team, after reviewing the Bush-era arrangements, now intends to abjure elements in its ties with New Delhi that could rile China, including any joint military drill in Arunachal or a 2007-style naval exercise involving the U.S., India, Australia, Japan and Singapore. Even trilateral U.S. naval maneuvers with India and Japan are being abandoned so as not to raise China's hackles.
As his secretary of state did in February, Obama is undertaking an Asia tour that begins in Japan and ends in China — the high spot — while skipping India. In fact, Washington is quietly charting a course of tacit neutrality on the Arunachal dispute. Yet Beijing remains suspicious of the likely trajectory of U.S.-India strategic ties, including pre-1962-style CIA meddling in Tibet.
This distrust found expression in the latest People's Daily editorial that accused New Delhi of pursuing a foreign policy of "befriending the far and attacking the near." Left to fend for itself, New Delhi has decided to steer clear of any confrontation with Beijing.
Still, even as it seeks to tamp down tensions with Beijing, New Delhi cannot rule out the use of force by China at a time when hardliners there seem to believe that a swift, 1962-style military victory can help fashion a Beijing-oriented Asia.
Having declared that America's "most important bilateral relationship in the world" is with Beijing, the Obama team must caution it against crossing well-defined red lines or going against its gospel of China's "peaceful rise."
Brahma Chellaney is professor of strategic studies at the independent, privately funded Center for Policy Research in New Delhi and the author of "Asian Juggernaut: The Rise of China, India and Japan," published by HarperCollins, with a new U.S. edition scheduled for release in January.
I think they should work on *domestic* consumption, rather than leeching off of us.
And *double* for China, since they *do* have military ambitions which would adversely affect us.
Cheers!
Maybe, but as with so many other areas of human endeavour, common sense does not change the facts on the ground or the situation to be dealt with.
The international nuclear consensus is that Israel and the US should be disarmed and the every radicalized state should have nuclear weapons.
Doesn't matter - In addition to being stupid, that goes against all the current non-proliferation treaties. We can ignore all that.
We need to establish norms contrary to the international norms.
Agreed. The current system is stupid.
The US india deal emphasizes the good principal that democracies get nukes and anti-democracies don’t.
It is a good principle only in the eyes of the west. To the other 170 nations of the world, it emphasises that the rules only apply to nations which are not friends of the US and is spun instantly into propaganda from the anti-western brigade. Secondly, in terms of our view that democracies may be trusted with nukes, it seems liklely that China or Russia (Democracy in name only) may feel that non-democracies may be trusted with nukes (Actually, as a side note - Mexico is a democracy. Would you terust them with an arsenal?). At the moment the rules call for anti-proliferation measures. No matter how tempting our reasons are for our own strategic needs, they open avenues to immediately be seized and exploited by other nations, many of which may be inimical to us.
Let's reform the damn treaties properly and amend interantaional law according - that can't regrettably be done unilaterally.
Also, when drafting, we may as well be realistic and acknowledge to ourselves that nukes can't be kept in the bottle forever, so the new laws should specify penalties for unprovoked use, etc. Nukes are a resourcing and engineering problem which means that while it's easy to make it tough to build them, the genie will escape at some point.
Because it made it hard for the US to say “Nuclear weapons are limited only to the authoirsed 5” whilst simultaneously participating in the pathetic fiction that neither India nor Pakistan officially have nukes and pouring such assistance into India’s nuclear infrastructure.
The dela was clever on Bush’s part for long-term strategic goals, though poorly executed. In terms on the US drive to restrain proliferation, it smacked of “Do as we say, not do as we do.”
You are correct. We are talking about the same place but I got the name wrong
Uttar Pradesh
Uttar Pradesh is in the heart of India and the people there are Indo-European, not Mongoloid.
They are not.
Phil, the Indians are as close to democratically-thinking ideological cousins and allies as we are ever likely to get East of Suez. "Cousins," and allies, they are. Blood brother pals they are not. They are cutthroat competitors and hearty capitalist chaps.Of course they are taking jobs and industries away from us. We let them ,,, encourage them ... do everything but give it away.. (Or rather, interests who own our government do) The Indians ain't stupid, if it's on the table, they'll take it.
Nations have allies who come and go. There is no such thing as a "friend," in foreign affairs.
Time to hamstring all immigration until we stabilize American culture and get our economy sound again. And it is time to end offshoring of our jobs.
Huzzah and God Bless you, Sir! And just whom have you selected to handle that patriotic chore? Hazlitt for President...yea!
The wisest thing to do is to use them, as they use us. That is to keep the CHICOM in line.
BS
They are using us. Period. Just like the ChiComs.
thanks — I know world geography. however, that does belie your statemetn that ARunachal was ever part of Mongolia — it wasn’t, not even the Mongol Empire. Neither was Uttar Pradesh.
Oh comon! Its on the outer rim of Mongolia
Well when ya put it that way....
Nearly half the Indians are vegetarians, especially the upper castes and have very little carbon footprint
Nice try. But Al Gore tells me that much cooking in India is done over smoky wood and charcoal fires! This must stop!
From now on, these "vegetarians" must eat the vegetables raw! And what about this dastardly Indian plan to bring electricity to remote villages? And tracking down man-eating tigers and dispatching them?
India is clearly a carbon-danger to the entire planet, especially hard on women, children, and minorities. One more such feeble excuse for their bad behavior, and I am reporting you to Oprah!
True. However, I think we'll find the Indians a bit more "user-friendly" from our POV than we will ever find the ChICOM.
IMHO, we have a fighting chance of developing a much sounder trading relationship with India than we will ever have with China. You are like a football player who is angry at the other team for outplaying us because they have a better coach.
What we need is a government that manages better, rather than one whose policies reward giving away the store.
You keep discussing this as if the US did it alone.
India and the US made a treaty.
That is good. The future is coalitions of the willing not UN norms of inhumanity.
Democracies are on the rise and they will thwart the anti-democracies such as Pakistan.
That will be the story of the 21st century.
I would rather Mexico have nukes than Pakistan or North Korea.
Obviously, facts and rationalism have no impact on you.
You are convinced of your certitude that is combined with a lack of discrimination of actual facts.
So, GFY, Ghost.
P.S. The jobs are gone. Noticed that yet?
However, this cuisine is now starting to appear in America.
What are the strategic implications.
Granted, a Wiki link, so statements may not match reality or facts, but this topic seems fairly balanced...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Chinese_cuisine
Sounds delish. Is it OK with Al Gore?
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