SASF – Blogs

By Mohan Guruswamy. November 3, 2009. The short answer to whether India and China will always be rivals is YES. But rivals need not be enemies and neighbors need not get fratricidal. If there are two large and rising powers in a region, rivalry is inevitable. France and Germany or Brazil and Argentina come readily to mind. A hundred and fifty years ago France and Britain were bitter adversaries. The rise of Teutonic nationalism and of Nazism united the two countries against a common enemy. The “end of history” with the triumph of liberal democracy has largely blunted Franco-German rivalry by entwining them economically, while the advent of the European Union has made the borders seamless. The ratification of the Treaty of Tlatelolco of 1967 by Argentina in 1994, making all of Latin America and the Caribbean a nuclear free zone, has more or less eliminated any vestigial military fears Argentina and Brazil may have had. On the other hand go to a Brazil-Argentina soccer match or to a France-England rugby game and you will wonder if things have changed at all? Rivalries, it seems, are forever!

The situation between India and China is not very different. Nationalism arrived in both countries at about the same time in the early 1900’s with the advent of Sun Yat Sen in China and MK Gandhi in India. This was after centuries of foreign rule over the Han and Hindu ethnic majorities. After decades of turbulence both countries emerged as “free nations” with entirely different systems in the waning 1940’s. Mao Zedong and Jawaharlal Nehru were leaders with entirely different personalities and world views. Mao’s ruthless instincts were honed as the leader of the Communists in a bloody civil war. On the other side Jawaharlal’s were finessed under the tutelage of Mahatma Gandhi into that of a somewhat naïve and dreamy idealist. The isolation of the two countries that the British had so assiduously nurtured by supporting an independent Tibet was rudely shattered by its annexation by China in 1951. This and the handing over of Xinjiang by the then USSR to the new PRC made the Han and the Hindu neighbors for the first time in history.

Since 1954 the legacy of a disputed border has flared up into a bitter row. Both countries are guilty of misinterpreting history to further their claims. India’s claim of the barren and wind swept Aksai Chin plateau rests on an arbitrary extension of the border in 1939 to the present claim line first suggested by WH Johnson in 1865. Johnson was a discontented official of the Survey of India who made his fortune by vastly extending the Kashmir Maharaja’s domain on the map. The 1939 extension was done to create a buffer between Xinjiang, which had turned into a Soviet protectorate, and British India.

On the other side in China the obsequious courtiers of the Qing (Manchu) dynasty were not averse to some cartographic conquests of their own.  Ge Jianxiong, a well respected history professor at China’s prestigious Fudan University, has written that “the notions of Greater China were based entirely on one-sided views of Qing court records that were written for the courts self-aggrandizement.” Ge has also written criticizing those who feel that the more they exaggerate the territory the more “patriotic” they are. The present Dalai Lama lent weight to this by formally staking a claim over Tawang to the newly independent India in 1947. Such is the stuff that wars are made off and the two countries are in a military face-off since 1962.

To be fair to the Chinese they have at several times offered a package deal of settling by foregoing each others un-historic and unsubstantiated claims in Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh. India’s leadership has balked at this lest it be accused by the opposition of the day of selling out. Only in recent days a new wisdom seemed to creeping into South Block, but the Chinese have suddenly turned recalcitrant. They now seem to suggest that the package deal is no longer on offer?

As if this were not enough there are other issues that color each other perceptions. The voracious appetite for Tiger parts in China is one. The rise of China, which was the dominant event of the last two decades, is now being threatened by a slowing down economy, and it is locked into an irretrievable reverse hock to the vastly indebted USA. India on the other hand has begun to experience heady growth rates since the turn of the century, giving rise to a new giddiness about its place in the world. The Chinese don’t care too much for this. This is the stuff of competition. But not war. For both sides, as the song goes, are now endowed with the mushroom shaped cloud! And so we will have to be content playing rivals.

Mohan Guruswamy

Email: mohanguru@gmail.com

November 3, 2009

By Mohan Guruswamy

Ironically enough the downslide in India-China relations began in just days before November 2006 visit of Hu Jintao, supposedly intended to showcase an upswing in the relations. It began when the then Chinese Ambassador to India, Sun Yuxi, made a rather indiscreet and untimely comment to a TV news channel that the status of Arunachal Pradesh was still an unresolved issue between the two countries. Whether Sun Yuxi made this comment as mere restatement of the old Chinese position for the record or to deliberately stir the pot will be debated for a long time. Sun Yuxi himself told me that he did not intend it to stir things up and that the partly American owned TV channel deliberately played it up to blight the improving ties. Sun Yuxi also, quite significantly, added that while he might have been indiscreet, his statement won him a great deal of support from groups in China who favor a hard-line with India, ever since it began to draw closer to the USA. Many in China believe that India is now part of an US attempt to encircle it and even Prakash Karat of our CPM has echoed this view. The result of the Sun Yuxi statement was that what had become a mere border alignment issue was once again transformed into a territorial issue.

The thaw in our ties was initiated when Deng Xiaoping made an offer to Rajiv Gandhi in December 1988 to settle the border dispute on an as is where is basis. The politically beleaguered Rajiv Gandhi felt that he did have the political capital for a deal to essentially forego claims on Aksai Chin in exchange for an alignment generally corresponding McMahon Line. The two leaders then agreed to keep the issue frozen for settlement “at some future time”.

Following this and the agreements consequent to the visits of Narasimha Rao and Atal Behari Vajpayee, it was generally believed in India that the Chinese claim on Arunachal Pradesh was now in the past. While releasing my book “India China Relations: The Border Issue and Beyond” earlier this year, in response to a pointed question from a journalist, the then Foreign Secretary strongly hinted that a settlement along the status quo might now be more acceptable to the Indian leadership.

As if the border row wasn’t enough to heat up relations, other issues too have cropped up. There is the question of the Dalai Lama’s continued residence in India which surfaced even as the waters of distrust began receding. China’s inability to deal with the increasing Tibetan restiveness also makes it angrily point a finger at India. When in India the Dalai Lama is restricted to just performing his ecclesiastical duties which include tending to the spiritual needs of a large Indian flock adhering to the Tibetan school of Mahayana Buddhism. The Chinese have now taken umbrage over his visit to the ancient monastery at Tawang. Let alone the Dalai Lama’s visit, they were even critical of Dr. Manmohan Singh’s visit to the state last month. In the recent days the situation has been further vitiated by stories, many of them false, in the Indian media.

The global economic crisis has exacerbated problems within China’s rapidly growing economy. With US markets’ rapidly shrinking it needs to find markets elsewhere to sustain its export led growth model. The rapidly growing Sino-Indian trade, but increasingly tilted in China’s favor mostly due to an undervalued Yuan, is yet another festering issue. China derives much of its export prowess due to its undervalued Yuan and exploitative labor practices. The economic profligacy of the USA and China’s somewhat naïve hoarding of trillions of dollars as reserves makes it the USA’s co-equal in causing the global economic mayhem. There is no sign that China has derived lessons from this and will revalue the Yuan.

The misuse of business visas by Chinese construction companies to bring in tens of thousands of workers into India is now another issue. On the other hand the issue of visas on a separate sheet of paper to Indian residents of J&K and Arunachal Pradesh in a bid to highlight their disputed status is seen as deliberately provocative by India. Providing a backdrop to all this is the China’s rather duplicitous role at the Vienna conference to ratify the IAEA’s exemption for India from the stringent provisions instituted after our 1974 nuclear test; and its opposition to the expansion of the UN Security Council’s permanent membership and by extension India’s entry into it.

In the recent days several new publications and books have exposed how extensively China assisted in the development of Pakistan’s nuclear program and their delivery systems. Since Pakistan’s nuclear program is entirely India centric, this is in itself is quite revealing about the intensity of Chinese hostility then towards India. The Chinese have been insisting that it was in the past and China is now committed to improving ties with India. But the proof of the pudding is in the eating and China, despite its much vaunted policy culinary abilities, has not yet put it on the table!

(Mohan Guruswamy is a well known commentator and is the author of the recently published “Chasing the Dragon: Will India Catch-up with China?”)

An excellent analysis written by, Nimmi Kurian for the Indian Express 1st August 2009.(The writer is an associate professor at the Centre for Policy Research.)

Questions to be asked (Please add more If you feel like )

1) Where does this leave India?
2) Will China become an Imperial power annexing smaller nations to feed its labor demand ?
3)Will a negative population growth rate in China sustain Chinas Economy ? If not then what ? (Reminder : China and India have been touted as saviors in the context of the current economic crises.)
4)Will aspirations of “super power” status be scuttled by a weakened population base ? If so will China of the future be more belligerent in the international arena to achieve this super power status before its eventual collapse?
5) Is a weakened China good for Asia ? (Personally I think not)

China may be taking its first tentative baby steps to change its landmark one-child policy. In particular, Shanghai has indicated a relaxation in the policy by encouraging couples to have two children. This year marks the 30th year of its implementation: Why could China be having second thoughts?

Good reasons. Child-bearing has always enjoyed a millennia-old political and cultural sanction in China; through the eons-long line of dynasties, child bearing was not only encouraged but also actively promoted by the state through preferential policies. In fact, in the ’50s and ’60s, Mao even gave awards to women for bearing many children. Population control was nothing short of heresy in those days, anyone arguing for such curbs was thrown behind bars.

It is ironic that China is rethinking the policy not because it has failed. It is doing so because it succeeded. In fact its success is China’s biggest problem today. Rigorous implementation has seen China’s average fertility rate falling below replacement levels. As a result, China as a whole may be having around 1.4 to 1.5 births per woman, with Shanghai registering a low of 0.96. Official estimates claim that the policy has prevented more than 400 million births since its inception. But this has brought in its wake several disturbing social and economic challenges. As it braces to wrestle with these, the question is, can China retrofit the demographic architecture of the country?

Easier said than done. There is a growing realisation that the cure was worse than the disease. It has resulted in a skewed sex-ratio of disturbing proportions.China’s gender gap has steadily grown worse from a relatively normal ratio of 108.5 boys to 100 girls in the early ’80s to now stand at 123 boys for every 100 girls. This has also gone on to worsen the deeply-entrenched cultural preference for a male child. The Ancient Chinese Book of Songs reads more like a dirge for girls: “when a son is born, let him sleep on the bed, give him fine clothes” but “when a daughter is born, let her sleep on the ground, wrap her in common wrappings, and give broken tiles to play.” The stringent implementation of the one-child norm has resulted in a sharp spike in “gendercide” through illegal prenatal sex determination and sex-selective abortions.

The policy-induced crisis means that the country will have to grapple with a whole set of social, productivity and fiscal challenges. To begin with, growing gender gaps have set off an intense competition for wives. It is estimated there could be as many as 40 million “surplus” men in China by 2020 unable to find a wife. Hence a highly organised criminal network of trafficking in girls and women: anywhere between 2000 and 3000 girls and women kidnapped a year. Particularly perverse is the rising incidence of baby bride trafficking, where armed gangs are kidnapping baby girls for farmers who want wives for their sons when they grow up.

China is already home to half the elderly in Asia, with those above the age of 65 expected to rise to 320 million by 2040. A fast ageing society will also induce a prolonged period of labour pains. It is estimated that China’s labour force could peak by 2016 and structural shortages of labour could become an endemic feature of the economy. Inter-generational tensions are also on the rise as the one-child policy grapples with what has come to be known as the 4-2-1 problem. This means that there will only be one child left in a family to care for two parents and four grandparents.

As these social costs have mounted, China has mounted a campaign to achieve population control through softer, less coercive means. It is unlikely that course-correction will result in a major reversal in policy. Changing course will prove tricky in a country where population control still remains the primary policy goal. To expect China to walk away from this will be both unrealistic and unfeasible.

Moscow: Russia has completed the first stage of pre-delivery trials of the Akula-II class ‘Nerpa’ nuclear-powered attack submarine, which is likely to be operational with the Indian Navy much before New Delhi’s indigenous ‘INS Arihant’.

The ‘Nerpa’ submarine will join the Navy by the year-end with the first set of sea trials being completed successfully according to schedule, an official of the Amur Shipyard was quoted as saying by the ‘RIA Novosti’ Monday.

But top officials in both Moscow and New Delhi are tight-lipped about the armaments the submarine will carry.

While ‘INS Arihant’ is being armed with 700-km range K-15 nuclear-tipped missiles, it is not known if Nerpa will have Indian or Russian nuclear missiles.
‘Nerpa’, the Akula-II class submarine, has a displacement of 12,000 tonnes and is far bigger than ‘INS Arihant’, which has just 6,000 tonnage capacity.

India joined an elite club of nations, including the US, Russia, China, France and the UK to produce nuclear under-sea vessels with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his wife Gursharan Kaur inaugurating the sub for extensive sea trials on Sunday.

The new trials for Nerpa are taking place as it was hit by a major mishap on November 8 in the Sea of Japan when accidental triggering of the fire suppression system led to release of highly toxic gas, killing 20 crew members and civilian technical staff. It resumed sea trials on July 10 following extensive repairs.

Nerpa is the latest nuclear submarine in the Russian Navy’s armada. Though ‘INS Arihant’ has some features like the Russian sub, but according to NATO sources the Akula-class vessel is one of the most potent undersea weapons in the world, far superior than the Chinese subs.

After the sea trials, Indian Navy men would be trained on Nerpa, which can come in handy for personnel posted on board the ‘Arihant’.

“The (Nerpa) sub is back at the in Bolshoi Kamen (port) in the Maritime Territory, and it is getting ready for the second stage of the scheduled trials,” the shipyard official said.

Some special equipment for performance checking and adjustment work will be installed on board the submarine, before it begins the second and final stage of pre-delivery trials.

Source: PTI

Ramtanu Maitra

12/30/07

The gruesome killing of Benazir Bhutto in the evening hours of Dec. 27 in Pakistan’s garrison town of Rawalpindi is yet another step in the process of weakening, and eventual break-up, of Pakistan.

Despite the crocodile tears shed in Washington and London over Bhutto’s assassination, it was a disaster waiting to happen and therefore, was altogether expected. Those who believed, naively, that Bhutto’s mission was to reinstate democracy in Pakistan and put its usurpers, the Pakistani military, in the background, do not realize why she was inserted into the scene, which was already rife with violence. The truth is that the British imperial circles, with their stooges in Washington, set up Bhutto’s execution, to advance their scheme to break up Pakistan, and create chaos throughout this strategic region.

Bhutto, no doubt, was a mass-based political leader, but she was a woman (an excuse used by the puppet Islamic jihadists to commit violence against a person), and she was goaded into the scene by the United States-perhaps now the most hated nation among Muslims in general-to serve Washington’s purpose, which was to put the Pakistani military on the defensive and force it to share power with a democratic politician. According to the master strategists in Washington, that is the best of both worlds-the Pakistani military stays friendly, while the United States shakes off its guilt of backing a military dictator.

It is not known what transpired in the telephone call between U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Benazir Bhutto that led to Bhutto’s decision to return. What promises were made will not be known unless Rice can shake off the national security garb and tell the truth. The one who knew, and could tell others, is gone.

The 9/11 event had enticed a weak-in-the-head Bush Administration to embark on a journey, the path of which was paved by the British colonialists. The vestiges of British colonial aspirations exist not only at Buckingham Palace, but even more so in the power of the intrigue and secrecy-ridden City of London.

Britain and the Muslims

The partition of India, and the formation of Pakistan, a Muslim nation, by the British Raj, was not done because the British liked Muslims. They had slaughtered them by the thousands in 1856, when the Hindus and Muslims joined hands under the last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, to drive out the firenghee (white-skinned foreigners). Those who remember that untold part of the history of the Indian independence movement, talk of the piles of bodies lying in the streets of Delhi slaughtered by British soldiers. Most of them, like Benazir Bhutto and her colleagues who died on Dec. 27, were Muslims.

The Muslims were “traitors” aspiring to reinstate the “despicable” and “corrupt” Mughal dynasty, London screamed.

The key to the British Empire’s financial success was its ability to manipulate Islam. The British Empire-builders eliminated the Islamic Caliphate, created nations out of deserts, eliminated some nations, and partitioned others to create Islamic nations. Britain was aware that the oil fields of Arabia would be a source of great power in the post-World War II decades. The western part of British India bordered Muslim Central Asia, another major source of oil and gas, bordering Russia and Muslim Afghanistan. British India also bordered Islamic Iran and the Persian Gulf-the doorway to the oil fields of Arabia. In order to keep its future options open, Balochistan, bordering northeastern Iran, and the tribal Pushtun-dominated areas bordering Afghanistan, remained as British protectorates. continue reading…

“Evolving Entente”: Geostrategic Import of the Coming Bay of Bengal Naval Exercise

Ramtanu Maitra

Executive Intelligence Review, 27 July 2007

Come September, India will host a major naval exercise in the strategic Bay of Bengal, located between mainland India, Bangladesh, and the western shores of Myanmar, Thailand, and Malaysia, Indian Defense Ministry officials report.

The war manoeuvre will bring together naval forces from four other countries:Australia, Japan, Singapore, and theUnited States. The 20 warships that will participate include two nuclear aircraft carriers from the United States, the USS Nimitz and USS Kitty Hawk, and one non-nuclear carrier from India, the INS Viraat. In addition, the five-day manoeuvres will also see in action shore-based Jaguar deep penetration strike aircraft of the Indian Air Force and the Indian Navy’s Sea Harrier jets and Sea King helicopters from the INS Viraat.

Indian defense officials point out that the location of the planned naval exercise has been chosen to maintain distance from the arc of the Pacific Ocean, and skirts the borders of Russia and China where such moves could arouse Beijing’s sensitivities.

From all available accounts, it can be assumed that the September naval exercise will be the biggest held in the region by far. Last April, the United States, Japan, and India conducted their first joint naval exercises off the Japanese coast. That was a one-day goodwill exercise, as one Indian official pointed out, and did not involve many manoeuvres.

The Mysore, an Indian guided-missile destroyer, along with two U.S. destroyers and three escort ships of  Japan’s Self-Defense Force (SDF), were among the vessels that took part in the exercise off Chiba prefecture (state) on Japan’s eastern coast, according to Japan’s Defense Ministry. No doubt the September exercises will be dramatically different.

A Troubled Area

The manoeuvres will take place at a time and place of great instability, much of which has spun off from the Anglo-American reactions to the 9/11 event. Not far from where the September exercise will take place is the Persian Gulf, the cockpit of the current Iraq conflict, and potential attack on Iran.

The situation in Iraq is deteriorating every day, and the fear of involvement of citizens, if not of the governments of Iraq’s neighbors, in this civil war looms large. The presence of about 200,000 foreign troops, of which 170,000 are from the United States, and almost 30,000 private, armed security forces, mostly from western countries, have not succeeded in drawing down the level of violence which exceeds 100 deaths every day in Iraq.

East of Iraq, the United States and the NATO member-nations have been engaged for over five years in trying to physically eliminate the Islamist Taliban militants, who have been entrenched in Afghanistan since 1996. The invaders’ self-proclaimed war on terror was launched soon after the 9/11 event. continue reading…

Ramtanu Maitra and Susan Maitra

Sunday, January 29, 2006

Continuing terrorist actions and violent demonstrations over the last five decades have turned India’s Northeast into a dangerous place. Large-scale introduction of narcotics and arms from neighboring Myanmar (Burma) and China has made this strategically crucial area a potential theater of violent secessionist movements.

Imbued with the British ideology of encouraging ethnic, sub-ethnic, religious, and linguistic identities—as opposed to the identity of a citizen of a sovereign nation-state—both New Delhi and the residents of Northeast India are marching recklessly along the very path prescribed by the British Raj in 1862, when he laid down the law of apartheid to isolate “the tribals.” While it is not clear how long this fateful road is, there is little doubt what awaits them at the end.

British mindset at work

Since India’s independence in 1947, Northeast India has been split up into smaller and smaller states and autonomous regions. The divisions were made to accommodate the wishes of tribes and ethnic groups which want to assert their sub-national identity and obtain an area where the diktat of their little coterie is recognized. New Delhi has yet to comprehend that its policy of accepting and institutionalizing the superficial identities of these ethnic, linguistic, and tribal groups has ensured more irrational demands for even smaller states. It has also virtually eliminated any plan to make these areas economically powerful, and the people scientifically and technologically advanced.

A situation has now arisen in which New Delhi’s promised carrot of economic development evokes little enthusiasm in the Northeast. Money from New Delhi for “development” serves to appease the “greed” of a handful and to maintain the status quo. On the other hand, fresh separatist movements bring the area closer to the precipice.

Assam has been cut up into many states since Britain’s exit. The autonomous regions of Karbi Anglong, Bodo Autonomous Region, and Meghalaya were all part of pre-independence Assam. Citing the influx of Bengali Muslims since the 1947 formation of East Pakistan, which became Bangladesh in 1971, the locals demand the ouster of these “foreigners” from their soil. Two violent movements in Assam, the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) and the Bodo Security Force (BdSF), are now practically demanding “ethnic cleansing” in their respective areas.

To fund their movements, both the ULFA and the BdSF have been trafficking heroin and other narcotics, and indulging in killing sprees against other ethnic groups and against Delhi’s law-and-order machinery. Both these groups have also developed close links with other major guerrilla-terrorist groups operating in the area, including the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Muivah) and the People’s Liberation Army in Manipur. continue reading…

By Ramtanu Maitra 30 March, 2005

The United States is beefing up its military presence in Afghanistan, at the same time encircling Iran. Washington will set up nine new bases in Afghanistan in the provinces of Helmand, Herat, Nimrouz, Balkh, Khost and Paktia.

Reports also make it clear that the decision to set up new US military bases was made during Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s visit to Kabul last December. Subsequently, Afghan President Hamid Karzai accepted the Pentagon diktat. Not that Karzai had a choice: US intelligence is of the view that he will not be able to hold on to his throne beyond June unless the US Army can speed up training of a large number of Afghan army recruits and protect Kabul. Even today, the inner core of Karzai’s security is run by the US State Department with personnel provided by private US contractors.

Admittedly, Afghanistan is far from stable, even after four years of US presence. Still, the establishment of a rash of bases would seem to be overkill. Indeed, according to observers, the base expansion could be part of a US global military plan calling for small but flexible bases that make it easy to ferry supplies and can be used in due time as a springboard to assert a presence far beyond Afghanistan.

Afghanistan under control?

On February 23, according to the official Bakhter News Agency, 196 American military instructors arrived in Kabul. These instructors are scheduled to be in Afghanistan until the end of 2006. According to General H Head, commander of the US Phoenix Joint Working Force, the objective of the team is to expedite the educational and training programs of Afghan army personnel. The plan to protect Karzai and the new-found “democracy” in Afghanistan rests on the creation of a well-trained 70,000-man Afghan National Army (ANA) by the end of 2006. As of now, 20,000 ANA personnel help out 17,000-plus US troops and some 5,000-plus North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) troops currently based in Afghanistan.

In addition, on February 28, in a move to bring a large number of militiamen into the ANA quickly, Karzai appointed General Abdur Rashid Dostum, a regional Uzbek-Afghan warlord of disrepute, as his personal military chief of staff. The list of what is wrong with Dostum is too long for this article, but he is important to Karzai and the Pentagon.

Dostum has at least 30,000 militiamen, members of his Jumbush-e-Milli, under him. A quick change of their uniforms would increase the ANA by 30,000 at a minimal cost. Moreover, Dostum’s men do not need military training (what they do need is some understanding of and respect for law and order). Another important factor that comes into play with this union is the Pentagon-Karzai plan to counter the other major north Afghan ethnic grouping, the Tajik-Afghans. continue reading…