“India and China engage in an annual strategic dialogue in which, for long, China refused to discuss nuclear issues. Its proliferation record, especially clandestine supply of nuclear and missile technology to Pakistan, is out of bounds. Delhi has never had the courage to raise the topic for fear of offending Beijing. Decoupling Pakistan from China ought to be a strategic objective.”__________________________________
by Major General Ashok Mehta (retd)
(March 24, New Delhi, Sri Lanka Guardian) Cognisant of the spotlight on the Olympic Games in summer, the Chinese are dealing firmly with the third uprising in Tibet. They have a time-tested strategy, which is to wait out the Dalai Lama and appoint his successor - like their earlier selection of the Panchen Lama. In awe of the Chinese and their markets, the Western world will do no more than raise issues of human rights. India, on the other hand, has no strategy for Tibet and China.
This startling deficiency in Indian diplomacy owes its origins to Delhi's acquiescence to Beijing's invasion, subjugation and annexation of Tibet in the 1950s. China not only covertly built a strategic highway across Aksai Chin connecting Tibet, but also delivered the ignominy of a military defeat resulting from India's thoughtless forward policy. Nursing the psyche of a defeated country, India has been merely reacting to China's agenda on the border dispute intrinsically linked to Tibet. Bhutan's residual border dispute with China has become hostage to the McMahon Line and will require three-way talks to fix the two trijunctions on the Bhutan border.
Having lost Tibet as a buffer, India was unable to take advantage of its military successes in Nathu La (1967) or Sumdorong Chu (1987), or for that matter develop the Tibet, Taiwan or Vietnam cards. On the other hand, it proposed China's membership of the UN Security Council and extolled the virtues of 'Hindi-Chini, bhai-bhai'. Even the parliamentary resolution of 1962 to "recover every inch..." was an empty boast, as neither operational nor infrastructural capacities were built up to do so. The Forward Policy mark II, initiated in the early-1980s, was abandoned in deference to Chinese sensitivities. Tawang, the bone of contention today, had been fortified by the late-1980s into a four-brigade garrison and had to be thinned down.
Working to a plan, the Chinese sought and secured the Peace and CBM Treaties of 1993 and 1996 and Indian complacency, while virtually freezing the border dispute. This was a prerequisite for stability and growth in China, modernisation of the PLA and enhancement of infrastructure in Tibet. The Chinese have dictated the terms and timetable of the border talks - whether defining the Line of Actual Control or skipping the demarcation with a political solution based on ground realities. As a satisfied power - it has Aksai Chin and Tibet - there is little urgency or incentive to let India off the hook as the border deployment imposes avoidable costs on Delhi.
Chou En Lai offered India "territorial swap" deal in the late-1960s, which was later repeated by Deng Xiaoping. By then the 1962 parliamentary resolution was emblazoned in military op rooms across the country. Sticking to a historical trait, as China became stronger, its position on the border dispute hardened to "concessions in the east for concessions in the west", which led to the definition of the LAC. As China had no intention of resolving the border dispute other than on its terms, it reneged on the exchange of maps and subsequently raised obstacles on the alternative approach of "political parameters relating to not disturbing settled population centres". Leading India up the garden path, it seeks to possess all of Tawang and widen and deepen the Chumbi Valley salient adjoining Bhutan to pose a permanent threat to the Siliguri corridor in cahoots with Bangladesh.
China has resorted to upping the ante with India periodically: Objecting to the Tibetan Government-in-exile at Dharamsala, derecognising Sikkim, claiming Arunachal Pradesh and raising a shindig after India attributed its nuclear tests to "threat from China". The then External Affairs Minister, Mr Jaswant Singh, travelled to Beijing to publicly retract that 'statement' and said that China was not a threat to India. China is extremely sensitive about the notion that as a peace-loving country it could be a threat to another. Recent Chinese Ambassadors to India have been less than diplomatic in public comments on the responsibility for 1962 India-China war and border-related issues, a privilege never afforded to the Indian Ambassador in Beijing.
Beijing's most recent assertions have come in the wake of China doubling to quadrupling its infrastructural and operational capacity in Tibet, President Hu Jintao's 2006 visit to India and the growing India-US strategic partnership. The claim to Arunachal Pradesh has never been more strident and India's timidity never more pronounced. Chinese diplomats have had the temerity to equate Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's January visit to Arunachal Pradesh as trespass into their territory - all India did was to say Arunachal Pradesh was an integral part of India. For such an unfriendly act to occur in the aftermath of high-level visits to China by Congress president Sonia Gandhi, Mr Singh and Defence Minister AK Antony is nothing short of appalling. India has become habituated to turning the other cheek to China.
Mr Antony has been showering praise on the infrastructural development in Tibet compared to the near-zero development on the Indian side. The high altitude train to Lhasa, which is to be connected to Kathmandu, and the maze of road networks, including the Class 50 four-lane East-West Highway and three new airfields, have raised the logistics capacity phenomenally. Sixteen trains per day have enhanced build up from 4,700 tonnes to 11,000 tonnes per day and enabled concentration of 28 PLA Divisions in one season. The recent appointment of the former Army Chief, Gen JJ Singh, as Governor of Arunachal Pradesh is just symbolic while the Rs 8000 crore development package is too little too late. The IAF, too, has been caught on the back-foot and will have to shift the strategic focus from west to east and look north.
India and China engage in an annual strategic dialogue in which, for long, China refused to discuss nuclear issues. Its proliferation record, especially clandestine supply of nuclear and missile technology to Pakistan, is out of bounds. Delhi has never had the courage to raise the topic for fear of offending Beijing. Decoupling Pakistan from China ought to be a strategic objective.
Only when India capitulated unambiguously on Tibet that China depicted Sikkim within India on its map. Despite periodic humiliation over Arunachal Pradesh, the Prime Minister wants to emulate China. He lavishes praise, claims India has the best of relations with it and emphasises that China is the focal point of India's 'Look East' policy. By 2010 India-China trade will surpass $ 60 billion with the latter being the bigger beneficiary. On every count - political, diplomatic, military and economic - Beijing outwits Delhi and calls the shots. There is no quid pro quo for the Indian record of generosity and goodwill. China has kept India guessing on its permanent membership of the UN Security Council and the nuclear deal with the US.
The turmoil in Tibet is an opportunity for India to break out of its self-inflicted straitjacket and explore ways and means for a dynamic Tibet and China policy. The Dalai Lama, who is quite circumspect, need not then have to say that India is very cautious in dealing with China. Caution, yes. Diffidence, no.
- Sri Lanka Guardian
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