India must wake up to the individual and joint efforts its immediate neighbours are making to destabilise the security environment in the country. Unfortunately, the Centre remains passive
With its economy in the doldrums, New Delhi is now confronted with a situation where two of its neighbours — China and Pakistan — are jointly and separately undermining its security and influence worldwide. Emboldened by Chinese assistance leading to the strengthening of its Navy (four new frigates), Air Force (JF 17 fighters) and nuclear armoury (plutonium-based tactical nuclear weapons), Pakistan now believes that it can effectively deter India from responding firmly to terrorist strikes emanating from its soil. India’s mandarins, resorting to clichés like, “Pakistan is also a victim of terrorism”, and “Action on terrorism (by Pakistan) should not be linked (by India) to the Composite Dialogue Process”, now referred to as the ‘Sharm el-Sheikh Syndrome’, would like us to believe that Pakistan is having a change of heart.
It is this approach to diplomacy that has led Mr Nawaz Sharif to insist that the Composite Dialogue Process with India should commence at where it was, when he was ousted in 1999. He wants us to forget that the Red Fort was attacked by the lashkar-e-Tayyeba (now generously financed by his brother, the Chief Minister of Punjab) in 2001, and ignore the attack on our Parliament in 2001 and the 2008 26/11 carnage in Mumbai, executed by jihadis from Pakistan. Despite the outrage over the recent killings of our soldiers, we should have no doubt that our ‘dialogue at all costs’ security establishment in South Block will stealthily return to the recipes of the Sharm el-Sheikh surrender. Mr Sharif has returned from China, fully assured that the Chinese will build a highway linking their Xingjian Province to Gwadar Port, which they now manage, through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. The strategic implications of this project, which will be largely executed by Chinese Army engineers, together with their development of hydro-electric projects and infrastructure in Gilgit-Baltistan, give the Chinese the ability to establish a security presence adjacent to the line of Control, astride our lines of communication to ladakh and Siachen.
If Pakistan had succeeded in pushing New Delhi to delink the Composite Dialogue Process from its support for terrorism, China has successfully scuttled all possibility of an early border settlement, by upping its border claims in both Arunachal Pradesh and ladakh, even as it waxes eloquent on the dialogue on the border issue between the designated Special Representatives. Successive Indian National Security Advisers have strutted around pretending that they have devised brilliant new ideas to resolve the vexed border issue. The reality is somewhat different. Prime Minister Wen Jiabao agreed in 2005 that the “boundary should be along well defined and easily identifiable natural geographical features” and that in “reaching a border settlement, the two sides shall safeguard the interests of their settled populations in the border areas”. Yet, just a year later, the Chinese Ambassador in New Delhi proclaimed that the whole of Arunachal Pradesh, re-designated as ‘South Tibet’, is part of China.
It should have been evident to New Delhi that China had no intention of resolving the border issue, when it refused to exchange maps delineating the line of Control in the crucial western (ladakh) and eastern (Arunachal Pradesh) sectors. India claims the line of Actual Control in the ladakh sector lies along the Karakoram mountains up to the Indus river watershed. This conforms to the 2005 Guiding Principles that the border would be along “well defined and easily identifiable natural geographical features”. Chinese intrusions in Debsang, Chumar, Chushul, Pangong lake, Daulat Beg Oldi and Demchok are clearly in areas where they have no business intruding, going by the terms of the Guiding Principles of 2005. Moreover, India’s claims are also validated by agreements on the ladakh-Tibet border, starting with the 1683 ladakh Tibet Agreement defining the border as lying along “the lhari stream at Demchok”, to the September 1842 Treaty with Tibet/China concluded by ladakh’s Sikh rulers, and the Macartney-Macdonald line presented by the British to China in 1899.
Instead of directly confronting Chinese assertiveness on the border issue, New Delhi has been a mere spectator while China made inroads, undermining Indian influence in Bhutan, Maldives and Nepal, while building bridges to a possible Khaleda Zia-led dispensation in Bangladesh. China has even undermined India’s defence ties with the US and Japan by forcing a dithering security establishment in South Block to cancel participation in proposed joint naval exercises in the Pacific. While Premier li Keqiang’s visit to New Delhi was linked to his trip to Pakistan, would Prime Minister Manmohan Singh reciprocate by visiting Vietnam, Japan and the Philippines after his forthcoming visit to ChinaIJ Should we not engage Japan, Vietnam, the Philippines and others for devising a ‘string of pearls’ in the South China SeaIJ The economic downturn and delays in defence acquisitions have only added to errant and assertive Chinese and Pakistani behaviour. After dithering for over two years, the Cabinet has finally sanctioned the raising of Strike Corps for deployment along the Siliguri Corridor. But what use will such a Strike Corps be, without mountain artillery whose acquisition has been hanging on fire for years, the deployment of mechanised and tank formations, and the establishment of air dominance over our bordersIJ
Economically, the Chinese are obtaining a stranglehold on the power, communications and electronics sectors in India, thereby, getting the potential to disrupt power and communications in the country. After much procrastination, the Government has slapped a 22 per cent duty on import of Chinese power equipment. Hopefully, Indian public and private companies will be given incentives to face state-supported and state-subsidised Chinese companies. The picture is unfortunately bleak in the electronics and communications sectors where our imports, substantially from China, could well exceed our petroleum imports by 2020. This issue was sought to be addressed by the establishment of manufacturing parks for chips and IT equipment. Such manufacturing facilities would naturally require preferential access in purchases by Government organisations and private companies. The Government is, however, now showing signs of buckling to American pressures, demanding substantive and non-discriminatory market access for American products in these areas.
The Americans have obviously concluded that there is no reason to hesitate in applying pressures on an Indian Government, which bends backwards to pressures from Pakistan and China. Given our recent track record, the Americans would not be wrong in such an assessment, though they are themselves given to imposing exorbitant countervailing duties, with many of their State Governments giving preferences to domestic products.
(The accompnying visual is of Chinese troops holding a banner that reads, “You’ve crossed the border, please go back,” in ladakh on May 5. AP photo)