China And India or China Vs India?

By Steve Hynd

The competition between rising Asian powers China and India has been described as the contest of the coming century:

 China has officially become the world�s second-biggest economy, overtaking Japan. In the West this has prompted concerns about China overtaking the United States sooner than previously thought. But stand back a little farther, apply a more Asian perspective, and China�s longer-term contest is with that other recovering economic behemoth: India.

...How China and India manage their own relationship will determine whether similar mistakes to those that scarred the 20th century disfigure this one.

Indeed, in an important sense the current war in Afghanistan can be seen as a proxy war for that competition. We've heard a lot about Pakistani meddling in Afghanistan recently and seen that the US is between a rock and a hard place that essentially dictates that it must continue courting its some-time allies in Islamabad if it ever wants an exit, even as the fund and train militants killing US troops. We also hear plenty about how Indo-Pakistani mutual fear drives much of the Afghan narrative. We hear less about Indian meddling or about China's ambitions to access Afghanistan's resources for itself, although the reporting is there.

But what we hear least about is the tangled weave of national interests that means China courts Pakistan as a proxy for it's own competition with India, to the point where Pakistani experts concede that, given a choice between alliance with the US or China, Pakistan's military will choose China "every day of the week, and twice on Fridays".

Pakistan is preserving its (probably partial) control over regional extremist groups as a hedge against India. India really is a threat to Pakistan because Pakistan is allied with China, which really is a threat to India just as India really is a threat to China. What, you thought confusing competition with threat was an American hegemonic perrogative?

China has strategically allied itself with Pakistan in a geopolitical move against India which concentrates as much on economics as on military support - although in Pakistan's military-heavy economy the two are inseparable. For instance, dredging the harbor at Gwadar has given both China and Pakistan an important economic asset as well as China an advance naval base. All concerned have so far decided that the benefits of trade outweigh their wish to fight their enemies directly, and so have largely confined themselves to military posturing and proxy forces. But Afghanistan is the battleground for a facedown between India and China/Pakistan, each trying to deny the other important overland trade access to the Middle East and Europe. The latter see the U.S. as primarily an ally of India and theories run wild as to America's true motives.

India, in it's turn, is feeling ignored and unloved by the U.S. after the false spring of Bush's nuclear giveaway and the bipartisan rush to sell India lots of expensive but obsolescent weaponry. And it's trying to create a new strategy that accepts the reality of America and the West's continuing bamboozlement by Pakistan - including through outreach to nations like Saudi Arabia and Iran as well as more traditional allies like Russia and France.

The likelihood of open war, however, remains remote. China and India are nuclear powers, as is China's ally Pakistan. Jonathan Holslag, author of China and India: Prospects for Peace, told Time in March:

The scope for these two countries to develop peacefully and fulfill their national interests without entering into competition is getting smaller due to internal social pressures and rising nationalism. I am not arguing that they don't want to develop peacefully, but that the options for doing so are not that great. They'll be competing at all levels, not only for economic opportunities, but for regional influence. This will lead to an uncomfortable and risky situation.

...It wouldn't first be open war. China and India are building up their interests in conflict-prone and unstable states on their borders like Nepal and Burma � important sources of natural resources. If something goes wrong in these countries � if the politics implode � you could see the emergence of proxy wars in Asia. Distrust between India and China will grow and so too security concerns in a number of arenas. It's an important scenario that strategic planners in both Beijing and Delhi are looking at.

That "proxy war" scenario is what we're already seeing in Afghanistan - and the US stepped right into the middle of it.

Some Indian national security thinkers are beginning to realise that landward proxy feuds- like Afghanistan and, even more importantly, Kashmir - are ultimately a losing concern for India too. Vikram Sood served in India's RAW intelligence agency for over three decades and retired as its chief. He wrote in the August 25 edition of the Deccan Cronicle (bold emphasis mine):

While some American experts [describe the] Chinese attitude as a sign of defensive nationalism � assertive in form but reactive in essence, the fact is that since about the middle of 2009 the Chinese have talking more and more about their �core interests�. As D.S. Rajan, director of the Centre for China Studies, Chennai, points out, Chinese leader Dai Bingguo said in July 2009 that �the PRC�s first core interest is maintaining its fundamental system and state security, the second is state sovereignty and territorial integrity, and the third is the continued stable development of the economy and society�. Translated into specifics, it means protection of its interests in Tibet, Taiwan, Xinjiang, the South China Sea and its strategic resources and sea trade routes.

China�s assertiveness about the South China Sea, its umbrage at US secretary of state Hillary Clinton�s July 2010 remarks in Hanoi on creating an international mechanism to resolve this issue, has been particularly visible in the past few weeks. Dai Bingguo conveyed to Ms Clinton in May 2010 that China regarded its claims to the South China Sea as a core national interest. The Chinese have closely watched the growing US-Vietnamese ties, which includes an American offer of a civil nuclear deal to Vietnam on lines similar to the India deal. A triangular acrimony between the US, China and Vietnam has been growing for some time.

...The message [was] that the western Pacific was China�s sphere of interest and influence. It suggested a division of zones of influence between the Eastern and Western Pacific. The US and China have their own geostrategic rivalries to settle, and the Chinese may have assessed that their moment has come.

Yet China remains concerned with its intricate trade and financial links with the US, and also with the security of its trade and supply routes that transit the Malacca Straits. It has endeavoured to develop extensive land routes through Central Asia, but these are inadequate. It is a matter of time before China will make its presence more visible in the Indian Ocean. It has port facilities in Hambantota and Gwadar, and a presence in the Arabian Sea as it battles Somali pirates. China has expanded its contacts with Iran, more in competition with Russia than the US, it seeks mineral wealth in Afghanistan, its relations with Pakistan need no elucidation and it has developed strong ties with Burma. Thus while we may agonise over challenges across our land frontiers, we would be ignoring the new challenge in the Indian Ocean unless we plan countermeasures now.

Vikram Sood is pointing to a truism here: maritime trade and maritime power, be it military or economic, always trumps the land-based version. To coin a historical analogy, India's almost monomaniacail focus on Pakistan, Kashmir and Afghanistan makes as much sense as if England in the 16th and early 17th centuries had focussed entirely on Scotland, Wales and Ireland to the exclusion of France.

India has also yet to make the intellectual leap that likewise eludes America: that positioning all your strategic planning around a terrorist threat that kills less than car accidents or lack of healthcare is simply a recipe for draining the nation's coffers and distracting it from a brighter future. China pretty much owns Pakistan and will own Afghanistan within a decade. India would be better served, in my opinion, by turning its back upon both in their entirety, rather than shackle itself to a ball and chain designed by China. Although national pride demands that something, anything, be "done now" about terrorism, the truth is that such attacks are gnats stinging an elephant, doing more damage by distraction than by the pain they inflict.

India has the potential to surpass it's rival China in a decade or two if it concentrates all its energy on maritime economic expansion and on development of its infrastructure. It can only do that if it avoids the trap turning obsessively inland creates for it. For the next two decades, it should do its very best to pretend that it is an island.

As for America's role in the competition, it is setting off entirely on the wrong foot. It seems as if American policymakers cannot see the wood for the trees, enmired as the West is in Afghanistan. In hock to China and pandering to Pakistan for an Afghan exit, it appears to have forgotten India almost entirely. Although it is important to Indians that they pursue their own strategic independence, that's no reason why America and India should not have closer ties which would help it see its national interests as more parallel to America's. In that respect, George Bush got something right - although his choice of a nuclear deal was not the best one as a first step.

The U.S. should be backing, investing in, India's economic expansion. But the one place it can be of most use is in strengthening the structures of international governance. Here, there is a "deep need", as The Economist's leader of August 19 puts it:

one that it took Europe two world wars to come close to solving: emerging Asia�s lack of serious institutions to bolster such deals. A regional forum run by the Association of South-East Asian Nations is rendered toothless by China�s aversion to multilateral diplomacy. Like any bully, it prefers to pick off its antagonists one by one. It would be better if China and India�and Japan�could start building regional forums to channel their inevitable rivalries into collaboration and healthy competition.

Globally, the rules-based system that the West set up in the second half of the 20th century brought huge benefits to emerging powers. But it reflects an out-of-date world order, not the current global balance, let alone a future one. China and India should be playing a bigger role in shaping the rules that will govern the 21st century. That requires concessions from the West. But it also requires commitment to a rules-based international order from China and India. A serious effort to solve their own disagreements is a good place to start.

Here, at least, the U.S. can do some good by adding its diplomatic weight in international forums.