CIAO DATE: 09/07
The National Interest
East Meets East
Greg Sheridan
Full Text
I was greeted in March 2006 by Manmohan Singh in a small sitting room in the quite modest prime minister’s bungalow in New Delhi. The prime minister of India wore a broad smile, for he had just days before concluded a revolutionary nuclear deal with George W. Bush. Probably outside of Israel, no foreign capital is as pro-Bush as Delhi. Singh was basking in the glory of the Bush deal.
Indeed, India’s political and strategic elite, even more than America’s, understands the epic nature of the new strategic relationship with Washington. It has been rightly compared with Nixon’s opening to China in the 1970s. It’s different in many ways, but it has the same potential to reshape almost all geostrategic equations, particularly those involving China.
The economist academic who happens to be India’s prime minister is still not really a politician—that’s one of Singh’s great strengths—but he was prepared to accept a little gentle praise for the Bush deal. In Washington, there is much (reasonably justified) self-congratulation over the India initiative, which is rightly seen as a masterstroke, but America has scarcely recognized India’s own complex and many-faceted motivations for entering the new relationship. One, which political correctness prevents both Indians and Americans from publicly discussing much, is India’s growing strategic competition with China. With a characteristic Asian feel for the balance of power, New Delhi has reached out to the superpower to counter-balance, in part, its giant neighbor and inevitable rival China. I predict that throughout the rest of this century India’s strategic competition with China will intensify and become almost as fundamental a part of the global order as the Sino-American contest.
Asia’s international orientation contrasts diametrically with Europe’s. No one in Asia wants to pool sovereignty or find refuge in postmodern, trans-state associations. Asia’s politicians have come up through hard schools and amid hard neighbors. They appreciate hard power; the U.S. position is much stronger in Asia than anywhere else in the world.
For some time India was something of an exception to this Asian rule. For most of the Cold War it took the Non-Aligned Movement seriously and indulged to no end in moralizing on foreign policy. But just as the market has liberated India’s entrepreneurs, the booming economy has bolstered state power and brought to the ruling class a realistic sense of opportunity and an appreciation for classical national-interest calculations.
This may seem an eccentric moment to argue the inevitability of Indian-Chinese strategic competition. The two giant neighbors have made progress on their festering border disputes and have even reopened a land trade bridge along the Silk Road, which had been closed for decades. Two-way trade is booming and may reach $20 billion next year, with a substantial trade surplus for India. At one moment of delirious fatuousness the two nations’ leaders even referred to each other as “strategic partners”, though that formulation has quietly died.
All of that is to the good. But the national personalities and demographics of each country consign them to deeper competition. Half of India’s billion-plus people are younger than 25, forming a much younger profile than China’s population. Very soon, perhaps by 2020, it will overtake China as the most populated nation in the world. And then there is India’s effusive regard for the United Nations (the last gasp of the Non-Aligned mentality) and determination to ascend to Security Council membership, which China implacably opposes.
Or take India’s nuclear deal with the United States. China is strongly opposed to that as well, on the pretext of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (npt). Under the deal, the United States will presumably support only India’s peaceful nuclear energy program (which will come under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency), but New Delhi will maintain its nuclear weapons program. The npt holds that only the five recognized nuclear weapons states (the United States, China, Russia, the uk and France) are permitted to have nuclear weapons.
The U.S.-India deal will bring 65 percent of India’s nuclear program under iaea supervision. Since there is no way any Indian government would ever give up its nuclear weapons, this represents progress on counter-proliferation. India, after all, has never proliferated nuclear-weapons technology to another nation or party, something that cannot be said of npt member China—to say nothing of Pakistan. The ban on supplying nuclear technology to India has been accompanied by a range of technological restrictions that have hurt India’s economic and industrial development. Most of those restrictions have been phased out, but Singh was delighted to see the last of them eliminated with the U.S. deal.
In his discussion with me, Singh made clear that he would like to buy Australian uranium. Australia possesses about 40 percent of the known reserves of uranium and is a member of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, so Singh was making more than a mere theoretical proposition. But China immediately said it wants the npt preserved and opposed the selling of uranium to any party outside npt provisions, which would exclude India from purchasing uranium.
In other words, China opposes the emergence of Indian power. Indeed, China has played its diplomatic hand brilliantly, getting the world to accept its own estimation of itself (an emerging great power), while thwarting any such projected status for India. Objectively, as the old Marxists might have said, Indian power contradicts Chinese power.
America and China, meanwhile, are rightly seen to be in a contest for influence, especially in northeast Asia and Southeast Asia. China does enjoy a species of soft power, but it lacks the soft power of idealism or cultural attractiveness. It does have the soft power of money. China has learned to astutely use business communities throughout Asia to leverage financial interest of those communities in China. And Chinese diplomacy has become more professional and effective. The Chinese are exceptionally good at flattery, as any “old friend of China” who has ever been a guest at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People can attest. But no one is seriously attracted to the Chinese system on idealistic grounds. So Chinese soft power, based on money, is strong but limited.
What about Indian soft power? Indian soft power based on money will grow as the Indian economy grows. In 2005 and 2006, India hit the Chinese growth rate of 8 percent. China will probably continue to grow faster than India for some time. But unless it messes things up, India should grow fast for a lot longer than China, partly because its population is so much younger. If the Indian economic development model works, it could eventually catch China, though that is a long way off.
India has a great presence in the Western mind. Millions of Westerners have read Indian novels in English. This is not true of Chinese novels. Indian movies, which are popular all over Asia, are starting to penetrate Western consciousness.
Indeed, India shows (contrary to Chinese arguments) that economic development is compatible with democracy in huge, diverse, multi-racial, poor countries. It is almost impossible therefore to overstate the Western, specifically the American, interest in India’s success. As India integrates ever more deeply into Asian structures, its mere presence becomes a standing rebuke to China’s human-rights record and political stagnation. As it grows richer, with its natural and distinctive mastery of English, India will penetrate global culture. If truth be told, most Southeast Asian nations define national identity partly on the basis of rejecting Chinese culture, specifically the culture of their Chinese minorities—which has often been a very unpleasant business. Those nations won’t feel the same about Indian culture.
India will not need to wage any great crusades for its democracy to become, with Japan, an Asian pole of power countering China. When the Asian tsunami struck on Boxing Day, 2005, the United States chose two allies—Japan and Australia—plus Asia’s (and indeed the world’s) greatest democracy, India, to join it in responding to the disaster. Some at the un were peeved that such a group should operate without initial reference to the institution, but the core members of the group had their navies steaming to the crisis areas while the un was still on holiday.
The big and notable exclusion from the group was China. White House officials say they weren’t trying to make a geostrategic point, but were rather trying to get aid delivered most effectively. That’s a little too cute, for a geostrategic point was certainly made. It’s a pity the core group didn’t find a way to keep itself together for other tasks, or at least for more coordinated consultations, but the joining of those nations for international endeavors may become an increasingly familiar sight.
India and China will also compete in more traditional ways for strategic influence. They are already doing so. Take the case of Burma. With the possible exceptions of North Korea and Iran, Burma has one of the most demented national leaderships in the world. The Burmese military junta, led by Than Shwe, decided to move the capital (then Rangoon) inland to Pyinmana, a city they built entirely from scratch. The timing of the move was precise to the minute, conforming to astrological readings. One of the reasons for moving the capital was fear of a U.S. military strike, however unlikely that may seem. (All paranoia ultimately leads to Washington.) So, in order to avoid a U.S. air strike, the military junta removed themselves from an ancient civilian city and relocated to an isolated hilltop. These people do not get out much, and they are not the most strategically astute.
Needless to say, Burma has an appalling human rights record, but the U.S. and European policy of isolation and imposing sanctions has thrown it into China’s arms. Beijing has had strategic influence in Burma for many years but, previously, the Burmese had the option of telling the Chinese to go home. They no longer have that option. Burma is reported to keep up a brisk military-to-military relationship with North Korea, conducted through the two countries’ embassies in Beijing.
Until 2001, India had a moral policy of condemning Burma. Opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi studied in India and was popular there. But India shares a long land border with Burma. Burma can cause India problems. And New Delhi has been aghast to see the extent of Chinese influence. China has established signals-intelligence-listening stations along Burma’s border with India. There are reports, often denied, of the Chinese navy having an interest in long-term access to Burmese ports, which would give it a power-projection capability in the Indian Ocean.
So in 2001 New Delhi changed tack and decided to engage Burma comprehensively. Over time, this may give Burma an alternative to China. It may even produce some useful political change in Burma. The Chinese are perfectly happy with Burma’s dictatorial ways. The Indians, while not imposing any conditions on their engagement with Burma and clearly motivated by realpolitik, may nonetheless eventually rub a little of their democratic magic onto Burma.
Nepal is another case of strategic competition between India and China. When the Nepalese king briefly assumed total power, suspending political parties and the democratic constitution, most democratic nations condemned the move and cut off military links. China enhanced military links, offered to supply arms and engaged in intense diplomacy with numerous delegations and visits. Beijing’s only conceivable purpose for such maneuvering is to gain a perch from which to discomfit India. Nepal’s rebel group, which has now been brought into the government, is composed of Maoists, and though not financed by the Chinese still owe allegiance to China’s late revolutionary leader.
Most important of all, though, is Pakistan. China has contributed, though not recently, to Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program and its missile program. Historically, China has used proliferation to hurt its enemies. Thus it proliferated to the Middle East to hurt the United States and to Pakistan to hurt India. China maintains a close strategic relationship with Pakistan—less close than in the past and complicated by the American presence, but substantial nonetheless. Particularly telling is the Chinese involvement in the development of the Gwadar port in the Pakistani province of Baluchistan, which is positioned to affect access to the Persian Gulf.
Singh told me he believes Pakistan still allows its territory to be used by terrorist groups that target India. The appalling terrorist bombings in Mumbai on July 11, 2006, which killed nearly 200 commuters and injured hundreds more, are widely believed to have involved the Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorist group, which originated in Pakistan. New Delhi finds Washington’s closeness to Islamabad perplexing, given its belief that Pakistan walks on both sides of the street on terrorism.
Another important area of competition is Bangladesh. China has made a huge effort to cultivate ties with the country, which the Indians believe is involved in many of the separatist movements in India’s northeast. India, in turn, was accustomed to causing trouble for China in Tibet by hosting the Dalai Lama—who India continues to host, although New Delhi has now accepted in principle Chinese sovereignty over Tibet.
What all this suggests is that India and China retain the capability to cause a lot of trouble for each other. And these spheres of competition put some limits on Indian-Chinese counter-terror cooperation. Although the Chinese are especially paranoid about Islamic separatism in their vast Xinjiang province, they may well find cause to cooperate with Islamist opponents of India’s secular democracy.
Most obviously, India and China will rub up against each other in Central Asia and in the Middle East (as Geoffrey Kemp outlined in the Summer 2006 issue of The National Interest). India has become a substantial aid donor to Afghanistan, where it has long been active in opposing Pakistani interests. India will have an interest in democracy and stability in both Central Asia and the Middle East.
China will care less about internal politics in either region, but will certainly care a great deal about energy security. This too will be India’s primary interest. Already China and India are competing for secure energy supplies from around the world. And perhaps the strategic competition between the two Asian giants will be most intense in an area scarcely alluded to publicly: the nuclear race. When India tested nuclear weapons in 1998, its then prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, wrote to President Clinton citing both China and Pakistan as reasons India had to have a nuclear deterrent. Indian defense and foreign ministers in the past have often made the same point about China.
India’s more sophisticated leaders no longer speak that way in public. Their deterrent, they say, is not directed at any particular nation. Nonetheless, you don’t have to travel far in Indian strategic circles to find that the deterrent is mostly oriented towards China. Indeed, nuclear weapons disadvantage India vis-à-vis Pakistan because India enjoys such an overwhelming conventional force superiority. But for India vis-à-vis China, the situation is somewhat different. No one should underestimate India’s conventional forces, but China is a wealthier nation and spends more money on its military.
India is not pursuing numerical equality of nuclear warheads with China, but it is determined to have a credible nuclear deterrent. In July 2006, India tested the Agni-3 missile, which for the first time would bring China’s huge cities of Beijing and Shanghai under its nuclear range. The Agni-3 failed in its second stage, but India expects to have it up and running soon. Delhi’s naval-expansion plans also involve nuclear submarines in the Pacific Ocean, which would put China’s coastal and northern cities under another layer of nuclear deterrent.
China has long had the capability to hit any Indian city with its nuclear weapons but has not faced such an Indian capability. It is overwhelmingly in U.S. interests for India to attain broad strategic parity with China, and Washington should therefore help India to manage this deterrence and help keep its arsenal effective and safe—hence the U.S.-India nuclear agreement.
As far ahead as one can imagine, India and China will provide the two great diasporas of the world. The Chinese diaspora is culturally loyal to Chinese civilization but often has very little regard for the dictatorship that runs the homeland. By contrast, democracy is at the very core of India’s national being. India’s emergence as a strategic equal of China is a good thing for the world, so long as New Delhi and Beijing manage their inevitable competition effectively.
The dynamic of this competition is destined to be a central feature of geostrategic equations throughout the 21st century. The international system would benefit from the influence of Indian genius and mellifluous style. In a naughty world, the Indian emergence is a rare piece of unadulterated good news.
Greg Sheridan is foreign editor of The Australian and is a contributing editor to The National Interest.