13 March 2021
This is the Ides of March or is it something far more overwhelmingly compelling? President Biden had a full fledged Quad Bloc Anti China coalition meeting before his top diplomat went to Alaska to meet with his Chinese counterpart. Loaded dice? Or is this a tear that was darned double quick so that the screen America wants to display before China as some ‘writing on the wall’ looked whole and forceful?
It is very difficult to understand right now, or blame any one country for how the alliance born at the height of a global tragedy, the Tsunami of 2004, needed another, this pandemic to come through again, in what I would like to call a ‘rebirth’, though military strategists like to term this as a ‘reset’!
From President Biden, this was the big bugle he wanted to sound, which you can clearly see, is one continuing signal from the days of his campaign trail, when he promised domestic audiences and those abroad that under his leadership ‘America will be back’. His administration is very particular to show that unlike Obama’s where it was understood that the VP had the last word in the room, here this VP is very visible, and that is why President Biden had VP Harris right next to him, seated at the high table even as he was flanked by his NSA and Secy State, while addressing and listening to the other three leaders. Biden’s being stickler for correctness in how the first ally to call on him is PM Suga in person, which is a huge signal to China that US is firmly fixated on the Indo Pacific.
From India’s corner, there was a domestic message and an international one. PM Modi called for indigenous solutions to the entire spectrum of strategic thinking and infrastructure while addressing a unique commanders conference, unique because it was held under the scenic shadow of Sardar Patel’s Chinese built Statue of Unity, and also one where the PM interacted with troops below officer rank, an issue that has set the military veterans abuzz https://theprint.in/opinion/why-the-military-brass-is-scratching-its-head-over-modis-commanders-conference-speech/619472/. The 50 word editorial by Mr Shekhar Gupta on the conference is actually more widely discussed than the exact message of the PM, which is arguably still under discussion. Then comes India’s choice, which was very persuasively made through the platform of Carnegie Foundation (https://carnegieindia.org/2021/03/10/road-from-galwan-future-of-india-china-relations-pub-84019) by its former bureaucratic head of its diplomatic corps, which lays out three subtle and substantive premises for why things Chinese turned sour.
1. While India and China both grew in the period from late 90s to the first decade of the new millennium , China was arguably ahead and was more focused on the USA and its goal of enhancing infrastructure in the near abroad that it failed to take India and her sensibilities into reckoning.
2. The Indian response to Chinese BRI initiatives in Myanmar, Lanka, Pakistan including development of key ports and road-rail heads, was to view these as infrastructural encirclement, christened a ‘string of pearls’ whereas the Chinese internal strategic calculus never even entertained these projects as having a military angle. China’s discounting of India was in contrast to this very simultaneous revision of India’s grand strategy which enjoyed continuity across governments, including the present Modi regime, where China was appraised as a most probable threat in her immediate neighbourhood, replacing Pakistan.
3. China’s burgeoning trade and investment partnership with India was negative, not just in trade imbalances and market access, but it was also obvious when it denied India access to Chinese soft ware demand, services sector demand and automobile sector demand in its booming domestic economy, worsening the imbalance. While China produced APIs, it barred Indian Pharmaceutical companies from exporting back to China, which was perplexing and unmistakably hostile trade practice.
So Mr Vijay Gokhale makes the case that Chinese decision makers are short sighted by a lack of historical perspective, which is diplo-speak for selective reading of history to suit their national ambition. That while India may have not really guessed the Chinese intentions in Galwan clash until things came about on ground, under Modi’s leadership, India did all it could to court President Xi and accommodate Chinese ambitions by undertaking the Wuhan and Mamallapuram Summits even after Doklam. Mr Modi had personally invested in his rapport with the Chinese strongman by talking repeatedly about the connections between each other’s personal origins, historic links between his village and Xi’s as recounted by monks, and by not naming China or President Xi for the Eastern Ladakh situation which is very uncharacteristic restraint on Mr Modi’s part, considering his responses with other sub continental military situations.
So what could Mr Modi imply by his indigenous military imprint? Is it an impetus to find for India a military & diplomatic way to continue to have both Russians and Americans on board for military hardware, to support Iran and non Taliban groups in Afghanistan despite recent efforts on world stage to exclude India from Afghan US withdrawal talks?( Apparently at Russia’s insistence.) Is it using Israel and Russia to do back channel with China, while clearing Chinese investments in India post haste, even as the ink on Pongang Tso lake mutual withdrawal agreement was drying up? Is Mr Modi’s ‘indigenous’ a renaming of ‘Non Aligned’, a continuation of her strategic posture of ambivalence, where India will continue to be a member of Quad, not a member of RCEP, but perhaps an American sponsored trade regime for the Indo Pacific, while continuing to have bilateral and multilateral relations with China, Russia and participate in BRICS and Shanghai Cooperation Organisation? India would both not decouple from China herself while benefiting from the decoupling the rest of world undertakes from China?
For Japan and Australia, the choices are acutely perplexing, due to the recent behaviour of the USA under President Trump and the continued hold he enjoys evidently over the Republican Party. We cannot after all, be always lucky to have a Georgia flip each time there is a ballot in the US, can we? One that will deliver a Biden to restore the US to her ‘senses’, for nowhere has President Trump been as debilitating as he has been in the realm of strategic affairs. Few European and Japanese watchers were fooled by the last ditch efforts by Secretary Pompeo as he tried to case China and offer a hard US led approach to the situation. If Trump upended trade talks with China, it was simply bound to happen under any other presidency, for the US could not have continued on the path of bleeding her economic and intellectual wealth to the Chinese without pushing back. So Japanese as well as Australians have embarked on their own military build up, so that on their own, they can offer the PLA a bloody nose when conflict be forced on them. Both were clear that China was not just turning belligerent, but her hostile turn was going to escalate as China grew in economic and technological strength. In a sense, first Japan, and now Australia and South Korea, realise that like pre War Europe, under Hitler, hostilities is a matter of time. How far Taiwan has impressed on this posture is hard to say, yet the repeated undercurrents and over the top responses from CCP China with respect to Taiwan, made these traditional trading partners with Taiwan sit up and note. Of course, the pandemic has shred all iota of doubt if it ever existed, only added a sense of urgency to these countries and their plans, as demonstrated openly by Australian PM Morrison declaring the Climate of Strategic Uncertainty, again harking to that 1930s European situation.
That is why, the outcome of a Quad (https://sputniknews.com/asia/202103121082328398-biden-hails-anti-china-quad-bloc-as-vital-to-guaranteeing-free-and-open-pacific-at-first-meeting/) is already decided, especially when Korea (http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20210309000118) is now talked of as a Quad Plus. The weak link is India, driving a bargain as she should. For American neglect of India, Pentagon’s traditional hostility and aversion to New Delhi’s ‘pompous posturing’ and neglect of real politick, all of it is now turned on its head! So for a trial is the decision to finance India to become a global competitor to China in vaccine supply and how this plays out. If Americans manage a Transfer of Technology and get the EU, UK, Japan, Korea and Australia to invest in Indian capabilities, and India manages to respond with a purposive timeline, then a global recovery by mass vaccinations could bring America truly back to a leadership position on the global stage. As of now, the drift is more like an Intellectual Properties issue, western countries dragging their feet, not prioritising research and production for the COVAX scheme of WHO, and squabbling over supplies themselves on either side of the Atlantic!
The Quad can be back with a bang! Effectively this bang in the near term translates into a jab in the arm for humanity! Else, there is much that begins with a bang, gets rebooted even with a bang, but always peters out to whimpers…
indiarubberman.com 