ABSTRACT
The final chapter explains why the Sino-Indian rivalry is more than a border dispute, and why the contention is likely to grow in intensity in the diplomatic and the military spheres despite growing trade links, on going border talks and diplomatic discourse. This book has adopted a matrix of contentious cultural and diplomatic-military worldviews of the three countries, their growing economic and military capacities, the growth of size and power of governmental agencies that manage this triangle, an expanding geo-political arena where India, Pakistan and China are in contention, and finally international institutions and outside powers are less able to influence the orientation of this triangle. Since 1947-48 the national bureaucracies of India and Pakistan have expanded their power and repositioned themselves in the regional and international environment. A similar process occurred in the case of India and China. This process is common to India, China and Pakistan. It has a robust character because it is meant to guard against serious imbalances in economic capacity, military and intelligence capacities which are required to defend and deter aggressive behaviour. The 1962 Sino-Indian War played a critical role in unleashing a process to
rectify the imbalances in Sino-Indian economic and military capacities and its diplomatic attitudes and methods. The Indo-Pakistani wars of 1947-48 and 1965 clearly did not play such a catalytic role. In the 1947-48 Kashmir War the Nehru-Mountbatten approach emphasized a policy of ‘no war with Pakistan’, peaceful settlement of the issue bilaterally and under UN auspices, and development of modest Indian capacity to mount a local military defence of Kashmir. This approach dominated the discourse between India and Pakistan and members of the UN. This approach required IndoPakistani ceasefires under UN auspices if war broke out, maintenance of Indo-Pakistani military and diplomatic parity, and show of goodwill by India and Pakistan to peacefully settle the Kashmir dispute. This approach presumed the continuous involvement of great powers and the UN machinery in Indo-Pakistani and Kashmir issues. In the 1965 war Nehru’s successor Prime Minister L. B. Shastri deviated from the Nehru-Mountbatten line by ordering the Indian Army to cross into Pakistan across the international border to relieve the Pakistani military pressure in Kashmir. But this action did not
change ground realities; the two sides returned to the status quo ante with a UN mandated and Soviet-US supported ceasefire in 1966. The Sino-Indian War in 1962 however, became the game changer because it made nonsense of Nehru’s China policy and the theory of peaceful international change. In addition, both the US and USSR saw the 1962 war as a sign of Chinese aggressiveness in Asia. India started to build its military weight and to alter its diplomatic orien-
tation and alignments after 1962. This was the first game changer; the second game changer was China’s decision to turn to Pakistan to pressure India after 1962 and to lay the foundation of a strategic triangle. The third game changer occurred in the 1971 Bangladesh War when Nixon and Kissinger worked with Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai and Pakistan’s military establishment to counter Indian actions. Barring Moscow’s support, India was isolated at the UN. It learned a lesson about the importance of building its material strength, and about the danger of UN and foreign interventions. These were post-1962, post-Nehru developments that sought to build India’s economic and military base and simultaneously to adjust its diplomatic stance away from a policy that relied on diplomatic and peaceful discourse to a policy that combined diplomacy and coercive intervention to manage India’s rivalries with Pakistan and China. The policy attitude changed after 1962 although the development of India’s military base was slow in the areas of conventional armament, nuclear weaponry, missile and air power, and naval capacity and reorganization of India’s intelligence and its national security machinery. The 1962 war was a signal event in psychological and policy terms because China had unleashed a process on the Indian side that it could not control or end. This is the basis of my judgement that the South Asian strategic triangle has a long shelf life, conflict is inevitable and the border talks between China and India and India and Pakistan are unlikely to change the reality of a civilizational and strategic conflict between the two in the foreseeable circumstances. A Sino-Indian border settlement could reduce the deficit of trust between the two countries but it would not end the rivalry because of key differences in their worldviews, aims and interests. China initiated the triangular strategic game, but India has perpetuated it by its refusal to accept the Chinese theory of its superiority and Indian inferiority, and the Pakistan belief in Muslim glory that goes back to the days of Mughal Empire in India. The following sections assess the current dynamics and implications for the
future. Two themes are assessed. First, the major imbalances in the policies and capacities of the three members of the strategic triangle have produced an institutionalized process of conflict formation and conflict management but there is no powerful impulse to move towards a peace settlement among the three. The middle ground is occupied in each country by powerful and entrenched bureaucratic or institutionalized forces that enjoy social and political support and that shape leadership decisions. Currently the middle ground is taken by forces that do not seek war, that do not mind meddling and limited provocations of each other, that are continuously engaged in war
preparations just in case of a nasty surprise, they are engaged in diplomatic and military manoeuvres but there is no forward movement towards a peace settlement. A process that secures the trajectory of three interactive and conflictual forces into an expectation of ‘manageable instability’ is the undeclared policy norm among the practitioners in this triangle. These imbalances required a development of geo-political or locational
perspectives by the three particularly after 1962. For India the pre-1962 Nehru perspective was skewed against war, against balance of power, against diplomatic bargaining to deal with border disputes, and against American rather than Chinese policies in the 1950s. Nehru no doubt paid attention to India’s northern defences in a narrow way by creating a modest military force to prevent Pakistani takeover of Kashmir, by building India’s intelligence and administrative capacity in the border areas with China, and by maintaining treaty relations with the Himalayan kingdoms. But Nehru ignored the importance of geo-politics in Indian foreign affairs and in his assessment of China’s policies towards India. China on the other hand had a developed geopolitical view of its security in Inner and Outer Asias. The development of a triangular policy that incorporated Pakistan into China’s opposition of India was an expression of China’s geo-political approach. China faced problems in its frontier zone in Tibet and Xinjiang and the situation required Chinese action to control the Inner/Outer Asia regions. Pakistan too had a welldefined geo-political view of its security in 1947; it required parity with India, an expansion of Pakistan’s military and political space in Kashmir and by the 1980s it sought an expansion of its military and political space in Afghanistan. How the players developed their locational or geo-political perspectives and defined the range of their military and diplomatic actions is discussed in the following section. Then follows a discussion of the second theme; that is, cracks have emerged in Sino-Pakistan relations, and if these cracks grow or Pakistan implodes because of an intensification of Islamist insurgency or terrorism in Pakistan and in the Afghan area, then a key pillar of the triangle will weaken; and if the Sino-Indian contention is to persist, the conflict will acquire a bipolar character. Finally, the volatility of the situation in Tibet is noted in this chapter. Tibet is nominally not a member of the China-India-Pakistan strategic triangle but as my discussion has shown the Tibet issue has been an integral part of Sino-Indian diplomacy. Its location and China’s military position there, affects Chinese and Indian assessments of their interests in the Himalayan area. The situation in Tibet is important as a platform for the advancement of Chinese strategic and diplomatic aims in the southern zone. It is also important for India because the Tibetan government in exile is based in northern India. The presence of the Dalai Lama and the exiled community in India is a major irritant for China. This irritation is growing as the Dalai Lama has supported India’s position on Arunachal Pradesh which China claims as ‘Southern Tibet’. As such the Tibetan situation has a fallout on Sino-Indian relations and exacerbates the tensions and mistrust between the two.
