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Paper no. 2556
17-Jan.-2008
INDIA’S IMPERATIVES FOR AN ACTIVE HEDGING STRATEGY AGAINST CHINA
By Dr. Subhash Kapila
Introductory Observations
China and India are indisputably two powerful Asian nations and with both aspiring to attain global power status. This in itself carries the seeds of future competitive rivalries if not adversarial and conflictual potential. The latter element gets reinforced when it is taken into view the fact that China and India share an over 4000 km long border which China disputes.
China’s border dispute with India is not just about the realignment of the border here and there. Its magnitude and extent is colossal. In the North in India’s Ladakh region, China is in illegal occupation of Indian territory of the size of Switzerland. In India’s North-East periphery, China is rigidly claiming the whole of India’s Arunachal Pradesh – a territory which in terms of size approximates the size of Austria.
Hence any discussion of China’s border dispute is not about mere border realignments along the Himalayan frontiers. China’s border disputes with India pertain to illegal occupation of Indian Territory of the size of Switzerland and a persistent claim to Indian Territory of the size of Austria.
The strategically naive Indian political leadership aided by an equally strategically naïve Indian media imbued with romanticizing about China has not realistically projected to the Indian public the colossal magnitude of the Sino-Indian border dispute.
Implicit in the magnitude of the Sino-Indian border dispute is an equally colossal magnitude of the insurmountability of the resolution of the Sino-Indian border dispute. This is evident that even before a dialogue can take place, China has so far not taken the preliminary steps to exchange border alignment maps with India. This is a strategic reality about China which the Indian political leadership must educate the Indian public if they wish to avoid nemesis catching up with them as it caught up with Nehru in 1962.
The barometeric reading of any China-India partnership, political or strategic, cannot be read from the increase in high level political exchanges or the exponential increase in trade relations. An accurate reading has to be provided by China by meaningful and substantive movement on the vital border issue.
After every high level political visit to India or China by their political leaders the repetitive jargon by both sides is that the process will be accelerated. This is plain hogwash and the political spin-masters lead the public to believe that a resolution of the border dispute is around the corner. Another thought that is marketed to the Indian public is that China does not make any dramatic breakthroughs but does things incrementally.
In this author’s last paper “China: The Imperatives of the Strategic Breakthrough with India” SAAG Paper No. 2541 dated 08 January, 2008 (http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers26/paper2541.html), it was stressed that “India cannot wait endlessly for incremental changes in its (China's) foreign policy towards India”. And that holds good more forcefully after the lusterless and inconsequential visit to China of the Indian Prime Minister last week. China’s political leadership did not concede anything to India.
A six page “Vision Statement for the 21st Century” signed by the Chinese and Indian Prime Minister was just an exercise in rhetorical jugglery to further obfuscate the issues that divide China and India.
Sadly, India’s foreign policy stances towards China have been more tactical rather than strategic in content. In such a stance more is read on the turn of a phrase by the Chinese leaders rather than an analysis of China’s strategic intentions.
While India must continue striving for a stable, cooperative and friendly relationship with China it needs to take a long term and strategic view of both China’s intentions and capabilities and laterally China’s moves in India’s contiguous regions.
A sound China policy, strategic in content, must essentially incorporate and give primacy to its national security interests and not to tactical and incremental gains thrown as crumbs by China to India’s political leadership
This paper attempts to examine the main theme of this paper under the following heads:
- China-India Contentious Issues: Boundary Problem Not the Only Issue
- India’s Imperatives for an Active Hedging Strategy Against China
- India’s Hedging Strategy: Essential Components
- India Must Play the Tibet Card
- United States – India Strategic Partnership Must be Reinforced
- India Should Cultivate Substantial Strategic Partnerships on China’s Peripheries
- India’s Differentials with China in Strategic Assets Should be Narrowed
China-India Contentious Issues: Boundary Problem Not the Only Issue
China-India boundary dispute is presently the main issue but it is not the only issue that will make relations between China and India contentious in the future.
China and India in their trajectory towards global power status can be expected to jostle with each other for political and strategic influence both in India’s contiguous regions and regions further afield. One already sees this in evidence with China persisting in the China-Pakistan strategic nexus and India’s quite successful “Look East” policies and the attempts to wean away Myanmar from China’s orbit. As China and India intensify such moves an element of not only contention but an element of covert conflict cannot be discounted.
China and India are both currently engaged in building up their energy security reserves and potential. China and India are scouring all over the globe to garner every conceivable oil and natural gas reserves. China did not respond positively to India’s calls for complementarities of effort in this direction as joint efforts.
The contention element in the pursuance of energy security carries many dimensions ranging from economics, political and more importantly strategic. It is not only the garnering of energy supplies at source by China but also the safe and secure moving of such supplies to China by sea and land pipelines. When it comes to the strategic aspect, China is faced with the prospect of India sitting securely and squarely astride the sea-lanes that such Chinese oil supplies must traverse. It is not a welcome prospect for China.
Moving towards global power status, China and India both are faced with the daunting task of the management of their relationships with the existing global power centers. A lot of strategic and political jostling by China and India can be expected as they attempt to change or manage existing global strategic alignments. China’s and India’s national security interests are likely to collide as they pursue their respective national aims.
In view of such contentious issues likely to pervade in China-India relations in the future, China would be less and less inclined to resolve its boundary dispute with India.
The Chinese reluctance has been analyzed in detail in this author’s paper “China: The Strategic Reluctance on Boundary Settlement with India. SAAG Paper No. 2023 dated 13.11.2006 (http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers21/paper2023.html). The strategic importance of Tawang to China, which is China’s present demand on India as Chinese territory, also stands highlighted in this paper.
What would be the end result of all the contentious issues discussed above? The short answer is that the trust deficit between China and India is likely to increase. China would continue outwardly to display its readiness to build cooperative relations and a partnership with India, but in parallel, China can be expected to limit India strategically and impede India’s growth towards global power status.
India’s Imperatives for an Active Hedging Strategy against China
The term “hedging” seems to have crept into strategic and political terminology with specific reference to the United States policy responses in relations with China. Instead of an outright balance of power or containment policies, “hedging strategy” involves a dual combination of both “engagement” and an indirect balancing policy by building up relationships with third countries which could be used as future leverages against the country intended when one’s own relationship with that country deteriorates.
Hedging strategies are called into play when a country cannot decipher the intentions, motives or policy attitudes of another country. By using a mixture of engagement and indirect balancing, a nation is virtually taking out an “insurance policy” strategically against future risks.
China in the past few years and more lately post-1998 and post-9/11 has been following hedging strategies against India. India’s counter responses have been absent or muted at best.
The state of China-India relations today is that India feels helpless and unsure of China’s intentions and peaceful designs when contemporary Chinese policies in South Asia are taken into account and the growing Chinese hardening of stances on the boundary issue with particular reference to Arunachal Pradesh and Tawang.
India therefore needs to put into effect a well-crafted “hedging strategy” against China to send a strong message to China that China-India relations in the future will be a two-way street, strategically.
India’s Hedging Strategy: Essential Components
Hedging strategies to be successful should be aimed at bringing about with their implementation a change in the other countries thinking and attitudes and a draw back from policies that impinge on the strategic sensitivities of the other party.
Keeping this intent in mind, it is felt that the following should comprise the essential components of any active Indian hedging strategy against China:
- India Must Not Hesitate to Play the Tibet Card
- United States – India Strategic Partnership Needs to be Reinforced
- India Should Cultivate Substantive Strategic Partnerships on China’s Periphery
- India’s Differentials With China in Strategic Assets Needs to be Narrowed
India Must Not Hesitate to Play the Tibet Card
Tibet was a spiritual and peaceful kingdom until the Chinese military occupation in 1950. What followed thereafter has been genocide of the Tibetan nation and a deliberate and well-orchestrated effort by China to change the demographics of Tibet by wholesale influx of Han Chinese.
Nehru’s strategic blunders led to the gifting away of Tibet to China by India without a demur. In one stroke India had obliterated a “buffer state” vital for India’s national security.
But does this strategic blunder have to be perpetuated ad-nauseum. In India if the “Tibet Card” is mentioned any time in discourse it sends a shiver down the spine of the Indian policy establishment. The 1962 syndrome still seems to plague the psyche of the Indian policy establishment.
There should be no Indian acquiescence as exhibited even during the recent visit of the Indian Prime Minister to China of Tibet’s status as part of China. If nothing else at least silence and ambiguity should be maintained by India on this issue.
Whenever Chinese leaders visit India, peaceful protests by Tibetan organizations are brutally put down and suppressed by the Indian State machinery. Is India a tributary state of China where China’s sensitivities have to be borne in mind as uppermost?
While the historical damage on the Tibet issue cannot be undone, India should now commence playing the “Tibet Card” as part of its hedging strategy against China. “Real politik” demands it and nations aspiring for global power status do not shirk from such choices, however hard.
One could go further by demanding that in any future resolution of the boundary issue with China, Tibetan representatives can be insisted for inclusion.
Importantly, India should come out actively against China’s attempts to fudge the issue of the present Dalai Lama’s successor. A sustained campaign on this issue would be very much in order.
United States-India Strategic Partnership Must be Reinforced
The United States is the unipolar global power with unparalleled political, economic and strategic strengths. United States global predominance is expected to last for the better portion of the 21st Century.
In terms of strategic perceptions, both the United States and India have strong convergences on China. Both are uncertain of China’s peaceful intentions and are wary of its policy moves. Both United States and India feel that China needs to be engaged but feel that prudence demands that hedging strategies too need to be put into practice because of the uncertainties that cloud China’s intentions due to a lack of transparency.
Strategically, the United States flanks China on the East and India flanks China in the South and the only nation which could checkmate China’s penetration into the Indian Ocean. Taken together both countries present a formidable strategic proposition to China.
A strong US-India Strategic Partnership, without any containment measures but with active hedging strategies could serve the national security interests of both the United States and India.
This strategic partnership need to be reinforced and not be held hostage to the eventual outcome of the Indo-US Nuclear Deal.
India Should Cultivate Substantive Strategic Partnerships on China’s Peripheries
A string of substantive strategic partnerships which can be forged by India with nations on China’s peripheries could provide future leverages to India, not as Indian-led alliance members but as political and military counter-weights which China could ill ignore.
Top priority needs to be accorded by India to forge strategic partnerships with Vietnam, Myanmar and Afghanistan. India needs to assist these countries to build up their military capabilities and potential by military hardware supplies on the pattern of China’s “friendship prices”, including Prithvi and Brahmos missiles. Central Asian Republics on China’s Western peripheries need also to be wooed by India.
In East Asia, countries like Japan and Australia can be candidates for enhanced military –to-military contacts.
In South East Asia, Singapore is the prime candidate with whom India already enjoys a significant defense relationship. Indonesia too needs to be drawn into a more substantive defense relationship.
India’s “military diplomacy” should outweigh economic diplomacy in the regions discussed. The intended message is not the military containment of China, but getting together with like-minded countries with similar strategic perceptions.
India’s Differentials with China in Strategic Assets Should be Narrowed
Some analysts believe that hedging strategies are the options of weaker nations in a strategic face-off. It necessarily does not have to be so, otherwise the United States and China would not have resorted to such strategies. But one could believe that nations resorting to such strategies with substantial strategic assets at their deposal multiply the end effect of hedging strategies.
India’s hedging strategy against China would call for a narrowing down of India’s differentials with China in terms of strategic assets inventories. India is far behind in this respect as a result of successive Indian Government succumbing to external pressures of not increasing India’s arsenals.
The building of India’s strategic arsenals is not only dictated by the requirements of a hedging strategy alone but also as an important adjunct of India’s aspiration to emerge as a global power.
Concluding Observations
India has a historical aversion to enter military alliances or multilateral security mechanisms which provide a sense of security against strategic uncertainties. If that is not an option available to India’s policy establishment, then the next workable option is to resort to a hedging strategy against countries like China which has not shown any positive signs to lessen the strategic uncertainties that it poses to India.
India needs to recognize the strategic reality that as it transcends the trajectory towards global power status, it cannot hope for “platonic” strategic or political relationships. ‘Realpolitik’ would be and should be the major determinant of India’s policy formulations. And, where national security interests are at stake India should not shirk from any strategies that further her security interests. A hedging strategy against China actively pursued has now become an imperative and should be recognized as such by India’s political leaders.
(The author is an International Relations and Strategic Affairs analyst. He is the Consultant, Strategic Affairs with South Asia Analysis Group. Email:drsubhashkapila@yahoo.com)
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