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Paper no. 2645
26-Mar.-2008
TIBET: GLOBAL AMNESIA ON CHINESE GENOCIDE GENERATES GRAVE STRATEGIC IMPLICATIONS
By Dr. Subhash Kapila
Introductory Observations
Tibet has once again been thrust in the global consciousness by the widespread Tibetan uprising of March 2008 just a year before the 50th anniversary of the first major uprising of the Tibetan nation against China and nearly the 60th anniversary of China’s military invasion and occupation of the sovereign, spiritual and pacifist nation of Tibet.
The global community needs to be reminded that Tibet till its military occupation by China was an independent nation with its own currency and other trappings of a sovereign nation including independent foreign relations. So much so that US President Franklin Roosevelt in early 1940s sent emissaries to Lhasa to seek permission to traverse Tibetan territory for US supplies to China’s Nationalist regime battling Japan. If Tibet was really a part of China the United States would not have sought Lhasa’s permission.
This having been noted, it also needs to be recorded that in these last five decades the global community developed a marked amnesia over China’s military occupation of Tibet and the ethnic, religious and cultural genocide that China has relentlessly inflicted on the hapless Tibetan nation. The Tibetan nation was pacifist, peace-loving and spiritual in character. These were the very attributes which emerged as weaknesses in Chinese Communists perceptions and prompted their military subjugation of Tibet.
China’s military annexation of Tibet has been akin to the military annexation of Manchuria by Japan in the first half of the 20th Century. The global community then too developed a strategic amnesia and watched idly until strategic realities dawned and World Was II was necessitated.
China’s military annexation of Tibet would never have taken place had the United States and India with substantial strategic stakes in Tibet had not allowed a “strategic vacuum” to develop in Tibet as a result of the end of British India Empire which ensured that Tibet continued as a sovereign buffer state.
Even if the United States and India were reluctant to militarily commit themselves in Tibet in the period 1947-1949 they could have through the United Nations got Tibet declared as a “neutral country” like Switzerland and further under United Nations protection.
Sadly, the United States and India have turned out to be the most significant strategic sufferers by the “strategic inactivity” of the United States and pathetic “strategic timidity” of India as we shall see later in the Paper.
To cover up their strategic follies both the United States and India developed a strange political and strategic amnesia on Tibet. The rest of the global community followed suit.
Emboldened by the global amnesia on Tibet, the Chinese Government has been tempted to pursue an unrestricted policy of ethnic, religious and cultural genocide in Tibet. The periodic Tibetan uprisings in virtually every decade were brutally suppressed by China confident that no international murmurs would follow.
The March 2008 Tibetan uprisings have been widespread and violent and no longer only directed against Chinese security forces in Tibet. This time the swelling Han Chinese population in Tibet too was targeted. This is ominous.
The global community can no longer afford to continue with its amnesia on Tibet and should take the March 2008 Tibetan uprisings as a wake-up call for concerted action to restore Tibet’s sovereignty.
A lot of papers and analyses have flowed-in on the Tibet issue since March 10, 2008 dealing with every conceivable political aspect and events. This Paper therefore would confine itself to analyze the grave strategic implications that could be generated if the global community continues to be permissive of the Chinese cultural genocide in Tibet. Also would be highlighted the strategic losses suffered by the United States and India as a result of their Tibet policies.
This paper therefore would like to focus attention on the following issues:
- India's Strategic Losses Accruing From Timid Tibet Policies.
- United States Strategic Losses Accruing From “China-Permissive” Policies
- Tibet: The Contemporary Strategic Significance.
- Tibet’s “Total Independence” is a Global Strategic Imperative
- The United States, NATO and India's Convergence of Strategic Interests on Tibet.
Some readers may be dismissive over some of the issues stated above on the grounds that they are too far fetched and not falling in the realm of possibility. The answers to such dismissiveness would be that in international relations nothing is impossible. How many foresaw the disintegration of the Soviet Union, how many thought that the disintegration of Yugoslavia would be facilitated by United States and NATO military intervention on humanitarian grounds and how many thought that the unilateral declaration of independence by Kosovo with NATO protection would not generate strong international murmurs.
Therefore the strategic implications on Tibet outlined above arising from the Chinese genocide in Tibet, cannot be ruled out. Analytically, historical strategic losses may stir USA, NATO, India and others towards full independence of Tibet as a global strategic imperative. Hence the discussion that follows.
India's Strategic Losses Accruing From Timid Tibet Policies
India's political leadership in the last 60 years has refused to learn strategic lessons from the Nehruvian foreign policy approaches towards China. The responses of the Indian Government to the March 8, 2008 political unrest are again pathetic and in the Nehruvian mould, India's political leadership as opposed to India at large, has a palpable fear of China and saying anything against China.
It is pitiable that India as an emerging global power should be reveling in statements from Chinese Foreign Ministry officials certifying that India is a good neighbor because the Indian Government has refused to condemn China over its ongoing cultural genocide in Tibet.
In stark contrast, when has China been sensitive to India's strategic sensitivities in the last 60 years in its South Asian policies. In fact China has constantly adopted stances adversarial to India's national security interests, right till to date and India’s political leadership has just lumped it.
India at large needs to know the strategic losses that have accrued to India as a result of India's political leadership’s timidity beginning from Nehru.
Briefly outlined these can be enumerated as follows:
· Tibet as buffer state essential for India's security was gifted away by Nehru’s total obliviousness to India's strategic interests. And this too without a murmur. In passing it needs to be said that once again another Congress Government has gifted away Nepal as a buffer state to Nepalese Maoists.
· Military occupation of Tibet by China with India's permissiveness brought China’s military presence on India's doorsteps for over 3000 kilometers
· Emboldened by India's passivity, China raised territorial disputes all along India's borders with Tibet, ultimately resulting in the Sino-Indian War of 1962 and Chinese military occupation of vast tracts of Indian territory.
· Nehru’s strategic and political timidity resulted in India being unprepared for war with China and a military debacle heaped by China from Tibet on the illustrious Indian Army for which culpability lies solely on India's political leadership.
· Tibet’s annexation by China facilitated it to emasculate India strategically within South Asian confines.
· If India had contested China’s annexation of Tibet, India would not have had to face Pakistan as a country with Chinese nuclear weapons and Chinese long range missiles.
· The Karakoram Highway which outflanks India strategically, courtesy Pakistan would not have come up if Tibet was helped by India to retain its independence. Karkoram Highway is a Chinese life-support system to Pakistan to strategically confront India
· India would not have lost thousands of kilometers of Indian territory in Aksai Chin and the North East as a result of Chinese aggression facilitated by China’s military annexation of Tibet.
These are inexcusable strategic losses caused by India’s political leadership’s timidity. India today is well placed to join others in undoing many of the negative aspects of India's strategic losses by working towards full independence of Tibet
United States Strategic Losses Accruing From “China Permissive” Policies
The United States as many American authors maintain has for the better part of the 20th Century had a narcissistic obsession with China hoping to convert China into a Westernized and Americanized Asian nation.
The Communist take over in 1949 brought the United States face to face with China's propensity for armed conflict first in Korea and then later in Vietnam.
The United States continued to view China solely through its strategic utility in relation to drawing China away from the Soviet orbit. The United States did manage to do so for a brief period in the 1970s. However, China’s strategic utility to USA was over by early 1980s and thereafter United States-China relations have been decidedly adversarial, notwithstanding the rhetoric that emanates from both nations.
The “China-Permissive” policies of the United States as such led first to the military annexation of Tibet by China and now the emergence of the “China Threat” to US security.
The United States strategic losses accruing as a result of its “China-Permissive” policies can be recounted as follows:
· Tibet as the heartland of Asia was allowed by United States permissiveness to be annexed by China and its militarization is now a threat to USA and NATO interests.
· Had the United States prevented the Chinese annexation of Tibet and which it was in a position to do so militarily, Chinese military intervention in Korea against the United States may not have taken place.
· Chinese hold over Tibet facilitates an extended Westward deployment of Chinese strategic nuclear missiles by thousands of kilometers. Such Westward deployment of Chinese strategic weapons facilitates effective coverage of South Asia, South West Asia, Central Asia and NATO countries – all areas strategic for United States and NATO security interests.
· China’s annexation of Tibet facilitated it to convert Pakistan into a more durable strategic ally of China than the United States by using land routes for unrestricted supply of Chinese nuclear weapons and missiles via the Karakoram Highway built by China.
· China’s development of Gwadur port in the vicinity of the Gulf and its being linked with Karakoran Highway to Tibet and thereon to China outflanks USA strategically in the vital Gulf Region, Afghanistan etc.
· The above gives China a vital counter-pressure point strategically to counter USA strategic moves against China in East Asia.
· China as an emerging superpower contending with the United States enjoys significant strategic advantages as long as it holds on to Tibet. In a way it not only imparts greater flexibility to China against USA but also reinforces Chinese deterrence capabilities against USA.
China’s strategic utility to the United States in the global chess-game became redundant in the 1980s.
It is China which is now in the process of check-mating the United States and this is facilitated by China’s continued military occupation of Tibet.
The United States needs to review its China strategic policies and especially on Tibet more specifically and forcefully. Full independence for Tibet should now emerge as the prime US aim, strategically.
Tibet: The Contemporary Strategic Significance
Tibet with its vast expanse of the Asian heartland is no longer some remote hermit kingdom which the global community can rule it out of its strategic consciousness.
The world has shrunk with globalization and globalization cannot be confined to the political and economic dimensions. Strategic shrinkages have also accrued as a result of the globalization process.
In terms of global strategic shrinkage, events and turbulent unrest in Tibet has global strategic implications on a number of grounds, when it is taken into account that it is in Tibet that a sizeable component of China’s nuclear arsenal and long range nuclear missiles are deployed.
Sixty years of China’s forcible suppression of Tibetan uprisings has failed to subdue the Tibetan nation’s aspirations for independence. This is likely to intensify further.
If ever China’s rises to emerge as a threatening military superpower and needs to be checkmated, it is Tibet from where the process of checkmating has to start.
China minus Tibet and Xinjiang is reduced strategically to an East Asian regional power, more in the nature of Japan and without pretensions to sit equally with USA and Russia.
With China’s military annexation of Tibet undone, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia will fall like dominos from China’s control.
Strategically, the global community has to recognize that Tibetan unrest with China has not yet acquired the contours of suicide bombers and insurgency against China. It cannot be ruled out even if external support is not forthcoming. The global community has to prepare itself for the contingency of military intervention in Tibet on humanitarian grounds if such an eventuality emerges.
Tibet’s “Total Independence” is a Global Strategic Imperative
The discussion in the paper so far would have amply highlighted that “total independence: of Tibet is a global strategic imperative.
This issue is deliberately injected into this discussion as the global community can be tempted to settle for less by “greater political autonomy” for Tibet under China’s political and strategic control. This temptation could arise as His Holiness, the Dalai Lama now seems to be inclined to accept this as a compromise solution.
Strategically, Tibet’s “greater political autonomy” under China would not facilitate the withdrawal of China’s nuclear weapons arsenal and strategic missiles arsenal from Tibet. China’s global strategic weight arising from the geo-strategic advantages imparted by military control of Tibet is not reduced.
In strategic terms, China is counting on the demise of the present Dalai Lama. The Tibetan younger generation is aware of it and are becoming restive. They are also impatient with the Dalai Lama’s peaceful “Middle Way” policy approaches to China as in the last five decades it has neither brought peace to Tibet nor independence to Tibet. They demand complete independence from China now.
The global community needs to pay serious attention to this aspiration of the Tibetan nation, if not on grounds of human rights and liberties, but at least on strategic grounds.
The United States, NATO and India's Convergence of Strategic Interests on Tibet
No further effort in analysis is required to highlight that there are strong convergence of strategic interests on Tibet which should bind the United States, NATO and India for assisting the Tibetan nation’s re-emergence as an independent sovereign nation until it was military annexed by China in 1949.
Complying with China’s insistence that all countries should politically adhere to the “One China” policy is a travesty of both history and strategic realities.
The Tibetan nation has a distinct ethnic, religious and cultural character which in no way is anywhere close in ethnicity and culture to China. The Tibetan nation is as distinct from China as China let us say is distinct from India. The “One China” policy is only applicable to China and not to Tibet, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia. The global community has so far gone along with this fraudulent concept as a result of its China appeasement policies. The time has come to call off this fraud.
Fortunately, the United States and NATO countries have shown indications to call of this fraud.
The present German Chancellor was strong enough to receive the Dalai Lama officially in her office in September 2007 in defiance of Chinese protestations.
The French President has not ruled out boycotting the Olympics should China not change its policies in Tibet.
The visit and meetings with The Dalai Lama this month of the US Speaker, Ms Nancy Pelosi to the Headquarters of the Tibetan Government-in-exile at Dharamsala in India were rich in political symbolism. The US Speaker made no bones about expressing the following to highlight American support for the Tibetan nation:
· “If freedom loving people throughout the world do not speak out against China and China’s oppression in Tibet, we have lost all moral authority to speak on human rights anywhere in the world”.
· “The situation in Tibet is a challenge to the conscience of the world”.
· “We are here at this time to join you in shedding bright light on what is happening in Tibet”.
· “I am here to support the Dalai Lama on behalf of the people of the United States."
Sadly, India is yet to forcefully come out with such strong support for the cause of Tibetan independence, when India's strategic stakes in Tibet are far more higher.
More pathetically, the present Indian Government has not permitted any contact by its political leaders or government officials with the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan Government-in exile in India out of supine deference to China’s sensitivities.
It is high time that India's political establishment recognizes that such stances impinge heavily on India's image as an aspiring global power. How can the world respect India's emerging power when its leaders project the deficiency of political will in speaking out forcefully on issues which effect India's national security.
Concluding Observations
The Tibetan revolt against China in March 2008 on a widespread scale and in unprecedented intensity sends ominous signals to the global community, in that while the United States, NATO countries and India and others may fear China’s military rise, the Tibetan nation and its people no longer fear China and challenged and will continue to challenge China’s colonization of Tibet which is akin to Manchuria's annexation by Japan in the 1930s.
The prevailing global strategic balance, despite China’s military modernization and expansion of her strategic assets is still not tilted in China’s favor so as to deter USA, NATO countries and India from strong strategic and political postures on Tibet.
Political and strategic excuses could be found in the 1950s to justify their passivity in acquiescing to China’s military annexation of Tibet. In 2008 when globalization has also led to global strategic shrinkage, the global community should not watch idly the continued cultural genocide by China in Tibet and the resultant spin-off of suicide bombings and insurgency which the younger generation may resort to for total independence. They are convinced that China will not relinquish its annexation of Tibet without the use of force.
In the 1930s the global community did not stand up to events on Manchuria. Munch and Sudetenland. The end results were devastating.
Can the United States, NATO countries and India afford strategically a repeat of the above events by China’s continued annexation of Tibet and from where it targets critical strategic regions of the world with her nuclear weapons and long range strategic nuclear missiles?
(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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