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Harsh V Pant in an article titled “India’s Power Challenge” in Outlook in response to Guha’s earlier article in the same magazine saying that India shouldn’t indulge itself in the so called skulduggery of international power politics makes the point that international relations are anarchic and involve skulduggery in the first place to begin with and India cannot close its eyes to that fact and avoid the situation by chanting the peace and goodwill mantra alone.

He also wonders why Indian politicians who practice the worst form of realpolitik in the domestic arena shy away from power politics when it comes to the international arena.

A fundamental quandary that has long dogged India in the realm of foreign affairs and that has become even more acute with India’s ascent in the international order is what Sunil Khilnani has referred to as India’s lack of an “instinct for power”.

Most recently, this ambivalence was expressed by the Indian minister of commerce in a speech when he said: “this word power often makes me uncomfortable”. Though he was talking about the economic rise of India and the challenges that India continues to face as it continues to strive for sustained economic growth, his discomfort with the notion of India as a rising power was indicative of a larger reality in Indian polity. This ambivalence about the use of power in international relations where any prestige or authority eventually rely upon traditional measures of power, whether military or economic is curious as the Indian political elites have rarely shied away from the maximization of power in the realm of domestic politics, thereby corroding the institutional fabric of liberal democracy in the country. It was Indira Gandhi who long back, while addressing a foreign audience, suggested that India doesn’t believe in power (apparently only when it came to foreign policy it might seem).

Well the reality is actually quite down to earth. This is because most Indian politicians and bureaucrats and so called “intellectuals” included do not understand the outside world the way it is. They are more comfortable politicking in a domestic arena where they can easily recognize themselves with their opponents, rivals, supporters and other assorted cast of characters and even second guess them. On the other hand the rest of the outside world is indeed very foreign to them. They do not understand the ideologies, the fears, the ambitions and the desires that animate those outside India and thus their instinct since the last six decades has been to stick to a formula, that of professing its peaceful intentions and goodwill towards the outside world and hoping that they will leave them alone so that they can continue to indulge all their politicking energies in the domestic arena.

And one cannot blame them since they are the product of a culture that has been very insular and did not seek to know very much about the outside world until very recently. Only in modern times perhaps since the mid-nineteenth century have Indians traveled abroad in significant numbers. Until then it was even a religious taboo to travel abroad and those who did faced social ostracism on their return.Nowadays it is becoming more and more common and the globalization process means that more and more Indians are coming in direct contact with the outside world in some way or form.

And resultantly the current generation is much more aware of the outside world and India’s place in it. So it is largely a matter of a generation gap and once the current generation of politicians and bureaucrats who had their young formative years back in the era when the dinousaurs roamed the earth retire and ride into the sunset over the course of the next decade and the new generation takes over India will begin to engage with world in a significantly more assertive manner.

According to this IDRW article dated July 4, 2008 China at this stage is ahead in building and deploying Submarines for its navy while India is ahead in building and deploying surface ships and has decades of experience in operating Aircraft carriers compared to the PLA Navy which is still to obtain one.

After 10 years of steady effort, both India and China have made significant qualitative changes in their navies. In terms of submarine capabilities – the construction of SSNs and SSBNs – China is now far ahead of India, however.

China has built two 094 SSBNs and two 093 SSNs, along with JL2 and JL1M submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) that are ready to go into service in the PLA Navy, if they have not already done so.

In contrast, India is only preparing to receive one Russian-made Akura SSN for testing purposes by the end of 2008. In February 2008, the Indian Navy also launched from under water a 700-kilometer-range K-15 ballistic missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead.

Nonetheless, India’s pace in the construction of large-tonnage surface battleships and an aircraft carrier is faster than China’s. Thanks to the 290-kilometer-range BrahMos supersonic multirole missile jointly developed by India and Russia, the overall technological standard of the Indian Navy’s ship-to-ship missile is superior to that of China’s PLA Navy. India’s surface battleships currently being built will all be fitted with BrahMos SSMs, according to the plan of the Indian Navy.

Ships added to the PLA Navy over the past 10 years include two 051C DDGs, two 052B DDGs, two 052C DDGs, four 956E/EM DDGs and one 051B DDG, all of which have a full-load displacement of over 6,000 tons. Six additional ships, 054 and 054A FFGs, have also been built. These surface battleships are the flagships of the modern Chinese navy.

In the Indian Navy over the past 10 years three Delhi Class DDGs and three 4,000-ton class Type 1135.6 FFGs have been commissioned, with the latter armed with 300-kilomter-range Club-N surface-to-surface missiles. The Indian Navy has also received three Type 16A FFGs with full-load displacement of 4,500 tons and armed with 16 units of H-35 surface-to-surface missiles.

As a result, in terms of the construction of surface battleships above 6,000 tons, China is temporarily ahead of India, while in the building of 4,000-ton class missile frigates, India and China are about equal, with India slightly ahead in technology.

The Indian Navy is also armed with one Hermes aircraft carrier with a full-load displacement of 28,000 tons as well as 12 Sea Harrier FRS Mk 51 fighters. Obviously, the Indian Navy’s experience in the use of an aircraft carrier is surely superior to that of the PLA Navy.

Regarding the surface battleships under construction right now, India seems to be much more ambitious than China. Since 2007, the only large surface battleship China has been building is the 054A FFG. In contrast, the Indian Navy has started to build three P-15A DDGs at its Mazagon Shipyard. This is an upgraded variant of the Delhi Class DDG, with drastic changes. So far one P-15A has already been launched.

A source from the Mazagon Shipyard told the author in New Delhi that the P-15A construction program is now giving way to the Shivalik, or P-17 FFG. The first P-17 will be delivered to the Indian Navy within this year, and the second and third will be delivered in 2009 and 2010 respectively.

The two types of surface battleships mentioned above will all be fitted with a vertical-launched version of the BrahMos SSM. The P-15A will be armed with 16 such missiles. The P15A DDG has a full-load displacement of 7,000 tons, and still uses the Shtil-1 ship-to-air missile. The P-17 is India’s indigenous stealthy FFG and has a full-load displacement of 5,300 tons. It is also armed with Shtil-1 ship-to-air missiles. [link]

The good folks at Bharat-Rakshak are war gaming a war scenario with China on the Tibetan plateau. While a similar exercise is being done by some on the Chinese side too.

Andrei Chang writing in his column Military might on UPIAsiaOnline has this to say about a possible Indo-China conflict after the Beijing Olympics.

Should China-India relations deteriorate to the verge of military confrontation and the riots in Tibet spread extensively, the first combat units of the PLA to be called to action would be the No. 52 and No. 53 Mountain Brigades under the Tibet Military Region.

The No. 52 Brigade, stationed at Linzhi, is highly mechanized and armed with T-92 wheeled armored vehicles and HJ-8/9 anti-tank missiles. National highway 318 directly connects Linzhi and Lhasa; thus it is logical to conclude that the T-92 wheeled armored vehicles on the streets of Lhasa were from this brigade. The No. 52 Mountain Brigade is stationed at Milin and is also the PLA combat unit stationed closest to the city of Lhasa.

National highway 318 is in fact the southern route of the Sichuan-Tibet highway. In the event of war or future large-scale riots in Tibet, the highway will be the key passageway for combat troops from the Chengdu Military Region to enter Tibet.

However, this key highway runs across the Minjiang River and the Daduhe River in a region with an average altitude of 4,250 meters (around 14,000 feet) above sea level, and thus is very susceptible to attack by the Indian Air Force or assault by organized rioters. Most of the highways within the Tibet region will be within striking range of the Su-30MKI fighters soon to be deployed in the No. 30 Squadron of the Indian Air Force at Tezpur.

Read the rest…

When the External Affairs minister Padmashri Shri Pranab Mukherjee landed in Beijing for his scheduled meeting with the Chinese leadership. He found that neither Hu or grandpa Wen could spare any time to meet him. But they instead fixed up a meeting with the newly appointed Vice President Xi Jinping who is currently assigned for dealing with crank cases.

That has left the Indian side including both the MEA and MEdiA quite confused and they are trying to figure out whether this is a good thing or a bad thing.The current leadership shows no inclination to meet him while at the same they arrange a meeting with the supposed future leadership.

Well let me help them out of their stupor. In one short sentence- It is a BAD thing and it is a straightforward diplomatic slap in the face.

Xi Jinping might be the chosen successor of Hu Jintao slated to succeed him in 2012. but the CCP history is littered with the corpses of such “chosen ones”. from President Lin Biao to Party General Secretary Zhao Ziyang there are many who one day were on the path to superstardom only to find themselves in a dark dungeon the next day holding their intenstines in their hands and begging for mercy from the red guards just because of one small real or perceived misstep.

Xi knows this very well. So all that Pranab can expect from this encounter is more homilies, platitudes, joint declarations ad hominem but nothing of substance.

And one more thing that has missed the notice of most Padmashri Shri Pranab should have chosen a better day to make his trip to Beijing than preferring to go on the 19th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre in an Olympic year when the whole world is trying to use the Olympics as a leverage to pressure Beijing to improve its record on human rights. It is said that diplomacy is a lot about symbolism. The posturing matters just as much as the substance. It is unlikely that the either Pranabda or the babus of the MEA were unaware of the significance of the day.

Now the timing is definitely not an issue between India and China. Most certainly the Chinese would have been just as boorish as they have been today even if the Indian foreign minister had landed on June 6th, 7th or 8th or whenever. it wouldn’t make a dime of a difference.

But where it will come to matter is in the court of International opinion which the Indian diplomats are trying to woo for myriad reasons and especially for their coveted permanent security council seat. For a country that is drumbeating its credentials as the largest democracy in the world to gain a seat at that supposed high table. It matters what message each of its words and actions sends to the rest of the world. This unfortunately has only sent the message that India really doesn’t have any courage of conviction to act on its own professed principles and again when they see the craven attitude of Mukherjee and his ministry in the light of Chinese boorishness it doesn’t raise their confidence that India has the ability to even stand up for its own self. No wonder governments in most world capitals do not take the Indian diplomats seriously.

One another item to add to the long list of inglorious achievements of the UPA regime that will haunt India in the coming decades is helping establish a pro-China regime in neighbouring Nepal which effectively brings the communist sickle right upto India’s heartland endangering its security in ways that will only become apparent as time rolls by.

One of the first acts of the Maoists after seizing power in the recently held elections was to dictate the end of Nepal’s 240 year old monarchy thus removing a sizeable thorn in the way of their ultimate aim of seizing absolute power in Nepal in incremental steps. They haven’t yet disbanded their militia and reports are that they used them extensively to intimidate opposition party candidates and supporters in the recent elections.

In the meanwhile the Maoist leader is on a charm offensive. In an interview with Karan Thapar on Devil’s Advocate he has laid out his vision for the future course of Indo-Nepal relations. It is a very charming interview where Prachanda or Pushpa Kumar Dhamal has tried to make all the right noises and lull his enemies into a false sense of security. In that he has learnt from the example of his predecessors from across the globe ranging from Stalin to Mao to Castro and others on how to charm the gullible left-liberals and use the enemy’s own free media against him. that in itself begs the need to keep an eye out for this hooded serpent.

Read the rest…

A little under two years ago on July 6, 2006, the Nathu-La Pass situated on the border between India and now illegally occupied Tibet was opened for border trade between the Indian state of Sikkim and the so called Tibetan Autonomous region.

At that time much of the media and officialdom had gone on an overdrive peddling the line that this was being done because China had finally recognised Sikkim as an integral part of India, in exchange for the India’s unequivocal recognition of Tibet as a part of China.

But since then though countless Indian officials, mediamen and politicians cutting across party lines have many times chanted the mantra that India recognises Tibet as an integral part of China without the slightest provocation, no Chinese leader has ever made a similar statement on Sikkim even when asked pointed questions in that regard. The closest that they ever came was when Chinese premier Wen Jiabao in his April 2005 visit to India in reply to a pointed question tactfully replied “It is well known that the issue of Sikkim is no longer the problem between China and India. This is the common consensus reached by the leaders of both countries.”

The Indian side unfortunately did not push this matter forcefully enough with the Chinese side and extract a unambiguous written statement from the Chinese declaring that they accepted that Sikkim was an integral part of India and chose to be content with the Chinese statement that “Sikkim was no longer a problem between China and India”.

Well now they have decided to make it a problem. A year after they demolished a makeshift bunker on the Indian side comes the news that they have now laid claim to a piece of land in North Sikkim.

China has surprised India by laying claim on a small tract of land in North Sikkim, even threatening this week to demolish existing stone structures there. India has strongly rebutted these claims, lodged an official protest and barred Chinese troops from entering the area.

Referred to as the “Finger Area” by Indian armed forces, this territory falls north of Gyangyong in Sikkim and overlooks a strategically important valley known as the Sora Funnel. It contains several stone cairns, which are essentially heaps of stones that can be used for shelter. The area is in the northernmost tip of Sikkim, north of a place called Gyangyong, and appears like a protruding finger on the map — hence the name Finger Area.[link]

The bottomline is that the Indian side brought this upon itself by not extracting a written and unambiguous statement from the Chinese side that they regarded Sikkim as an integral part of India and lulling themselves into complacency. The Media is not entirely blameless in this episode as it had back then shirked its duty of playing the role of a vigilant watchdog and allowed itself to be taken in by the government line that the absence of an unambiguous statement from the Chinese side was not a big deal at all. so this despairing statement at the end of the article in the Indian express appears quite disingenuous.

But clearly, what was considered a settled issue once China recognized Sikkim as part of India is now making an uncomfortable re-entry into the boundary settlement discourse.

can we hear that collective refrain from the Indian establishment and the media- oh! the wicked Chinese not respecting the “spirit” of that “settlement” .

got news for you guys with Communist China even the letter doesn’t matter. but it would have atleast made you guys look less stupid now if you had only managed to get it.

The following article appeared on the website of the Chinese communist party’s official mouthpiece “People’s Daily Online” reiterating China’s official claim on Tibet under the title “Tell you a true Tibet Story”. Well its a nice story all right but to think that there is any truth in it at all would be ridiculous.It is actually an excerpt from a propoganda book published by the so called “information” office of the state council of the PRC titled “Tibet- its ownership and human rights situation”. If this is the best the Chinese can do then they really need to brush up on their imperialism.

First a brief backgrounder. Tibet was historically a mountainous nomad country tucked away towards the south-west frontier of China. There was little political contact between either country till the mid-13th century when they both came under Mongol domination and then after the disintegration of the Mongol empire into four different factions after the death of Mongke Khan the Eastern part of the Mongol Empire which included Mongolia proper, Sinkiang, Tibet, China proper, Manchuria and Korea came under the rule of Genghis Khan’s grandson Khubilai Khan.

Read the rest…

The young Mongol knelt “reverently upon the ground” and “with the deepest gratitude”, acknowledged himself “to be a Mongol slave of inferior ability, perfectly unable to repay in the slightest degree the imperial favours of which his family have been the recipients for generations past, he declares his intention of performing his duties to the best of his feeble powers”. He then “turned himself toward the palace and beat his head upon the ground…in grateful acknowledgement of the imperial bounty.”

The above passage is excerpt from an 1878 report in the Peking Gazette and quoted in Jack Weatherford’s book ‘Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World’, giving a glimpse of the ceremony of receiving an Ambassador from a vassal state in the Manchu court of those days.

And this is exactly how future Indian Ambassadors could be sworn in a decade from now at the Chinese court if the recent events are any indication of the path the MEA and its political master the UPA are hell bent on dragging India towards.

The Chinese of course were rude and discourteous enough to summon the Indian ambassador and a lady at that at 2 am in the morning to express their “displeasure” at the scaling of their embassy wall in New Delhi by Tibetan protestors. Now this is something that could have easily been taken up during working hours. And one can easily blame the Chinese for their uncivilized conduct. But what one cannot excuse is the pusillanimous behavior of the MEA in the light of such reprehensible behavior on the part of the Chinese. Not only did the Ambassador meekly turn up at the doorstep of the Chinese foreign ministry to face the music, the MEA did not even lodge a protest at this public humiliation later on!

India was not the only country where the local Chinese embassy was targeted by protestors during the last one week. Protests took place in dozens of countries all over the world. The Chinese embassies were also targeted in New York, Sydney, Paris and Austria. But not one of the Ambassadors of these countries was humiliated in this way. Infact in these cities the incidents were even more violent involving mob violence and in one case protestors scaling the embassy building itself and tearing down the Chinese flag which never happened here.

In all these cases the Chinese expressed “satisfaction” with formal apologies from these countries. Only India was targeted in this manner and this begs an explanation. What is the MEA doing wrong in representing India and its interests abroad?

The Chinese embassy in New Delhi is huge even by the palatial standards of the embassies in the Chanakyapuri enclave. Big enough to host an entire PLA armoured division. There is a huge open ground in front of it and as far as one can tell there are no barricades around the embassy like there is around the US embassy nearby, it is easy for anyone to walk right up to its walls. So the Chinese themselves are not blameless here. To prevent the incident where a small group of Tibetan protestors tried to scale the walls of the embassy the Delhi Police would have had to form a two layer thick human chain all around this huge building 24 hours a day seven days a week in anticipation of such an event which might or might not have happened!

The MEA couldn’t even be trusted to put forth this point forcefully in front of the Chinese and protest the horrible treatment meted out to its envoy and one wonders why? Unfortunately when an incident like the public shaming of the ambassador by a foreign country happens it automatically morphs into an issue of “insult to the country itself” and the people automatically line up behind their man (or woman in this case) .

But in this case this will merely shield the MEA from accountability for its sins which brought about such a situation in the first place. Atleast in this case the Indian public can save their anger and direct it where it should be, not at the Chinese but at their own foreign office. Because the trend since the days of KM Panikkar and going right upto and including the current foreign secretary when he himself was posted there has been for the Indian embassy in Beijing to act as a surrogate for Beijing rather than as a representation of India. No wonder the Chinese, practitioners of realpolitik have developed a healthy disregard for Indian diplomats and treat them as their doormat. This is perhaps what made the difference for an insomniac Chinese foreign office clerk ordered by his masters to find a scape goat among the nearly two dozen countries to trouble early in the morning to pick up the phone and dial the Indian ambassador’s number.

For nearly five decades the present Dalai Lama, the 14th in line, Tenzin Gyatso has been the most recognised symbol of the Tibetan nation. But the question that after him who is going to take over his mantle occupies the minds of most Tibetans and international observers. At present it seems that it is only the communist mafia in Beijing with a clear succession plan in mind, to simply install their own puppet in his place after his death as they did with the Panchen lama and thus eliminate the most potent symbol of opposition to their continued brutal occupation of Tibet.

China’s plans to seek out and enthrone the next Dalai Lama on its own have been known for well over a decade. Nevertheless, the Dalai Lama admitted that he and his government in exile had really come to no decision about how they would manage the search for and recognition of the next Dalai Lama.

China has long been convinced that the Dalai Lama’s passing will deflate the Tibet issue as an international concern. It will handle the succession process by itself, installing its own Dalai Lama on its own terms. It has done this with a Panchen Lama who is rejected by most Tibetans and has long believed it can now install a Dalai Lama with little regard for popular approval.

In India, the Dalai Lama’s stated uncertainty about selecting his successor, combined with the fractures that lie under the surface of the exiled community, may make it likely that at his passing he will leave a resident Tibetan refugee community adrift. For all of his missteps in dealing with China, the Dalai Lama’s achievement in securing the cohesion and stability of the exiled community is considerable. And he is the most universally recognisable symbol of Tibet. Given what has just transpired in Tibet, China feels that the elimination of that symbol can come none too soon.[link]

Update: Brahma Chellaney on the importance of the institution of the Dalai lama.

Second, if Tibet is to be the means by which India coops up the bull in its own China shop, it has to treat the Dalai Lama as its most powerful ally. As long as the Dalai Lama is based at Dharamsala, he will remain India’s biggest strategic asset against China. The Tibetans in Tibet will neither acquiesce to Chinese rule, as their latest defiance shows, nor side with China against India. If after the death of the present incumbent, the institution of the Dalai Lama gets captured by Beijing (the way it has anointed its own Panchen Lama), India will be poorer by several army divisions against China. To foil China’s scheme, India should be ready with a plan.

The Army Chief Gen Deepak Kapoor in an exclusive interview to CNN-IBN to be telecast at 8:30pm IST(GMT + 5.5) tonight has gone on record saying that India can be held equally to blame of intruding into Chinese territory!

“The Chinese have a different perception of the Line Of Actual Control as do we – when they come up to their perception we call it an incursion, likewise they do.”

His shocking statement that India can be equally blamed for intruding into Chinese territory is based on a presumed logic that since the two sides have not agreed on a mutual Line of Actual Control both sides can accuse each other of intruding into their territories.

Infact the Army chief by making such a statement has exposed his ignorance of the history of the India-China border issue and also gives the impression that he is completely ignorant of the proceedings of the nearly 11 rounds of border talks that have been taking place since the last two and a half decades which coincided with much of his Army career.

He doesn’t seem to realise that technically India and China do not share a border. The entire length of the India-China border as it is today is actually the borders of occupied Tibet and Chinese Turkestan both forcibly incorporated into Chinese territory in the years immediately after the Maoists seized power from the nationalists in China in 1949. And the entire historical Chinese claim to these two territories is based on the premise that they were both part of Chinese territory during the Yuan dynasty of Kublai Khan.The so called “Middle Kingdom” hypothesis. The only fly in the ointment is that Kublai Khan was a Mongol vassal for much of his rule and thus it is more correct to say that Mongolia has more historical claim to China, Tibet and Chinese Turkestan rather than China has a claim on Inner Mongolia, Chinese Turkestan and Tibet.

The wily Chinese get around this by peddling the fiction that Kublai Khan became a “Chinese emperor” after the death of Mongke Khan and his subsequent defeating of his younger brother Arik Boke who had succeeded Mongke as Khan of the Mongol empire. That is absolute nonsense because after defeating Arik Boke, Kublai Khan had declared himself as the Khan of the Mongol empire the only problem was that the rest of the Golden family refused to recognise him as such. On the other hand Kublai Khan like a lot of other pragmatic conquerors in history also adopted some local Chinese titles and symbols to make himself more acceptable to the Chinese masses and cement his rule over the part of the empire directly under him [1] and by the time the Yuan dynasty was overthrown a century later by the indigenous Ming dynasty Tibet and Chinese turkestan did not form a part of their realm.

In short while the Chinese refuse to recognise the McMohan line terming it as a product of British imperialism their entire claim on Chinese Turkestan and Tibet which brings them to that Border line in the first place is itself a product of their past allegiance to Mongol imperialism which they cleverly disguise as the “Middle Kingdom” for consumption by gullibles!

Gen Kapoor has also conveniently sidestepped the fact that the Line of Actual Control remains undefined because the Chinese side inspite of nearly two decades of border talks have refused to exchange maps of the Western and eastern sectors with India while India’s own claim line is crystal clear for all including the Chinese side to see. It is therefore the responsibility of the Chinese side as a claimant to submit maps clarifying their own stand on where they think the Border in their opinion must run. India as a status quo power which has since the last 100 years adhered to the McMohan line cannot be held “equally responsible” in anyway for incidents on the border.

Gen Kapoor has clearly overstepped his brief in this case and this is not the first time, recently he held forth on the sixth pay commission on foreign soil disregarding all established norms that domestic politics stops at the water’s edge.The Government should either rein him in or relieve him of his responsibilities immediately if he continues to undermine the Indian position with his hollow moral grandstanding and continuous whining.That seems to be a long shot considering that the rest of the current government is no better in this regard.

It is also sad that Karan Thapar who has a reputation of being a “tough” interviewer who wouldn’t let even a bat escape on a dark moonless night gave a free pass to Gen Kapoor and did not challenge him with the fact that it was China which was being the obstacle in clearly demarcating the Line of Actual Control and India’s position in that regard is clear that it adheres to the McMohan line. Thapar would surely have pounced on any bureaucrat or politician if he had said such a thing. That he didn’t in the case of Gen Kapoor proves Pragmatic’s position that the Indian media and the public are in awe of the institution of the Armed forces and do not want to question them too closely for fear of offending them. This has to change. The Armed Forces like the rest of the state establishment should be held as much accountable to the Nation’s interest like anyone else.

Source: 1. Genghis Khan and the making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford.