India follows China's Central Asian
steps By M K Bhadrakumar
The geopolitics of Central Asia form one
significant template in the surprising twists in China's
recent approaches toward India. Chinese policy is adapting
to the post-September 11 Central Asian situation with
a high degree of flexibility. China is seeking
cooperation with India in Central Asia, including Xinjiang. On
a pending four-year-old Indian invitation, the chairman
of China's autonomous region of Xinjiang, Ismail
Tiliwandi, visited India in October. He sought development
of transportation links between Xinjiang and India and
the laying of a natural-gas pipeline connecting the two
countries. Again, China is warming to the idea
originally mooted by former Russian prime minister (and
the doyen of Soviet "Orientalists"), Yevgeny Primakov,
of a strategic triangle involving Russia, China and
India.
China has doubtless edged closer to the
Russian position on the question of India's membership
in an expanded UN Security Council. Last but not the
least, China's position that there is no obstacle to the
resolution of the border dispute with India is
indicative of a willingness to negotiate a settlement
that could potentially take relations to an altogether
new level.
As India would see it, post-Soviet
Central Asia has been accorded a degree of strategic
importance in China's regional policy, second only to
East Asia and the Taiwan Strait. Chinese diplomacy in
Central Asia set out to work, paradoxically, from a
position of great strength, but beset with challenges.
The Silk Road itself is traceable to the secret mission
undertaken by intrepid Chinese traveler Chang Chien in
the 2nd century BC to the obscure regions to China's
west. It reached the peak of its glory during the Tang
Dynasty (618-907) which was also China's "golden age".
Under the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), when China slammed
its door on the West, the Silk Road began to decline -
"the traffic slowed, the merchants left", to quote from
Peter Hopkirk's masterly chronicle of the Great Game,
"and finally its towns vanished beneath the desert sands
to be forgotten" - leaving behind the stuff of so many
legends. Thus, when China "returned" to Central Asia
in 1992 in the post-Soviet space, it was the inheritor
of a legacy embedded in the region's historical
consciousness. But China had challenges to cope with -
ill-defined borders with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and
Tajikistan; unstable state structures; the specter of
religious extremism and militancy haunting the region;
economic and social upheaval endemic to periods when an
entire era simply gives way; national identities untamed
by decades of Soviet rule; and external powers with
competing agendas jostling for geopolitical space.
Two distinct phases of Chinese diplomacy are
discernible. Up to 1996, China focused largely on giving
direction to: (i) establishment of state-to-state
relations with the newly independent countries; (ii)
settlement of territorial boundaries; (iii) providing
legal underpinnings to bilateral relations; (iv)
sustaining high-level political exchanges. China,
meanwhile, finessed the conceptual framework to move
forward. It sought to introduce guiding principles in
its discourse with Central Asian capitals - respect for
each other's sovereignty and territorial integrity;
non-interference in the internal affairs of each other;
common cause in strengthening regional stability; and,
mutually beneficial cooperation.
Clearly, these
principles were the irreducible minimum of China's own
national priorities as well - getting the Central Asian
countries to scrupulously adhere to the "one-China"
policy; safeguarding Xinjiang from cross-border
terrorism; facilitating peaceful development of China's
western provinces ("Go West" policy); and augmenting
China's energy security by drawing on the formidable
Caspian reserves of oil and natural gas.
With
the underpinnings of state-to-state relations put in
place, China began initiating cooperation across
multiple areas, ranging from economic, social and
cultural issues to politics and security. China
projected the cooperation as a factor of regional
stability. It sought "soft influence" by molding Central
Asian perceptions of a "benign" China. Of course, the
diplomacy was helped by Beijing's pragmatic policy of
political stabilization; its espousal of strategic
engagement with great sophistication; and, the active
role of the Jiang Zemin-Zhu Rongji team in projecting
China as a responsible regional player and stabilizer.
The second phase of China's policy surfaced in
April 1996 with the "Shanghai Five" initiative. From a
modest beginning in the early 1990s as an expanded
dialogue between China and Russia to discuss border
demarcation and arms reduction issues, it has taken
shape as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO)
comprising China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan,
Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. If SCO has rapidly evolved
into a collective security organization with a range of
activities - intelligence sharing, anti-terrorism
coordination, military cooperation and economic
cooperation - China should claim credit. Conceivably,
China had cause to worry about the waffle that was
Russian policy toward Central Asia during the wayward
Boris Yeltsin years in the 1990s and the resultant
predatory raids by Western powers into the power vacuum
in the region.
Chinese diplomacy had to
cope with Western propaganda too - that China harbors
a "Middle Kingdom" mentality that aims deep down at
making the Central Asian states its tributaries; that
China would make inroads into Russia's sphere of
influence; that China would invidiously push migrations
of its people in their millions into Central Asia's vast
uninhabited landscape, and so on. The more China wrapped
up energy deals in the region, the sharper became the
Western warnings. Nonetheless, Russia appears content
with SCO. Indeed, China and Russia share concerns over
regional stability to an extent that is compelling them
to become stakeholders in averting economic and social
unrest on their Central Asian peripheries. (Uighur
groups and Chechen rebels have variously exploited the
weaknesses in Central Asian countries' state structure
and porous borders.)
The civil war in
Tajikistan, Islamist revival in Uzbekistan, the
Taliban's ascendancy in Afghanistan - these phenomena
engendered a climate of religious extremism and
militancy in the region within which Uighur separatist
groups strove to establish training camps outside of
China's reach. Taliban and al-Qaeda funded, Uighurs were
armed and trained in camps within Afghanistan. This led
to a spurt in cross-border terrorism and in militant
attacks on Xinjiang. By 1998, violence in Xinjiang had
significantly escalated, prompting Beijing to step up
counter-terrorism cooperation with the Central Asian
countries and to commit increased Chinese investments
within the SCO framework in the region.
Of
course, the SCO calculus is more complex than that.
China uses SCO for stimulating its bilateral relations
with the member countries, while drawing on growing
bilateral ties to activate SCO's capabilities. Thus,
China regards SCO as a vital instrument to sustain a
stable external environment conducive for the
development of its backward western provinces.
Significantly, China reconciled with Russia's leadership
roles in other overlapping regional processes - the
Commonwealth of Independent States, the Collective
Security Treaty Organization, the Central Asian
Cooperation Organization and the Common Economic Space -
and did not visualize them to be either SCO's
"competitors" or "trend-setters".
Meanwhile, a
new volatility began appearing in the security
environment in the region after September 11, 2001. A
long-term US military presence in Central Asia became a
ground reality. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization
has begun to seriously expand into Central Asia. Japan
recently took the major initiative on yet another
regional forum - "Central Asia Plus Japan Dialogue" -
that promises to engage itself with the entire range of
issues affecting the region. Japan is thereby making it
clear that it is party to the core issues of Central
Asia's stability and security as much as China would be,
China being Central Asia's next-door neighbor
notwithstanding. To quote Frederick Starr, the
influential American strategic thinker on Central Asia,
"Japan's move is in full harmony with American interests
in Central Asia, and represents a step toward the
creation of a 'concert' of interested powers."
The point is, in Central Asia, China comes
face-to-face with US "double standards" in the
"war on terrorism". China hoped that its fight against
East Turkestan (Xinjiang) forces would become part of
the international effort against terrorism. But as early
as October 2001, President George W Bush warned China
that it should not use the "war on terrorism" as an
"excuse to persecute minorities".
Washington has
in effect followed a two-pronged policy of
distinguishing between those it regards to be violent
Uighur groups that have links with international
terrorism and what it considers to be legitimate Uighur
national movements that merit US financing. This
calibrated policy aims at isolating China's interests
from those of Central Asian countries (or of Russia),
apart from creating a lever of pressure on China.
Symptomatic of the US policy dilemma is its current
predicament in figuring out what to do with the two
dozen Uighur militants who were captured in Afghanistan
and interned in Guantanamo Bay. Handing them over to
China would be tantamount to acknowledging that they
were indeed terrorists linked to Taliban and al-Qaeda,
while granting them political asylum on US soil would be
a brazen act of "double standards". Washington sounded
out European allies and Turkey to harbor these Uighurs
as "refugees" from Xinjiang, but none would relieve
Washington of its excess "baggage".
American
scholars envisage that Beijing's response to the Central
Asian equations includes weaving together threads of
seamless partnerships with other regional powers such as
India (or Pakistan) that would preempt their gravitation
towards any US strategy of containment of China. As
Stephen Blank of the US War College wrote recently,
China is holding out the prospect of Xinjiang as a
"laboratory for increased cooperation" with its South
Asian neighbors.
India has so far remained a
passive observer of the process of a long-term US
military presence taking shape in Afghanistan and the
Central Asian region - neither critical nor approving,
neither overtly alarmed nor privately exhilarated.
Certainly, to the extent the US is serious about
exterminating the forces of militancy and terrorism in
the region, India would see the inevitability of the US
military presence in Afghanistan or Central Asia. But
India has traditionally been averse to joining hands
with military blocs. The fact remains that India is
neither a natural nor an indispensable partner of the US
regional policy in Central Asia in ideological or
political terms. For example, India would have no
hesitation to see eye-to-eye with the Central Asian
countries that a movement like Hizb-ut Tahrir could be a
charioteer of political Islam pernicious to the region's
stability, while the US maintains an ambivalent outlook.
The US would prescribe Western democracy as the ideal
model of statehood for the Central Asian countries,
whereas India would be acutely conscious of the vanity
of attempting to clone these countries to any model
without due regard of their culture and history and
their contemporary circumstances.
If anything,
India has a commonality of interests with Russia and
China over the threat posed by terrorism and religious
extremism to the Central Asian region's security. India
would share the Russian or Chinese perspective that
there are no "good" or "bad" extremists. Like Russia and
China, India has a high stake in Central Asia's
stability for its negative fall-outs on India's own
security. All the same, India has not joined Russia and
China in voicing condemnations of "double standards" in
the "war on terrorism", at the recent meeting of the
foreign ministers of the three countries in Almaty. If
at all Delhi chooses to refer to the issue in public, it
has been in innuendos, unlike the explicit articulations
by Moscow or Beijing. Evidently, India would prefer to
constructively engage its interlocutors with their
burden of "double standards" vis-a-vis issues affecting
India's national security, on a one-to-one basis, away
from the glare of public diplomacy. Interestingly, India
suggested that future trilateral consultations between
Russia, China and India should also bring onto the
agenda the prospects of economic cooperation, apart from
political exchanges. It must be noted that no joint
political statement was issued after the Almaty meeting
of the three foreign ministers.
The hard reality
is that apart from the common bonds of history and
despite having a head start over most other regional
powers - India was one of only four countries permitted
by the Soviet authorities to maintain a consulate in
Central Asia - India's presence remains thin on the
ground in economic terms. Even in political terms, if a
touchstone were to be applied, it is noteworthy that the
Central Asian countries have chosen to back Japan's
claim to be represented in an expanded UN Security
Council. This despite the Central Asian leaderships
being uniformly comfortable that India has never
moralized to them on the dynamics of democratization,
human rights or globalization affecting their national
life. The point is India has not put much money on the
table in Central Asia. (Japanese assistance to the
region over a 10-year period till 2002 amounted to
US$2.6 billion, as against India's $100 million or so;
at the SCO summit meeting in Tashkent in June this year
alone, China pledged a fresh top-up commitment of $500
million.)
Indian diplomats in the Central Asian
capitals has not frittered away their time or energy by
factoring China as a "rival" or "competing" power. China
would also take comfort that despite India's
determination to forge close relations with the US and
despite India's manifest aversion towards taking any
confrontationist stance towards the US on regional or
international issues where opinions (or interests) may
vary, India has studiously kept its distance from any US
strategy of containment of China.
India's Central Asia policy places
strong emphasis on the bilateral track with the five
countries in the region. India's diplomacy works
independently of even an exceptionally friendly power
like Russia that doubtless enjoys a privileged status in
the Central Asian region and could be of help in
advancing India's interests. As for regional frameworks
like SCO or the Central Asia Cooperation Organization
(or the newly formed "Central Asia Plus Japan
Dialogue"), India's cogitations with them would be
essentially as supplementary channels at the secondary
or tertiary level, even as India would place primacy on
ploughing the bilateral furrow with the Central Asian
states. This might make India a lousy team player. But
it has sound logic. India views the Central Asian
leaderships, with their sturdy experience in the
corridors of Soviet power, as far from novices in
realpolitik
who could be shepherded around from one
regional forum to another piloted by grandiloquent
foreign powers.
As such, India's policy has been
guided by considerations of what is in there for India
in tangible beneficial terms vis-a-vis any of the
on-going noisy tournaments of the Great Game in the
Central Asian region. Indeed, if a possibility to tap
energy sources in Xinjiang were to emerge, India would
be seriously interested. Energy security is after all a
national priority of development for India.
M K Bhadrakumar is a former Indian
career diplomat who has served in Pakistan, Afghanistan,
Uzbekistan and Moscow.
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