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| from ChinaDaily |
Building Sustainable Peace; An Agenda for India China Military Dialogue
With the visit of a high level Indian defence delegation to Beijing, India and China are set to resume their military dialogue. This is a confidence building step expected to be followed by the fourth level of their bilateral defence dialogue since it began in 2007. Lot of anxious watchers are following this development closely, from all around the world and from all quarters of the society, since this round of dialogue is taking place at an extremely critical juncture. Despite the three dialogues before, and notwithstanding multiple meetings between the leadership of the two countries, the 2011 defence dialogue will take place under the shadow of recent history.
Therefore, it would be a first success of the 2011 dialogue if the two sides agree to avoid recurrence of the kind of instances that took the bilateral relations to their lowest level in the last decade. It will ensure that the future dialogues on any issues do not have to start on a clean slate. Subsequently, at the minimum after this dialogue, India China relations will achieve a key missing ingredient, momentum, that can take the relationship decisively forward.
Lofty ideals apart, the critical question here is how does one achieve all of it? In the subsequent section, steps will be suggested from an Indian perspective on what is felt that is missing and that needs to be done in the short and long runs.
A) Allying threat perceptions: This is really the core task of the dialogue. Increasing economic engagement has not been able to boost the bilateral confidence as far as India and China are concerned. India views Chinese engagement with Pakistan negatively and for the obvious reason that India sees Pakistan as a failing state. It is generally felt in India that unconditional Chinese support to Pakistan at this juncture would encourage the belligerence of its leadership. It is quite clear that Pakistan is willing to see itself bigger that it indeed is based on Chinese support as was apparent after Pakistani President Zardari's recent China visit. China would do well to reduce the irritant quotient of its Pakistan strategy. On occasions, China has argued that it sees Kashmir as a bilateral issue; it needs to tell Pakistan to behave as such and not make the Chinese economic support to Pakistan an irritant in the India-Pakistan or India-China relations. China would also help the bilateral relations if it clarified the doubts on the nature of its activities in the Gilgit Baltistan Region of the Pakistan occupied Kashmir.
On the Indian part, India needs to reassure China of India's strategic independence. In other words, China needs to be told to believe that India is not at present and will not become a client state unlike India’s western neighbour. China has to also believe that India will not become a party in increasing its strategic uncertainties in addition to its Pacific dilemma. Chinese scholars have been liberally sighting the Indo-US nuclear deal in the context of the Sino-Pakistan strategic nuclear cooperation. However, this kind of argument undermines India's strategic autonomy as evident from India's recent rejection of American bidders from its combat aircraft deal. If India were a client state to the US then that decision would have been too easy. More importantly, simplistic analyses of the India US deal and its usage to justify nuclear assistance to Pakistan tend to justify hardliner view in India on China. In addition, it casts the Indo-US deal in a strategic context instead of an energy security context. While China goes all out to ensure its energy security as a developing country, it should be willing to give India the same space for energy development since India's energy needs are equally pressing. In other words, India is not party to any encirclement strategy and China should do its bit to demystify the alleged strings of pearl strategy that tends to bother India.
B) Respecting Sovereignty and Territorial Status Quo: It goes without saying that this is a critically important requirement in building sustainable peace. The obvious reference here is to the stapled visas and denial of visa controversies. India had opted out of the 2010 dialogue and exercise because of these reasons only. Any action that amounts to interference in respective internal affairs must be avoided. Here one might add that bigger responsibility is on China since Kashmir remains India’s internal matter and a bilateral issue between India and Pakistan. China’s interference in it would be undesirable as seen from the instances of the past year.
C) Nuclear Dialogue: India and China should begin discussing nuclear security sooner than later. That step will be a major confidence builder in the bilateral relationship. Irrespective of numbers, doctrine level discussions must be undertaken to reassure each other of the mutual No First Use (NFU) strategies. This is especially crucial when India is now a firm player in the global nuclear debate. This may not be the first step but nuclear confidence building pacts could be discussed towards enhanced confidence building. Undoubtedly, if peace is the ultimate objective, it is better off reached through dialogue and consensus building.
D) Management of Misinformation: Misinformation spreads when dialogue is absent. Regular dialogues and exchanges on military capabilities and doctrines can dispel misinformation. If workable understandings on capabilities do not develop based on credible exchanges then hyperrealist nationalistic news tends to spread like wildfire. China’s thinking on international relations is certainly not decisively hyperrealist. However, due to a lack of multidimensional dialogue and lack of space for other perspectives, hyperrealist versions of Chinese thinking on India are taken like gospel by the sensitive media. For example, when a 2010 blog article originating in China spoke of dismembering India into 30 states, one could not blame the media for airing that as the Chinese view.
More dialogue will create more space for diverse perspectives to be heard and told. At its minimum, it will create a chance for agreeing to disagree but within the framework of a sustained dialogue. Before India and China are able to concretize their mutual trust for a meaningful engagement, this round of dialogue will do well to establish sustainable peace between the estranged Asian giants.
(Avinash Godbole is Research Assistant with the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses and doctoral scholar at the Jawaharlal Nehru University. Views expressed here are in his personal capacity)
this is an extended version of my article in today's ChinaDaily. ChinaDaily edited some parts for obvious reasons!
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