If Narendra Modi is strident, Xi is the strongest Chinese leader in decades
India detonated its nuclear device in Pokhran in 1998. Pakistan matched its response at the Chagai Hills and both states became formally nuclear armed. Under a perverse but effective logic of mutually assured destruction (MAD), Pakistan’s security was considered assured. Also, a full-scale war between the two adversaries has been successfully held at bay since 1984, the time Pakistan’s nuclear weapons’ programme was made known.
The Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979 and Afghan resistance to foreign occupation was, fatefully, converted into global jihad as a clandestine arrangement between the US, Pakistan and meddling Middle Eastern kingdoms. Money, arms and glory seeking volunteers started to pour in. Eventually the Afghans won and the Soviets retreated. So did the US in indecent haste. Coincidently, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan occurred a few years after the dismemberment of Pakistan. The festering notion in Pakistan to fall back on Islamic precepts of active resistance against aggression found a physical form in the Afghan jihad, and its success confirmed their belief in its effectiveness.
It is reasonable to assume that radicalisation and militancy in Pakistan are the cumulative results of India’s momentous invasion of Pakistan in 1971, its needlessly Pakistan-centric military and nuclear build up and the US’ exploitation of the Afghan war riding over our leadership of the time’s quest for legitimacy and quixotic ambition.
To obviate a future nuclear war in South Asia, a vigorous policy of positive persuasion and constructive engagement from a position of reasonable strength is still possible. Despite the storm clouds over the horizon, one sees a window of opportunity for just such a sensible strategy. An example is that of post WW II Japan, which is relevant particularly with reference to its nuclear weapons’ policy. Notwithstanding full technological and industrial potential, Japan very wisely decided upon seeking a nuclear security umbrella from the US in return for giving up offensive military build-up and ensured its highly enviable rise as a secure and peaceful economic power in the world.
Ensuring national security is not the end in itself but a means towards more productive purpose. The purpose of security is to ensure peace, wholesome progress and economic prosperity of people under a coercion free and respectable regional environment. Potent geo-strategic factors are fortunately converging just in time for Pakistan to undertake a serious reappraisal of its national priorities and chart a sensible future course in the region.
China has long been an object of Euro-US strategic containment, forcing it to perform below par. That steel ring is disintegrating. Two factors have expedited the breakout since: US courtship of nuclear-armed India under a rather reckless Modi regime and an extremely energetic President Xi heading the all-powerful Politburo in China. India is being set up to be a counterpoise and if needed pitched against the expanding Chinese sphere of influence while the Chinese gaze on South Asia appears to have been fixed in a decisive manner, having the power to alter the regional strategic balance comprehensively and to the detriment of the Indo-US grand coalition.
The US has created a mosaic of dialogue and consultation with India, notably the Joint Strategic Vision for Asia Pacific and Indian Ocean Region as agreed to between President Obama and PM Modi, the India-US Strategic and Commercial Dialogue, Space Security Dialogue and India-US Consultations on Africa besides a deepening defence sector cooperation. All the five processes are substantive, the strategic effects of which may singe Chinese sensitivities in those spheres. The US is also pushing for India’s permanent seat in the Security Council and a role in Afghanistan. US global design envisages to woo India as its proxy and partner into its geo- strategic cordon around China just where it is coming apart in the Indian Ocean and the Asia Pacific region.
China understands this grand design quite clearly. If Narendra Modi is strident, Xi is the strongest Chinese leader in decades. President Xi has a ‘China dream’ and seems to have “a grand plan, a sense of historic destiny for the Chinese nation during his period of paramount leadership in a way his predecessors did not. Xi’s new world order envisions a Chinese-led regional bank and globetrotting state-owned companies, along with expanded trade networks radiating from China that could tie together some 60 nations, much as the ancient Silk Road once did,” according to China’s Power Play by Hanna Beech.
It is a lively face off but with a difference: India is being pushed into it while China is pulling it off. To realise the ‘historic destiny’ of the nation and become an economic powerhouse, Xi’s ‘grand plan’ has to be driven by an arc of paramount security far beyond Chinese borders in tandem with a stable regional/global market for assured returns. Hence, Xi’s famous economic corridors — one through to Mayanmar-Singapore and on to the Bay of Bengal, and the other of strategically greater significance through Pakistan to Gawadar on the Indian Ocean, at the flank of the huge oil, trade and power projection sea highway.
This chess like move would mean hardly much if it did not checkmate the US. It does so in a classic manner and with brilliant economy of effort. China constitutes a predominant part of the pivot area within the Eurasian heartland as identified by Sir Halford Mackinder. This pivot area extends from the Persian Gulf to the Yangtze River and “has remained the fulcrum of future world power”, as claimed by Alfred W McCoy in his excellent essay ‘The geo-politics of American global decline’. It is this fulcrum that the US tried to encircle just as the British Empire began to recede in 1945. Mackinder insisted, in his seminal paper ‘The geographical pivot of history’, “Who rules the heartland rules the world island (Africa-Europe-Asia)”. To that end, by 1990, as the Cold War ended, the tally had risen to 700 US overseas bases, 1,763 jet fighters, more than 1,000 nuclear tipped ballistic missiles, 600 naval ships including 15 nuclear carrier battle groups, all linked by a satellite communications system. This is besides 60 operational bases for high endurance sensor-fitted armed drones patrolling the same area.
China watched this encirclement with great poise and went about quietly chiselling its strategic response. Its grand strategy for securing global power status appears to be in two steps: build a transcontinental high speed infrastructure for economic integration of the world island from within and put in two marshal military forces to surgically slice through the US’ encirclement in two places: Gawadar and Singapore. That will sever the US chain link in three disjointed parts. In this way, operating from strategically interior lines, Beijing hopes to shift the locus of geopolitical power deep into the heartland. This inspired but unstoppable maneuver once matured will result in a position of formidable power and advantage for China.
With this perspective, it should be quite clear by now that Pakistan is a very important pillar of the Chinese global strategic plan. The other major conclusion is that Pakistan’s future has become firmly tied to the articulation of China’s global strategy and design of power projection leaving less elbowroom to pursue truly indigenous foreign and regional policies. Pakistan’s liberty of action in foreign policy formulation is going to depend more upon the Chinese leadership’s understanding in future. Fortunately, both countries enjoy a very large measure of mutual cordiality, remarkable understanding in their worldviews and there being no outstanding contentious issues to be resolved between the two. Their borders are contiguous, trade and people-to-people contact are flourishing and there is a deep collaboration in defence, industrial, energy, culture and infrastructure sectors.
This rather detailed premise should lead us to certain conclusions. One, India needs to realise the futility of becoming a US proxy pitched against China in this global great game. The US has a Midas touch. India will needlessly waste effort, national resources and perhaps jeopardise its territorial integrity trying to match or oppose China. Simultaneously, Pakistan is well on its way to becoming a strategic partner with China along its South Asian spur, which means it may not maintain an independent nuclear deterrence against possible Indian aggression. That will be taken care of by China, as a threat to Pakistan will be a threat to the strategic corridor, which would be unacceptable. All that Pakistan is required to do is work out the modalities of this promising and unique alliance with clarity, as the road to enduring peace and prosperity has been reached. It is for India to choose between peace and pointless confrontation.
Written by a retired brigadier of the Pakistan Army and published on http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/opinion/28-Oct-2015/pakistan-s-evolving-security-paradigm-ii