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Mainstream, VOL XLIX, No 43, October 15, 2011

How do we Tackle the China-threat to India?

Wednesday 19 October 2011, by Mansoor Ali

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Currently trilateral and quadrilateral dialo-gues in the Asia-Pacific region have become quite fashionable. Such dialogues are being actively encouraged by the US and its time-tested reliable satellites like Japan. The next step is to evolve an Axis of Democracy which Washington aggressively promotes and seeks to translate into reality. It is an undeniable fact of life that thanks to the US propaganda machine a sizeable section of the Indian strategic community has voluntarily joined the drive to market this concept and ensure its materiali-sation. The Chinese threat is projected in this context. Needless to admit that this threat is no figment of any fertile imagination: it is potent and real. Nevertheless, it is necessary for India to take a pause in order ponder over the consequences of entering into a close relationship with the US and its military arm, the Pentagon, to counter the threat.

There is not a shadow of doubt that Washington is at present striving its best to restore its position in Asia in a bid to reverse the reversal it suffered in Indo-China in the mid-fifties, that is, more than 36 years ago, epitomised in the American officials’ ignominious flight from their mission in Saigon (now aptly renamed as Ho Chi Minh City) after it fell to the Vietnamese national liberation forces. Today it must be brought out in bold relief that an inseparable part of such efforts is to meddle in the existing and potential conflicts and tensions in this part of the globe as is the US course in every corner of the world with the purpose of establishing its hegemony.

For the American establishment, restoring and safeguarding its role in Asia is to sustain all local rivalries that it can exploit to its full advantage. At the moment South China Sea and its SLoCs constitute a flashpoint. In the recent past it was the turn of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) and Kashmir to justify the presence of the US Navy’s battleship carriers in the Indian Ocean region. In the coming days Washington is certain to once again focus attention on the plight of Kashmiri Muslim to interfere in India’s internal affairs with the objective of pressurising New Delhi to fall in line or else face the music.

IT is no surprise that despite all the so-called strains in the US-Pak ties (the reports of US-Pak conflicts are mostly the handiwork of pro-US elements frequenting New Delhi’s corridors of power and these are primarily based on wishful thinking), Washington continues to mete out kid-glove treatment to the Islamabad establish-ment. That is because, after all, it enjoys a long and durable strategic partnership with Pakistan since the latter’s birth in 1947 in the midst of the Cold War. Moreover, it must be understood that the ISI is not the lone partner of the jehadis. Latest developments in Libya and Syria demonstrate the ease with which the American leadership is able to switch sides to develop close contacts and intimate cooperation with die-hard Islamists while all along professing to eliminate Islamic fundamentalism.

Hence what needs to be reiterated is that New Delhi must deal with the problems it has with Beijing on its own without entering into any anti-Chinese combination in the company of the US. And even if such a collaboration becomes imperative, it should not build it before rooting out the threat posed by Pakistan on its western front so as to deny the US any fresh opportunity to stealthily stab India in the back. It must be made clear to Washington that if it is really sincere in its declaration of genuine friendship with this country, it should first help the South Asian democratic nations to reform Pakistan and make democracy irreversible there, a task which is long overdue but is being persistently ignored and thwarted by the American establishment in view of its love for and affinity with the General Headquarters at Rawalpindi.

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