Friday, March 29, 2024
 
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Restless Elephants in the Room



By Farooq Ganderbali





Before the US President landed in Delhi many were of the opinion that two elephants in the room, Pakistan and China, might overshadow the series of meetings between him and his Indian host, Narendra Modi.

From the time Barack Obama landed in Delhi on a three-day visit during which he became the first US head of state to be the chief guest at the Republic Day parade on January 26, the discomfort of the two elephants was palpable but it was anything but the dance of rogue elephants.

Pakistan, an old but distrusted ‘ally’ of the US, and China a strong rival of the US in the great power race, apparently did look somewhat uneasy at the sight of bonhomie between the leaders of the world’s oldest and largest democracies.

The de facto foreign minister of Pakistan, Sartaj Aziz, and many others in his country were offering gratuitous advice to Obama on how to ensure ‘peace’ in South Asia. They asked Obama to force India to talk to Pakistan for resolving the Kashmir ‘dispute’. For Pakistanis ‘peace’ in the region is all about wresting the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley from India. When the noises from Pakistan failed to reach Obama’s rather large ears, the Pakistanis became enraged; Aziz said that the agreements and deals signed by India and the US would ‘destablise’ the entire region!

Before Obama flew out of India and presumably to ensure ‘stability’ the Pakistanis promptly dispatched their army chief to Beijing to elicit the predictably reassuring words of consolation from the Chinese about how the two countries are intertwined.

Nothing hurts the Pakistanis more than the fact that the gap in economic and military strength between India and Pakistan is rapidly increasing. It undermines their consistent demand that they should be treated as India’s ‘equal’ in all fields. A theme most frequently repeated in Pakistan is that the US is overlooking the claims of its old ‘ally’ for becoming a regional hegemon and is, instead, helping India raise its profile on the world stage.

The Pakistanis have an India complex and they worry that India and the US can get closer only at their expense. Unlike his previous visit to India in 2010, Obama did not mention Pakistan during his three-day sojourn in Delhi and thus effectively de-hyphenated the two South Asian countries. A matter of deep concern in Pakistan!


The civil nuclear deal between India and the US caused much heartburn in Pakistan when it was first signed in 2005. Now it looks like the deal, in the limbo for long, may be operationalised soon. The Pakistanis are incapable of seeing the nuclear deal as anything but a step to help India build its nuclear arsenal. Never mind that Pakistan is reported to have a larger number of nuclear bombs than India and is multiplying its nuclear arsenal at the fastest rate in the world.

Pakistan continues to suffer from the humiliation brought upon them when in response to repeated Pakistani entreaties, the then US President, George W. Bush, who signed the nuclear deal with India, famously said that India and Pakistan are two different countries—meaning that the track record of the two countries (in nuclear proliferation) cannot be compared. Worse, Pakistan has the reputation of being the world’s terror centre.

The Pakistanis are not satisfied with having got an even better civilian nuclear deal from their ‘all weather’ friend China (no restrictions on the use of nuclear fuel for weapons). They cannot live with the idea that their old friend and patron, the United States of America, has moved away from the old practice of being ‘even handed’ in the treatment of the two traditional South Asian foes.

While geopolitical reasons will continue to favour Pakistan to the extent that the US would not ‘abandon’ it and, in fact, would continue to humour it in its own way, it can be said with some certainty that the US is not about to treat Pakistan as India’s ‘equal’. As far as India-US relations are concerned this elephant will not be in a position to wreak havoc.

China too offered unsolicited advice during the Obama visit. It looked like a threat when Beijing asked outside powers to stay away from the seas around China. But it sounded a bit pathetic, considering the economic and military might of China, when it arrogated to itself the right to speak on behalf of India and tell the US that New Delhi will not fall into its trap for cobbling up an anti-China military alliance of sorts.

China knows it full well and India has always maintained that it is not interested in forming an anti-China front in the region. The US too understands that. So for the Chinese to tell India or the US that it will not accept any move for ganging up against it is superfluous.

China becomes restless because it realises, though without admitting it publicly, that China has an image problem because of its aggressive maritime postures and periodic flexing of muscles before its Asian neighbours. But the dynamics of the Chinese economy makes it difficult for it to go to war to reclaim what it claims its own territories beyond its shores.

China is set to overtake the US to become the world’s largest economy. China cannot attain that position by becoming an international bully, using force against any country, big or small. Economics overrules Chinese designs, if it has designs to ignite a war against India or any other country. The best China can do is to stage intrusions beyond its boundaries with India.

If there was indeed a Chinese elephant in the conference room of Modi and Obama it had per force to remain tranquilised. In his interactions with the top Chinese leadership soon after taking over as India’s prime minister in May last year, Modi had let it be known that he would be willing to set aside ‘pinpricks’ from China in order to establish enduring ties of cooperation and understanding. And Modi is said to be packing his bags for a visit to China. The Chinese elephant in the room would not have liked to throw tantrums and vitiate the atmosphere.




(Opinions expressed in write-ups/articles/Letters are the sole responsibility of the authors and they may not represent the scoopnews.in)


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