The Asian Waltz

The political glacis of power, the reorientation of power in international relations, is an excruciatingly slow process and the emergence and the disappearance of politically powerful nations has a lot to do with the intangible forces of history than due to any calculated designs of grandeur its leadership might have harbored. In many ways, the rise and decline of national power on the global scene is an oblique ancillary of the prevailing international system, which itself creates the window of opportunity for a nation to avail for itself the mantle of a regional, or even a global power. The regime of international relations is an extremely conservative paradigm, which eschews drastic changes in the polity of international affairs, but seems to favor equilibrium of a balance of power arrangement. The balance of power arrangements, in international relations, are designed with the sole intention to facilitate mutually enhancing, cooperative, convergences of interests over issues, which do not create political fissures of instability in the dominant systemic paradigms of international affairs.

The rearrangement of the international constellation of powers happens rarely. However, when it does, it is often as a result of a complete collapse of either a competing ideology or as an outcome of a major war or, because of the changing nature of the global economy, which concentrates economic power, a commodity, which is sought by other nations for reasons of their own economic interests, in a given nation. The international system works on the principle of harmonizing power, by a dominant nation, unevenly for its own benefit and then allowing the re-distribution of that power to the nations of the periphery, with whom it shares visions of symmetrical interests and this delegation of power, from the dominant nation to the nations of the second-tier, is done with the sole of intention of regulating the dictates of power in international relations. International relations operate on the modus oprendi of perceptions and in this sense power in the international arena is the perception of a nation’s strength and not the actual strength, which that nation might enjoy.

Over the course of the last decade, India has emerged as a new power in the region of South Asia based on the multiple and politically indexed indices of population, economic growth, projected military power and more importantly, as a geo-political actor occupying a strategic position in a vital quarter of the globe. The rise of India from the obscurity of a backwaters non-aligned Third World country to the threshold of the major economic powers of the world, during the decades of the 1990s, has irreversibly altered the geo-strategic dynamics of the region and thus, has initiated a political process, which will in the long term exert a profound disturbance in the political landscape of South Asia and its ripple effects are going to be felt throughout the continent of Asia.

India’s rise to the status of a regional power in South Asia, a fact already conceded by the Americans, could be traced to the decade of the 1990s, when its economy mushroomed at a growth rate of nearly 8 percent annually following the policies of economic liberalizations and due to its burgeoning Information Technology industry, but more crucially due to the vast reservoirs of trained IT professionals, which it has been turning out each year from its universities. The Americans need the Indian IT professionals, because their own recent economic expansion has been exclusively fueled by the IT revolution and there are not enough Americans to fill the ever increasing jobs created by the information economy, which has blessed the United States with the strongest economy in the world. Though India seems to claim that it should be given the official status of a regional hegemon on the basis of its democratic and population credentials, it is India’s attraction to America, in terms of sustaining its own economic “bubble”, which seems to be the strongest advocate for India’s inclusion into the club of global economic powers and it is on the basis of India’s viable economic performance, rather than its nuclear status, that India is being seen by Washington as a possible heir apparent, to maintain its influence, in the region of South Asia.

Accordingly, for a nation to aspire to the status of a regional hegemon, as in the case of India, it has to exhibit an aura of its own importance in international affairs and hence, convince the other nations of the world that not only can it can make a positive contribution to the existing paradigms of international affairs, but more importantly, it is willing to abide by the existing rules of the game as determined by the dominant power, which in this case would be the United States. In other words, the reason why India’s paeans for a regional power status are finding a receptive audience in the Americans is, because New Delhi has successfully convinced Washington that they, India and the United States, share a symbiotic relationship and New Delhi’s increased political, economic and military clout in the region will ultimately sustain and eventually increase the American influence in the region.

Given the Indian economic growth rates and the geo-political position it has in South Asia, India has emerged as the natural choice for upholding American values, of economic interests, in the region, because of the tacit realization by the Americans that India, in contrast to its traditional ally Pakistan, is a stabilizing influence in the region and in the long term, American interests would be better served by increasing the Indian capabilities to protect the spheres of American interests in the region. Thus, due to these confluences of American interests and India’s potential for the continued growth of the American economy, the United States has been paying more attention to India’s concerns in the region and seems eager to prop India as a South Asian bulwark of American economic interests in the newly emerging economic power equations of the information economy and its future implications on the nature of the global economy itself.

Even through the Americans have accepted the Indian ascendancy to a regional hegemonic status, there still exists a gulf of divergent interests, between India and the United States, on certain key issues of mutual concerns, which seems to be putting a damper on this newly discovered bliss of American and Indian political and economic intimacy. The cause for concern does not lie in the economic realm, but it exists in the arcane world of nuclear non-proliferation and in India’s determined refusal to accede to American attempts to restrict its nuclear program. The United States, though its has for all practical purposes conferred upon the India the hegemonic role in South Asia, it still hopes that India will play out the said role within the parameters of Washington’s own game plan and not seek to unsettle the American intentions vis-à-vis signing of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty. The major disagreement between the United States and India has risen in these matters, because New Delhi has shown a streak of independence in its own security concerns, away from Washington’s own interests and that seems to exacerbate their differences on key security issues of mutual concerns.

The Indians wish to employ their nuclear forces, much as the French did, as a Force d’Frappe in the regional context of South Asia and generally in the wider scope of Asian geo-strategic policies and therein, lies the perceptional rift between India’s own vision of its hegemonic role in the region and the United States’ own interests in defining a regional role for India in the region. Force d’Frappe, was a term coined by Charles DeGaulle to define France’s independent foreign policy and her eventual withdrawal from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in the 1960s. DeGaulle, angered by what he considered to be America’s trans-Atlantic imperialism in Europe, had withdrawn France from NATO and in doing so had effectively divorced the French nuclear deterrent from the overall calculus of American strategic interests in Europe. Using the independence of France in foreign affairs, as guaranteed by its nuclear capability, DeGaulle had sought to use the umbrella of French nuclear status to garner and reinforce the image of France as a European power with clearly defined interests, in Europe and the world, outside of the American gambit of geo-strategic concerns. In doing so, not only did DeGaulle force the Americans to treat France as an equal power in Europe and the world, but he also insured that French interests would never be sacrificed upon the alter of American political expediencies.

Thus, the Indian refusal to sign the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the cornerstones of the American policies to thwart the spread of nuclear proliferation, has created a potential schism in the Indian-American interests, because, unlike the Indian perceptions, the United States sees India as an economic hegemon promoting its economic interests in the region. The United States is acutely aware that India’s political ambitions have the looming prospects of destabilizing the region and consequently, harming American investments in India. The American policy makers are well aware that Indian political adventurism in the region will be resisted by Pakistan and in Pakistan resisting the imposition of a Pax Indica, there is a distinct possibility of a political fallout in the guise of a disastrous conflict. Hence, when the Americans suggest that South Asia is a future nuclear holocaust waiting to happen, they are not being paranoid, because Pakistan’s “knee-jerk” reaction to any Indian attempts to imbalance the power equations in the region has the latent possibility of gravely affecting the overall health of the American economy itself and that should that happen, it would be the bete noir of American self interests in both a political and economic sense.

Therefore, the Americans are eager to groom India as an economic power, to balance China’s economic might in Asia, but not as a regional military power. This fact can be easily ascertained from the American efforts, despite their huge economic stakes in the emerging Indian markets, not to soften their positions on NPT and their consistent demands on New Delhi to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, even to the extent of holding India’s candidacy for the United Nations’ Security Council seat conditional upon India’s willingness to affix its signature to the document.

Henceforth, the differences in the perceptions of New Delhi and Washington lies in the forgotten pasts of history and how each side views and understands the lesson of history differently from the other. This is especially true in the aftermath of the Second World War and division of the Indian sub-continent into two mutually hostile and implacable neighbors: Pakistan and India. India, in its present political incarnation, is an artificial creation of the British to expedite their administrative control over India, because India, as a political entity only came into existence with the advent of the direct British rule in the wake of the War/Mutiny of 1857. Prior to that, India was a motley collection of independent princely states with myriad political alliances owning a sense of allegiance to Delhi, but always seeking to preserve their independence from Delhi’s imperium.

It was this fragmented and diffused political reality of India, which prompted Sir Winston Churchill to wryly comment, during the debates on Indian home rule in the House of Commons, that, “India is a geographical term; it is no more a united country than the equator”. However, as the British were thinking of leaving India, there emerged a consensus of opinion within the Indian political elites, which suggested to them that India was a successor state to the British Raj with all of its attendant privileges and responsibilities. This implied that the Indians, upon the exit of the British, saw themselves filling the vacuum left by the British power in the region, that is, from the Straits of Malacca in the east to the west of Aden at the southern tip of the Red Sea, including the excess to the Suez Canal from the western Arabian Sea.

Therefore, given the Indian aspirations in this regard, it should come as no surprise why the Indians’ wish to use to their nuclear clout, as a force d’frappe, to consolidate their political dominance over the region. In this sense, the Indian attempts to break down the racial and political barriers, in order to win an entry into the club of global powers, is a case of history repeating itself exactly a hundred years later, and why the Americans are wary of this Indian fixation with a “Great Power” status. India is following in the very same footsteps, which Japan followed on its way to great power status. At the turn of the twentieth century, Japan was poised to emerge as a new power in Asia, but it was resisted by the other Great Powers; United States, Britain, France and Italy, and it sought to break their monopoly on the colonial status quo through a rearmament program, whereby it could match their naval strengths, then the barometer of a great power status and thus, gain entry into the colonial club of great powers. Japanese policies of militarism and rearmaments were in direct proportion to its attempts to carve a colonial empire for itself in Asia and in the process gain the “respect” its growing economic prowess demanded from the other great powers, who refused to accredit it with a colonial status despite its annexations of Chinese territory and its successful military victories in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-06 when it soundly defeated Tsarist Russia, an European power, and heralded its arrival on the colonial scene.

This emergence of Japanese power posed a direct threat to American “Open Door” policy of trade rights in China. Consequently, Tokyo’s and Washington’s inability to resolve their differences over China, would set the stage for the American-Japanese rivalry in the Pacific, which would end in the Japanese Imperial Navy’s surprise attack on the American Pacific fleet anchored in Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Accordingly, the United States is wary of the Indian intentions, to cement a political-military role for itself outside of the American approved economic responsibility, because Washington using the historic precedent of Japan realizes that it could at a future date find itself in disagreement with India on a policy matter. If such a scenario ever happens, Unites States is concerned, in a strategic sense, that India’s increased military-political influence would make it difficult for the United States to fashion a consensus with New Delhi on their divergent viewpoints. Simply put, the United States is aware that it is opening a Pandora’ Box by allowing India a voice in the affairs of the region, but it still wants to be able to close that proverbial Pandora’s Box when its interests might be threatened, and that is why the Americans are so hesitant to formally approve India’s elevation to a regional and possibly a continental hegemon in Asia.

This way, the Indian attempts to carve niche for itself in the Asian continent by using its nuclear card as a force d’frappe is quite logical from the Indian viewpoint, because its nuclear status is the only real viable trademark of its great power status. India wants to utilize its’ nuclear power status, as a carté blanche, to get the level of “respect” it feels is being denied to it as the second most populous nation on the earth with a world class economy, which also happens to sustain the world’s largest democracy. In the other terms, India has to rely on its nuclear status to stamp the imprint of its, military, hegemonic role in South Asia, because in order to project itself as an emergent hegemonic power, it needs to be able to project its force; its influence in the region with a credible military might. The projection of military power, in the chosen area/region of its hegemonic interest, is the Achilles’ Heel of India’s hegemonic status, because unlike past historic hegemons, Japan or Germany, or Britain or the United States, India is dependent for projection of its military on the good graces of other powers. This is because its levels of domestic defense productions and procurements are inefficient and mired in bureaucratic entanglements and it has to import its military hardware, the tools of power projection, from aboard to maintain its status as a regional power.

A good case in point is the Indian attempts to build a main battle tank, the “Arjun” for its armored corps. Even after nearly thirty years of trial and error and development, the Indians have been unable to produce the Arjun in significant numbers to be inducted into the inventory of its armored corps to replace its ageing strike force of Soviet era T-72 MBTs. To add salt to the injury, the Indian Armored Corps itself has given a vote of no confidence to the Arjun by opting to buy the Russian T-90 MBTs for its forces, thus casting serve doubts on the ability of the Indian defense-industrial complex to meet the needs of the Indian armed forces. Another case of Indian inefficiency in the development of weapons systems is the Light Combat Aircraft, which has been undergoing so many modifications that its eventual rollout and production dates have been continually pushed back for the last twenty years, while India has to rely on the French and Russian aircrafts to keep its air force in a credible posture. In both the cases, India has been unable to introduce new weapons systems/platforms from its own domestic resources and has to repeatedly rely on foreign arms to augment its armed forces’ logistical and combat needs. The sina qua non of a hegemon, that is, being self-sufficient in defense matters is perhaps the weakest link in the Indian argument to be accredited a hegemonic status, because it would be dependent on the indulgences of its major patron powers for the upkeep of its hegemonic role and in fact, would be rather limited in the implementation of its regional interests to its complete satisfaction.

Also, India’s colossus industrial-defense complex has not been able to meet the air force’s requirements for an advanced jet trainer (AJT), with which to train its pilots on high performance aircraft and the end result has been that the Indian Air Force has been plagued by a chronic problem of crashes, thus losing aircraft, but more importantly skilled pilots, which has gravely undermined its flight efficiency. The reason being that an aircraft can be replaced, but a skilled pilot lost is irreplaceable and the constant loss of pilots, due to tragic and avoidable accidents, has seriously impinged on the morale of the Indian Air Force. If this situation was not already deplorable, the Indian Navy has to seek Russia’s help in refurbishing its carrier forces. All the branches of the Indian armed forces are dependent on foreign suppliers for their battlefield/combat needs and this raises serious questions about India’s ability to project military power, as a would be hegemon, when it has to, ironically, rely on external help in the projection of power to protect its own interests. A further illustration of this problem is that during the height of the Kargil crisis, the Indian military had to import shells for its artillery, from South Africa, since its domestic defense-industrial infrastructure could not even provide the basic genuine needs of the Indian Army during active combat operations against its traditional nemesis! This hardly inspires confidence in the ability of the Indian armed forces to project the political interests of New Delhi and to credibly back its hegemonic pretensions in the region of South Asia, or for that matter beyond South Asia.

Hegemonic aspirations, by a nation, also lead to a re-correlation of interests to combat a perceived threat and such perceptions of interest fuel and highlight potential points of disagreement, which could seriously endanger the hegemonic aims of a country, like India’s, in the regional context of South Asia and Asia. India embarking on a hegemonic quest can not viewed as isolated event in of itself, without any reactive consequences, because the arena of the international politics is an extremely fluid enterprise. It has its own pre-determined set of parameters, which owing to the perceptional implications of international affairs have an annoying habit of creating their own political trajectories that often impose conditions in which the events influence the decision making process instead of it being the other way around. This re-correlation of forces could be witnessed in the guise of military, political, economical, or a combination of all three factors to influence the foreign policy priorities/objectives of a nation, whose sense of threat perceptions indicate that it is being presented by a fait accompli, which might be harmful to its strategic interests. International relations, especially hegemonic pretensions and vying for great power status, are fraught with perils, because under the international system a nation’s reaction to another nation’ intentions is based on the principle and the logic of a zero-sum confrontation fueled by perceptional misunderstandings.

As mentioned earlier, India’s hegemonic intentions, vis-à-vis its perceptions of being the successor state to the British Raj, are not contained within the geographical context of South Asia, but have a tendency to migrate eastwards towards the approaches of the Malacca Straits. In doing so, they are in a state of friction with the China’s interests in the region. China, like India, has hegemonic aspirations of its own, but those expectations are limited to the region of Far East and China wants to be an economic hegemon, which can rival Japan’s economic ascendancy in Asia. China’s only overtly militaristic hegemonic pressure is reserved exclusively for Taiwan, whom it considers to be a breakaway province, and other than brow beating Taipei, Beijing has no military interests in the region. China, thus, poses the only credible threat to Indian expansionistic aims in Asia and in this sense, is India’s only rival for the ultimate designation of an Asian hegemon. Therefore, Chinese discomfiture, about Indian intentions, lies in the fact that China sees India as an instrument of American policy in the region, whose sole reason being the economic checkmating of China’s growing power in the region, as an American ally, hindering Chinese political intentions in the Far East.

However, it seems that India is determined to prod China into a confrontation in the Far East, because India seems to be harboring ambitions for a “blue water” role in Asia, which actively casts doubts on China’s “land-water” capabilities in the region. India, it would seem, from its intentions in the region is not interested in the playing the American game of checkmating China, but is determined to wedge a political influence for itself in Asia, as a direct contender to Chinese power in Asia. The Indian foreign policy in the region is advocating closer economic cooperation with Vietnam, Philippines, and Taiwan. Indian naval power, projected from its newly created Far Eastern Naval Command, in the Nicobar-Andaman islands, seems to be directed with the sole purpose of projecting Indian influence into what Beijing considers to be as its traditional spheres of influence.

China, for all practical purposes, has no blue water navy with which it can project its influence in the Yellow Sea or to the south in the vicinity of the Spartley group of islands. China considers the Spartleys to be a disputed territory, in conflict with Vietnam and the Philippines, and is interested in annexing those islands within its own sphere of influence. To this purpose, China is engaged in the creation of a blue water navy and Beijing would not look at an Indian influence in the region kindly, before its has completed the process of modernizing its navy from its present operational posture, a coastal navy with defensive capabilities, into a blue water navy capable of projecting Beijing’s interests in the region. Therefore, the operational nexus of Chinese and Indian naval forces, vying for influence, would suggest that India looks upon China as its most logical economic rival in the region and would seek to translate its economic ascendancy over China into a tangible political character in the context of Asian politics.

This Indian inclination towards the Far East, as implicitly suggested by the creation of the Far Eastern Naval Command by the Indian Navy, based on the Nicobar-Andaman islands, is evidenced from New Delhi’s attempts to saffronize the Indian Ocean. As the Romans used to refer to the Mediterranean Sea, nearly two thousands years before, the Indians too consider the Indian Ocean as mare nostrum, or as “our sea”, and would like to Indianize the region. Indian naval force projection towards the east is the only route, where India can exercise its growing influence, because it cannot project its force westwards or towards the south without incurring a frown from the Americans. If the Indians increase their force projections towards the south, they are encroaching upon Australia’s growing interests in the southern Pacific Rim regions and since Australia is the newly appointed American deputy in the region, Washington would seek to discourage an Indian move southwards, because it would hate to mediate a conflict of interests between two of its own regional hegemonic appointees.

The Americans would resist Indian naval and political projections westwards, themselves, because any Indian naval influence to the west would impinge upon America’s ability to “sanitize” the Persian Gulf and the entrance to it, the Straits of Hormuz, for their own economic interests. The United States, no matter how fervently it may wish to see India emerge as a contender to the Chinese economic-political hegemony in Asia, would be loathe to create a direct threat to its economic lifeline, access to the Middle Eastern oil, by allowing India to straddle its (America’s) strategically-critical SLOCs (Sea Lanes of Communications). Washington clearly understands that, in the near future, there might be points of divergence with India in Asia and therefore, because of that strategic feasibility, it does not want India to gain a position of dominance in the region from, from which it could pose a “a clear and present danger” to the national security interests of the United States in the region.

Another obstacle to the Indian regional ascendancy in the region is the reaction of Pakistan to the growing Indian influence in the region. In all the discussions of an Indian regional responsibility in South Asia, Pakistan is the “wild card”, because it is very difficult to accurately predict just what the Pakistani response might be to an increased Indian role in region. There is no doubt, in the American strategic analysis, that Pakistan would whole heartily resist an Indian domination of the region, but the real question, which is unnerving the American strategic planners, is just what tangible shape that resistance might assume. The Americans are intensely aware of the reality that Pakistan is in an advanced state of an economic meltdown and that the civil society in Pakistan, for all practical purposes, has collapsed due to its own internal contradictions. The only reason the Americans are interested in shoring up the sagging fortunes of Pakistan is, because Pakistan, thanks largely to Indian myopia, is a nuclear armed state in a regional neighborhood, which is increasingly hostile to the American interests in the region.

Pakistan, in of itself, is no threat to the American interests, but where it assumes an over proportionate importance is due to the pre-mutations of emerging alliances in the region, which could effectively chortle American influence in the region.

Consequently, it is this unknown of a Pakistani reaction, which is forcing the Americans to resist Indian demands to declare Pakistan as a terrorist state and to isolate it completely in the international community by putting it in the same classification of rouge nations such as Iraq and North Korea. The American refusal to accede to the Indian pleas, of declaring Pakistan a terrorist state, has to do with their ingrained fears of the unintended penalties of such a course of action. Should the United States, by agreeing to the Indian wishes, declare Pakistan as a terrorist state it would have successfully mooted its own security interests in the region, because it would be the United States, ironically, who would end up being isolated in the region. The reason for this hypothesis is quite simple. America is in a state of conflict with Iraq and does not recognize the regime in Baghdad; the United States has no diplomatic relations with Iran and it has consistently maintained an economic and political embargo of Iran for the last twenty years; the United States’, due to its obsession with the evil of international terrorism, has already isolated Afghanistan; and if it isolates Pakistan, it would have in fact blanketed an entire region from the scope of its security coverage and would be in no position, short of a direct armed intervention or attack, to sustain its interests in the region.

The American fears in this regard, which the Indian political pundits in New Delhi do not seem to understand or share with the Americans, is that the international isolation of Pakistan would be the final nail in the coffin of the American non-proliferation regime, because the worst American nightmare; a credible nuclear threat to the security of Israel would have materialized due to a confluence of common interests. The nations of Iraq and Iran are known, to the Americans, to be interested in the acquisition of a nuclear capability, but do not have the technical expertise to attain them. On the other hand, Pakistan has the technical capability and if “pushed to the wall”, would not hesitate from selling its expertise to these nations and has the potential to emerge as the dominant country in this scheme of options, what the American strategic analysts might consider as an “unholy alliance” against the American interests in the region. So far, Pakistan despite the gravest provocations of an economic necessity and the inequity of the American policies towards it, has refrained from indulging in acts, which go against the intentions of the non-proliferation regime. Granted that Pakistan has in the past defied the non-proliferation regime, but it has never been a source of proliferating nuclear technology itself to other nations even the though the financial rewards to it could have been immense.

Another reason why the American would like to see an economic hegemony of India is, because as long as India and Pakistan are in what the Germans call, “ein kreigpermanez” or a permanent state of war, American economic investments in India would always be under the impending clouds of a South Asian war. Therefore, the United States, if given the opportunity, would like to see India and Pakistan with open borders encouraging free trade, between the two nations, through a mechanism not unlike the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The United States sees the sub-continent, in economic terms, not only as a potential market of nearly a billion plus people for the American business interests, but it also views the region as the logical jump off point for American economic influence in the Central Asian Republics. Basically, the American raison d’état in promoting South Asia as an American economic zone is the logical attainment of its cold-war policies of economically isolating the Soviet Union, now Russia, and thus, lessening its political influence in the Central Asian Republics and its ability to manipulate those nations’ foreign policies, especially their ability to market their energy resources to the west. In this sense, the pre-eminent American interest in the economic independence of the Central Asian Republics has to do with a vested American economic interest in the oil deposits of the Caspian Sea and its ability to access that oil cheaply through an overland pipeline.

Given its festering and frayed diplomatic ties with Iran and its animosity towards Iraq, Pakistan appears to be an ideal candidate, via Afghanistan, for this pipeline. It is for this reason that the American pressure is being exerted on Pakistan to find a political solution to the crisis in Afghanistan, which would enable the American economy to cost-effectively replenish its dwindling oil stocks, while at the same time lessening its dependence on the political whims of Oil Producing and Exporting Countries (OPEC). Therefore, in lieu of this American economic interest, which is the driving force behind Washington’s diplomatic efforts to get both India and Pakistan to instigate a resumption of a political dialogue. Accordingly, Washington though it is wary to mediate a political resolution between India and Pakistan has a well-defined economic interest in the region, which demands that Islamabad and New Delhi settle their outstanding problems reciprocally for the benefit of American economic interests. Hence, even though the Americans may tolerate Indian aloofness towards Pakistan’s present military government, they would be uncomfortable with the Indians current attitude in this matter, and would eventually like to see New Delhi negotiating with Islamabad.

Hence, Pakistan does have a diplomatic “ace” over India in this regard, because India’s constant refusal to talk to Pakistan has the prospects of diminishing economic returns for the United States, vis-à-vis its interests in the energy resources of the Central Asian Republics, and when those diminishing returns assume a critical mass, in the calculations of American economic benefits, the United States itself would be forced to apply diplomatic pressure on India, may be through the carrot of a United Nations’ Security Council seat, to make New Delhi more amenable to Washington’s interests in the matter. In reality though, this Pakistani diplomatic “ace” has serve limitations and those limitations invariably arise from Pakistan’s own incompetence in matter, because of its failure to heed the American warnings on Afghanistan, the United States has already opted for a land-route through Turkey for the Caspian oil pipeline and is negotiating the final settlement of an overland pipeline through Turkey with Ankara. Whatever influence Islamabad could have hoped to wring out of Washington has already evaporated and Pakistan is once again finding itself searching for a task, which could justify American security interests and thus, return Islamabad back to the good graces of Uncle Sam.

However, what is really saving Pakistan from being completely isolated by the United States, in international relations, is Washington’s hesitancy towards its own policy of whether condoning or approving of India’s militaristic designs in the region. The United States policy towards India, though definitely exhibiting signs of a closer cooperation, is still in the early stages of articulation. The United States needs to decide whether it will allow India to assume a military posture in the region, something which New Delhi wants, or to limit the scope of an Indian hegemony within an economic sphere as determined by American economic interests in the region. In view of this nuance, Washington is quite willing to apply pressure on Pakistan to limit its “proxy antagonisms” of India, because if New Delhi were to embark on a “final solution” of the Pakistani problem, the attendant fallout of such a move could imperil American interests in the region by holding them hostage to a political game of Russian roulette, whose ultimate loser would be the American economic interests themselves.

The source of this American shadenfreude, or nightmare, is the growing levels of political alienation within the Indian political landscape itself, as revealed in the growing disenchantment of the Indian states with New Delhi. The centralized nature of the Indian political pyramid, where all power flows out of New Delhi, which is from the center to the periphery, has exposed strains within the façade of the Indian confederation, which seems to question the validity of the Indian claims to emerge as a power in the region. These complaints, of the Indian states with New Delhi, are a result of what is viewed by the state governments as an imperial indifference of the New Delhi establishment to the problems of the states and the refusal of the central government to allow the diffusion of power to the states. To further compound this administrative headache for the Indians, there are a number of armed insurgencies going on in the Indian states clamoring for a host of political demands, which the central government in New Delhi is unwilling to accede to. Even if the benefit of a doubt is given to the Indian argument that there are no insurgencies in Indian states, there is no denying that the levels of alienation, towards New Delhi, do exist.

The signs of this alienation could be seen in the wake of the Orrisa Cyclone, which devastated large tracts of areas and left nearly 10,000 people dead. The criminally slow response of New Delhi, in responding to the crisis created by the cyclone, to the tragedy in Orissa proved to the states that the central government lives in a utopian bubble and is completely isolated from reality, as it exists outside the immediate environs of New Delhi.

Therefore, it is for these reasons that the Americans would like to see India follow an economic path to greatness, because they are aware that India has myriad internal problems, which could be exploited and it would become an American responsibility to save India from its own domestic contradictions. The Americans view this scenario as a possible reality, because Pakistan when confronted by the growing Indian power and feeling itself isolated and pushed to the wall, might resort to this tactic to make it costly for India to emerge as a would be hegemon in the region. The fact, which scares the Americans is not that Pakistan might actually indulge in this option, but the perception of Pakistan doing so gives pause to the American analysts and forces them to caution India about needlessly aggravating Pakistan into a suicidal course of action. The American strategic analysts clearly envision an economic role for India, in Asia, and though at the present both the Indians and Americans are mending their respective political fences after nearly twenty years of neglect, the Americans are clearly not comfortable with the Indian aims of altering their economic regional character, as scripted by the Americans, into a military inspired role.

Consequently, the emerging nature of the Indian influence in South Asia, and Asia in general, will likely create a shifting of political influences, based on economic principles, which will greatly impact the Asian geo-political landscape. After the end of the cold war, and the gradual withdrawal of American interests away from the purely strategic considerations towards economic compulsions, Asia is witnessing a realignment of political power not seen since the partition of the British Raj into Pakistan and India followed by the rise of communist power in China. China and India, by the virtue of their economic performances, are poised to step up to the thresholds of Asian powers and will understandably, given their political motives, see each other as potential rivals in Asian politics. In this sense, the next ten to fifteen years will glimpse a correlation of influences between India, China and the United States in the implementation of Asian politics, where the dominant forces of influence will be Beijing and New Delhi, with Washington acting as a diplomatic fulcrum of balancing out their power status in lieu of its own strategic requirements in Asia. The major bones of political contentions, where their interests will likely collide will be Taiwan in the Far East and Pakistan in South Asia and in the economic sense it will be the Chinese over-dominance in the Pacific Rim and its influence on the developing economies of south-east Asia, which will be in a state of conflict with the Indian interests in those regions.

The American paranoia over Chinese economic strength does not exclusively lie in the Chinese ability to compete with the Americans, but in the intangible ability of the Chinese to channel their economic powers into an effective military projection of their interests in the region. It is for this reason that the United States wishes to employ India as a balm in the hopes of protecting its economic welfare from being harmed by the Chinese political influences. In terms of Realpolitik, India will end up playing a surrogate role between the competing interests of the United States and China as a “frontline” American buffer state in the wars of economic hegemony, which will characterize the Sino-American power struggles in the first quarter of this century. In this sense, given the Indian marriage to the American economic interests in Asia, India will seek to contest the Chinese position on Taiwan in the interests of its own economic enhancements, especially in its growing position as a global leader in information technologies, and it will grudgingly play the American game of imposing a cordon sanitaire around China, when its own political interests demand so, and will accordingly emerge as an extension of American economic policies in Asia.

It will be within this scenario that a Sino-Indian confrontation, in economic-political terms, will shape up and the major focal point of this disagreement of views, between New Delhi and Beijing, will be Pakistan. Whether Pakistan has been blessed or cursed with its geo-strategic position, is an interesting conundrum. It is due to Pakistan’s strategic position vis-à-vis the regional balance of power maneuverings that it is being seen by Beijing as a possible pawn in diminishing Indian options, aided and supported by the United States, against China’s own interests in the region. Given the rising Indian influence in the region and its projected conflict of interests, interalia American security concerns, with China, Beijing is increasingly coming to the conclusion that Pakistan needs to be revived, as a buffer state protecting Chinese interests in Asia. China wants to give Pakistan the responsibility of presenting India with a threat, which causes the Indians to strategically reprioritize their concerns away from challenging Chinese economic-political-military hegemony in Far East, and in Asia generally, by forcing New Delhi to deal with Islamabad as a constant irritant in New Delhi’s attempt to carve a political niche for itself in the region. The Chinese attempts to reinstate Pakistan in its traditional role, of serving another patron’s interests, is based on the simple cold calculations of Chinese strategic interests and has nothing to, as much as Pakistan might pretend otherwise, with the notions of the historic Sino-Pakistani friendship.

Though the Chinese have not clearly expressed this, Beijing’s raison d’état to the Pakistanis, there are indications that the Chinese strategic judgment is leanings towards this pronouncement, as a personification of its interests, and these interests could be discerned in the levels of Chinese investments in refurbishing the industrial and defense infrastructures of Pakistan. The Chinese investment in Pakistan is being directed towards the agriculture sector in hopes of increasing the yield of crops and in order to modernize the farming techniques in Pakistan and to introduce a level of efficiency in Pakistani farming, which could turn, it is hoped, Pakistan into an agriculturally surplus nation. The rather nebulous question, which then emerges is why are the Chinese interested in increasing the crop yields in Pakistan and it is only when this question is framed within the context of Chinese geographical and demographical concerns that answer to it becomes apparent in a logical manner.

China, despite its huge territorial landmass, is limited in the availability of its farming lands, because the interior of China is extremely mountainous and thus, the majority of farming in China is done around the coastal areas. Coupled with this fact, China’s population continues to increase despite Beijing’s, “one child policy” and China is being slowly presented by a reality under which it is becoming increasingly difficult for Beijing to feed its ever-increasing population. This population growth, ironically, is devouring its available farming lands due to the rapid urbanization of China unleashed by its policies of economic liberalizations and through the creation of the economic free zones located near its major cities on the coastline. Hence, the Chinese leadership is presented with a dilemma of a growing economy, which is balanced with the visions of a starving population and how to rationalize the dichotomy of these twin problems within a political sense.

Consequently, Chinese leadership explicitly understands the growing dichotomy of its problems, on how to balance a growing population with dwindling agricultural resources, and has come to the realization that if this problem is not effectively checked it could become a political problem. The only three countries, which usually produce a surplus of wheat for export are the United States, Canada and Australia and if China needed to import wheat to feed its population, it would have to seek assistance from one of these nations. Asking the United States for additional food grains could be a tricky exercise, because of Washington’s habit of attaching political considerations to such a sale and this is especially true when the role of the United States’ Congress is considered in this aspect. The United States’ Congress, if given the opportunity, would use its political leverage to extract political mileage out of this issue and accordingly, this issue has the potential of boomeranging on Beijing, because it would be forced to enter to a regime of political compromises with the United States, most probably on Taiwan, and should that happen, it would greatly undermine China’s emerging role in the Far East as an Asian hegemon. Given the political diffusion of interests within the United States itself, this request has a potential of becoming a policy headache for Beijing, because the different American political groups, each with its own vested sphere of interest, would seek to influence the policy and would seek to pressurize the administration in Washington to get the most concessions out of the Chinese.

To avoid this political minefield, China could turn to Australia as a supplier of its wheat requirements, but given the newly emerging Australian role, within the framework of an American security policy, China realizes that this option too could be problematic in the long run. Furthermore, with the Australian intervention in East Timor, Canberra seems intent on invoking an Australian influence in the southern Pacific Rim regions and seems destined to breakout of its foreign policy isolation by taking an active role in the development of its interests in the Far East. Though Canberra cannot directly challenge the Chinese role in the region, it can allow the United States to maintain a strategic presence in the region and that American presence will be invariably against Chinese interests in the region. Therefore, given the emerging correlation of interests in the region, China is confronted with a series of perceptional threat indicators from the east (Japan and the United States); from the southeast (Australia) and from the west (India) and is acutely aware that it is being slowly encircled within a pre-determined policy influenced by Washington to chortle its escalating political-economic abilities in the region. Hence, the Chinese leadership is cognizant to the fact that Australia, because of its own interests and as a fulcrum of United States’ interests in the region, could be a fair-weather source of an essential item, whose lack of guaranteed delivery could have far reaching implications for Chinese security in the region.

Due to this, a process of deductive logic, Beijing would like to see Canada as its major source for importing wheat, because Ottawa has been traditionally independent from Washington when it comes to trade policies and because as it chafes at United States’ political dominance on trade issues. However, despite Ottawa’s independence from Washington, Canada has been associated with the United States in a strategic partnership for the past fifty years and because it may capitulate to United States’ political arm-twisting on its trade policies with China, Beijing would prefer not to concentrate all its eggs in one basket. With this in mind, Chinese economical-political interests would like to see Pakistan as a guaranteed source for its food requirements as an adjunct complimenting the Canadian wheat sales. By propping up Pakistan, China is seeking to minimize its weak points vis-à-vis its (confrontational) interests with the United States in the Far East and due to the fact that since the United States, once it determines its policy in regards to India will actively seek investments in India’s emerging markets, the Chinese political mandarins realize that Pakistan needs to be co-opted into a Chinese political orbit and used as a counter-balance to even out the American-Indian confluence of interests, which seems to be manifesting a subtle threat to China’s strategic interests in Asia.

With this in mind, the Chinese interests to develop the Pakistani naval port of Ormara and Gwadar takes on an added significance, because given the location of Ormara-Gwadar naval complexes, near the mouth of the Persian Gulf, China wants to be in a position to pose a direct military threat to the United States’ SLOCs and to the American access to the Middle Eastern oil upon which the American industrial economy is heavily dependent. Given the Chinese desire to assume a “blue water” mandate for its navy, China is extremely interested in securing a naval presence in the Arabian Sea, because not only would it force the United States to re-consider its strategic policy, but more importantly China would be in a situation, where it could effectively use its naval power projection, in Arabian Sea