Strategic Trust-Building

The bill, which finalized the civil nuclear agreements between the United States and India begun under the Bush administration, has drawn heated criticism domestically and internationally -- particularly among U.S. nuclear suppliers. Spurred by collective memory of the 1984 Bhopal disaster, in which thousands of people were killed by poisonous emissions from a pesticides factory, Parliament crafted a bill that would hold suppliers liable in case of nuclear accident. Ordinarily, only operators are held liable.

Much of the controversy over the bill stems from the fact that India is re-writing international civil nuclear law, notes Sibal. But the main thrust of criticism is that suppliers from United States, France and Russia, fearful of risk exposure, will not help bring new nuclear power plants to India. Sibal argues that this is not the case:  “It is not chest-thumping to say that foreign suppliers will find it very difficult to ignore India’s large nuclear market, and ways to adapt to the Indian legislation will eventually be found.”

Some of suppliers’ worst fears about legal repercussion are baseless, according to Sibal: by the new law, a plant’s liability is not automatic, but would need to be established in court, and insurance amounts would be capped at a “tiny percentage” of a nuclear plant’s budget.

Despite critical reception to the bill, Sibal writes that the bill is ultimately a positive indicator for Parliament’s ability to seek consensus through compromise. As for whether India -- the nuclear community’s newest member-- should be able to alter international civil nuclear law, Sibal points out that for better or for worse, it already has.

Click here to read Sibal’s article in Mail Today.

In The Changing Political Utility of Nuclear Weapons: Nuclear Threats from 1970 to 2010, Samuel Black offers historical evidence against the idea that nuclear weapons are “weapons of peace”: first, there have been twice as many nuclear threats since the end of the Cold War than there were from 1970 to 1990; second, Pakistan, the U.S. and India were the leaders when it came to making those threats.

“One could quibble with the methodology of the study, yet there is no contesting the somber finding,” Sidhu writes. “States possessing nuclear weapons actually find the political utility of these deadly weapons increasing.” Sidhu points out that the nonchalance with which threats are issued can discredit the seriousness of a nuclear threat and allow more room for casual errors.

“While there is, clearly, a temptation to create the comforting legend of nuclear weapons as manna from heaven that will end the scourge of war for evermore, it is a dangerous delusion,” Sidhu concludes.  “The stark reality is that nuclear weapons by themselves cannot ensure peace.”

Click here to read Sidhu’s article on livemint.com

For Miller, the report reveals that “concern in the United States is not just focused on China’s remarkable economic rise, but also on the modernization and expansion of its military.” Miller highlights the report’s concerns over sophisticated new Chinese weaponry, the evolution of military thinking toward protecting China’s economic interests abroad, and China’s perceived lack of transparency. Although the report expresses the hope that China’s increased military capabilities could be used for peacekeeping or humanitarian efforts, Miller argues that “the unavoidable takeaway is that China’s military rise is harmful to U.S. strategic interests.” And while the report is not likely to greatly impact the bilateral relationship, it does little to advance the Obama administration’s ultimate challenge: to work with China while advancing America’s strategic interests.

Kok focuses her analysis on the report’s implications for United States-China military-to-military exchanges. Kok writes that the report, released in a period of heightened tensions, poses another challenge for bilateral military relations. While a section of the report touts the importance of military cooperation, this is undercut by “unflattering references” to China’s motivations for military exchanges: ”They include China’s presumed desire to gain ‘insights into potential U.S. vulnerabilities,” Kok writes, and “to drive a wedge between the United States, its allies, and its partners, including Taiwan.” Kok finds China’s response – a call for the United States to be objective and proactive in mending relations – to be unsatisfying. For relations to improve, Kok writes, both sides will have to replace “rhetoric and posturing” with an honest attempt to communicate. Preferably in time for the 2011 report.

Click here to read Jacqueline McLaren Miller's Piece (66.34K PDF).

Click here to read Piin-Fen Kok's piece (49.89K PDF).

“The news last week that China surpassed Japan as the world’s second largest economy (after the US) coincided with the annual report the US department of defense presents to the US Congress, on Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China, 2010,” Sidhu writes.  “This happenstance reflects the direct correlation between China’s growing economic strength and its increasing military might and holds important lessons for many countries, notably India.”

While China’s growth is impressive, Sidhu points out the economic and military differences between the U.S. and China: “On the economic front, China’s annual GDP of around $5 trillion is still one-third of the US’ $14 trillion.” China’s defense budget is pegged at somewhere between $80 billion to $150 billion dollars: “Yet even this high figure dwarfs in comparison with the towering US defence budget of over $650 billion,” Sidhu explains.

China plans to expand its growth through new technologies with a focus on cyber warfare, missiles and space technology, and extended-range power projection capabilities.

Sidhu concludes with by looking at India’s progress and the challenges of its future economic and military growth. “Perhaps the most important lesson is to seek to create a cooperative security arrangement, particularly involving China, so that the prospect of war is eliminated,” he asserts. “This might prove to be the most ambitious challenge of them all.”

Click here to read Sidhu’s article on livemint.com

Japan’s political and security calculus has been entirely different from that of India all these decades. Japan has depended on the US for its security through a mutual defence treaty whereas nonaligned India has abjured all military alliances. The two countries have not therefore had a shared security perspective. In foreign affairs Japan has followed the US lead, tuning its relations with India to the tenor of India-US relations.

India’s political closeness with the Soviet Union may not have been a contentious element in India-Japan ties bilaterally, but it certainly impinged on Japanese view of India’s role in south east Asia- a primary area for Japan’s post-war economic effort. India’s closed door economic policies until 1991 discouraged a pragmatic build up of mutual economic ties with an economically focused Japan, despite political divergences. When China opened up economically 12 years before us, India lost out in regional economic stakes, as Japan put its investment and trade energy in building a massive relationship with the giant next door.  The nuclear question has bedevilled India-Japan relations more than it need have because of peculiar Japanese sensitivities as the only victim of the actual use of nuclear weapons.

This Japanese squeamishness has seemed politically and morally dubious as Japan has hung on tenaciously to the nuclear weapon guarantee of the very country that martyred it with nuclear devastation. Japan has, with twisted logic, disregarded the nuclear threat to an India without any external nuclear shield from two collaborating nuclear neighbours, and irritatingly lectured India on the virtues of nuclear abstinence.

Major changes- all welcome- have taken place in the quality and content of India-Japan relations in recent years. India’s transformed ties with the US has prompted Japan to modulate its policies toward India. With India and the US stepping up their defence cooperation, India and Japan announced enhanced defence cooperation between them in a joint statement issued during Indian Defence Minister’s visit to Japan in May 2006.   With India and US establishing a strategic partnership, the Indian and Japanese Prime Ministers also announced a Strategic and Global Partnership in December 2006. It envisages stepped-up defence and technological cooperation, annual summit meetings, dialogue between National Security Advisors, a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, working together for the security and safety of international maritime traffic, pursuit of the G-4 agenda for Security Council reform and close collaboration in the East Asia Summit(EAS) as well as in the East Asia Community(EAC).

As India-US understanding has grown, so has India-Japan bonding. In December 2009, during Prime Minister Hatoyama’s visit, a New Stage of Strategic and Global Partnership was announced, with agreement on an Action Plan containing specific measures to advance security cooperation, such as deepening the annual strategic dialogue between the two Foreign Ministers, holding an annual Defence Minister level dialogue, instituting a combined foreign affairs and defence 2+2 dialogue(held in July this year) that Japan has only with two allies- the US and Australia, and, calling, in addition, for an open and inclusive East Asian Community as distinct from China’s exclusivist approach that would   impair India’s Look East Policy.

To put the bilateral relationship on a higher strategic footing, Japan has removed 11 Indian entities from its end-user list, sent its army, naval and air chiefs to India and participated in the trilateral India-US-Japan Malabar naval exercise and a quadrilateral exercise with Australia’s addition that became politically controversial in India because of concerns about it slipping into US led defence arrangements in East Asia and China’s querulousness about the intent of these exercises, which also made Japan and Australia baulk at quadrilateral initiatives involving democracies in Asia.

Japan has tried to manage China’s rise constructively by creating positive economic linkages intended to blunt potential friction through interdependence, emulating US strategy. China no doubt provided a huge new market for Japanese products and investments, doubly important because of Japan’s stagnant economy. But a rising and confident China, with bulging economic, financial and military muscle, has begun to cause concern to neighbours because its political and strategic intentions remain unclear. Japan and China have already had a face off in the South China sea which China now defines as its “core interest”. In this background, as well as saturation limits on Japanese economic expansion in China, India’s value as a strategic partner is obvious. Neither Japan nor India has any intention to antagonize China or pursue any containment policy, and the leaders of both countries have clarified publicy that their security cooperation is not China-oriented, but hedging strategies against a potential China threat even as that country is positively engaged cannot be ignored.

A third driving factor in the Japan-India relationship is, of course, the economic opportunities that Japan’s stagflation ridden economy burdened by unemployment and an aging population sees in a growing and dynamic Indian economy. India and Japan are working on a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement(CEPA), and hope to sign it when PM goes to Tokyo this October. CEPA is intended to enhance reciprocal investments and boost the current low levels of India-Japan trade- $13 billion in 2008-2009- far short of the target of $20 billion by 2010. India could potentially serve as a global manufacturing hub for Japanese industry if projects like the Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor financed by Japan are accomplished. For India hi-tech trade with Japan holds great promise in the fields of energy efficient technologies, ultra mega power generation projects based on super critical technologies, and new and renewable energy sources like clean coal, solar and nuclear.

The Indo-US nuclear deal and the NSG waiver for India has opened doors for India-Japan discussions on a nuclear pact. Japanese companies like Mitsubishi and Hitachi which control GE and Westinghouse would no doubt want to capitalize on India’s commitment to the US for the installation of 10,000 MWs of nuclear power in the country by its companies. The first round of talks on the nuclear nuclear pact has followed discussions on the subject between the Indian and Japanese Prime MInisters at the June 20 Toronto G-20 summit. The pitch has been queered by the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki opposing nuclear cooperation with a non-NPT country like India, prompting Foreign Minister Okada  to state publicy at New Delhi on August 21 that he expected Japan’s philosophy of non-proliferation, including suspension if India tested, to figure in appropriate terminology in the agreement, to conclude which no time lines will be drawn- a signal that it is unlikely to be ready by October when PM goes to Tokyo. Ostensibly, Japan wants India to go beyond the  language of the India-US nuclear deal. One cannot see how India can.
 

The author is a former foreign secretary of India and a member of EWI’s Board of Directors. The article was published in Mail Today.

At last! A new, and unlikely contender steps onto the field of play to take on the reigning champions of Europe. In an unlikely move last month, British Prime Minister David Cameron scored a dazzling goal against the Sarkozy-Merkel camp on the issue of Turkey’s membership of the European Union.

Cameron said on 27 July: “I’m here [in Ankara] to make the case for Turkey’s membership in the EU. And to fight for it.” He was joined by Lech Walesa on 19 August. “There is no Europe without Turkey”, the feisty giant-killer of Gdansk told a journalist.

Nobel Peace Prize winner from 2008, Martti Ahtisaari, leads an international commission that has twice reviewed the relationship between Turkey and the EU. The first report in 2004 confirmed the EU’s legal obligation to proceed with Turkish accession. The second noted the “vicious cycle” of negative public debate and stalling and reaffirmed the importance of seeing a “transformed Turkey” as a member of the European Union.

Citing the Association Agreement between the EEC and Turkey in 1963, a Customs Union agreement in 1996, and an EU decision in December 2004 that Turkey could join subject to completion of accession instruments, the Ahtisaari Commission went on to note that Turkey is already “broadly integrated into almost all pan-European Institutions”: the Council of Europe, including the European Court of Human Rights, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

According to a 2005 report by the Foreign Policy Centre (London), titled “Turks in Europe: Why Are We Afraid”, the position of Germany’s Angela Merkel reflects the failure of German policies of integration of its Turkish immigrants. More recently, domestic politics in France have led President Sarkozy to make disquieting statements about immigrant communities in his country. His statements have been accompanied by clear indications of state-sanctioned hostility to, or discrimination against certain classes of immigrants (Muslim women wearing burqas) and would-be immigrants (Roma).

I wonder about David Cameron’s motives in joining the debate so vociferously and, as he said, “very passionately”. But this is a fight that I hope he and his new partner, Walesa, can win.

Chancellor Merkel has advocated that Turkey should scale back its expectations and settle for a “privileged partnership”. She is not supported on this by her coalition partner, Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, who in visiting Ankara on 28 July, left open the door for continuing negotiations. The Independent Commission labeled advocacy of “privileged partnership” as a “populist excuse”.  There are far higher political stakes in the question of Turkey’s relations with Germany and France, and how these two countries view Turkey’s inclusion in the EU. The prospect that the EU would abandon its legally binding commitment to Turkey because of domestic political positions inspired by xenophobic or anti-immigrant sentiment at home could be, in the words of a Turkish German politician, a “fatal political signal”.

As Turkey becomes more active on the global political stage, it is becoming a lightning rod for the worst nightmares of conservative American analysts, with one from the American Enterprise Institute recently charging at Congressional hearings that Turkey’s foreign policy in the Middle East “favors the most radical elements”. Thankfully, more considered views are in evidence from the German Marshall Fund’s Ian lesser at the same hearings: “if Turkey’s candidacy proves hollow, this could well interrupt or reverse Turkey’s longstanding convergence with the West, further complicating an already strained relationship with the United States.”  But please note, the fight for Turkey in Europe is a fight for dignity and equality as much as it is a fight for realpolitik. If immigrant bashers win, that could become a fatal political signal for the internal security of the “immigration continent”.

What is different about this latest round of tensions is that its scope has transcended the historical disagreements over exclusive economic zones (EEZs) and it is being played out against what is no longer a purely bilateral backdrop.  In late July, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton chose a multilateral forum – an Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Regional Forum meeting in Hanoi – to place the United States squarely in the middle of the South China Sea territorial disputes.  Her remarks – construed by the Chinese as an attempt to internationalize what they see as bilateral issues between China and the littoral states concerned – drew strong rebuttals from Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi and the Chinese Ministry of National Defense.

These were followed by more posturing:  at the end of July, China conducted its largest ever military drills in the South China Sea.  And earlier this month, the United States and Vietnam – the ASEAN chair and a party to offshore territorial disputes with China – held a week-long naval exercise; ostensibly, this was to commemorate the 15th anniversary of normalized relations, but in light of recent events, it wouldn’t be far-fetched to interpret it as a shot across China’s bow.

And while visiting the Philippines this week, the head of U.S. Pacific Command Admiral Robert Willard spoke out on China’s apparent assertiveness in the South China Sea region, denounced the coercive use of force to settle territorial disputes, and made an explicit commitment to a continued U.S. presence in the region for years to come.

Admiral Willard’s remarks coincided with the Pentagon’s release of its latest annual report to Congress on military and security developments involving China.  The report references China’s territorial disputes, including in the South China Sea, and mentions that the Chinese military is building the capacity to attack ships in the Western Pacific Ocean.

The actions of the United States, beginning with Secretary Clinton’s remarks in Vietnam, seem to be a response to the Chinese government’s surprising message to senior U.S. officials in March that the South China Sea issue was now one of China’s “core interests” – a diplomatic code phrase for a matter over which China would fight a war.

At the same time, those actions, while geared toward the situation in the South China Sea, would appear to be part of a broader series of overtures by the Obama administration to reassert the United States’ role in Southeast Asia.  Such overtures include signing the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation with ASEAN, announcing the intention to open a mission and name an ambassador to ASEAN in Jakarta, holding the first U.S.-ASEAN summit, and strengthening sub-regional and bilateral cooperation with specific ASEAN countries.

In short, despite being mired in two wars elsewhere in the world and having twice postponed a presidential visit to the region, the United States is issuing a clear reminder that it still is – and plans to remain – a key strategic player in the region.  That this reminder is in large part directed at China – and meant to reassure America’s Southeast Asian allies – begs the question of whether the South China Sea, and by extension Southeast Asia, is fast shaping up to be the next major battleground for influence between the two powers.  This, in turn, has implications for ASEAN unity:  as some countries (for example, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei) are affected more than others by the South China Sea issue, there is the potential for individual countries to be pulled in different directions, especially against the backdrop of big power intervention.

On the U.S.-China front, if managed imprudently or left to fester, the current tensions in this region could well develop, in the very near future, into a major source of friction that destabilizes bilateral relations.

There is thus an immediate need, as always, for cool-headed U.S.-China diplomacy, including through military-to-military dialogue.  It would be extremely useful, for example, for each side to clarify its definition of a “core interest” (in the case of China) or a “national interest” (in the case of the United States) in the context of the South China Sea issue; for the United States to explain the policy nuances behind Secretary Clinton’s remarks (as one reason for China’s displeasure is its perception that the United States has significantly changed its position on the South China Sea disputes); and for both countries to clarify their strategic intentions in the region.

There is also a greater need for maritime diplomacy among the key players in the South China Sea region.  While territorial disputes need to be resolved by the relevant parties concerned in accordance with international law, such disputes should not get in the way of the maritime trade and commerce that is critical to the region.

In this regard, stepped-up efforts between China and ASEAN to agree on a code of conduct in the South China Sea would help address freedom of navigation concerns amid conflicting territorial claims.  It would also reflect good faith on the part of China to engage constructively with its regional neighbors, despite their differences.

At the end of the day, however, codes of conduct and other confidence-building measures will not be effective if the root causes of mistrust are not addressed.  As China continues to develop and assess its approach to and public diplomacy pertaining to maritime affairs, it will eventually have to respond to the growing perceptions of its stance and swagger – both in the South China Sea and in the waters further northeast.  This is especially so if China wishes to reassure the world that its rise is indeed peaceful.

“As a country wedged between India and Tibet, Nepal has traditionally played the Chinese card against us,” Sibal writes.  “No matter which government is in power there, to a lesser or greater degree our China problem with Nepal will remain.”  There is a constant struggle between Nepal’s sovereignty and India’s expectations for cooperation, preventing a mutual relationship of trust: “The 1950 Treaty, the reality of the open border, the historical, cultural, linguistic and religious ties between the two countries underpin our expectations.” 

As a result of the historically tumultuous relationship between the two countries, Nepal relies heavily on China, an issue of great concern to India with the rise of the Maoist party in Nepal.  “In general, Nepal has been provocatively testing our China-related sensitivities and we have resorted to fire-fighting to counter its moves, without being able to reach a clear understanding on the self-restraint Nepal should voluntarily practice in its dealings with China out of a recognition of the particular nature and the depth of its ties with India.”

The surprising Maoist victory in Nepal’s 2008 election worried India, contributing to the rising tensions between these three countries.  “The Maoists have constituted the most hostile force in Nepal toward India, backed in the past by the Palace to counter the Nepali Congress seen as pro-India,” explains Sibal. 

Given those political developments, India will continue to wrestle with the dilemma of what to do about its neighbor. “How to find the right balance between engagement and non-intervention is a challenging task,” Sibal concludes.

Click here to read Sibal’s article in Mail Today.

Reviewing EWI board member Christine Loh’s Underground Front: The Chinese Communist Party in Hong Kong, the Financial Times praises this “fascinating book” that expertly explains the history and operations of the party. Loh also explains why, even after Hong Kong became Chinese territory again, the Hong Kong communists still operate as if they were a clandestine movement.