As the year 2023 draws to a close, a tumultuous period for Indian foreign policies needs to be weighed with some plain-speaking. The paradox is that Indian foreign policy is in a crisis mode today although the country faces no threat of external aggression and a ‘new normal’ exists vis-a-vis its neighbours, including China.
The remarks made by Lt Governor of Ladakh, Brigadier (Retd) BD Mishra, in a recent interview regarding the India-China border standoff were absolutely stunning. Mishra tore into the narrative about ‘Chinese incursions’ into Indian territory and asserted that “there is not a single step or boot of the Chinese which is on our side of that land”.
Mishra said, “The perception is that they are in our area, the Chinese say that we are in their area. We say that LAC runs along a particular place—so there is a bit of clash of perceptions, but despite that, no Chinese boot is on this side of that area… The deployment is along the no man’s land. That has to be maintained. And our boundary as per our perception runs in that no man’s land. When people say that they (sheepherders) are not permitted to go anywhere, it is not that Chinese have come. It is because there is a no man’s land.”
It appears that, quintessentially, the India-China standoff is still about Mission Creep in no man’s land in the name of road construction or sheep grazing for more than half a century. For someone of Mishra’s stature, who was posted in that sensitive border region while serving in the army, the remarks were imbued with candour; that is very rare for an entrenched establishment figure. Yet, the fact that he hasn’t been reprimanded for the brutally frank remarks makes the episode more meaningful in political and diplomatic terms.
Indeed, a degree of stability and predictability has come to prevail in the disputed Ladakh region. But what we see is also that through this period since May 2020, India’s relations with China have morphed into geopolitical rivalry. That is an absurd phenomenon, to say the least, given the massive difference in the comprehensive national power of the two countries.
Well-informed western opinion is that, in order to oust China as the global economic driver, India requires to grow at around 8 percent annually for a sustainable period of two or three generations. For growing at this speed, the country needs massive investment in areas
such as mining, utilities, storage and transport.
The smart thing would have been to attract Chinese investments but we have instead got mired in a geopolitical rivalry, punching far above our weight and with no commensurate returns either.
The sad part is that this deliberate transition to rivalry is concurrently used by interest groups to give convoluted rationale to hitching the Indian wagon to the US’s Indo-Pacific strategy. This in turn is steadily eroding the country’s strategic autonomy and alienating the Global South that is not in the least interested in taking sides in an esoteric India-China binary in international politics. The political gaffe over the current West Asian conflict situation is a telling example of India, the self-proclaimed leader of the Global South, finding itself as a straggler when the crunch time came and realising its isolation, ultimately beating retreat from its ill-advised solidarity with Israel. This is what happens to unprincipled foreign policies.
The interplay of three factors brought about this dismal situation. First, our foreign policy elite gleefully lapped up the western narrative caricaturing Russia’s tactical manoeuvrings in the war of attrition in Ukraine through last year as military defeat. We were not only unprepared for Russia’s spectacular turnaround by mid-2023 but also the growing likelihood of the US and NATO suffering a humiliating defeat. Russia’s foreign intelligence chief explicitly warned the US that continued Western support for Ukraine would only turn the conflict into a “second Vietnam” haunting Washington for years to come.
It is in such dramatic backdrop that the brewing Israel-Palestine conflict erupted with a demonic fury, which badly exposes the US’ loss of influence in the West Asian region—the US-led coalition in the Red Sea cannot attract a single major participant from the non-western world—as well as becomes a debilitating template for President Biden himself in the US politics in a tight election year. In combination, the looming defeat in Eurasia—with deleterious consequences for the transatlantic system—and the quagmire in West Asia—for, there is no way Israel will accept a two-state solution—means that the fizz has gone out of the Indo-Pacific strategy. Evidently, Biden is in no hurry to hold a QUAD Summit anytime soon—our
government’s tearing hurry notwithstanding. It speaks volumes about the shift in the US’ strategic priorities toward China.
India’s geopolitical rivalry with China now becomes nonsensical. The US has come to realise that a prolonged confrontation with Russia in Eurasia has made the idea of a simultaneous US Cold War or a military showdown with China a farfetched proposition.
The pendulum swung from ‘decoupling’ to ‘de-risking’ and stood at ‘China+1’ at the San Francisco summit. Meanwhile, the US and China are also moving toward dialogue as an AI superpower, sharing global responsibility to set the direction of technological advancement and collaboration rights—India’s dream wicket.
Meanwhile, India ends up like a beached whale, as the two QUAD members from Asia, Japan and Australia, synchronise their watches with the US with delectable ease. The unkindest cut of all is that Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau already sees “a beginning of an understanding that they (India) can’t bluster their way” through Nijjar’s killing after Washington warned Delhi about its involvement in a thwarted plot to kill Pannun. Don’t be surprised if Trudeauspeak harks back to the ‘White man’s burden’.
M K Bhadrakumar, Former diplomat
(Views are personal)