Pentagon report and the wolf warrior next door
It’s an unnervingly transitional world we live in, any which way it’s looked at. The old order is breaking, and the new order taking shape offers no comfort. The strategic-diplomatic-military space exemplifies this the best. Domestic politics is inflecting cross-country transactions everywhere, especially when it comes to behemoths like the US, China and India.
Much of the belligerence Beijing is displaying in the Asia-Pacific and elsewhere is in a way linked to the 20th National Party Congress of the Chinese Communist Party slated for October 2022, an event that would decide whether Xi Jinping stays on for a third term (as of now, there are no contrary signs). Globally, China also seems to be priming itself for the big role it envisages for the nation by 2049—the centenary of the People’s Republic of China is the target date by which it aims to conclusively replace the US as the world’s most dominant economic, military and strategic power.
The Pentagon annual report that delineates and contextualises China’s expansionism brings this alive in a worrying manner: Imagine a China with an even more upscaled, modernised army, brimming with nuclear warheads, winning away friends and destabilising the American spheres of influence. This, naturally, cannot happen without India’s own neighbourhood getting deeply impacted. What’s playing out in the western theatre and around the borders in Arunachal Pradesh is nothing but part of Beijing’s larger muscle-flexing.
China has two sources of insecurity—Tibet and Xinjiang. One abuts India all along its north, the other too is proximate. We may end up paying for that by getting our own pain point, Pakistan, activated. The scale on which China is both physically enlarging its defence capabilities and deploying AI technology for espionage and intelligence is unprecedented. Even if it does not accept all that is suggested in the Pentagon report, India must digest this: The Wolf Warrior lurks next door, and it’s there for good, Quad or no Quad.