India-China Relations #2: External Reasons

In this blog, I’ll go over Kanti Bajpai’s point from his book, India Versus China, that “power balancing” among actors not limited to India and China has meant that they’ve always been on “opposite sides”. By that, he means that the “India – China – US – USSR/Russia quadrilateral” has constantly “shaped Indian and Chinese choices”.

 

Between 1947 and 1958, Bajpai says the two countries were busy with the task of learning to govern their own countries, and it was thus a period of entente. While India tried to remain non-aligned in the Cold War, China found the US at its doorstep thanks to the Korean war. And so they leaned on the USSR to keep the Americans at bay.

 

By the late 50’s, China and the USSR fell apart – they disagreed on who was the leader of the communist movement, the Soviets had stopped supporting China’s nuclear weapons program, and they even fought a brief war against each other. During the 1962 war, the US sent its nuclear weapon armed aircraft carrier as a signal against China (They’d send the same ship against India during the Bangladesh war!).

 

In the late 60’s, the US decided to capitalize on the Soviet-China split and tried to wean China away for good. That in turn “forced” India to categorically tilt in favour of the Soviet camp. These stances hardened after the USSR invaded Afghanistan – the US used China, in addition to Pakistan, as a hub to arm, train and send funds to those fought against the Soviets. With the US-China embrace getting stronger, India had to go even more strongly towards the Soviets.

 

Then the Cold War ended, with the fall of the USSR. The US now looked at China differently – as a possible threat. An in-chaos Russia was not of much use to India. China was desperate to ensure it didn’t fall the way other communist countries were falling. India, with the fall of the USSR, was nearly bankrupt. And so India and China were back to their old state – internal problems were far bigger; and the two were back to entente mode…

 

When India tested its nuclear weapons in 1998, the US was furious and imposed sanctions. But the US needed India as a counter-weight against a rising China. So an uneasy alliance started to grow between the US and India. And as US-China relations oscillated between conflict and cooperation, China hedged and grew closer to Russia – the US was seen as the common threat to both.

 

Then came 9/11. The US needed Pakistan; and so its relation with India was put under strain. After the 2008 financial crisis, the West was stalling even as China continued to grow. This drove India and the US closer once again.

 

To summarize then, Bajpai says China’s policy has been to use the US or USSR/Russia as a counterweight against the other. India’s policy has been to lean towards whichever of those two (US or USSR/Russia) that China is opposed to. No wonder then, the relation between India and China has always been neutral (when both have internal problems) or opposed to each other.

 

To cap it up, Bajpai says neither India nor China has any history that suggests they can trust each other. Since 1947, they have always gone to the opposite side (if one gets pally with the US, the other moves towards Russia). And to make matters even more difficult:

“Neither system is notable for academic and policy expertise on the other country, expertise that might provide alternate views.”

 

So yes, it’s hard to see how things can be good between the two countries. The only blessing is that the Himalayas are an insurmountable barrier, leading to what Western analysts call a “cold peace”. Perhaps the only hope lies in the fact that as both countries grow richer and more powerful (China vastly more than India), both would want the existing white/West dominated global institutions to be changed/replaced. And that then may become the common thread that would bring them together, even if it is only in a common-goal-but-no-love-or-trust kind of way. Whether that will happen, only time can tell…

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