SAVING ISRAEL: THE STORM AHEAD By Dr. Gordis

29. May 2010 by admin.

The Storm Ahead by Dr. Daniel Gordis

May 29, 2010

Dr. Daniel Gordis

 

This is a re-post with permission by Dr. Gordis.

THE JERUSALEM POST

MAY 28 2010

In October 1994, several days after kidnapped IDF soldier Nachshon Wachsman was killed in a failed attempt to save him from his terrorist captors, I was scheduled to teach my weekly graduate seminar at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles. But given the horror of what had just transpired, I couldn’t even imagine simply teaching as planned. I no longer recall what had been scheduled for that day. But what I do remember is that I decided to scrap the usual fare and that I taught a text in memory of Wachsman.

As the seminar drew to a close, it was obviously quiet in the room. But just as the students were preparing to disperse, one looked at me and asked, “What does any of this have to do with us?”

More than 15 years later, I can still picture that moment, frozen in time. I remember exactly where she was sitting. I recall the looks of discomfort on the faces of some of the other students, but the nods of agreement with her question from others. And I remember that I had no idea what to say.

And I remember feeling unbearably lonely and wholly out of place. Lonely because it was clear that she was not the only one wondering why in the world we were thinking about Nachshon Wachsman, when my own heart was breaking, and out of place because I had no idea how to engage those students in a conversation about why he mattered to me. I didn’t know where to begin.

What I didn’t know then, of course, was that a question that seemed to me an aberration would soon become the norm.

BUT IT has. Among young American Jews today, the public discourse has been captured by the intellectual and emotional heirs of that graduate student. Today’s is a generation of young American intellectuals and communal leaders without the instinctive bond to Israel that my generation possesses, even when Israel infuriates or embarrasses us. This is a generation of people like the talented writer Jay Michaelson, who wrote in The Forward, “I no longer want to feel entangled by [Israelis’] decisions and implicated in their consequences… count me out.”

Even in the moments of our greatest frustration with Israel, the people that I grew up with could never utter the words “count me out.”

Michaelson is but part of a massive wave. Prof. Jack Wertheimer, in presenting some preliminary findings from his newest study of American Jews (the specific figures are still being processed), noted a few weeks ago that most young American Jewish leaders (yes, leaders) “do not see Israel as central to Jewish identity and peoplehood.”

The evidence is virtually limitless. We’re witness to a tectonic shift in American Jewish life, but many people would rather ignore it than face the serious work that lies ahead. Thus, when I pointed out (“If this is our future,” Jerusalem Post, May 7) that following Brandeis University’s invitation to Ambassador Michael Oren to be its commencement speaker, the public discourse was captured by those opposed to his invitation, some people responded by pointing out the (obvious) fact that many Brandeis students (and probably the majority) supported the invitation. A petition in favor, signed by 5,000 people, was also reported. And a small number of articles in the Brandeis paper, opined one faculty person in a response to the Post, ought not be taken out of context. “Imagine someone telling you it’s pouring rain outside and you stick your head out the window and see there are just a couple of clouds in the sky,” he wrote.

But what we’re facing would be “just a couple of clouds in the sky” if the story that mattered was about Brandeis, which it obviously is not. Everyone knows that Jewish life on campus doesn’t get better than Jewish life at Brandeis. So why pretend that Brandeis is the issue? What is significant is that even at Brandeis, one of the crown jewels of American Jewish academe, as of the publication of my previous column, there had been four pieces in the student newspaper about the Oren invitation. The Justice’s official editorial and the head of the campus J Street chapter weighed in opposed. So, too, did a member of the computer science faculty. And a student representative to the Board of Trustees aimed to defend the invite by suggesting that Oren was being asked to campus not as a representative of the State of Israel, but as an academic.

WHY DOES any of this matter? Because in not one of these pieces did any of the four writers have a single positive thing to say about Israel. That, not Brandeis, is the story.

So instead of circling our wagons, seeking to convince ourselves that it’s not really raining and that there are only a few clouds in the sky, I propose that we ask ourselves a few basic questions: (1) Do we believe that the future of the Jewish people depends on what happens to Israel? (2) Do we believe that Israel can survive without strong and consistent support from the American Jewish community? (3) Given today’s younger generation, does a serious problem loom? (4) If we are facing a challenge, how did it arise? (5) And perhaps most importantly, what should be done?

To me it seems patently obvious that the secure, confident and creative Diaspora community that many American Jews now take for granted is directly dependent on a vital and flourishing State of Israel. Today’s young American Jewish leaders can neither recall nor imagine the days in which Jews hesitated to march on Capitol Hill, or the days in which one could not get a job on Wall Street wearing a kippa. That confidence is the product of Israel, and of the formative experiences that many American Jewish leaders have had in the Jewish state. The image of the Jew, no longer one of victim, but of utter confidence, was born in June 1967. In Israel.

Though many will disagree, it seems equally clear to me that were the State of Israel to be vanquished, the vibrant American Jewish life that we now too easily take for granted would wither away within a generation. And if that were to happen, the two great centers of world Jewry – Israel and America – would each essentially be gone.

And I believe that Israel’s military might, cultural flourishing, strength of spirit and more, important though they all are, are not sufficient to sustain the country. America’s support – financial, military and in the increasingly hostile court of international public opinion – is critical. Yet that support would be much endangered without an American Jewish leadership that instinctively feels deeply connected to Israel, that doesn’t ask, “What does any of this have to do with us?”

Today, we have that leadership. But the future is not as secure as many would like to believe. Nor is that future very far away.

SO HOW did this come to be? To be sure, Israel is partly at fault. It is notoriously horrendous at telling its own story, and has allowed those sworn on its destruction to capture world opinion. Nor has Israel been blameless in the interminable conflict with the Palestinians, of course. Israel alienates American Jewry with an anti-intellectual and often intolerant religious establishment. And the government still refuses to see the gradual distancing of young American Jews as a serious existential challenge, which it could become, if it isn’t one already.

But the responsibility for this widening fissure in world Jewish life cannot be attributed solely to Israel. Too many young American Jews have not been taught what they need to know to evaluate the conflict fairly. They know that they are opposed to the occupation, but they are much less clear on how the occupation began or what Israel has done in the past 43 years to seek to end it. Largely illiterate in Jewish texts or language, they are increasingly unaware of the cultural renaissance that Israel has made possible for Jews the world over.

Yet the problem is actually far more complex. At its core, the issue isn’t really Israel, or even American Jewish education. The real issue is the larger world in which today’s younger American (and Israeli) Jews live. Responding to Wertheimer’s study and the concerns it raised, Noam Pianko, a professor of Jewish history at the University of Washington, denied that there is a problem. As Gary Rosenblatt of the Jewish Week recently wrote, Pianko insisted that “boundaries don’t match the moment” of 21st-century America. His America, Pianko says, is “‘post-ethnic,’ symbolized by President Barack Obama, who he said represents racial fusion rather than division.”

Obama did not create this worldview; this Weltanschauung elected him. But Obama is perhaps the most eloquent spokesperson for this orientation, insisting, as he did in Cairo, that we ought not be “defined by our differences.”

Even if we set aside the obvious fact that it is precisely by pointing to differences that we define most things, Obama reflects the worldview that is shaping both young Americans and increasingly, young Israelis: Difference is not an ideal, but an unfortunate reality, best transcended whenever possible.

In such a world, it is no surprise that a successful young nation-state, which breathes new life into an ancient language, which fosters Jewish ingathering from across the globe and which enables a cultural regeneration unlike anything humanity has ever witnessed – a state which, in other words, celebrates difference – would be uncomfortable for many, and reviled by some.

All of which makes the challenge even greater. Because engendering the instinctive passion for Israel that many of us feel, and miss, requires swimming against the current of an intellectual culture now pervasive in America and much of the Western world. But Jewish history in general and Zionism in particular are proofs that the trends of Western civilization can be withstood, and even altered at times. The question facing us now is whether we plan to capitulate, or whether we’re willing to lace up our boots and enter the battle.

This will be no simple battle. But as Joshua said to the angel (Joshua 5:13), you are either with us or against us. Left versus Right, or Orthodox versus Reform are now secondary issues. What matters now is whether or not each individual, organization, movement, etc. sees defense of Israel’s absolute right to exist as a Jewish state as its foremost responsibility. Let all our differences abide. But let both leftists and hard-liners understand that today, they are not opponents, but rather partners, assuming that both are committed to Israel’s survival and to making the case for that survival day in and day out. The rest we can deal with down the road. For the moment, especially when any substantive chance for a peace deal seems remote, changing the Jewish conversation about Israel, and then the international conversation, is what matters most.

That will not be easy, but first we have to decide that that’s what we want to do. So let’s begin with honesty. We delude ourselves if we pretend that there are but a few clouds in the sky. The Jewish people will survive, and thrive, not by pretending that everything will magically work out, but rather by acknowledging the challenges that lie ahead, and by then bonding together and resolving to meet them head-on.

SavingIsrael by Daniel Gordis

About

Dr. Daniel Gordis is Senior Vice President of the Shalem Center, where he is also a Senior Fellow.  The author of numerous books on Jewish thought and currents in Israel, and a recent winner of the National Jewish Book Award, Dr. Gordis was the founding dean of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at the University of Judaism, the first rabbinical college on the West Coast of the United States.  Dr. Gordis joined Shalem in 2007 to help found Israel’s first liberal arts college, after spending nine years as vice president of the Mandel Foundation in Israel and director of its Leadership Institute.

Since moving to Israel in 1998, Dr. Gordis has written and lectured throughout the world on Israeli society and the challenges facing the Jewish state. His writing has appeared in magazines and newspapers including the New York Times, theNew Republic, the New York Times Magazine, Moment, Tikkun, and Conservative Judaism. His latest book, Saving Israel: How the Jewish People Can Win a War That May Never End was published by Wiley in March 2009, and was subsequently awarded the 2009 National Jewish Book Award.

Dr. Gordis is presently at work on two new books.  A volume about 19th and 20th century rabbinic responsa on conversion, which he is writing together with Rabbi David Ellenson of the Hebrew Union College, is tentatively entitled For the Sake of Heaven:  Conversion, Law and Politics in the Modern World of Jewish Orthodoxy. And another book, on Zionism and its contributions to human freedom and vitality worldwide, is tentatively called Israel’s Promise: How Zionism Can Help Preserve the Nation-State and Human Freedom, is also now being written.

His books to date are:

• Saving Israel: How the Jewish State Can Win a War That May Never End(Wiley, 2009)

• Coming Together, Coming Apart: A Memoir of Heartbreak and Promise in Israel (Wiley, 2006)

• Home to Stay: One American Family’s Chronicle of Miracles and Struggles in Contemporary Israel (Random House, 2003)

• If a Place Can Make You Cry: Dispatches from an Anxious State(Crown/Random House, 2002)

• Becoming a Jewish Parent: How to Explore Spirituality and Tradition with Your Children (Random House, 1999)

• Does the World Need the Jews: Rethinking Chosenness and American Jewish Identity (Scribner, 1997)

• God Was Not in the Fire: The Search for a Spiritual Judaism (Scribner, 1995)

   

Dr. Gordis received his B.A. from Columbia College (Magna Cum Laude), a Masters Degree and Rabbinic Ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and his Ph.D. from the University of Southern California.

He and his wife, Elisheva, live in Jerusalem and have three children.

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Germany After the EU and the Russian Scenario

29. May 2010 by admin.

Germany After the EU and the Russian Scenario

By George Friedman

Discussions about Europe currently are focused on the Greek financial crisis and its potential effect on the future of the European Union. Discussions these days involving military matters and Europe appear insignificant and even anachronistic. Certainly, we would agree that the future of the European Union towers over all other considerations at the moment, but we would argue that scenarios for the future of the European Union exist in which military matters are far from archaic.

Russia and the Polish Patriots

For example, the Polish government recently announced that the United States would deploy a battery of Patriot missiles to Poland. The missiles arrived this week. When the United Statescanceled its land-based ballistic missile defense system under intense Russian pressure, the Obama administration appeared surprised at Poland’s intense displeasure with the decision. Washington responded by promising the Patriots instead, the technology the Poles had wanted all along. While the Patriot does not enhance America’s ability to protect itself against long-range ballistic missiles from, for example, Iran, it does give Poland some defense against shorter-ranged ballistic missiles and substantial defense against conventional air attack.

Russia is the only country capable of such attacks on Poland with even the most distant potential interest in doing so, and at this point, this is truly an abstract threat. In removing a system that was really not a threat to Russian interests — U.S. ballistic missile defense at most can handle only a score of missiles, meaning it would have a negligible impact on the Russian nuclear deterrent — the United States ironically has installed a system that could affect Russia. Under the current circumstances, this is not really significant. While much is being made of having a few U.S. boots on the ground east of Germany within 40 kilometers (about 25 miles) of the Russian Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad, a few hundred technicians and guards are simply not an offensive threat.

Still, the Russians — with a long history of seeing improbable threats turning into very real ones— tend to take hypothetical limits on their power seriously. They also tend to take gestures seriously, knowing that gestures often germinate into strategic intent. The Russians obviously oppose this deployment, as the Patriots would allow Poland in league with NATO — and perhaps even by itself — to achieve local air superiority. There are many crosscurrents in Russian policy, however.

For the moment, the Russians are interested in encouraging better economic relations with the West, as they could use technology and investment that would make them more than a commodity exporter. Moreover, with the Europeans preoccupied with their economic crisis and the United States still bogged down in the Middle East and needing Russian support on Iran, Moscow has found little outside resistance to its efforts to increase its influence in the former Soviet Union. Moscow is not unhappy about the European crisis and wouldn’t want to do anything that might engender greater European solidarity. After all, a solid economic bloc turning into an increasingly powerful and integrated state would pose challenges to Russia in the long run that Moscow is happy to do without. The Patriot deployment is a current irritation and a hypothetical military problem, but the Russians are not inclined to create a crisis with Europe over it — though this doesn’t mean Moscow won’t make countermoves on the margins when it senses opportunities.

For its part, the Obama administration is not focused on Poland at present. It is obsessed with internal matters, South Asia and the Middle East. The Patriots were shipped based on a promise made months ago to calm Central European nerves over the Obama administration’s perceived lack of commitment to the region. In the U.S. State and Defense department sections charged with shipping Patriots to Poland, the delivery process was almost an afterthought; repeated delays in deploying the system highlighted Washington’s lack of strategic intent.

It is therefore tempting to dismiss the Patriots as of little importance, as merely the combination of a hangover from a Cold War mentality and a minor Obama administration misstep. Indeed, even a sophisticated observer of the international system might barely note it. But we would argue that it is more important than it appears precisely because of everything else going on.

Existential Crisis in the EU

The European Union is experiencing an existential crisis. This crisis is not about Greece, but rather, what it is that members of the European Union owe each other and what controls the European Union has over its members. The European Union did well during a generation of prosperity. As financial crisis struck, better-off members were called on to help worse-off members. Again, this is not just about Greece — the 2008 credit crisis in Central Europe was about the same thing. The wealthier countries, Germany in particular, are not happy at the prospect of spending taxpayer money to assist countries dealing with popped credit bubbles.

They really don’t want to do that, and if they do, they really want to have controls over the ways these other countries spend their money so this circumstance doesn’t arise again. Needless to say, Greece — and countries that might wind up like Greece — do not want foreign control over their finances.

If there are no mutual obligations among EU member nations, and the German and Greek publics don’t want to bail out or submit, respectively, then the profound question is raised of what Europe is going to be — beyond a mere free trade zone — after this crisis. This is not simply a question of the euro surviving, although that is no trivial matter.

The euro and the European Union will probably survive this crisis — although their mutual failure is not nearly as unthinkable as the Europeans would have thought even a few months ago — but this is not the only crisis Europe will experience. Something always will be going wrong, and Europe does not have institutions that could handle these problems. Events in the past few weeks indicate that European countries are not inclined to create such institutions, and that public opinion will limit European governments’ ability to create or participate in these institutions. Remember, building a super state requires one of two things: a war to determine who is in charge or political unanimity to forge a treaty. Europe is — vividly — demonstrating the limitations on the second strategy.

Whatever happens in the short run, it is difficult to envision any further integration of European institutions. And it is very easy to see how the European Union will devolve from its ambitious vision into an alliance of convenience built around economic benefits negotiated and renegotiated among the partners. It would thus devolve from a union to a treaty, with no interest beyond self-interest.

The German Question Revisited

We return to the question that has defined Europe since 1871, namely, the status of Germany in Europe. As we have seen during the current crisis, Germany is clearly the economic center of gravity in Europe, and this crisis has shown that the economic and the political issues are very much one and the same. Unless Germany agrees, nothing can be done, and if Germany so wishes, something will be done. Germany has tremendous power in Europe, even if it is confined largely to economic matters. But just as Germany is the blocker and enabler of Europe, over time that makes Germany the central problem of Europe.

If Germany is the key decision maker in Europe, then Germany defines whatever policies Europe as a whole undertakes. If Europe fragments, then Germany is the only country in Europe with the ability to create alternative coalitions that are both powerful and cohesive. That means that if the European Union weakens, Germany will have the greatest say in what Europe will become. Right now, the Germans are working assiduously to reformulate the European Union and the eurozone in a manner more to their liking. But as this requires many partners to offer sovereignty to German control — sovereignty they have jealously guarded throughout the European project — it is worth exploring alternatives to Germany in the European Union.

For that we first must understand Germany’s limits. The German problem is the same problem it has had since unification: It is enormously powerful, but it is far from omnipotent. Its very power makes it the focus of other powers, and together, these other powers can cripple Germany. Thus, Germany is indispensable for any decision within the European Union at present, and it will be the single center of power in Europe in the future — but Germany can’t just go it alone. Germany needs a coalition, meaning the long-term question is this: If the EU were to weaken or even fail, what alternative coalition would Germany seek?

The casual answer is France, as the two economies are somewhat similar and the countries are next-door neighbors. But historically, this similarity in structure and location has been a source not of collaboration and fondness but of competition and friction. Within the European Union, with its broad diversity, Germany and France have been able to put aside their frictions, finding a common interest in managing Europe to their mutual advantage. That co-management, of course, helped bring us to this current crisis. Moreover, the biggest thing that France has that Germany wants is its market; an ideal partner for Germany would offer more. By itself at least, France is not a foundation for long-term German economic strategy. The historic alternative for Germany has been Russia.

The Russian Option

A great deal of potential synergy exists between the German and Russian economies. Germany imports large amounts of energy and other resources from Russia. As mentioned, Russia needs sources of technology and capital to move it beyond its current position of mere resource exporter. Germany has a shrinking population and needs a source of labor — preferably a source that doesn’t actually want to move to Germany. Russia’s Soviet-era economy continues to de-industrialize, and while that has a plethora of negative impacts, there is one often-overlooked positive: Russia now has more labor than it can effectively metabolize in its economy given its capital structure. Germany doesn’t want more immigrants but needs access to labor. Russia wants factories in Russia to employ its surplus work force, and it wants technology. The logic of the German-Russian economic relationship is more obvious than the German-Greek or German-Spanish relationship. As for France, it can participate or not (and incidentally, the French are joining in on a number of ongoing German-Russian projects).

Therefore, if we simply focus on economics, and we assume that the European Union cannot survive as an integrated system (a logical but not yet proven outcome), and we further assume that Germany is both the leading power of Europe and incapable of operating outside of a coalition, then we would argue that a German coalition with Russia is the most logical outcome of an EU decline.

This would leave many countries extremely uneasy. The first is Poland, caught as it is between Russia and Germany. The second is the United States, since Washington would see a Russo-German economic bloc as a more significant challenger than the European Union ever was for two reasons. First, it would be a more coherent relationship — forging common policies among two states with broadly parallel interests is far simpler and faster than doing so among 27. Second, and more important, where the European Union could not develop a military dimension due to internal dissensions, the emergence of a politico-military dimension to a Russo-German economic bloc is far less difficult to imagine. It would be built around the fact that both Germans and Russians resent and fear American power and assertiveness, and that the Americans have for years been courting allies who lie between the two powers. Germany and Russia would both view themselves defending against American pressure.

And this brings us back to the Patriot missiles. Regardless of the bureaucratic backwater this transfer might have emerged out of, or the political disinterest that generated the plan, the Patriot stationing fits neatly into a slowly maturing military relationship between Poland and the United States. A few months ago, the Poles and Americans conducted military exercises in the Baltic states, an incredibly sensitive region for the Russians. The Polish air force now flies some of the most modern U.S.-built F-16s in the world; this, plus Patriots, could seriously challenge the Russians. A Polish general commands a sector in Afghanistan, something not lost upon the Russians. By a host of processes, a close U.S.-Polish relationship is emerging.

The current economic problems may lead to a fundamental weakening of the European Union. Germany is economically powerful but needs economic coalition partners that contribute to German well-being rather than merely draw on it. A Russian-German relationship could logically emerge from this. If it did, the Americans and Poles would logically have their own relationship. The former would begin as economic and edge toward military. The latter begins as military, and with the weakening of the European Union, edges toward economics. The Russian-German bloc would attempt to bring others into its coalition, as would the Polish-U.S. bloc. Both would compete in Central Europe — and for France. During this process, the politics of NATO would shift from humdrum to absolutely riveting.

And thus, the Greek crisis and the Patriots might intersect, or in our view, will certainly in due course intersect. Though neither is of lasting importance in and of themselves, the two together point to a new logic in Europe. What appears impossible now in Europe might not be unthinkable in a few years. With Greece symbolizing the weakening of the European Union and the Patriots representing the remilitarization of at least part of Europe, ostensibly unconnected tendencies might well intersect.

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Remembering a War: Sino-Indian War of 1962

26. May 2010 by admin.

Remembering a War: Sino-Indian War of 1962

 

The Rediff Special/Claude Arpi

 

 

If someone asked me what is the greatest scam since Independence, I would have some difficulty answering. I might initially consider the ‘Jeep case’ involving Krishna Menon, or the smoking guns of Bofors.

 

But in the end, the one that I find the most stupid, and perhaps the most harmful to India’s interests in the long run, is the confiscation of history by government babus under the Public Records Act.

 

These rules vaguely state that “unclassified public records more than 30 years old should be made available to any bona fide research scholar, but subject to such exceptions and restrictions as may be prescribed”.

 

Because of the last part of the sentence, the people of India are today not able to know about their recent history. One of the main casualties is the 1962 war with China. As a sad result of this policy, the Chinese version of history is often prevalent, even in India.

 

A few weeks after the debacle of October-November 1962, Lieutenant General J N Chaudhuri constituted a committee to study the causes of the ‘Himalayan blunder’. An Anglo-Indian general called Henderson Brooks was requested to go through the official records and prepare a report on the war. Sometime in 1963, the general presented his study to Nehru and a couple of his ministers. The report was immediately classified ‘Top Secret’.

 

One can understand that at that time the prime minister did not want the report made to be public, as he may have had to take responsibility for the unpreparedness of the army and, most probably, resign.

 

The tragedy is not that the report was ‘classified’ in 1963, but that it continues to remain classified today. Forty years later, nobody has still seen the report. That is, except for one person: a British foreign correspondent named Neville Maxwell. The rumour is that a senior minister passed on the report to him.

 

Nine years after the war, when Henry Kissinger made a secret trip to Beijing to prepare President Nixon’s visit to China in February 1972, he stayed five days in China and had a series of 10 crucial meetings with Zhou Enlai, the Chinese premier.

 

The transcripts of these talks, which were recently ‘declassified’ by the US administration, are mind-opening, particularly in the above context. Here are some of Kissinger’s remarks to Zhou Enlai: “I read the book by Maxwell that the prime minister recommended to me last time, and it is our view, certainly at the White House, that the Indians are applying the same tactics to that situation as they did to you.”

 

Kissinger refers to Maxwell’s book India’s China War, which shows India as an aggressive nation that bullied China during the 1962 war. Later in the discussion, the Chinese premier comes back to Maxwell’s book: “We [the Chinese] understand best the traditions of India. After having read the book of Maxwell you also believe it [that bullying others] is the traditional policy of India.”

 

It is amazing that Maxwell, thanks to the Government of India’s propensity for secrecy, is the only person who has managed to see the Henderson Brooks report. Maxwell stated himself in the Economic & Political Weekly in 2001: “The report includes no surprises and its publication would be of little significance, but for the fact that so many in India still cling to the soothing fantasy of a 1962 Chinese ‘aggression’.”

 

Yes, the theory put forward by the Chinese and Maxwell is that the war was only due to Nehru’s aggressive policy and China had no other choice but to launch a ‘pre-emptive attack’ on October 20 on the slopes of Tagla ridge.

 

Not only did India lose the Aksai Chin and other territories in Kashmir in the 1950s, but India became the bully, the ‘expansionist’ nation.

 

One can only be sad that 40 years after the event, the Government of India is still adding water to the Chinese half-baked history mill by continuing to hide what is most probably a quite insignificant report.

 

The burial of the Henderson Brooks report, however, raises several other questions. When one reads Indian newspapers, one gets the impression that the people of India (or at least the journalists of India) are greatly interested in history. For the past few years, not a day has passed without one comment or another on the history textbooks that have been revised by the NCERT; or the HRD minister who is supposedly spending his time ‘rewriting’ Indian history, or adding colour to historical facts.

 

But tell me, what is wrong in ‘rewriting’ history books when it is necessary? The great son of India, Gautama Buddha, once told his disciples: ‘As the wise test gold by burning, cutting and rubbing it on a piece of touchstone, so are you to accept my words only after examining them and not merely out of regard for me.”

 

As long as there is new information, new inputs or documents, history needs to be researched and researched again, in the Buddha’s fashion. Is it not in the interest of a nation to know her past?

 

The great misfortune in the case of the 1962 war is that there is no will from the government’s side to give the means to those inclined to do this research to obtain a truer picture of the past.

 

Personally, I faced a similar problem when I tried to research my two pet subjects: Tibet and Kashmir. Going through the painful exercise of trying to access some documents at the time of the Chinese invasion of Tibet (1950) was a nightmare.

 

At the National Archives of India, I was told that all documents for the NEFA area (which included Tibet and Bhutan) were ‘classified’ after 1913 and nobody could access them. For ‘Gilgit area’ [read Kashmir], the date is 1923. This colonial terminology gives an indication of the backwardness of the historical studies in India. Have not the British left India 55 years ago?

 

What about the famous ‘Nehru’s Papers’? They are kept in the Nehru Library by a private trust, chaired by the leader of the opposition, and you have to obtain her consent to see them. In any case, you cannot see them, as they are ‘restricted’.

 

Only ‘official’ historians are able to study them. The very helpful staff can only tell you: “Sorry, sir, this is the rule.” India must be the only nation where the prime minister’s official papers belong to his family and not the state!

 

In my case it was even more stupid because most of the political files regarding Tibet from 1914 till as late as 1952-53 were freely available for researchers in the India Office Library and Records in London. The moral of the story: go to London to study Indian history.

 

Different reasons are given as to why historical documents should not be ‘declassified’. The most current and irrelevant argument is that these old documents are of a ’sensitive’ nature and their circulation may jeopardize India’s security.

 

I believe that some years ago, a ‘group of secretaries’, the most dreaded order of the babu species, stopped the publication of the report of the 1965 war because: “it gave information about certain aspects of command and control.” Luckily, a Good Samaritan managed to get hold of a copy and post it on an Internet site.

 

But something is even more incongruous. While the Government of India is holding the Henderson Brooks report close to its chest, a very historic international conference was held in Cuba recently.

 

Many will remember that the week the Chinese troops entered in the Northeast and in Ladakh, humanity was coming very close to its first nuclear war. This was the Cold War’s climax: the confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union in Cuba over the installation of ballistic missiles targeting American cities threatened to degenerate into World War III.

 

To commemorate the stupendous events of the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban government, with the National Security Archive of George Washington University, organized a conference titled “The October Crisis: Political Perspectives 40 Years Later”.

 

Some of the veterans who participated in those historic days were invited to discuss the conflict between Khrushchev and Kennedy.

 

During the last session of the conference, the participants, including Cuban president Fidel Castro and former US secretary of defence Robert McNamara discussed some newly declassified documents.

 

The documents show that the Soviet nuclear-armed tactical weapons in Cuba stayed there after the missiles were withdrawn, and may even have been intended for Cuban custody.

 

“Documents released today included verbatim Soviet records of the contentious meetings between top Soviet leader Anastas Mikoyan and top Cuban leaders, including Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, during Mikoyan’s trip to Cuba in early November; Soviet orders first preparing the tactical weapons for training the Cubans and then, on November 20, ordering their withdrawal; and a prophetic summary of the crisis written by the British ambassador to Cuba, who predicted that the crisis could ultimately rebound to the benefit of the Castro regime and the long-term survival of Communism in Cuba,” said a press release.

 

Some may think that Cuba is a totalitarian banana republic, but Fidel Castro did organise the conference and participate in it.

 

We cannot dream of such a debate in India today. Why? I have no answer.

 

We have in Delhi many universities, policy centres, think-tanks, a host of retired ‘thinking’ generals (as if the serving generals are not able to think). Why can’t any of them take up the challenge and open a debate on what really happened in 1962? Many fields of research have remained untouched. To give a few examples:

 

*When was Aksai Chin really occupied? Why did the government react so late?

*The relation between the 1959 uprising in Lhasa and the 1962 war (one very symptomatic fact is that the Chinese followed the same   route as the Dalai Lama took when he escaped to India in 1959) as well as the Panchen Lama’s petition against the party in 1962;

*The importance of the split between Moscow and Beijing, which came into the open in October 1962; and Moscow’s sudden change of stance vis-à-vis India in the midst of the conflict;

*The relation between the Cuban crisis and the 1962 Indo-China war;

*When did China prepare the 1962 operations and what were her real motivations;

*The internal political factors in China and Mao Zedong’s own motivations (he was facing strong opposition from within the Communist Party after his disastrous Great Leap Forward and was sidelined);

*The reasons for the sudden unilateral withdrawal by the Chinese;

*The role of the Indian Communists during the war;

*The non-intervention of President Ayub Khan.The recently ‘declassified’ documents available in the Russian, Cuban, and East European archives, as well as the already available materials collected by organizations such as the National Security Archives or the Cold War International History Project of the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars in Washington, DC, could certainly be of great help.

 

But is India interested? This seems to be the main problem. If the media and the public had made the same amount of noise for the Henderson Brooks report and other archival materials to be released as they have done for the so-called ‘rewritten’ textbooks, we would have had a truer picture of 1962 war history today. No harm in hoping!

 

(Claude Arpi, author of The Fate Of Tibet (HarAnand), which has also been translated into French, writes regularly for rediff.com)

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Sino-Indian Dispute

26. May 2010 by admin.

THE SINO/INDIAN DISPUTE

THE PREVIOUS CHAPTER examined in some detail the background to the Tibetan question. This detail is necessary if we are to understand the very important role which Tibet has played in the evolution of Sino/Indian relations.  Ever since its establishment in 1949, the attitude of the Communist Chinese Government towards India has been bound up with the Tibetan issue. India had, on gaining independence in 1947, inherited the British “special position” in Tibet, along with the Mission in Lhasa and trade agencies in larger towns. It had retained the services of British officials stationed in Tibet. When, in 1949, Tibetan leaders made their bid to contact foreign Governments, they first contacted these officials, and it was only a short step for the suspicious minded Chinese to regard this as evidence of Indian collusion with the British.  The Communist Chinese also had ideological reasons for believing that such collusion existed. At the time of their coming to power, Moscow was propagating the line of a world divided into two camps, with the Indian Government depicted as a tool of British imperialism and firmly situated in the opposing camp. The Communist Chinese leaders, who previously had had little contact with the outside world, faithfully repeated these accusations against Nehru and his Government.  Following the Chinese occupation of Tibet in late 1950, Peking’s suspicions of the Indians were further aroused when Nehru, in notes to the Chinese Government, expressed the “surprise and regret” of his Government at the Chinese action. He described as “deplorable” the Chinese use of force in Tibet.¹ Standard diplomatic practice stipulates that a state does not criticise the behaviour of another state acting within its own territorial boundaries unless there are special reasons for so doing. The Indians justified their criticism of the Chinese on the ground of their special interest in Tibet, from which the Chinese inferred that the Indians were implying some restriction on Chinese sovereignty. A sharp reply was received from the Chinese accusing the Indians of unwarranted interference and claiming that the policy of the Indian Government was “affected by foreign influences hostile to China in Tibet”.  Nevertheless, whatever suspicions the Chinese may have felt about the Indians in 1949-50 must to some extent have been allayed by subsequent developments. India opposed the 1950 Tibetan appeal to the United Nations; it was one of the few non-communist countries not to condemn China’s intervention in the Korean War; it sought to have China seated an the United Nations. The culmination of these moves to improve relations with China was the signing, in April 1954, of an agreement by which India recognised without qualification China’s sovereignty over Tibet and conceded many of India’s former rights there. A few months later the Chinese Premier, Chou En-lai, paid a successful visit to India, and in October of the same year Nehru visited Peking.  The very considerable improvement in Sino/Indian relations from 1950 to 1954 was on the Indian side almost entirely the result of efforts by Nehru, who saw friendship between China and India as the starting point of a new order in world affairs. It must have been obvious to the Chinese that considerable opposition to Nehru’s pro-China policies, at least as far as Tibet was concerned, existed both within and outside the Indian Government. It should also have been clear that problems were going to arise over wide discrepancies in the claimed Sino/Indian border, as shown in maps published by both sides.  However, as long as Nehru’s China policy appeared to produce results, his opposition in India remained silent. It was important for both Nehru and the Chinese that this policy continued to appear to give results, and hence the efforts made by both sides to keep intact the edifice of good relations. The Chinese, under the 1954 agreement, allowed India to maintain certain trade and pilgrimage rights in Tibet. They sought to play down the significance of border differences, stating that they had simply inherited their claimed Sino/Indian frontier from the pre-1949 Nationalist Government and that it would be “revised” in due course.² Nehru, for his part, avoided public mention of the reality and extent of border differences, and it seemed that both sides were moving towards a compromise settlement of the question.  What were these differences, and what evidence was there that both sides were in fact prepared to compromise?  The Sino/Indian border can be divided into three sectors:  (i) an eastern sector where 99,000 square kilometres of territory described by the Indians as the Northeast Frontier Agency, or N.E.F.A is in dispute: (ii) a middle sector where some 2.000 square kilometres of territory on either side of the main Himalayan passes is disputed: and (iii) a western sector where the Indian province of Ladakh borders on Tibet and Sinkiang and where both the Indian/Tibet and Indian/Sinkiang borders are disputed, in particular the ownership of some 30,000 square kilometres of high plateau country known as the Aksai Chin.

To an outside observer looking at the frontier as it stands, an apparent basis for a compromise settlement would be for China to drop its claim to the N.E.F.A. in exchange for India dropping its claim to the Aksai Chin, with both sides making concessions over the middle sector and the Ladakh/Tibetan border. Such a settlement accords with the realities of both geography and administrative control two important criteria in the settlement of border disputes. The N.E.F.A. lies to the south of the Himalayan watershed and is controlled by India. The Aksai Chin, for the most part, lies to the north of the main range, and the Chinese claim to have controlled the area since 1950. In 1956-7, they built a strategic road across the Aksai Chin, linking Sinkiang with Tibet. That the Indians learnt about the road only from a map published by the Chinese in 1958 is substantial evidence that India was not in control of the area.  The historical basis of the border is more confused. The Indian claim to the N.E.F.A. rests almost entirely on acceptance of the McMahon Line, a line agreed to by the Tibetans and British in 1914 as the border in this area. In the Aksai Chin area no agreement has ever been reached on the alignment of the border. Nevertheless, if both sides were to take a generous view of the historical data, a basis for a N.E.F.A./Aksai Chin exchange could be found.  During the post-1954 honeymoon period of Sino/Indian relations, both sides did in fact seem prepared to take a generous view of the situation and to move towards a compromise settlement. In 1956, Chou En-lai admitted privately to Nehru that, although lie thought the McMahon line “was not fair”, nevertheless China would accept the line as the border with India after they had “consulted with the Tibetan authorities”.³ Chinese recognition of the McMahon Line was also implied when its eastern extension was accepted as a basis for border negotiations with Burma, and by Chinese de facto acceptance of the line as the dividing line between Chinese and Indian forces in the area.  Nehru, for his part, appeared willing to play down the Indian claims to the Aksai Chin. He tried to delay disclosure if the news that the Chinese had built a road in the area. After the news had been revealed, he sought to play down the economic significance of the area, describing it as a “barren tundra”. He even went so far as to cast doubt on the validity of the Indian claim to the area. In statements to the Indian Parliament during early 1959, Nehru pointed out that “during British rule, this area was neither inhabited: nor were there any outposts”, adding that “this place, Aksai Chin area, is distinguish completely from other areas. It is a matter for argument which part belongs to us and which part belongs to somebody else. It is not clear”.  Nehru’s efforts to take the heat out of the Aksai Chin question were not entirely successful. (One of his critics even suggested building an atomic reactor in the area to promote its economic development.) News of the Chinese road in the area appeared to trigger off long-suppressed Indian sensitivity over the border issue, and, in August 1958, the Indian Government made a formal claim to the disputed territory in all three sectors. In a letter to Nehru of January 1959, Chou En-lai claimed that the Aksai Chin was Chinese territory and added that the McMahon Line was a “product of British aggression”, illegal, and had “never been recognised by the Chinese Central Government”. He proposed that the existing status quo he maintained, however, pending a negotiated settlement of the dispute, and added that China would take a “realistic attitude” over the McMahon Line.*

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*The Indians have since claimed that Chou’s 1959 denunciation of the McMahon Line represented an about-face in his attitude as expressed in 1956. Once the Indians had lodged a formal claim to ail the territory in dispute, however, it was only to be expected that the Chinese would move to establish the basis of their claim in the N.E.F.A. and so provide a bargaining counter against the Indian claim to the Aksai Chin. Moreover, it is difficult to see any significant difference between the Chinese 1956 and 1959 positions.

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The Tibetan uprising of March 1959 upset the delicate balance of Sino/Indian relations. Reports of Chinese military action to suppress the uprising, together with the sight of thousands of Tibetan refugees crossing into Indian territory, quickly aroused feelings of alarm and anger in India, particularly among those who believed their country had an historic interest in Tibet. Nehru’s Right-Wing critics charged that India should never have allowed the Chinese into Tibet in the first place. Nehru, influenced possibly both by Indian public opinion and his own feelings on the question, came out in open condemnation of Chinese behaviour in Tibet. 

The Chinese reacted even more strongly than they had in 1950. Nehru, in addition to condemning the Chinese, had spoken of his sympathy with “the aspirations of the Tibetans for autonomy”. He had given asylum to the Dalai Lama, who was also allowed facilities to make his 1959 appeal for U. N. action over Tibet. And finally, the Chinese had reason to believe that the Tibetan guerrillas were receiving arms from across the Indian border. ⁴ In May 1959 the Chinese published a long article urging, almost begging, Nehru not to be swayed by his reactionary Right-Wing critics and to return to the path of Sino/Indian friendship. With a frankness and detail probably unmatched by any other Chinese statement on foreign policy, the article set out the Chinese case over Tibet, and accused the Indians of unjustified interference. Indian trade with Tibet was greatly restricted. Clashes involving casualties occurred at several points along the disputed border as the Chinese Army extended its control over border areas in an effort to restrict the move- court of Tibetans across the frontier.*

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*Whether the sites of these clashes lay in Chinese or Indian territory has been argued at some length. At least one of these points, however, Tamaden, lay to the north of the McMahon Line, clearly within Chinese territory, and was subsequently evacuated by the Indians.

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These border clashes, following in the wake of the Tibetan uprising, appeared to put an end to Nehru’s willingness to compromise over the border dispute. Having earlier in 1959 cast doubt on the Indian claim to the Aksai Chin, in September he stated before the Indian Parliament that the Chinese claims were “absurd” and would mean “handing over the Himalayas to them as a gift”. A Chinese call in November 1959 for negotiations and a twenty-kilometre military withdrawal from the McMahon Line in the east and the “line of actual control” in the west to prevent a recurrence of border clashes was met with an Indian demand for a prior Chinese withdrawal from the Aksai Chin. A Chinese reply pointing out that this should also be paralleled by an Indian withdrawal from the NE.F.A. was ignored. In the end the Chinese appeared to settle for a freezing of the existing status quo - without negotiations or a twenty-kilometre withdrawal.*

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*The Chinese claim to have made a unilateral twenty-kilometre withdrawal, leaving only civilian-manned posts along the line of actual control.

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However, if the Chinese were happy to keep things as they were (keeping also their road across the Aksai Chin), Nehru and his Government were not. Throughout 1960-61 Indian opinion progressively hardened, and demands for the Government to do something about Tibet and the disputed border increased. The army was given full control over the frontier districts and it proceeded to build up its strength in these areas.  During the summer (northern) of 1962, Indian military patrols repeatedly crossed the Chinese-claimed line of actual control in the western sector of the frontier. Posts were established well behind the Chinese forward positions in territory claimed and occupied by the Chinese. Frequent and insistent Chinese protests were met with the bald statement that the Indians were merely operating in Indian territory. By August 14, Nehru was able to announce that India had three times as many posts in the western sector as the Chinese. He asked for a free hand to continue the build-up of Indian strength in the area.  The Chinese had repeatedly warned that a continuation of such activity would end in hostilities. On July 9, they had warned the Indians “to rein in on the brink of the precipice”. On August 4, they called for immediate negotiations on the border. The Indians replied that negotiations could not be held until the Chinese had ceased their occupation of “every square inch of sacred Indian territory”, and that the Chinese must first “vacate their aggression” in the Aksai Chin. The Chinese replied on September 13 proposing talks to begin on October 15 “without preconditions”, that is, without a Chinese withdrawal from the Aksai Chin. The Indians refused the offer.  While Indian military pressure was building up along the Chinese-claimed border in the western sector, a curious situation was developing along the McMahon Line in the eastern sector. The Indians claim that at its western end the McMahon Line was not accurately drawn: that it was meant to have followed the crest of a line of hills known as the Thag La ridge. The Chinese claim, and have produced the original McMahon Line from the Tibetan archives to prove their point, that the line as originally drawn lies approximately twelve miles south of this ridge along the southern side of a small river valley. (Western maps show the McMahon Line in conformity with the Chinese claim.) The area between the Indian and Chinese versions of the McMahon Line is described by the Indians as the Dho La strip.*

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* This was not the only unilateral revision of the McMahon Line carried out by the Indians. In his letter to Chou En-lai of September 29, 1959, Nehru admitted that in the Migyitun area (to the east of the Dho La strip) the border shown on Indian maps “differs slightly from the boundary shown in the Treaty map”. He claimed that when the McMahon line was drawn, “the exact topographical features in this area were not known”. The Indians have also now come to admit that “blind adherence” to the original McMahon Line would leave the Dho La strip on the Chinese side at the border. ⁷

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It is not clear who first occupied the Dho La strip. The Chinese claim that the area had always been under their control and that Indian troops moved in during 1962. The Indians claim they had long occupied the area and that the Chinese began a to establish posts in the area after September 8, 1962. What is clear is that on October 12, 1962, Nehru announced in the Indian Parliament that he had given the order to drive the Chinese out of the Dho La strip.  Eight days later, on October 20, the Chinese attacked in force across the Thagla La ridge and into the disputed strip, while advancing their troops into the Chinese-claimed territory in the western sector where the Indians had earlier established posts. Four days later, the Chinese called for a ceasefire to be followed by a withdrawal of both sides from the line that separated them at that moment (the so-called October 24 line of actual control). Failing to get a satisfactory response from the Indians, they advanced troops south of the Dho La strip into the N.E.F.A., defeating Indian military forces in the area. Two weeks later, they withdrew to the positions occupied on October 24. The main point of contention between the Chinese and Indians ever since has been whether the Chinese should maintain their October 24 positions or withdraw further to the positions they occupied before fighting broke out.  Sino/Indian Hostility: a Case Study in Mutual Misunderstanding. The Chinese attack of October 1962 has led to an almost complete breakdown in relations between China and India. The level of each country’s diplomatic representation in the other has been greatly reduced. Many thousands of Chinese nationals have been expelled from India. The few Indian nationals living in China have, in one way or another, been forced to leave. Border incidents have continued. Both sides have launched extreme propaganda campaigns against each other, the Chinese denouncing Nehru as a representative of the “big bourgeoisie” and a tool for U. S. aggressive designs against Tibet, while the Indians denounce the Chinese for having aggressive, imperialist designs against Indian territory. Both sides have gone to great lengths to discredit each other inter- nationally. Both sides have increased their military preparedness along the Himalayan frontier, particularly India, which has doubled its military budget to a level it cannot afford.  The question thus arises: Who is primarily to blame for the hostility in Sino/Indian relations? From the account already given, the primary cause of the hostility was the post-1959 dispute over the Sino/Indian border leading to the Chinese attack of October 20. But why the sudden emergence of such a dispute between two countries previously enjoying good relations?  Reverting to the terminology of our previous discussion on hostility between states, both sides see the breakdown in relations as being caused by the active hostility of the other side. This hostility, they claim, is both ideologically and national- interest based. The Chinese are accused of having acted in a hostile manner out of a desire to acquire territory and out of strong ideological dislike for the Indian Government. The Chinese claim the Indians have designs against Chinese territory and that their Government is under the influence of anti-Chinese and pro-U. S. reactionary elements.  Both sides realise that they have somehow or other to explain why the other side suddenly, in 1959, decided that its interests were no longer served by the maintenance of normal relations. The Indian explanation is that Chinese pre-1959 policy was designed to lull India into a false sense of security and so facilitate Chinese ambitions. The Chinese explanation was that reactionary elements began to gain the upper hand in the Indian Government in 1959, and point to the post-1959 increase in U. S. aid to India as evidence.  In fact there is good reason to believe that the hostility shown by each side towards the other was reactive rather than active: that each side was reacting to the believed hostility of the other. To take the Chinese side of things first.  In terms of the account already given, it seems likely that the Chinese attack of October 20, 1962, was primarily a reaction to Indian military pressure along the disputed frontier during preceding months. It could be argued, however. that the behaviour of the Chinese before October 20, and in particular their propaganda attacks against the Indians from 1960 onwards, cannot be explained simply as a reaction to previous events: that overall Chinese behaviour must therefore include some aggressive component.  The Chinese had in fact made their first hostile move against the Indians back in 1959 when they restricted Indian trading and other rights in Tibet. The Chinese had also, according to the Indians, extended somewhat the area they claimed in the western sector.* And they had, according to the Indians, been responsible for the 1959 border clashes already mentioned.

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*The Indian charge is based on alleged differences between the frontier claimed by the Chinese to 1956 and that shown on a map of the claimed Sino/Indian frontier handed to the Indians by the Chinese in 1960. The Chinese deny any difference between the two lines.

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Unless these apparently hostile acts of the Chinese can be explained in reactive terms., in terms of their reacting to previous Indian actions, then it would seem that the Chinese had taken the initiative in hostility towards India and were largely responsible for the eventual breakdown in relations.  The hardening of the Chinese attitude towards India in 1959 was clearly related to Tibetan developments in that year. In judging the behaviour of the Chinese, we need, in effect, to ask whether their sensitivity over Tibet was sufficient to explain this hardening of attitude.  To accept that the Communist Chinese are, in fact extremely sensitive toward Tibet does not necessarily imply a simple acceptance of Chinese propaganda. What we know of Chinese thinking and behaviour, strongly suggests that this sensitivity does exist. If all non-communist Chinese believe that China has the right to consider Tibet as an integral part of her territory, we should accept that Communist Chinese are equally convinced. If many non-communist Chinese believe (as they do) that Britain had designs against Tibet, we should accept that Communist Chinese, educated to believe in the evils of US Western imperialism, will be at least equally fearful. We do not need accept that these views are correct; we may even consider they are absurd. But if we are going to get anywhere in trying to understand China’s behaviour, we should start from the assumption that these views may be sincerely hold in Peking.  Nor may it be so absurd for the Communist Chinese to think along these lines. The Chinese legal claim to Tibet, it has been argued, appears difficult to refute. As for fears of foreign designs, if the British had earlier convinced themselves that the activities of one Russian agent in Lhasa could lead the politically unstable Tibetans to ally themselves with Tsarist Russia, the Chinese could be excused for thinking that the presence of a British Mission in Lhasa dealing directly with the independent-minded Tibetans and arranging on occasion for the supply of arms from India was evidence of British ambitions eventually to detach Tibet from China, and that India may have inherited these ambitions. Similarly, it would not be entirely surprising if the Chinese viewed the supply of foreign arms to Tibetan guerrillas from northern India in 1959 as confirmation that such ambitions existed. Finally, the Chinese were hound to be impressed by the demands of the Indian Right Wing for action against the Chinese in Tibet.*

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* For example: some weight could be attached to the fact that the then Chief of the Indian Army Staff wrote a not unenthusiastic foreword for a book published in 1961 entitled The Chinese Aggression. The author of the hook, a Dr. Satyanarayan Sinha, predicted that the “clash of the Indochinese weapons for the possession of the Himalayas will lead to making Tibet an independent country again”, and suggested ways in which this could be done.

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These, then, are the reasons for believing the Chinese may he sensitive about Tibet. Chinese behaviour provides further confirmation. British officials captured in Tibet in 1950 were subjected to long imprisonment and continual interrogation - treatment far more severe than that meted out to British nationals who fell into communist hands elsewhere in China. And there was Nehru’s sad admission to the Indian Parliament in 1959 after talks with Chou En-Iai, of the Chinese having “some sort of kink in their minds… of foreign countries, United Kingdom or America, somehow making incursions into Tibet”.  In sum, therefore, it does not seem unreasonable to conclude that the Communist Chinese sincerely believed they had a right to Tibet and that their position in the area was threatened from the direction of India. In which case they would have interpreted Indian behaviour in 1959 as an indication of hostility to which they felt compelled, or entitled, to react.  However, if Chinese behaviour in 1959 can be explained in reactive terms, can the same be said about the Chinese attack of October 1962? Even if the Indian claim to the Dho La strip was doubtful, does not the violence and intensity of the 1962 attack suggest that China was doing more than retaliate for any wrongs she may have believed the Indians to base committed?  By 1962, the Chinese were confronted not only by Indian agitation over Tibet, but also by two further aspects of Indian behaviour which would even more easily have been misunderstood. They were: (i) the Indian military build-up along the Sino/Indian border in 1961-2 and (ii) rigid Indian insistence that, as a precondition to border negotiations, the Chinese must first evacuate the whole of the Aksai Chin.  At the time, the Indians justified their position on negotiations and their military build up in terms of the correctness of their border claims. Indeed, the official Indian position was that the line claimed by India as a border had already been defined historically, and that the only purpose of negotiations was to demarcate on the ground the exact alignment of this border. From this it followed that they were justified (a) in regarding rival Chinese claims, and the occupation of the Aksai Chin, as evidence of Chinese hostility, and (b) in insisting that occupied territory had to be vacated before there could be negotiations. In the meantime the Indians had no alternative but to use military means to counter the Chinese “aggression”.  If India was in fact the injured party in the territorial dispute, the Indian attitude over the disputed border would have been explicable at least to an impartial observer, and possibly even to the less impartial Chinese. There would be less justification for the Chinese reacting in the way they did. But was this the case? To answer this question we need to take a closer look at the historical background to the Sino /Indian frontier, and shall begin with the eastern sector, or N.E.F.A.  Until the 1920’s, the region now known as the N.E.F.A. was largely unexplored. It was, and still is, inhabited by tribes of Tibeto-Burmese origin, some of which enjoyed trade and tributary relations with Tibet. Certain areas in the north of the region, the Tawang district for example, were inhabited by Tibetans and were under administrative control from Tibet.  The McMahon Line was negotiated with the Tibetans in 1914 at the time of the Simla Conference. It was drawn as far to the north as possible, since the British at the time sought to forestall a feared Chinese expansion into the foothills bordering the Assam plains. The Tibetans, as mentioned in the previous chapter, accepted the McMahon Line as part of a bargain whereby the British would press the Chinese to concede territory elsewhere to Tibet.  Even so, the Tibetans were not entirely happy about losing territory south of the McMahon Line, the Tawang district in particular. Their acceptance of the line was conditional on possible future adjustments in their favour. No such adjustments, were ever made. The British also failed to extract the promised concessions from the Chinese, since the latter refused to accept the Convention produced at the Simla Conference. Thus, even as a Tibetan/British frontier, the McMahon Line does not have full validity, particularly as the Tibetans subsequently, in 1936, made a formal request to the British for revision of the line in their favour a request which the British ignored. As late as 1946, the Tibetans were still collecting taxes in the Tawang area. And, in 1947, the Tibetans approached the newly established Indian Government, seeking the “return” of “Tibetan territories” from Assam to Ladakh*⁸.

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*The Indian reply to this approach may be of interest in the light of complaints to be voiced later by the Indians over the manner in which the Chinese spoke of their border claims being inherited from previous Chinese Governments “The Government of India should be glad to have an assurance that it is the intention of the Tibetan Government to continue relations an the existing basis until new Agreements are any reached . .. This is the procedure adopted by all other countries with which India has inherited Treaty relations from His Majesty’s Government”. ⁹

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The validity of the McMahon Line as a Chinese/Indian frontier is considerably more doubtful. True, in rejecting the draft Simla Contention, the Chinese did not specifically object to the McMahon Line as drawn on the map of Tibet attached to the Convention. But, as the Chinese point out, the then Chinese Government had no way of knowing what this line was supposed to represent, since the terms of the McMahon Line agreement were for some reason kept secret by the British and Tibetans until 1929. It could, in theory, have been a border between Tibet and a Chinese-owned N.E.F.A. Moreover, Chiang Kaishek’s Government was later to make it clear to the British (and the Indians after 1947) that it did not accept the McMahon Line. The Chinese have also pointed out that, since neither the British nor the Chinese regarded Tibet as a sovereign entity, the Tibetans were obliged to obtain Chinese approval for any frontier negotiated with a foreign power. * Failure to obtain this approval, both at the Simla Conference and later, meant that the McMahon Line never at any stage enjoyed international legality. And finally, as the Chinese never tire of pointing out, many Western and Indian maps, including one reproduced in a book by Nehru himself, Discovery of India, have, even in recent years., shown the Sino/Indian border as running along the edge of the Assam plain in conformity with the traditional Chinese claim.

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*The 1906 Convention between Britain and China (see page 95) had required China to accept responsibility for Tibet’s foreign relations. “The 1907 Anglo/Russian Convention required Britain ‘not to enter into negotiations with Tibet except through the intermediary of the Chinese Government”. Negotiations with the Tibetans over the McMahon Line were thus a breach of both conventions - a possible reason why the terms of the McMahon Line agreement were kept secret.

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For the Communist Chinese to appear to be willing to drop their N.E.F.A. claim is no small concession in view of the very considerable doubts as to the validity of the McMahon Line. Indeed, the Nationalist Government in Taiwan feels so strongly shout the justice of the Chinese clams that its official newspapers have accused Peking of being willing to abandon “sacred” Chinese territory. They have predicted that the present Communist Chinese leaders will be condemned by future generations of Chinese for their betrayal of China’s interests.  Nevertheless, the Indian position was that the Chinese should not only drop their claim to the N.E.F.A. but to the Aksai Chin also. How strong is the Indian claim in the western sector of the disputed frontier?  The province of Ladakh, which lies on the Indian side of the disputed western sector, was originally a semi-independent state with a complex tributary relationship with Tibet. It was far from being clearly defined Indian territory. These links with Tibet were severed as a result of the 1841 invasion of Tibet from Kashmir, and Ladakh was incorporated into India. In the agreement which followed the invasion, the Ladakh/Tibet border was defined simply as following “the old established frontier”, and it was only subsequently that British cartographers decided where this frontier should lie. A small area lying between the Chinese-claimed and Indian-claimed frontiers is in dispute.  By far the larger area in dispute, the Aksai Chin, lies for the most part north of the Ladakh/Tibet frontier, and its ownership depends on a definition of the Ladakh/Sinkiang border. At the end of the nineteenth century, the British decided an effort should be made to define this border, and in 1899 a note was delivered to the Chinese suggesting a possible alignment. This alignment is shown on the map above, and it will be seen that it leaves with China much of the territory at present in dispute. The Chinese never replied to the note. Shortly afterwards, the British attitude changed. Alarmed by growing Chinese weakness in Central Asia, and fearing Russian expansion into the area (fears similar to those being entertained in connection with Tibet), the British felt they should establish the border as far north as possible to forestall any southward advance by the Russians. British maps began to show the border as lying far to the north along the Kun Lun mountains. Chinese agreement was never sought for this claimed border (despite the fact that the British recognised Chinese sovereignty in Sinkiang) ; presumably it was only being put forward as an emergency measure in case the Russians attempted to seize Sinkiang. By the 1920’s the Russian threat had disappeared, and it was deemed safe to drop this particular claim.  In subsequent years, British and Indian maps showed a variety of claim lines some coinciding with the present Chinese claim line, some the claim line along the Kun Lun mountains, and some an in-between claim line which ran south of the Kun Lun mountains but which included the Aksai Chin as Indian territory. Maps showing this last claim line were in general use at the time of the 1947 transfer of power, and appear to constitute the basis of the present Indian claim to the Aksai Chin. However, the only border to have ever been officially proposed to the Chinese by the British in this area was that of 1899, and, as already mentioned, this border left most of the Aksai Chin with China.  Whatever the merits of rival Chinese and Indian claims to the Aksai Chin area, it does seem clear that the Indians can hardly speak of the frontier they claim in this area as being already defined by history and therefore subject only to demarcation. In this connection a rather curious aspect of the Indian position should be mentioned - an aspect which has been overlooked by most students of the Sino/Indian dispute. Numerous Indian authorities, including Nehru himself, have claimed historical validity for their version of the Indian! Sinkiang frontier on the ground that the line proposed by the British in 1899 “ran along the Kun Lun range to a point east of 80° longitude, where it met the eastern boundary of Ladakh”. In fact, the 1899 line ran well to the south of the Kun Lun mountains, and the text of the proposal speaks only of the tine meeting “the spur running south from the Kun Lun range, which [the spur] has hitherto been shown on our maps as the eastern boundary of Ladakh. This is a little east of 80° east longitude”.* A misquotation of these dimensions is rather serious, particularly when it is used to justify an official claim to some 30,000 square kilometres of territory, and when, on the basis of this claim, negotiations are refused in favour of a military solution of a complex border dispute.

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*The only observer who appears to have noted this misquotation is Alastair Lamb. In his book, The China-India Border, he gives the full text of the British note of 1899 and lists some of the Indian authorities who have misquoted the 1899 proposal. Distribution of his book within India has been banned.

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It would seem, therefore, that an impartial observer who takes into account not only the historical background of the border dispute, but also the equally relevant criteria of geography and administrative control, would agree that the Chinese are not being unreasonable when they call for border negotiations on the basis of the present status quo. If, as seems to be the case, the Chinese are prepared to do a N.E.F.A./Aksai Chin exchange leaving India in control of far the largest and most valuable of the territories in dispute, he may even feel that the Chinese are being quite generous. And if our impartial observer were to reach such a conclusion, it seems highly likely that the Chinese would be convinced of the reasonableness of their position and the unreasonableness of the Indian demand for a unilateral Chinese withdrawal from the Aksai Chin.  If the Chinese were in fact convinced that they were in the right over the border dispute, they would in all probability have interpreted the Indian military build-up along the disputed border in 1961-2 as evidence of active hostility. Striking confirmation that this was the case is contained in the “Tibetan Documents” - official Chinese documents which were captured by Tibetan rebels in 1961 and which subsequently found their way to the U.S., where they have been translated and published. These documents were intended as background briefing to senior Chinese military commanders stationed along the Sino/ Indian border. As such, their contents cannot be dismissed simply as propaganda. The documents warned of U.S./Indian collusion to build up pressure along the Tibetan frontier as a prelude to a joint attack against Tibet. Military commanders were instructed to observe strictly the twenty-kilometre troop withdrawal from the line of actual control and to avoid clashes with advancing Indian patrols since this would provide the “imperialists” with the pretext they needed to justify their planned attack.*

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*This instruction, incidentally, could explain why in the months before October 1962 the Chinese took no military action to prevent the incursions of Indian patrols along the western sector. The Chinese attack of October 20 could thus he interpreted in much the same terms as the 1950 Korean intervention, as a carefully considered resort to force to deter a feared enemy from further advance, taken only after repeated warnings had failed to deter his advance.

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Were the Indians themselves convinced of the reasonableness of their position?  To understand the Indian position we need to take account of the intense nationalism which underlies Indian politics. Even before 1959 Nehru was being strongly criticised for his apparent refusal to take a hard line with the Chinese over Tibet and the disputed border. After 1959, Nehru may have felt that he had no choice but to take an uncompromising stand towards China if he was to prevent the Indian Right-Wing from exploiting nationalist passions which had been aroused throughout the country. In addition, he had himself suffered a serious blow to his own prestige.  Thus it is possible to conclude that Indian behaviour throughout 1961-2 was influenced by a sense of wounded nationalism and wounded pride, which in turn were a reaction to the events of 1950. If, in fact, we can assume that Indian behaviour was emotionally based, we have a ready explanation of its seemingly unnecessary rigidity. To observers of Sino/Indian relations in the period prior to October 1962 (of which the author was one), it seemed highly likely that the Indian policy of military pressure along the disputed border, together with intransigence over the Aksai Chin and the Dho La strip, would inevitably provoke a Chinese military response in which the Indians could be the only losers.  That Nehru and his advisers had seriously misassessed the probable Chinese reaction to Indian policies and that this misassessment was at least partly a result of the emotional manner in which they had reacted to previous events, has been recently confirmed The former Commander of Indian Military Forces in the N.E.F.A., Lieutenant-General B. M. Kaul, in a book entitled The Untold Story and published in 1966, has given some of the background to events of 1962. Kaul states that Nehru believed the revolt in Tibet indicated a “break in the morale of the Chinese people and armed forces and that if India dealt with the Chinese it would get the better of them”. *¹⁰ Kaul also states that the Indian Government decision to move against the Chinese in the Dho La strip was made on September 22, and by way of explanation adds: “Nehru and his Government were deeply concerned about public opinion which was worked up at the time”. The decision was queried by the Army Chief, General Thapar, who on October 2 warned that the use of force against the Chinese was bound to have serious repercussions. Nehru assured Thapar that “he had good reasons to believe the Chinese would not take any strong action against us”. Kaul adds that on October 11, nine days before the Chinese attack of October 20, he made an unsuccessful approach to the Government to establish “whether I should launch an attack on the Chinese despite their superiority and the possibility of a reverse”.  What conclusion can be drawn from all this? Our original aim was to find out whether China had in fact followed a policy of active hostility towards India. If we accept that both sides appear to have been reacting defensively - the Chinese out of undue sensitivity over Tibet and fear of “imperialist” designs against their territory, the Indians out of a sense of wounded pride and nationalism - then it would seem that neither side has taken the initiative to promote hostility: that both sides would have preferred good relations. That both sides would in fact have preferred good relations seems clear from the record of Sino/Indian relations up until 1959.  Little of this has been accepted in the West, where China is widely condemned as the aggressive party in the dispute. Explanations for Chinese behaviour range widely. The fact of Chinese withdrawal from the N.E.F.A. following defeat of the Indian forces there has not discouraged those who favour the “expansionist China” explanation. Others see the Chinese as wanting (a) to drive India into a pro-Western alignment in order to destroy her non-aligned image, despite the fact that a pro-Western Government on China’s southern border means an increased danger to Chinese security, (b) to retard Indian economic growth which was said to be outstripping the Chinese rate of growth, despite the fact it costs China far more than India to maintain troops in the Himalayas and that foreign aid to India has sharply increased since 1962, (c) to overthrow Nehru’s Government and replace it with a pro Chinese Government, despite the fact that the 1962 conflict was used as grounds for the imprisonment of the pro-Chinese communist opposition in India; and so on. If one consistent feature emerges from this catalogue of misunderstanding it is the Western refusal to examine impartially the Chinese case in a dispute involving relations with another country. But that is the subject of another chapter.

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REFERENCES

1. Most of the correspondence between the Chinese and Indians from from 1950 onwards has been published in a series of Indian Government White Papers, and it is from this source that many of the quotations etc.., which appear in this chapter have been drawn For background to the territorial dispute, the reader is recommended to Alastair Lamb’s The China-India Border (1964).  2. Letter from Nehru to Chou En-lai of December 52, 1958, recounting conversations held in October 1954.  3. Ibid.  4. George N. Patterson, “Recent Chinese Policies in Tibet and Towards the Himalayan Border States”, The China Quarterly, October December, 1962, and “The Himalayan Frontier”, Survival, September 1963.  5. “The Revolution in Tibet and Nehru’s Philosophy”, Peoples Daily, May 6, 1959.  6. Letter from Nehru to Chou En-lai, September 26, 1959.  7. See The Chinese Threat (1963), Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, New Delhi.  8. Tibet and its History,. op.cit., p. 174.  9. Peking versus Delhi, op.cit., p. 174.  10. See review of Kaul’s book in The Hindu Weekly Review, January 10, 1967.

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Tibet, China, India: The Lies, Myths and the Facts

26. May 2010 by admin.

Tibet, China, India: The Lies and the Facts

The Dalai Lama is a wonderful chap. He is wise and full of good humour and has led a peaceful resistance movement for half a century. His antagonist, the Chinese government, is hard to sympathise with. The regime has committed gross crimes in the past and continues to deny its citizens certain basic human rights. It is not surprising, then, that the Dalai Lama’s cause finds favour across the globe. The demand for Tibetan independence, unfortunately, is backed by arguments that twist history, misinform the public and are on occasion willfully deceptive.

Greater Tibet

Take a close look at this image. It is the map of Tibet according to the Tibetan government-in-exile based in Dharamsala. This is the area that the organisation led by Tenzin Gyatso, the current Dalai Lama, wants to liberate from Chinese rule.

The map will mean little even to most who actively proselytise the cause of Tibetan independence, so let me explain its implications. The area which is generally known to the world as Tibet is the bit in yellow, the Tibetan Autonomous Region. The other provinces on the map never had Tibetan majorities and were never under Tibetan rule apart from a brief period when Tibet became an imperial power, and controlled, also, a large swathe of areas now within the Indian republic. It is absurd for the Tibetan government-in-exile to claim that all of these regions, which constitute together a fourth of the total area of the People’s Republic of China, belong in an independent Tibetan state. Is it any wonder that the Chinese government looks upon the Dalai Lama not as a holy man desirous of gaining autonomy for his province but as a dangerous secessionist?

Tibet as an independent nation

“As recently as 1914, a peace convention was signed by Britain, China and Tibet that again formally recognised Tibet as a fully independent country.” 

The sentence I have quoted is from the introduction (http://www.tibet.net/en/index.php?id=6&rmenuid=8) to Tibet’s history on the government-in-exile’s website. It is an outright lie, and the fact that the Dalai Lama has done nothing to alter it in all these years makes me think less of him. Media reports favourable to the separatist cause invariably quote the 1914 treaty as ground for considering Tibet a once-independent state.

Before 1914, all agreements regarding Tibet’s boundaries were signed between Britain and the Qing emperor, proving that Britain did not consider Tibet an independent nation. In 1914, when the Qing empire had crumbled, a conclave was held in Simla between representatives of British India, Tibet and the weak new Chinese government. The final draft agreement provided for Chinese suzerainty over Tibet, and marked boundaries between China, Outer Tibet (more or less what is today the Tibetan Autonomous Region) and British India.

The first lie Tibetan activists tell, then, is that the treaty defined Tibet as a “fully independent country”. The 1914 document cannot possibly be interpreted to mean any such thing, containing as it does the sentence, “Tibet forms part of Chinese territory”. The Chinese envoy, moreover, rejected the draft. The second lie in the government-in-exile’s statement is that all three parties signed on to the deal.In 1914, Britain had an extant agreement with Russia, which included a commitment that all agreements about Tibet would be signed with China. Since the Chinese did not sign the Simla agreement, London believed it contravened the Anglo-Russian pact. As a result, Britain itself did not publish the accord as an official document till the Anglo-Russian treaty ended in 1938. The basis of Tibet’s claim to independence, then, rests on an agreement that did not offer Tibet sovereignty, was not signed by China, and rejected for decades by the very power that drafted it, Britain.

Arunachal Pradesh

The recent diplomatic spat between China and India was sparked by the Dalai Lama’s trip to Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh, an area China has never accepted as a settled part of India. Tawang has an interesting history. The boundaries drawn by the British in the late 19th century placed all of Arunachal in Tibet. Later on, British India moved north, but Tawang stayed a part of Tibet. Only in the 1914 agreement was the boundary of British India shifted further to swallow up Tawang. China, remember, never signed on to the agreement. The dispute over boundaries was central to its refusal to sign. The man who drafted the accord was Lieutenant-Colonel Henry McMahon, and the boundary he drew is called the McMahon line. It was a classic colonial land grab. Unfortunately, after 1950, the independent republic of India, which repudiated similar land grabs where they were found inconvenient, took the position that McMahon’s border was the settled international boundary between India and China.China was willing to talk the issue through, but after India gave the Dalai Lama asylum in 1959, relations between the nations soured, eventually leading the Chinese to undertake a land grab of their own. During the 1962 war, Chinese forces overran Arunachal, and India’s military fled pretty much all the way to Calcutta. Afterwards, however, China voluntarily withdrew from almost all the areas it occupied, including Tawang.

In an impassioned editorial page article in the Times of India (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/opinion/edit-page/The-Moral-Defence-Rests/articleshow/5216162.cms), the activist Tenzin Tsundue wrote, “For India to keep Arunachal, based on the McMahon Line, the only choice is to recognise Tibet’s independence. It cannot legitimise the McMahon Line border otherwise.” His argument is that, while McMahon’s boundary is unjust (Tawang ought really to be in Tibet), the 1914 accord, signed by the 13th Dalai Lama’s envoy, commits any future Tibetan government to respect that border, something China will never do.

I believe the opposite is true. The current Chinese regime is open to a final settlement of the international border with minor adjustments. Their forces have had control of Tawang in the past and withdrawn. India is helped by the fact that the citizens of Arunachal Pradesh have no great love for China. The situation would change radically if Tibet became a sovereign republic. Historically, geographically, culturally, linguistically, Tawang is closer to Lhasa than to Delhi. Instantly, secessionist movements would arise in Arunachal and Sikkim demanding to be part of the newly created Tibetan nation. At that point, a number of Tibetan officials would doubtless discover that the 1914 accord was, in fact, imposed by a brutal colonial regime, and must therefore be rejected.

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A Brief History of the Sino-Indian Border Dispute and the role of Tibet

23. May 2010 by admin.

A Brief History of the Sino-Indian Border Dispute and the role of Tibet

Written by Maitreya Bhakal on Friday, March 26th, 2010

On 3rd July 1914, as Ivan Chen made his way down the steps of the Summit Hall building in Simla, he must have been aware of mixed feelings rising up inside him. He had done something which would have far reaching repercussions; and which would for years be remembered by many people on both sides of the Sino-Indian border, albeit in very different ways – He had just left the Simla conference. After refusing to sign the agreement himself, he was made to sit in a separate room, and behind his back, was signed one of the most controversial and bizarre treaties in human history – The Simla accord.

For over a century, the intricacies of the border between India and China/Tibet have baffled scholars. In fact, the plot leading to the Simla conference and beyond actually plays just like a thriller movie or book. The sheer complexity of this problem can be judged by the fact that 36 rounds of negotiations have taken place between India and China at different levels since 1981; but they have yet to reach a settlement.

Background

The era of the late 19th century and the early 20th century was ripe with the European colonial powers finding new ways of exerting their influence in Asia and dividing it up.Tibet was no exception. For years, many kings and empires, from Muhammad Tukluq to the British, had tried to wrench Tibet from China, with no significant successes.Finally, the British came up with an underhand ploy to divide Tibet from within; so as to create a buffer state between British India and China; just as Mongolia had been divided and part of it made into a buffer between Russia and China. Sir Henry McMahon proposed the division of Tibet into an ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ Tibet.

The Chinese representative saw through British imperial designs and smelt a rat; and thus left the Simla conference. But the matter didn’t end there. A note was appended to the Simla accord, which contained a map showing a part of Tibetan territory as Indian, based on a thick red line known as the McMahon line. Furthermore, China was barred from any rights and privileges of the Accord with respect to Tibet.

Disputed Territories

The major territories which are disputed between these two countries can be divided into two distinct parts:

1) The Western Sector – Aksai Chin, which lies to the east of the Kashmir valley, covering an area of about 37,250 sq.km (14,380 sq.mi) – currently occupied by China.

2) The Eastern Sector – The Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, which China calls South Tibet, covering an area of 83,743 sq.km (32,333 sq.mi) – currently occupied by India.

In addition to these, there are also a few small chunks of territory in between these two sectors, but they are largely irrelevant when compared to these two major distinct territories.

The McMahon Line

The McMahon line is the basis of the Indian claim to the area which was formerly known as the North-East Frontier Agency; and has since become the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh. It was drawn with a complete disregard forcartographic techniques and the geography of the area. The scale was – eight miles to an inch.As Wikipedia makes clear, “The actual treaty map itself is topographically vague (as the treaty was not accompanied with demarcation), and the treaty includes no verbal description of geographic features nor description of the highest ridges.” There is no protocol or scientific method which uses cartographic techniques to identify the geographical location of the line. The McMahon line was literally a line on paper.

Aksai Chin

Historical claims on the Aksai China area are even more dubious. There has never been any concrete demarcation of this region.Britain was concerned about Russia’s designs in this area, and hence proposed to make the Karakorum Pass as the boundary, so as to again create a buffer between Xinjiang/China and India.As author Neville Maxwell states,

“In early 1880s, China and India agreed the Karakoram Pass as the fixed point of boundary, while leaving both sides of the pass indefinite. In the mid-1890s, China claimed Aksai Chin as its territory, and voiced the claim to Macartney in 1896, who drew part of the British boundary in the Himalayas. Macartney presented the claim to the British who agreed with his comment that part of Aksai Chin was in China and part in the British territory. Meanwhile, the forward school of British strategist in London suggested that the British should not only include the whole of Aksai Chin, but also all the territory given to Kashmir in 1865.”

In 1899, the British proposed to China that the whole of Aksai Chin would remain Chinese territory and the boundary would be along the Karakorum range; which is the status quo as of today. The Karakorum pass falls precisely on the boundary of territory controlled by India and China, marking northern end of Sino – Indian border, known as the Line of Actual Control.

However, China didn’t reply to this proposal, something which it would regret for years. If it had, the fate of Aksai Chin would have been sealed then and there. Nehru, for his part, appeared willing to play down the Indian claims to the Aksai Chin. He tried to delay disclosure if the news that the Chinese had built a road in the area. After the news had been revealed, he sought to play down the economic significance of the area, describing it as “barren tundra” and where “not even a blade of grass grows”. He even went so far as to cast doubt on the validity of the Indian claim to Aksai Chin. In statements to the Indian Parliament during early 1959, Nehru pointed out that

“…during British rule, this area was neither inhabited: nor were there any outposts, …….this place, Aksai Chin area, is distinguished completely from other areas. It is a matter for argument which part belongs to us and which part belongs to somebody else. It is not clear”.

Britain’s Flip-Flops

Around that time, it was understood by the British government that Tibet forms part of Chinese territory. According to the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907, both players of the so called ‘Great Game’, Britain and Russia, had decided to negotiate with Tibet only through China. According to the Anglo-Chinese Convention of 1906, Britain was “not to annex Tibetan territory”. British Journalist Neville Maxwell states that McMahon had been instructed not to sign bilaterally with the Tibetans if China refused. But that was exactly what McMahon did, previous promises be damned. Britain and Tibet signed the agreement themselves without Chinese knowledge, and was thus rejected at first by the British government in London. (Later however, its stance seems to have changed; and then changed again in 2008, as discussed below).

Tibet welcomed this treaty because it would give further credence to what it thought was its ‘sovereignty’, even if it came at the cost of territory. Accordingly, the purpose and content of these exchanges had to be kept secret, and not only from the Chinese. Britain seems to have taken upon itself the self-appointed role of Tibet’s Guardian. In the 1940s, British officials in India pointed out to Anthony Eden, the then British Foreign Secretary, that China had no rights in Tibet since it had not accepted the provisions of the Simla accord of 1914 (As if it was up to Britain to decide the extent of China’s ‘right’ to Tibet!). Needless to say, the Tibetan government welcomed these intrusions. Initially, London rejected the Simla accord as it was in contradiction with many previous agreements. But later, in 1935, some hardliners within the government convinced it to start using the line on official maps – thus officially accepting that the McMahon line was the official border between India and Tibet (and hence, later China too). But recently in 2008, a historical statement was released by the British Foreign Office which would have far reaching consequences.

The British government discarded the Simla agreement as an anachronism and a colonial legacy – a “position [the British] took based on the geo-politics of the time”. The British pulled away the only leg India had to stand on. The statement says,

“…….our position is unusual for one reason of history that has been imported into the present: the anachronism of our formal position on whether Tibet is part of China, and whether in fact we harbour continued designs to see the break up of China. We do not.”

“Our ability to get our points across has sometimes been clouded by the position the UK took at the start of the 20th century on the status of Tibet, a position based on the geo-politics of the time. Our recognition of China’s “special position” in Tibet developed from the outdated concept of suzerainty. “ (A New York Times article about this statement, entitled, ‘Did Britain just sell Tibet?’ (as if Britain owned it!) accused the British of ‘rewriting history’ in exchange for China’s support during the financial crisis!)

Effectively, what Britain in fact was saying was that Tibet is a part of China and is not sovereign – which was the position of almost all countries by that time, including EU nations and the US. It even apologized for not having done so earlier. However, what is important in that statement is that the British seem to have completely discarded the Simla agreement – on which the whole of India’s negotiating stance is based. Consequently, if we start with the assumption that the Simla agreement was illegal as Tibet had no right to conclude treaties separately, then we arrive at what the Chinese position has been all along!

The Tibetan question and the cause of the dispute

The fact is that a large part of the border dispute hinges on the uncomfortable question of Tibet’s sovereignty. If Tibet was sovereign at the time of the Simla conference, then the treaty is legal and it serves India’s cause. If Tibet was not sovereign at that time, then the treaty is illegal and serves China’s cause. Some activists campaigning for a free Tibet often bring up the Simla conference as proof of Tibet’s independence.

Their arguments are mainly two fold -

a)The Tibetan representative signed the treaty even though he was instructed by the Chinese representative not to sign, a clear indication undermining Chinese suzerainty over Tibet.

b) More importantly, since Tibet concluded a treaty with a foreign power on its own, it was an independent country on that day. At the time of the Simla conference, although the Tibetan government had driven out all Chinese officials from Tibet after the collapse of the Qing dynasty and declared independence, the Nationalist government did not accept this and neither has the PRC or any other government.

India had enjoyed certain privileges with regard to Tibet under the Simla Agreement, including those regarding trade and commerce. If the Simla accord is legal, then it serves India’s cause; and if it is illegal, China’s. However, when China annexed Tibet in 1951, India under Nehru recognized it as Chinese territory, thus giving up those privileges and undermining Tibet’s sovereignty (which it may have momentarily enjoyed during the time of the Simla agreement). Thus in a sense the Indian government tacitly admitted that the Simla agreement was effectively illegal, which to this day remains China’s official position. In doing so, India weakened its own position with respect to the border dispute. The Simla agreement was signed between Britain, Tibet and China. Now, from this information, two questions present themselves -

1) If Tibet was sovereign, why was China invited at the conference at all? Why didn’t the British negotiate directly with Tibet?

2) If Tibet was not sovereign, why was it invited at the conference? Why didn’t the British negotiate directly with China?

In other words, why did China accept to attend a conference where Tibet was represented as a separate party? The answer to (1) is that, as stated above, Britain recognised Tibet to be under Chinese suzerainty. Hence, anybilateral agreement that Britain signed with Tibet (without Chinese agreement) would be illegal. (But ironically, that is exactly what the British did)(2) is a bit more complicated. There are indications that the British had blackmailed the Chinese into attending by threatening to – a) withdraw their recognition of the new nationalist government, and,b) sign the treaty with Tibet alone if China didn’t participate, thus acknowledging that Tibet was in fact sovereign. (But later the British did this exact same thing when China didn’t agree to its terms during the conference). Hence it is clear that Britain’s imperial designs and its policy of ‘divide and rule’ and double crossing everyone was in effect the cause of the entire dispute.

Conclusion

Surprisingly, in this complicated dispute, China has shown a remarkable tendency to restrain its own claims and even recognize the McMahon line. It is willing to ignore history and has offered to recognize Indian claims on 74% of the total disputed territory (currently controlled by India); provided India recognizes Chinese claims on the remaining 26 % (Chinese controlled Aksai Chin). In other words, while China has taken a prudent first step and is willing to convert the current status quo ‘borders’ into the international boundary. But India, on the other hand, is just not willing to even discuss the issue of compromise. In the western sector the claim is entirely a matter of perspective, as Nehru himself admitted. In the eastern sector, however, the entire disputed territory hinges upon one question – The legality, or not, of the Simla agreement. India has had two contradictory stances simultaneously – a) Not recognizing Tibet’s sovereignty and b) Recognizing the McMahon line as the international boundary; and thus the legality of the Simla agreement. However, if a country doesn’t recognize Tibet’s sovereignty, then consequently it is expected that it would also not recognize the legality of the Simla agreement and the McMahon line. The Indian position can also be construed to mean that regardless of whether or not Tibet is sovereign now , it wassovereign when the Simla agreement was signed; and consequently the McMahon line is legal.

Which begs the question on which the whole dispute in the eastern sector is based – Does signing a bilateral treaty with a foreign power make a province sovereign?

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Europe, Nationalism and Shared Fate

23. May 2010 by admin.

Europe, Nationalism and Shared Fate

May 11, 2010

 

 

By George Friedman

The European financial crisis is moving to a new level. The Germans have finally consented to lead a bailout effort for Greece. The effort has angered the German public, which has acceded with sullen reluctance. It does not accept the idea that it is Germans’ responsibility to save Greeks from their own actions. The Greeks are enraged at the reluctance, having understood that membership in the European Union meant that Greece’s problems were Europe’s.

 

And this is not just a Greek matter. Geographically, the problem is the different levels of development of Mediterranean Europe versus Northern Europe. During the last generation, the Mediterranean countries have undergone major structural changes and economic development. They have also undergone the inevitable political tensions that rapid growth generates. As a result, their political and economic condition is substantially different from that of Northern Europe, whose development surge took place a generation before and whose political structure has come into alignment with its economic condition.

 

European Unity and Diversity

Northern and Southern Europe are very different places, as are the former Soviet satellites still recovering from decades of occupation. Even on this broad scale, Europe is thus an extraordinarily diverse portrait of economic, political and social conditions. The foundation of the European project was the idea that these nations could be combined into a single economic regime and that that economic regime would mature into a single united political entity. This was, on reflection, a rather extraordinary idea.

 

Europeans, of course, do not think of themselves as Mediterranean or Northern European. They think of themselves as Greek or Spanish, Danish or French. Europe is divided into nations, and for most Europeans, identification with their particular nation comes first. This is deeply embedded in European history. For the past two centuries, the European obsession has been the nation. First, the Europeans tried to separate their own nations from the transnational dynastic empires that had treated European nations as mere possessions of the Hapsburg, Bourbon or Romanov families. The history of Europe since the French Revolution was the emergence and resistance of the nation-state. Both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union attempted to create multinational states dominated by a single state. Both failed, and both were hated for the attempt.

 

There is a paradox in the European mindset. On the one hand, the recollection of the two world wars imbued Europeans with a deep mistrust of the national impulse. On the other hand, one of the reasons nationalism was distrusted was because of its tendency to make war on other nation-states and try to submerge their identities. Europe feared nationalism out of a very nationalist impulse.

 

The European Union was designed to create a European identity while retaining the nation-state. The problem was not in the principle, as it is possible for people to have multiple identities. For example, there is no tension between being an Iowan and an American. But there is a problem with the issue of shared fate. Iowans and Texans share a bond that transcends their respective local identities. Their national identity as Americans means that they share not only transcendent values but also fates. A crisis in Iowa is a crisis in the United States, and not one in a foreign country as far as Texans are concerned.

 

The Europeans tried to finesse this problem. There was to be a European identity, yet national identities would remain intact. They wrote a nearly 400-page-long constitution, an extraordinary length. But it was not really a constitution. Rather, it was a treaty that sought to reconcile the concept of Europe as a single entity while retaining the principle of national sovereignty that Europe had struggled with for centuries. At root, Europe’s dilemma was no different from the American dilemma — only the Americans ultimately decided, in the Civil War, that being an American transcended being a Virginian. One could be a Virginian, but Virginia shared the fate of New York, and did so irrevocably. The Europeans could not state this unequivocally as they either did not believe it or lacked the ability to militarily impress the belief upon the rest of Europe. So they tried to finesse it in long, complex and ultimately opaque systems of governance that ultimately left the nations of Europe with their sovereignty intact.

When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, there was no question among the Germans that East and West Germany would be united. Nor were serious questions raised that the cost of economically and socially reviving East Germany would be borne by West Germany. Germany was a single country that history had divided, and when history allowed them to be reunited, Germans would share the burdens. Ever since the 19th century, when Germany began to conceive of itself as one country, there was an idea that to be a German meant to share a single fate and burdens.

 

This was the same for the rest of Europe that organized itself into nation-states, where the individual identified his fate with the fate of the nation. For a Pole or an Irishman, the fate of his country was part of his fate. But a Pole was not an Irishman and an Irishman was not a Pole. They might share interests, but not fates. The nation is the place of tradition, language and culture — all of the things that, for better or worse, define who you are. The nation is the place where an economic crisis is inescapably part of your life.

 

When the Greek financial crisis emerged, other Europeans asked the simple question, “What has this to do with me?” From their point of view, the Greeks were foreigners. They spoke a different language, had a different culture, shared a different history. The Germans might be affected by the crisis — German banks held Greek debt — but the Germans were not Greeks, and they did not share the Greeks’ fate. And this was not just the view of Germany, the economic leader of Europe, by any means.

 

In the past, Mexico has had several economic crises in which the United States intervened to stabilize Mexico. This was done because it was in the American interest to do so, not because the United States and Mexico were one country. So, too, in Europe: The bailout of Greece is designed not because Greece is part of Europe, but because it is in the rest of Europe’s interest to bail Greece out. But the heart of the matter is that Greece is a foreign country.

 

The Question of European Identity

During the generation of prosperity between the early 1990s and 2008, the question of European identity and national identity really did not arise. Being a European was completely compatible with being a Greek. Prosperity meant there was no choice to make. Economic crisis meant that choices had to be made, between the interests of Europe, the interests of Germany and the interests of Greece, as they were no longer the same. What happened was not a European solution, but a series of national calculations on self-interest; it was a negotiation between foreign countries, not a European solution growing organically from the recognition of a single, shared fate.

 

Ultimately, Europe was an abstraction. The nation-state was real. We could see this earliest and best not in the economic arena, but in the area of foreign policy and national defense. The Europeans as a whole never managed to develop either. The foreign policies of the United Kingdom, Germany and Poland were quite different and in many ways at odds. And war, even more than economics, is the sphere in which nations endure the greatest pain and risk. None of the European nations was prepared to abandon national sovereignty in this area, meaning no country was prepared to put the bulk of its armed forces under the command of a European government — nor were they prepared to cooperate in defense matters unless it was in their interest.

 

The unwillingness of the Europeans to transfer sovereignty in foreign and defense matters to the European Parliament and a European president was the clearest sign that the Europeans had not managed to reconcile European and national identity. Europeans knew that when it came down to it, the nation mattered more than Europe. And that understanding, under the pressure of crisis, has emerged in economics as well. When there is danger, your fate rests with your country.

 

The European experiment originated as a recoil from the ultranationalism of the first half of the 20th century. It was intended to solve the problem of war in Europe. But the problem of nationalism is that not only is it more resilient than the solution, it also derives from the deepest impulses of the Enlightenment. The idea of democracy and of national self-determination grew up as part of a single fabric. In taking away national self-determination, the European experiment seemed to be threatening the foundation of modern Europe.

 

There was another impulse behind the idea of Europe. Most of the European nations, individually, were regional powers at best, unable to operate globally. They were therefore weaker than the United States. Europe united would not only be able to operate globally, it would be the equal of the United States. If the nation-states of Europe were no longer great individually, Europe as a whole could be. Embedded in the idea of Europe, particularly in the Gaullist view of it, was the idea ofEurope as a whole regaining its place in the world, the place it lost after two world wars.

That clearly is not going to happen. There is no European foreign and defense policy, no European army, no European commander in chief. There is not even a common banking or budgetary policy (which cuts to the heart of today’s crisis). Europe will not counterbalance the United States because, in the end, Europeans do not share a common vision of Europe, a common interest in the world or a mutual trust, much less a common conception of exactly what counterbalancing the United States would mean. Each nation wants to control its own fate so as not to be drawn back into the ultranationalism of a Germany in the 1930s and 1940s or the indifference to nationalism of the Hapsburg Empire. The Europeans like their nations and want to retain them. After all, the nation is who they actually are.

 

That means that they approach the financial crisis of Mediterranean Europe in a national, as opposed to European, fashion. Both those in trouble and those who might help calculate their moves not as Europeans but as Germans or Greeks. The question, then, is simple: Given that Europe never came together in terms of identity, and given that the economic crisis is elevating national interest well over European interest, where does this all wind up?

 

The European Union is an association — at most an alliance — and not a transnational state. There was an idea of making it such a state, but that idea failed a while ago. As an alliance, it is a system of relationships among sovereign states. They participate in it to the extent that it suits their self-interest — or fail to participate when they please.

 

In the end, what we have learned is that Europe is not a country. It is a region, and in this region there are nations and these nations are comprised of people united by shared history and shared fates. The other nations of Europe may pose problems for these people, but in the end, they share neither a common moral commitment nor a common fate.

 

This means that nationalism is not dead in Europe, and neither is history. And the complacency with which Europeans have faced their future, particularly when it has concerned geopolitical tensions within Europe, might well prove premature. Europe is Europe, and its history cannot be dismissed as obsolete, much less over.

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Is War Around the Corner?

22. May 2010 by admin.

“Is war around the corner?”

By Vice Admiral Arun Kumar Singh

Originally Posted on 1st Jan, 2010

 

A few month’s back, Bharat Verma, Editor of the Indian Defence Review, in an article, had predicted that China may attack India by 2012. Frankly, at that time, I did not agree with this prophecy, because in my opinion China would not want a war till it becomes a true super power by 2050,and in any case the Chinese, in my opinion, would only go to war, if they had a 100 percent chance of success. Also China has now become India’s leading trade partner, and common sense dictates that good economic relations are a logical antidote against war. Finally, in the event of war in the next five years, the Indian Navy would be in a position to wreck havoc with China’s oil tankers, ferrying homewards, the Middle East oil, through the straits of Malacca, Sunda and Lombak straits. The IAF, too would be utilised, and the Chinese”cake walk” of 1962, would not be possible.

 

However, two recent events have caused me to rethink, though I still feel that an Indo–China war is not likely, specially if India urgently  reverses the current decline in its defence capability. The first event was the recent early September 2009 Chinese firing across the LAC (the first since 1986, and the first since the 1996 “no firing agreement”), in Kerang (northern Sikkim) where two ITBF jawans were reportedly injured (this report has been denied by the Indian Foreign Ministry). The second event was the firing on 12 September 2009, of five 107 mm rockets, by the Pakistan based Lashkar e Toiba (LeT), across the international border at Indian villages near Amritsar. Are these two firing incidents linked, coming as they do on the background of very disturbing reports of border incursions by our two hostile nuclear armed neighbours? While the Pakistani terrorist based actions are not new, the Chinese activities, sound similar to the ominous activities prior to the disastrous 1962 war.

Another serious mistake we are making is assumimg that the United States will pull our chestnuts out of the fire, by deterring China and pressurising Pakistan. While our broad national interests do generally appear to coincide with Washington, we must remember that no country will go to war against nuclear armed foes, unless directly threatened. Given Pakistan’s undeniable geostrategic location, we should not expect the Americans to “take out” or “neutralise” Pakistani nuclear weapons, to prevent them from falling into the hands of the terrorists. Neither should we assume that America has joint control over Pakistani nuclear weapons. It is good to have close ties with the USA, but it’s prudent not to outsource our national security to any external power.

 

Musharraf’s latest admission on 14 September, about Pakistan diverting American aid to beef up its defences against India, and how he ensured Pakistan’s strategic weapons programme was “speeded up”, and China’s latest border incursions, should finally clear the cobwebs from the minds of India’s leadership. Why do we continue to suffer nasty surprises at the hands of Pakistan and China. Some 47 years after 1962, India has again been repeatedly surprised by China in Arunachal Pradesh, Ladakh and in Uttarakhand . About nine years after Kargill, and 15 years after the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts, India was surprised by Pakistani terrorists taking the searoute to cause a bloodbath in Mumbai on 26/11 in 2008. The fact remains that India’s lack of strategic culture has been repeatedly exposed, and its military has been required to fight under very disadvantageous conditions because our politico–bureaucratic leadership, has allowed defence preparations to fall below critical levels, while following a policy of “passive , low reactive defence” which relies more on diplomacy than military strength. Hopefully the restrictions imposed on the Indian Army not being allowed to patrol some “sensitive areas” on the Indo–China border will now be lifted before the Chinese grab more of our territory. Also hopefully, the Government will think about inducting the long delayed 155 mm artillery, and raising more mountain divisions before it’s too late.

Their should be no doubt as to why Pakistan and its terrorists will always aim to cause mayhem in two places in India, viz Mumbai and Vadinar. Mumbai (its stock market turnover is four times Pakistan’s GDP) and Vadinar port in the Gulf of Kutch (it has three refineries with 99 million tons capacity and over two million tons of fuel storage). Yes, attacking foreign tourists in Goa will gain a lot of international publicity, but Mumbai and Vadinar are India’s economic jugular, and attacking these will keep India economically hyphenated to Pakistan. Fortunately the Coast Guard’s new North West Command, for Gujarat, headquartered at Gandhinagar has become functional, and is expected to be formally inaugerated by the Defence Minister in October. Hopefully, this new Command will urgently receive additional vessels and aircraft to ensure the safety of Gujarat, including Vadinar, because nothing can be more dangerous than creating a “paper force”.

 

What is the second best method to attack Mumbai and Vadinar,after terrorism? The answer is cruise missiles with land attack capability, launched from ships, submarines and Maritime Patrol aircraft like the P-3C Orion. Theoretically, the 120 km range, Harpoon anti-ship missile with a 250 kg warhead fits the bill perfectly for Pakistan as an interim system, while its ratcheting up the production of its larger Chinese gifted, 500 km range Babur cruise missiles to build an estimated stockpile of 450. The long term aim of the Pakistani Babur cruise missiles (these can be delivered by fighter or Maritime Patrol aircraft to extend their range) is to counter India’s over publicised Ballastic Missile Defence System (BMDS) and give Pakistan a “cheap”, massive first strike capabilty which may overwhelm India’s nuclear retaliation capabilty. Right now, Pakistan’s nuclear capability is designed to counter India’s superior conventional military power, but the Babur cruise missile along with new miniaturized plutonium warheads, will put Pakistan in a different league altogether.

 

The newer versions of the Harpoon, which Pakistan is hoping to acquire from the USA, already has a secondary land attack capability built in. What it has now apparently tested a few months back is the older anti-ship Harpoon, (about three dozen of these were acquired from the USA in the Reagan era). Given todays miniaturised Inertial Navigation Systems (INS) and Global Positioning Systems (GPS), any missile specialist should be able to convert the vintage anti-ship Harpoon to a land attack capable missile with reasonably accurate chances of hitting the Oil refineries at Vadinar and the various installations in Mumbai port. The only problem would be how to replace the 250 kg conventional warhead in the 53 centimetre diameter cylnderical Harpoon missile with a plutonium miniature nuclear warhead. Most Indian scientists will tell you that it is impossible for Pakistan to achieve this. In my opinion India should expect China to transfer the technology of a proven miniaturised nuclear weapon which would fit the larger Babur, and possibly the Harpoon cruise missiles.

 

What are the launch platforms for the modified land attack Harpoon missile ? The answer is simple. The two older French built Agosta 70 submarines and the half a dozen American P-3C Orion aircraft are the ideal launch platforms. The missile has sufficient standoff range to hit Vadinar and Mumbai.

Global experts believe that “low tech” nuclear powers would need 8 kg of Plutonium 239 (PU 239) to make a bomb, while “medium tech” powers would need about five kgs, and “hi-tech” powers (including China) would need 3 kg of PU 239.The media has given enough details of the new Khusab 2 and 3 reactors , which will be expected to produce about 15 to 30 kg of Plutonium for 3 to 10 miniaturised nuclear weapons per year to Pakistan. Latest media reports indicate that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons stockpile has now grown from 70 to 90. I have no idea about India’s nuclear weapons stocks, and am uncertain about how many Agni type missiles India can produce per year. China will take Indian deterrence seriously only after we induct the 5000 km Agni 5. The recent controversy about the 1998 thermonuclear tests “fizzzle” has not cleared the air. I am not a nuclear weapons designer, but as a nuclear specialist, it is my opinion that lots of luck would be needed to get a complex thermonuclear prototype device to function properly the first time, and even if it did, it would need atleast two more successful, confirmatory tests in a rugged militarised form. Detterence works best, when it’s based on hard realty, and not ambigious discussions. Also deterrence works best when the enemy leadership is itself threatened with annihilation by a politically firm Indian Government.

 

The Chinese, as expected have kept the pressure on India, with the latest news of its forces violating Indian territory in Ladakh, Sikkim and Uttarakhand. Being masters of the art of long term strategic planning, the Chinese game plan is obviously to keep India tied down by the triple threats from China, Pakistan and Pakistani sponsored terrorists. India’s foreign ministry should stop justifying China’s daily incursions by talking about “the differing perceptions on the Line of Actual Control”. China will stop its incursions only when it’s deterred by India’s conventional and strategic defence capability. We will need to change our “no first use” nuclear policy, and increase our defence expenditure from the present measely 1.99 percent of the GDP to atleast three percent of the GDP.

 

Ofcourse, the immediate threat to India is from terrorism by land, air and sea. In August, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the normally chaotic fishing vessel traffic in Mumbai port was now more disciplined. It was also heartening to see the Navy and Coast Guard maintaining round the clock vigil from boats and helicopters. Numerous visitors, enquiring about my health, also assured me that there was now unprecedented co-ordination and co-operation between the Navy, Coast Guard, Police, Customs, Intelligence Agencies and the port authorities. The real threat from the sea will come after early October, when the monsoon subsides, and the seas become calmer for permitting small boat terrorist operations. The recent 12 September rocket attacks from Pakistan on Indian villages near Amritsar, along with terror strikes in Srinagar, are pointers that things will only get worse, unless India responds firmly.

 

Given the decades of neglect, national security (including strategic deterrence) will need sustained funding for the next decade. The Prime Minister, while focussing on 9 percent GDP growth, and countering drought, will need to keep a very watchful eye on national security. The only insurance against any future disastrous, though unlikelym wars with China or Pakistan lies in deterrence, based on India investing heavily in conventional, counter terrorism and nuclear defence. If India fails to invest sufficiently on national security and displays palpable lack of political will, then there is a risk of minor border incidents spiralling out of control, and tensions escalating. The only danger this time, lies with Pakistan and its terrorists, also joining this unlikely doomsday scenario. We must have excellent economic and diplomatic relations with China, but we must also keep our powder dry. Our foreign policy should be backed by sufficent military power — something akin to a steel fist in a velvet glove.

January 1st, 2010.

 

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Unending Threats and Challenges

22. May 2010 by admin.

Unending Threats and Challenges

With a landmass of sub-continental proportions, India occupies a predominant strategic position in Southern Asia and dominates the northern Indian Ocean with a coastline that is 7,683 km long, and an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) that is over two million square km in size. India’s land borders exceed 15,000 km which it shares with seven countries including a small segment with Afghanistan (106 km) in northern Jammu and Kashmir (J&K). Lt Gen Vijay Oberoi (Retd) has given the following breakdown of the length of India’s land borders with its neighbours:1

• Bangladesh - 4,339 km (4,351 km as per MoD2).
• Bhutan - 605 km (700 km as per MoD).
• China - 3,439 km (4,056 km as per MoD).
• Myanmar - 1,425 km (1,643 km as per MoD).
• Nepal - 1,690 km (1,751 km as per MoD).
• Pakistan - 3,325 km (3,244 km as per MoD).

(In addition, India has a land border with Afghanistan as well. However, at present the area bordering Afghanistan falls in the Northern Areas of Pakistan Occupied Kashmir).

 

Due to the proclivity of India’s neighbours to exploit India’s nation building difficulties, the country’s internal security challenges are inextricably linked with border management. Also, the challenge of coping with long-standing territorial and boundary disputes with China and Pakistan, combined with porous borders along some of the most difficult terrain in the world, has made extremely effective and efficient border management mandatory. However, in practice this has seldom been the case due to the lack of understanding of such military issues among the decision-making elite and inadequate interest in national security, particularly during the early years after independence. Despite several border wars and conflicts, India’s borders continue to be manned by a large number of military, para-military and police forces, each of which has its own ethos, and each of which reports to a different central ministry at New Delhi, with almost no real co-ordination in managing the borders.

External threats to India’s security are not the only border management issue to be dealt with at present by the national security apparatus. India’s rate of growth has far outpaced that of most of its neighbours which has generated peculiar problems like mass migrations into India. Other threats and challenges have also emerged. Dr G P Bhatnagar, former Inspector General, Border Security Force (BSF) has written that the border security scenario is marked by:3

• Increased cross-border terrorism.
• Infiltration and ex-filtration of armed militants.
• Emergence of non-state actors.
• Nexus between narcotics and arms smugglers.
• Illegal migrations.
• Left-wing extremism.
• Separatist movements aided and abetted by external powers.
• Establishment of madrasas, which could result in security hazards.

Smugglers, drug-traffickers and fund-amentalist terrorists are often in league with local criminals, lower rung political leaders and police functionaries. Such a situation exacerbates the challenges of border management, making it more complex for the border guarding agencies. It is axiomatic that poor border management inevitably leads to a volatile internal security situation in the border states of the country. The employment of multiple forces results in problems of command and control as well as the lack of accountability for encroachments, poor intelligence and inept handling of local sensitivities.

Manning the Line of Actual Control with China

The Line of Actual Control (LAC) with China offers an illustrative example of the lack of co-ordination in border management. The western sector of the LAC in Ladakh and Himachal Pradesh and the central sector along the Uttrakhand border are manned by some Vikas battalions of the Special Frontier Force that reports to the Cabinet Secretariat and the Indo-Tibetan Border Police that is a Ministry of Home Affairs police force, respectively. Infantry battalions of the Indian Army man the Sikkim border and units of the Assam Rifles (AR) man the Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur and Mizoram borders. The AR is a para-military force under the Ministry of Home Affairs that is officered mostly by regular army officers. Its battalions have been placed under ‘operational control’ of local army formation commanders. Though the responsibility is that of the army, the AR battalions given to the army for border manning operations are not directly under its command. This arrangement is not conducive to fostering a professional relationship between the commanders and their subordinates.

 

Operationally, the Northern and Western Commands are responsible for military operations along the LAC in portions of the Western Sector. The Middle Sector on the Uttrakahnd border is under the operational jurisdiction of the Central Command, while the Eastern Sector along the Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh borders comes under the operational control of Eastern Command.4 On the other hand, on the Tibetan side, the entire LAC is managed by Border Guards divisions of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) under a single PLA commander of the Tibet Autonomous Region.

 

The Border Peace and Tranquility Agreement signed with the Chinese in 1993, and the agreement on Confidence Building Measures in the Military Field signed in 1996, were expected to reduce the operational commitments of the army from having to permanently man the difficult LAC with China. However, contrary to the usual assertion of the Ministry of External Affairs, it has not been possible to withdraw a single soldier from the border with China so far. In fact, despite the 1996 agreement on Military CBMs, several incidents of Chinese intrusions at Asaphi La and elsewhere in Arunachal Pradesh have been reported in the press and have been discussed in the Parliament. While no violent incident has taken place in the recent past, there have been occasions when Indian and Chinese patrols have met face-to-face in areas like the two “fish-tail” shaped protrusions in the north-east corner of Arunachal Pradesh.5 The patrol commanders on both the sides generally limit their inter-action to telling each other that the other side’s patrol is deep inside their territory and that such a violation should not be repeated. However, such meetings have an element of tension built into them and despite the best of training the possibility of an armed clash can never be ruled out.

 

In the western sector in Ladakh, the lie of the LAC is even more ambiguous because of several “claim lines” and due to the paucity of easily recognisable terrain features on the Aksai Chin plateau. This makes it difficult to accurately co-relate ground and map, except in the area of the Karakoram Pass, which lies on the high Karakoram Range. Both the sides habitually send patrols up to the point at which, in their perception, the LAC runs. These patrols leave “tell-tale” signs behind in the form of burjis (piles of stones), biscuit and cigarette packets and other similar markers in a sort of primitive ritual to lay stake to territory and assert their claim. Again, while no clashes have actually occurred, Indian patrols have occasionally sighted Chinese patrols observing them from a discreet distance and “shadowing” them when they move parallel to the LAC.

 

These issues are debated during the meetings of the China Study Group that is jointly chaired by the Vice Chief of Army Staff (VCOAS) and the Foreign Secretary. While the MEA invariably advises caution, it is extremely difficult for commanders of troops to advocate a soft line to their subordinates. There is an inherent contradiction in sending soldiers to patrol what they are told and believe are Indian areas and then tell them that they must not under any circumstances fire on “intruding” Chinese soldiers. This is the reason why it is operationally critical to demarcate the LAC on the map and the ground after joint physical surveys. Once that is done, tall pylons or pillars that can survive the ravages of weather, can be put up about one to two kilometres apart without prejudice to the position of either side on their respective claim lines. Also, the inadequacy of recognisable terrain features can be overcome by exploiting GPS technology to accurately navigate up to the agreed and well-defined LAC on the ground and avoid transgressing it even unintentionally.

 

In this light, the Chinese intransigence in exchanging maps showing the alignment of the LAC in the western and eastern sectors, while talking of lofty guiding principles and parameters and a “framework” to resolve the territorial and boundary dispute is neither understandable nor condonable. It can only be classified as another attempt to put off a solution to the dispute “for future generations to resolve”, as Deng Xiao Ping had famously told Rajiv Gandhi in 1988. In other words, the dispute is to be resolved at a time when it is convenient to the Chinese and when they are in a much stronger position in terms of comprehensive national strength so that they can dictate terms and get away with it. At present, it is the Taiwan issue that is at the forefront of Chinese strategic thinking and Chinese belligerence on re-unification is there for the entire world to see. After the reunification of Taiwan, China is bound to turn its gaze southwards towards India and will be able to dictate terms from a position of military strength.

The Western and Other Borders

In the west, the entire border with Pakistan is manned by the BSF except the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K). The LoC is the responsibility of the army with some BSF battalions placed under its operational control. Since the LoC has been mostly active on a daily basis, particularly since the early 1990s, this is a good arrangement. On the LoC, the primary operational responsibility is to ensure its physical integrity against encroachment by the Pakistan Army. The army’s secondary responsibility is to minimise trans-LoC infiltration by armed mercenary terrorists usually aided and abetted by the Pakistan Army and the ISI. For over 50 years since the Kashmir conflict began in 1947-48, soon after independence, the two armies were engaged in a so-called ‘eyeball-to-eyeball’ confrontation with daily loss of life and property that could justifiably be called a ‘low intensity limited war’. An informal cease-fire has been in place all along the LoC, including at the Actual Ground Position Line (AGPL) along the Saltoro Range west of the Siachen Glacier, since November 25, 2003. Though the LoC is no longer ‘live’ as small arms fire, machine gun and mortar fire have almost completely stopped, infiltration from POK continues at reduced rates.

 

The border with Nepal was virtually un-attended till very recently as Nepalese citizens have free access to live and work in India under a 1950 treaty between the two countries. Since the eruption of a Maoist insurgency in Nepal efforts have been made to gradually step up vigilance along this border as India fears the southward spread of Maoist ideology.  The responsibility for this has been entrusted to the Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB), erstwhile Special Security Bureau. The Cabinet Secretariat had exercised direct operational control over the SSB till 2003, but the force is now a Ministry of Home Affairs force. Along the Bangladesh border that has seen active action in recent years, the BSF is in charge. This border remains in the news as there are frequent clashes between the BSF and the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) over encroachments, enclaves and adverse possessions. For the Bhutan border, the BSF shares the responsibility with the SSB. Since the Royal Bhutanese Army drove out the Bodo and ULFA insurgents from its territory some years ago, the border has been relatively quiet, but there is a need to ensure that such groups do not again create sanctuaries for themselves in Bhutan. The border with Myanmar also remains operationally active. Several insurgent groups have secured sanctuaries for themselves in Myanmar despite the co-operation extended by the Myanmarese army. The cross border movement of Nagas and Mizos for training, purchase of arms and shelter when pursued by Indian security forces, combined with the difficult terrain obtaining in the area, makes this border extremely challenging to manage. This border is manned jointly by the army and some units of the AR.

 

India’s border with Bangladesh has a peculiar problem of ‘Enclaves and Adverse Possessions’. “There are 111 Indian enclaves (17,158 acres) within Bangladesh and 51 Bangladeshi enclaves (7,110.02 acres) in India.”6 Thirty-four tracts of Indian land are under the adverse possession of Bangladesh and 40 pieces of Bangladeshi land are in India’s adverse possession. Though the Land Border Agreement of 1974 has provisions for the settlement of the issue of adverse possession, it has not been implemented so far as the problem is politically sensitive. The border guarding forces are left to deal with the day-to-day problems that are bound to be thrown up by such territorial complexities. Unless the political leadership invests time and effort to resolve this sensitive issue, unseemly clashes that do no credit to either side will continue to occur and spoil relations between the two countries.

Issues for better Border Management

Ideally, border management should be the responsibility of the Ministry of Home Affairs during peacetime. However, the active nature of the LoC and the need to maintain troops close to the LAC in a state of readiness for operations in high altitude areas, have compelled the army to permanently deploy large forces for this task. While the BSF should be responsible for all settled borders, the responsibility for unsettled and disputed borders, such as the Line of Control (LoC) in J&K and the Line of Actual Control (LAC) on the Indo-Tibetan border, should be that of the Indian Army. The principle of ‘single point control’ must be followed if the borders are to be effectively managed. Divided responsibilities never result in effective control. Despite sharing the responsibility with several para-military and police forces, the army’s commitment for border management amounts to six divisions along the LAC, the LoC and the AGPL (Actual Ground Position Line along the Saltoro Ridgeline west of Siachen Glacier) in J&K and five divisions along the LAC and the Myanmar border in the eastern sector.

 

This is a massive commitment that is costly in terms of manpower as well as funds, as the deployment areas are mostly in high altitude terrain, and needs to be reduced gradually. The real pay off of a rapprochement with the Chinese would be the possibility of reducing the army’s deployment on the LAC. To some extent, the advances in surveillance technology, particularly satellite and aerial imagery, can help to maintain a constant vigil along the LAC and make it possible to reduce physical deployment as and when modern surveillance assets can be provided on a regular basis to the formations deployed forward. Similarly, the availability of a larger number of helicopter units will enhance the quality of aerial surveillance and the ability to move troops to quickly occupy defensive positions when it becomes necessary. However, these are both costly ventures and need to be viewed in the overall context of the availability of funds for modernisation.

 

The deployment patterns of CPOs are marked by ad hoc decisions and knee jerk reactions to emerging threats and challenges, rather than a cohesive long-term approach that maximises the strength of each organisation. Dr. G. P. Bhatnagar has identified the following lacunae:7

• Deployment of multiple forces in the same area of operations.
• Lack of any doctrinal concepts.
• Designed for a ‘fire fighting’ approach rather than a ‘fire prevention’ or pro-active approach.
• Based on a strategy of ‘reaction and retaliation’ rather than on holistic response to a situation, resulting in stress and decision making problems at the functional level.
• Wastage of energy and efforts.
• Lack of co-ordination and synergy between the security management organisations.

The recent nomination of the CRPF as the national level counter-insurgency force should enable the other CPMFs like BSF and ITBP to return to their primary role of better border management, as had been recommended by the Task Force on Border Management that was constituted by the Group of Ministers (GoM) formed to review major issues pertaining to the management of national security after the Kargil conflict.8 The task force was led by Madhav Godbole, former Home Secretary and had made several far-reaching recommendations. It had recommended that all para-military forces managing unsettled borders should operate directly under the control of the army, there should be lateral induction from the army to the para-military forces so as to enhance their operational effectiveness and had suggested several perceptive measures for better intelligence coordination.9 The task force studied steps needed to improve border management and suggested measures for appropriate force structures and procedures to deal with the entry of narcotics, illegal migrants, terrorists and arms. It also examined measures to establish closer linkages with the border population to protect them from subversive propaganda to prevent unauthorised settlements and to initiate special developmental programmes.10 

 

The recommendations of the task force were accepted by the GoM and are being implemented in phases. While some action has been taken, clearly much more needs to be done to make border management more effective. The infiltration of armed mercenary terrorists from Pakistan, mass migrations from Bangladesh into lower Assam, the smuggling of consumer goods and fake Indian currency from Nepal, the operations of ULFA militants from safe hideouts in Bhutan and the sanctuaries available to the insurgent groups of the north-eastern states in Myanmar and Bangladesh, have all added to India’s border security problems. If Pakistan implodes due to its internal weaknesses and the impact of ultra radical extremism, thousands of refugees may be expected to rush across to India for shelter and succor, much like the influx from Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) in 1971. Effective border management is now, and should always be, a primary national security priority.

Notes

1. Lt Gen Vijay Oberoi (Retd.), “Changing Battlefields”, Force, August 2004, p. 50.
2. “National Security Environment: An Overview”, Ministry of Defence website, www.mod.nic.in.
3. Dr. G. P. Bhatnagar, “Border Security”,  SP’s Land Forces, Vol. 2, Issue 6, 2005.
4. “Seal of Trouble”, Force, Vol. 1, No. 12, August 2004.
5. “An IB (Intelligence Bureau) report (No. DIBUO No-12) which corroborates the Chinese consolidation and LAC violation has been sent to the PMO and the home ministry… The IB report says that until last October, there were 195 successful attempts by the Chinese to violate the LAC.” Ajay Upreti, “Watch that Line: China Violates LAC and Intensifies Activities on the Border”, The Week, May 1, 2005.
6. n. 3.
7. n. 3.
8. Report of the Group of Ministers on National Security, mod.nic.in/newadditions/chapter-i.pdf.
9. P. K. Vasudeva, “Reorganising the Defence Set-up”, Tribune, November 27, 2000.
10. “Internal Security and Border Management”, PIB Press Release, pib.nic.in/archieve/lreleng/lyr2000/rjun2000/r13062000.html.

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The U.S.-Pakistan Conundrum and Europe’s Existential Test

22. May 2010 by admin.

The U.S.-Pakistan Conundrum and Europe’s Existential Test

 

 

May 20, 2010

 

 

U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER JIM JONES and CIA Director Leon Panetta met with Pakistan’s top civil and military leadership Wednesday and reportedly urged it to take more aggressive action against jihadists, especially in North Waziristan. (The region is the main hub of an array of international jihadist actors, which the Pakistanis have yet to target in their yearlong counterinsurgency campaign.) The visit was prompted by revelations about the deep connections the would-be Times Square bomber, Faisal Shahzad, had with Pakistan’s jihadist community as well as its military. Shahzad’s father is a retired Air Vice Marshal, the third highest rank in the Pakistani air force. His uncle is a retired two-star general who once headed the Frontier Corps in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province, formerly known as the North-West Frontier Province. The Frontier Corps is the paramilitary force currently playing a key role in the counterinsurgency campaign against Taliban rebels in northwest Pakistan.

Given the level of religious radicalization that the country has experienced over the past three decades or so, it is not unusual for a person with Shahzad’s pedigree to have joined al Qaeda transnational jihadists. Furthermore, being from an elite family also does not mean that senior people within the army have ties to the global jihadist nexus involved in plots to attack the United States. However, Tuesday there were reports that Pakistani authorities had arrested a serving army major suspected of being an accomplice to Shahzad, which further exacerbates an already complicated U.S.-Pakistani relationship.

 

Cooperation between Washington and Islamabad on dealing with the jihadist menace had just begun to improve when the Times Square bomb incident took place. It had hardly been three months since U.S. Central Command chief Gen. David Petraeus had applauded Pakistani efforts against the militant infrastructure. He said Islamabad’s forces were doing the best they could with limited resources, and should not be expected to expand the scope of their operations anytime soon. The shifting paradigm in Washington vis-a-vis Islamabad came to a screeching halt when it became clear that Shahzad had been dispatched by jihadist elements based in Pakistan.

 

The problem is not that the United States has completely reverted to the old policy of pressuring Pakistan. Rather it has to do with the dilemma where on one hand U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration needs to stabilize Pakistan to deal with the Afghan Taliban, while on the other it needs to pressure Pakistan to take tougher action against al Qaeda, which could further destabilize the already dangerously weakened Pakistani polity. In other words, the U.S. strategy for the region has been knocked off balance.

 

This precarious situation should not be considered an unintended outcome of the plot to detonate an improvised explosive device in the heart of Manhattan. It is very clearly the work of transnational jihadists headquartered in Pakistan who view increased U.S.-Pakistani cooperation as a lethal cocktail. The jihadists have been able to exploit the weakness of the Pakistani state and the contradictions within its security establishment to their advantage.

 

But in the past year they have faced a major onslaught and find themselves caught between U.S. unmanned aerial vehicle strikes and Pakistani ground assaults. They are in no position to resist the combined U.S.-Pakistani offensive. Their only way out is to undermine the bilateral relationship, which, given its fragility and the tools at the disposal of the jihadists, is not hard to do.

 

This strategy mimics efforts to ignite conflict between India and Pakistan by staging attacks in India in an attempt to force New Delhi into taking unilateral action against militant facilities on Pakistani soil. Doing so would lead to an all-out war between the two South Asian rivals, giving militants even more room to maneuver. In the case of the United States and Pakistan, an attack does not have to be successful, such as the case with the Times Square plot. All that is required is an attempt by an individual with easily traceable connections to Pakistan and its security establishment, which would undermine the ties between the two. Ideally, the goal is to create a situation where the United States is forced to be more aggressive about unilateral action on Pakistani soil. Doing so would create further chaos, which is the environment in which the jihadists thrive.

 

It should be noted that the whole idea of the al Qaeda-allied Pakistani Taliban claiming responsibility for the failed Times Square attack makes no sense. Why would the jihadists expend resources on an individual who did not have the skill set to pull off a real bombing? It only makes the organization appear weak, unless of course the intent was not to stage an actual attack, but rather undermine U.S. strategy for the region by creating problems between Islamabad and Washington.

 

Lest our readers think there isn’t anything going on in the world beyond Pakistan, the financial crisis in Europe has not gone anywhere — in fact, it continues to build. German Chancellor Angela Merkel told parliament that Europe is facing an “existential test” from the Greek-triggered crisis, noting that “if the euro fails, then Europe fails.” The chancellor is laying the groundwork for a Friday vote on approving Germany’s 123 billion euro contribution to a eurozone bailout fund.

 

While it was not designed that way, the euro has become the EU. The euro was intended to inject German economic dynamism into the rest of Europe, providing capital and markets that would act like the ocean tide and raise all boats. Instead, the common currency allowed poorer Southern Europe to delay reforms.

The issue of the day focuses on German subsidization of the South versus a series of rolling collapses should Berlin refuse. Unintended or not — and economically beneficial or not — the link between Germany’s checkbook and “the preservation of the European idea” is undisputed. If Germany is to seek global stature, it will have to make donations of similar scale to the European South over and over again. And should it refuse to participate, the great unraveling of Europe will begin with a vengeance.

 

It is not so much that we are attracted to the drama in Berlin — although it is worth noting that there has not been this type of drama in Berlin since the 1940s — but rather that the Germans are enacting policies that have a hint of desperation to them. On Wednesday the Germans instituted a ban on naked short selling, market parlance for betting that a certain horse will lose badly. Such trades usually only affect the margins of the market, and governments only get nervous about them when the ship seems about to go down. 

 

For comparison, the United States instituted a similar policy in July 2008, just before the American markets degraded from wobbly to free fall.

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