The purpose of diplomacy for any country is to project its point of view and protect its national interest. National interest includes every aspect of a nation state, its economy, defence, territorial integrity and self-esteem. Any dialogue, which does not factor in all these issues, cannot reflect sound diplomacy. This point is being made in the context of our responses to China over the last three to four years. The pace at which we have been ceding strategic space to the Chinese ought to have caused alarm. It is quite surprising that it has not. Clearly there is tacit acceptance of our unequal equation. More distressingly, there also seems to be an almost fatalistic acceptance of our incapacity to redress matters.

Look at the recent examples of our muted response to the trampling of our national pride and the acceptance of the violation of our sovereignty. The Chinese deny visa to an officer of the government because he is a resident of Arunachal Pradesh. We lump it. The Chinese protest when our prime minister visits Arunachal Pradesh. We remain silent. As a matter of fact a widely held view is that our PM avoided visiting Tawang for fear of further annoying the Chinese. If that were true shouldn’t the nation be asking questions? It can even be contended that the claims over Arunachal Pradesh — that the Chinese have recently become assertive about — are perhaps a consequence of what we have conveyed to them during the border talks. The spirit of accommodation that we may have eagerly conveyed could have been taken by them to mean a willingness to concede or a sign of weakness. There is definitely a requirement to analyse the change in posture of the Chinese over the last three to four years.

... contd.