Unleashing Pakistan

It is not the United States alone that shapes China’s power calculus on India. Pakistan is as important. Nuclear history also tells us that after India’s first nuclear test in May 1974, Beijing moved quickly to assist Islamabad’s nuclear weapon programme and allowed it to acquire atomic parity with India. As the Indo-US deal separates India from Pakistan, China’s traditional policy of promoting parity between New Delhi and Islamabad has come under severe stress. Beijing has three options on the nuclear deal. One is to stay neutral and go with the flow at the IAEA and the NSG. Second, is to use Pakistan and the Europeans to block or delay the deal at the IAEA and the NSG. Third, is to come out openly in support of the Indo-US deal, and position itself as a genuine partner of India. The problem for China is that the first option will have little credibility, the second will undermine relations with India, and the third demands a fundamental recasting of Beijing’s traditional South Asia policy in New Delhi’s favour. Beijing’s dilemmas are not impossible to resolve. After all the Bush administration has managed to improve relations with both India and Pakistan while discarding the past “even-handed” policy in South Asia. China, which is acutely sensitive to changing regional balances, cannot be blind to the fact that India is pulling away from Pakistan on all indicators of power. This demands that China swallow the lump in its throat, accept India’s new nuclear status and work with the new geopolitical reality in the subcontinent. Inertia, however, is a powerful retarding force on all governments, and it is never easy to change old policies.

SAARC diplomacy

After we hear from the Chinese at the IAEA on Friday, its foreign minister Yang Jiechi is likely to be in Colombo mingling with the subcontinent’s leaders over the weekend at the 15th Summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation. China is among the many new states, including the United States, European Union, Japan, South Korea and Iran, that have been admitted as observers into SAARC. If Beijing reveals a positive attitude towards the Indo-US nuclear deal at the IAEA, New Delhi must in turn signal that it is ready for genuine cooperation with China in deepening regional integration through the SAARC. It is no secret that China has sought an increasing role within the SAARC and India has been hesitant to let that happen all these years. If China makes it clear that it will not seek to balance India within the subcontinent, New Delhi has no reason to undercut Beijing’s profile in South Asia. Working together, they can redefine the economic future of the subcontinent.

The writer is a Professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore iscrmohan@ntu.edu.sg