IN many ways we are at a crossroads in our foreign relations. The near-complete dominance of world power by the United States has introduced an unprecedented situation in world politics. Hitherto all commentary on international relations was an analysis of a bipolar world. This description is also in a sense inadequate. Apart from the polarities involved there was also a systemic divide that dominated the world. A new aspect about our world is its divorce, as it were, from the systemic questions.

To be sure, even in earlier times there was often a divorce from the implications of the systemic divide in the actual conduct of foreign policy. A near-classical example should suffice to illustrate two cases of diplomatic moves of supra-systemic politics. I refer to the historic initiative of the Chinese in 1971-1972 towards the United States. This move came at a time often described as the spring of ideology in China – the Cultural Revolution. The extreme left that seemed to dominate the Chinese political scene understandably took the systemic divide rather seriously. Small wonder that the foreign minister of China had to answer some hard questions about the new move.

In justifying China’s moves towards the United States which first resulted in Kissinger’s trip, and a year later President Nixon’s visit to the Generals of the PLA, he drew an analogy with the politics of Stalin who was above reproach as far as the discourse during the cultural revolution was concerned. Chen Yi reminded them about what Stalin had done in the thirties, especially his pact with Hitler. Presumably he had hoped that the new, and what we have chosen to call ‘supra-systemic’, moves would need no further explanation.¹ The point is that foreign policy has always been laden with a rather heavy baggage of cynicism and opportunism. Nevertheless, it has also carried an equally heavy baggage of commitments and responsibilities resulting from the systemic division of the world.

An example of sorts would be the aid, both political and material, that the socialist states extended to liberation struggles all around the world and of course to the newly independent states of the Third World. Mao Zedong once used a very graphic phrase to describe a typical socialist state taking or giving assistance to different kinds of regimes, likening it to a Buddhist temple with four different abbots at four different gates.² The thrust of his argument was that there were obligations that were neither easy to fulfil or to explain politically.

 

We are now face to face with a China that finds itself free from a whole range of ‘systemic’ obligations. This is not to say that the international system does not exist, but that it is a system of states each of which is building or hoping to build a modern industrialized state. Terms such as ‘socialism’ or ‘people’s democracy’, as a special or more complete form of democracy, sound awfully dated. Modern international politics has become an exercise in management and governance rather than one of a triumph or decline of a production system. Now it is all a question of management.

Over the last decade there has emerged a world system that has been managed or sought to be managed by the five nuclear powers (N5 for short) who are also permanent members of the Security Council (P5 for short). In this context it is easy to see why the Chinese reacted so strongly to India’s nuclear tests at Pokhran. There was enough provocation for them in the speech made by the then defence minister of India, George Fernandes, that sought to identify our security with the threat from China. But it is equally true that the Chinese would have expressed their unhappiness at India’s audacity in wanting to enter the management council of the world, at any rate of the disarmament regime.

One must also see the Chinese attitude to the nuclear deal between India and the United States in this context. There was no criticism of the agreement but the tone of the comment was less than enthusiastic. This may, of course, have a bearing on China’s relations with the United States and, as such, may be more related to US foreign policy. After all, the agreement does involve the recognition of a sixth power, at least as a deputy manager, by the most powerful state, i.e. the United States, and that too without prior consultations with China, one of the P5 nations.

 

China has conducted its foreign relations in an environment that I would describe as post-conflictual. This means that China is perhaps the only state on the mainland of Asia that does not face military conflict or its possibility. In other words, China has no adversary that visualizes or apprehends a military conflict with China. There are many unresolved problems in China’s relations with its neighbours. None of its neighbours, however, postulates a military conflict with China as a possible solution. All its security or foreign relations problems, such as they might be, are essentially diplomatic in nature.

The most prominent among these relate to the question of the future of Taiwan. On arrival in Washington on 21 April 2006, Hu Jintao, the Chinese President, reiterated his resolve to solve the Taiwan question peacefully and through negotiations.³ There is also on the face of it the irresoluble problem of human rights. No less important is the American insistence on its own neo-conservative ideas of market-oriented democracy. The western ideas on the ‘so-called’ free economy and society in general and America in particular, pose a major problem for China’s foreign relations. Increasingly the Chinese foreign policy scene looks more tension-ridden than ever. It is not a new Cold War, but it certainly looks like a cold peace. In this situation Sino-Indian relations acquire a degree of importance that they never possessed over the past four decades or more. It suddenly looks that these relations have acquired an urgency of sorts.

 

One likely consequence of this is that the relations between India and China will cease to be limited to their bilateral aspects. It is likely that India and China would discover that their dealings with the new ‘neo-conservative’ world order would necessitate more open-ended consultations and that they better begin soon. It is perhaps not as important that India and the US emerge as strategic partners, as it is for China and India to begin a process of mutually arriving at an understanding of the implications of the American monopoly or dominance of the world distribution of power. China has still not demonstrated a will to see that its strategic perspectives needs to be shared with India. However, it is more than possible that it may see its need. It would not be wrong to assert that both India and China share a perspective – that it is not possible to deal with the new world order in terms of either complete collaboration with or uncompromising opposition to the United States.⁴

There was more security in the world during the years of the Cold War, in part because the reality of a ‘countervailing power’ to the United States, i.e. the Soviet Union, made the world a far less tense place to live in. With the destruction of the socialist bloc, the inherent security of the divided world has disappeared. It has been replaced with the near anarchy and unpredictability of the post-Cold War world. The US bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade is a fitting example of the new accident-prone nature of the new world order. The Chinese view that the bombing was intentional may not be very material. What is important is that such alleged accidents rarely occurred during the Cold War era.

 

The new world order has encouraged an indiscriminate use of interventionist approaches. Whether it was erstwhile Yugoslavia yesterday or Iraq today or Iran tomorrow, both China and India have to face the reality of indiscriminate use of interventionist military power. One does not have to be a protagonist of the ‘conflict of civilizations’ thesis to see that this power will be increasingly employed against the Asian states, thereby straining the credibility of the larger states like India and China.

It appears that China has yet to see the full implications of the new aggressiveness in the international behaviour of the United States, except in terms like what it might mean for the future of Taiwan. But even there the two powers seem to be content in stating their respective positions on Taiwan.⁵ Otherwise the Chinese foreign policy behaviour still labours under the history and thinking patterns of what is clearly a bygone era.

That may be the principal reason as to why China is (so far) less than keen on an increased and enhanced role for India in world politics. China’s lack of enthusiasm for a permanent seat on the Security Council for India is a telling example of the lack of realism in China’s diplomacy. It still does not see that another large Asian state must be represented on the Council. Its attitude is perhaps much too stuck in the politics of quid pro quo, not looking at the Indian demands with a view to their dynamism. It does not seem that Hu Jintao is quite willing to do that.

 

But then it is no less true that Indian diplomacy has not been as active on the China front as it should or could be. The negotiations on the border question have gone on for far too long. To be sure, the bottlenecks on the way to solutions are not only of India’s making. Nevertheless, the picture that emerges from the accounts of the near-endless series of consultations does not show that either country is quite conscious of the international implications of an unresolved border dispute between the two giant states of Asia. India-China problems were never only bilateral. They are even less so today. Any futuristic assessment of Asian politics will make it clear that the China-India relationship is the fulcrum of Asia. If the strings of power play in Asia have to lie in Asia, this fulcrum has to be strengthened. It is not clear to an outsider if South Block quite sees the things in this way at all. If it does, then it is not clear if it attaches any urgency to the task.

Then there is the inevitable China-Pakistan tie-up. In the first week of April 2006 there was a Chinese delegation in Pakistan discussing the complex issues of nuclear power. It is not and cannot be anybody’s argument that China’s close relationship with Pakistan has to cease before the India-China relationship can improve. At the same time China has to see that the China-Pakistan relationship has to be integrated into an overall strategic perspective for (at least) South Asia. There are occasional indications that this is beginning to happen; at any rate the Beijing-Islamabad relations have mercifully lost their earlier edge. This process has to go on and develop further. It may not be out of place to mention here that India can and should contribute to that process. This would mean that the present state of India-Pakistan relationship cannot afford its present state of suspended animation. This would suggest that the future of the China-India relationship is still unclear in as much as it has not gone beyond the bilateral formalities and a certain atmospherics. Nevertheless it shows that it is full of possibilities and potential.

 

There was a time, especially during the period of deteriorating China-Soviet Union relations, when a certain ‘global’ character was imposed on the China-India relationship. The manner in which Chen Yi defended China’s India relations to the Cultural Revolution group in the foreign ministry bears ample testimony to the fact that this relationship had turned global, so to speak, despite the national leadership’s apparent desire to the contrary.⁶ History has now turned full circle. Now it cries out to become global despite the national leadership’s apparent lack of enthusiasm for the same. These relations move along the beaten track that is conflict free but nevertheless a shade stagnant. It is difficult to predict as to when they would become active and dynamic again. All that can be asserted with some confidence is that Asian politics will not get out of the strait-jacket that the American neo-conservative (i.e. ideological) perspectives have forced it into.

 

* Given the nature of this writing, it does not quite need any footnotes. Here are, however, some texts elaborating on the points made.

 

Footnotes:

1. For a full account of this episode, see Ma Jisen, The Cultural Revolution in the Foreign Ministry of China. The Chinese University Press, Hong Kong, 2004, pp. 285-306.

2. There are collections of various remarks made by Mao Zedong during the turbulent years of the Cultural Revolution. This remark was one of those. I cannot either cite the source or authenticate it.

3. Various news agencies have reported Hu Jintao’s speech. I have cited it because it is the latest of its kind.

4. This has been true of China for a long time. In case of India, this is a relatively new phenomenon. India’s recent agreement with the US on nuclear energy is clearly the result of the new perspective.

5. Hu Jintao’s April trip to Washington has not taken us far in terms of understanding the Chinese perspective on the US position on no change in the status quo in the Taiwan Straits. How they view the consequences of this position is so far not clear.

6. See Ma Jisen, op cit.