"
A national consensus across the board is required on whether China is a threat or is China a neighbour that we can go along with
"
<--- MK NARAYANAN
While intent is the stuff of diplomacy, the national security calculus must include, and prepare to deal with, the capabilities we see around us
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SHIVSHANKAR MENON --->
NEW DELHI
2 May 2013
Delivering the late Air Chief Marshal PC Lal 25th Memorial
Lecture in New Delhi on 26 March 2008, the then national security adviser of
India, MK Narayanan, said that a “national consensus across the board” was
required on issues such as whether China is “a threat or is China a neighbour
that we can go along with”. In his lecture, entitled “Managing India’s national
security and building a consensus for the 21st century”, Narayanan suggested
that a consensus was also required on what would be the optimum terms of a
boundary settlement with China.
Four years later, Narayanan’s successor Shivshankar Menon
took to the podium in New Delhi to deliver the same memorial lecture but on a
different topic: “India’s National Security: Challenges and Issues.” Speaking
on 2 April 2012, Menon noted that “while intent is the stuff of diplomacy, the
national security calculus must include, and prepare to deal with, the
capabilities we see around us.” Later that year, Menon said in Beijing that
both sides had made considerable progress on the boundary negotiations and that
“we have increased our area of understanding between us steadily, thanks to the
SR [special representative] process.”
It could be argued that New Delhi is still none the wiser
today about Beijing, not in the least for lack of application on its part but
because China may not have helped matters with its attitude as manifested in
its foray into Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir (PoK), issuing of stapled visas to
Indian nationals, cartographic aggression, damming of rivers in Tibet, or, more
recently, incursions into Indian territory in Jammu and Kashmir. For its part,
New Delhi tweaked the Dragon's tail, first by feting Nobel Laureate Liu Xiaobo
in Norway, and then by omitting any reference to one-China from the joint
statement issued towards the end of the then Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's visit
to New Delhi in December 2010.
As New Delhi mulls options to deal with the latest Chinese
incursion into Indian territory, passions are running high among some political
parties and media alike, with calls for reproaching China and a retaliatory
action. There is a view that the latest incursion represents the largest and
most strategic land-grab since China’s launch of a more muscular policy toward
its neighbours. Another view is that if China does not respect India’s
territorial integrity, India is no longer bound to respect China’s. However,
there are others who believe that it would be premature to talk of a
retaliatory action. They insist that matters concerning relations with
important neighbours such as China deserve much greater attention to detail.
The Chinese media, which had hitherto remained silent on the
issue, spoke out on May 2 when the Communist Party-run Global Times said in an
editorial that “... staking claims to its borders is of crucial significance to
China and peace and stability along the border are also vital to India. Current
peace and status quo is not bestowed by India alone. China should firmly
maintain its friendly policy toward India. However, this doesn’t mean that
China will ignore provocations.”
Incidentally, on the day (May 1) when Indian Army Chief Gen
Bikram Singh briefed the political leadership on the situation obtaining on the
ground following the latest Chinese incursion, India held trilateral talks with
the US and Japan in Washington on a wide range of regional and global issues of
mutual interest. Their talks focussed on regional and maritime security, and
cooperation in multilateral fora.
As External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid prepares to
visit Beijing next week ahead of Chinese Premier Li Keqiang’s visit to New
Delhi later this month, it would be instructive to take a step back and look in
the rearview mirror in order to make sense of the present and the future.
The outcome of Li Keqiang’s forthcoming visit to India is not
likely to be any different from that of his predecessor Wen Jiabao in 2010,
when all that the two sides had to show by way of an outcome was a joint
statement that hid more than it revealed. There was no mention of any
contentious issues, nor did it hold out any promise for realignment of the
trajectory of Sino-Indian relationship, which by their own admission, has
“acquired global and strategic significance”. In fact, Wen’s visit did not
compare favourably with his last visit here in 2005, when both sides had at
least an “Agreement on the Political Parameters and Guiding Principles for the
Settlement of the Boundary Question” to show. The 2010 joint statement was
interesting to the extent that for the first time in many years, it did not
contain the usual formulations such as “Tibet Autonomous Region [is] part of
the territory of the People’s Republic of China”.
