USA And The Future Of The World

[dhu]

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->TALE OF TWO NATIONS: Why the US responds differently to the rise of China and of India
The Telegraph (India) ^ | 12/16/07 | SUNANDA K. DATTA-RAY


Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew wonders why “India’s peaceful rise hasn’t led to unease over the country’s future” whereas “China’s peaceful rise (has) raised apprehensions”. His comparison of the global (meaning American) response to the two nations in a recent article in Forbes magazine should warn smart-alecky Indians to stop their silly gushing about “Chindia” and consider a coherent and consistent response to the challenge as Manmohan Singh prepares to visit China.

Lee answers his own question by outlining the Confucian compulsions that drive China to forge ahead on the economic, social and military fronts so that it eventually becomes “a peer competitor, if not an adversary” of the United States of America. A China that aspires to best the US is bound to see India as a puny neighbour, as was evident from Liu Shao-chi’s claim that “China was a great power and had to punish India once”. So had Vietnam in 1979 because it, too, was becoming uppity. India may again have to be “punished” — though the instruments of chastisement may be different — if a booming economy and Western applause encourage what the Chinese consider too much assertiveness.

Of course, India’s high annual growth is narrowing the gap. There are also many flaws in the Chinese miracle that admirers seldom acknowledge. But China’s strident territorial claims, aggressive competition for gas, charm offensive in south-east Asia and determination to exclude India from east Asian diplomacy (Malaysia being its cat’s-paw) confirm the “singleness of purpose in policy and its execution” that prompt American, European and Japanese misgivings.

Lee’s surprise at the US actively promoting India’s growth while actively trying to curb China’s ignores the exigencies of swings in great power politics. Indians cannot forget the bleak years when the US would not sell the Kray computer India sought or components for a light combat aircraft. In contrast, politically acquiescent China received sophisticated dual use technology that laid the foundations of modernization as well as a flood of American investment for its economic revolution. It surprises Indians even more to learn that India is militarily more powerful than China. “India’s navy has an aircraft-carrier force; its air force has the latest Sukhoi and MiG aircraft; its army is among the best trained and equipped in Asia. India can project power across its borders farther and better than China can,” Lee says, “yet there is no fear that India has aggressive intentions.”

Isn’t there? Pakistan’s “major non-NATO ally” status, carrying substantial military and economic privileges, meant the Americans were renewing their traditional insurance lest their new investment in India went awry. Nor does the nuclear treaty grant everything India wants. If American wariness of India hasn’t quite gone, India is even more cautious, and with better reason too, about China. The spectre of 1962 haunts us still. India knows it cannot match China’s nuclear arsenal, range of ballistic missiles, the numerical strength of the People’s Liberation Army, “string of pearls” (reconnaissance posts) in the Indian Ocean and the strategic triangle of Gwadar in Pakistan, Hambantota in Sri Lanka and Sitwe (Akyab) in Myanmar.

Lee has an instinctive understanding of his ancestral land. He also has a special interest in the Sino-Indian equation because, as he says, Singapore and south-east Asia, sandwiched between the two behemoths, need China and India. His optimistic expectation is that in growing and prospering together, they will pull up the rest of Asia. The reasons he gives for the widespread assumption that the West prefers India to China deserve consideration.

First, India “is a democracy in which numerous political forces are constantly at work, making for an internal system of checks and balances”. Coalition governments and communist recalcitrance mean that “India’s development will, from time to time, run into domestic obstruction”. In short, we dither when the need is for decisive action. Second, being “surrounded by states in turmoil, India obviously has preoccupations enough to keep its focus fixed on its border regions”. In other words, unlike China, India has too much on its plate to threaten anyone.

That can be the accident of geopolitics; it can also owe something to political design. As Lee says, “Pakistan is in crisis; a bad outcome there will increase the terrorist threat to India.” Pervez Musharraf in civilian attire won’t have the same command over the army, and any other elected president would have even less. But it is also true that Pakistan’s nuisance value, especially the missile and nuclear strength that go a long way in redressing the region’s natural geopolitical balance, is largely the product of calculated and sustained American and Chinese patronage.

Third, India does not pose a challenge to Western global dominance — “and won’t until it gets its social infrastructure up to First World standards and further liberalizes its economy”. But the Chinese are so determined to catch up with the US, Europe and Japan that in 20 to 30 years the world will have to accommodate a more technologically advanced and economically sophisticated China, irrespective of whether it is still a dictatorship or has made some concession to multi-party politics.

Fourth, India’s elite “speak, write and publish in English” and “hold a wide range of diverse views”. Both make for easy communication with the Anglo-American elite but linguistic familiarity is not the only reason for the latter’s sense of comfort. Lee’s mention in this context of Amartya Sen’s The Argumentative Indian suggests a character trait Westerners find appealing. It is not clear whether he thinks this is because argumentativeness indicates disunity or because it implies flexibility.

China’s token gesture of rephrasing its “peaceful rise” to “peaceful development” has not helped. Lee feels that “greater openness and transparency in Chinese society” would make a difference. Now, even those few Chinese who speak or write in English use speech, like Talleyrand, to conceal their innermost thoughts. China’s huge success makes it doubly unpopular with a West that already suffers from the “phobia of the yellow peril” reinforced by memories of the Cultural Revolution, Tiananmen Square and government censorship. Even if a multi-party China lagged behind India economically, it would, Lee thinks, still invite Western hostility. What he leaves out but has elaborated before is the cultural difference between “intense” Chinese and “soft” or “spiritual” Indians that also explains why the West regards the former — and not the latter — as a menace.

Social psychologists might say that a sense of persecution is essential for a nation to mobilize its moral and material resources to tackle the world. But truth to tell, China’s isolation ended with Henry Kissinger’s 1971 mission. Apart from the technological and financial help already mentioned, America’s Cold War patronage also provided the diplomatic respectability China did not enjoy when India was its only non-communist champion on the international stage. The Sino-US rapprochement forced Southeast Asian countries like Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines swiftly to change tack and establish diplomatic relations with China. Indonesia, the biggest regional power, was the last. Chinese-dominated Singapore with massive economic relations with China, and China’s most eloquent interlocutor on the world stage, tactfully deferred the formality of diplomatic ties until then.

Having enabled China to reach this height, the Americans might feel their protégé has (to lapse into a vulgarism) become too big for its boots. That does not concern India. What does is China’s view of itself and its place in Asia and the world. That does not mean China is out to put down India. But any equation Lee suggests must reconcile India’s dignity and growing stature with what Jawaharlal Nehru called China’s “Middle Kingdom complex”. I suspect that knowing this, Southeast Asians feel obliged to propitiate China in the same way as the ancient Greeks called the Furies, the good-natured ladies in the hope of flattering them into being benign. But there is no reason for India to follow suit. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->