Altered Equations

So now the US, the world’s most powerful democracy, and China, the most powerful Communist authoritarian state, have taken a wondrous resolve to commit themselves to working for stable and peaceful relations in all of South Asia. This is what US President Barack Obama said during his joint briefing with Chinese President Hu Jintao in Beijing on Tuesday. Going by the joint statement, the two countries ‘‘support the efforts of Afghanistan and Pakistan to fight terrorism, maintain domestic stability and achieve sustainable economic and social development, and support the improvement and growth of relations between India and Pakistan’’. The naive would hail the joint statement as a reflection of Obama’s new-world vision, when every country would support every other. In that narrative, therefore, what it boils down to is an exceptionally reformed China coming to the rescue of India-Pakistan ties. Since when has Obama realized that such a China has already happened, to which the job of monitoring South Asia and especially of making an invaluable contribution to the strained India-Pakistan relations can be outsourced? Since when has Obama realized that Pakistan can keep sponsoring terrorists against India and yet China can help effect a new India-Pakistan camaraderie phase without even being seen asking Pakistan to stop the ISI terror notoriety? Since when has Obama realized that it is China that can be reliably banked on in securing peace in South Asia, especially in the world capital of jihadi super-terrorism, Pakistan, in relation to India?

All of that would not be if it were not for Washington’s coming to terms with the South Asian geo-strategic dynamics as well as the reality of China’s present stardom, both economic and military — it being the second largest economy in the world on the one hand and aspiring to territorialize outer space, too, on the other. An unspoken sense of practicality, therefore, is impacting on the US’ take on the unstoppable Chinese stride: it cannot afford to ignore China from the business point of view, with the American Inc only too eager to draft a new business text with China, nor can today the US dictate anything to China as Beijing freely goes about concretizing and refining its military hardware. In other words, the US has already accepted the China inevitability; the US can only watch China rise as a parallel power. Hence the grand Obama statement that the US will not come in the way of China’s rise. What the US President, of course, will not say is that even if his country wants to come in the way of China, it just cannot.

How should India respond now? Not like a shocked nation struggling to script a new US and China thesis in view of the incredible Obama-Jintao joint statement, but as an assertive global player calling a spade a spade and making it clear that China can begin to make a meaningful contribution to peace in the India-Pakistan region if and only if it has the will — and honesty of purpose — to ask its all-weather ally, Pakistan, to stop its sustained export of terror to India. But for all this to happen, China must directly address the Pakistan Army’s ISI, for it is the ISI that is presiding over the jihad against India. Will China ever risk a direct address to the ISI audience, all of whom are party to a gamut of sinister arms and nuke exchanges? Therefore, when Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh meets Obama next week during his visit to the US, he should make it a point to remind the US President of the Beijing joint statement and tell him how it makes no sense at all. THE SENTINEL