Category Archives: China and the Pacific

Nuclear Crises in the Time of Orwellian Wars

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This article was first published in my column on the Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies http://www.ipcs.org/article/south-asia/nuclear-crises-in-the-time-of-orwellian-wars-5314.html. A longer version of the article can be found here.

[…] The consciousness of being at war, and therefore in danger, makes the handing-over of all power to a small caste seem the natural, unavoidable condition of survival.               

 – George Orwell, 1984                           

 The Stalin-Churchill Exchange

In 1946, a fustian exchange of rhetoric between Stalin and Churchill was to set the stage for incessant crises in international relations since. It would take countries to the brink and often over it. In assessing the state of the world and character of relations between nations, Stalin, on 9th February, declared to a Moscow audience, “[…] development of world capitalism does not proceed smoothly and evenly, but through crises and catastrophic wars.” His point was that inequities lead to instability; as perceptions of insecurities in access to raw materials and markets provoke the impulse to redistribute favourable “spheres of influence,” often by employing armed force. The awkward irony is that this state of affairs of an uncertain world fragmented into hostile economic and military camps on the brink in perpetuity is the reality, with the effects of climate change being the only sobering moderator. The inelegant skepticism of the US in the climate change context makes for a deranged future. While Churchill (the former Prime Minister), on 5th March 1946, responded by condemning Soviet policies in Europe and declared in a speech at Westminster University Missouri, “A shadow has fallen upon the scenes so lately lighted by the Allied victory. From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent.”

There was a self-fulfilling prophecy in these words as the world knuckled down to the ideological declaration of war by the two belligerent blocs. Stalin’s words were taken to mean the inevitability of conflict between the two; while Churchill’s speech is considered one of the opening volleys of the ‘Cold War.’ With each passing year, heightened tensions between states retreating into the idea of closed dominions, the rise of nations that promote revisionist ideologies, and to add to it all the disrupting role of non-state actors and nuclear proliferation thrust new elements into the cauldron, deepening and making more catastrophic the probability of a global crisis spinning out of control.

Nuclear Crisis Group

Recognising that peril lay in the inability of formal establishments to monitor potential situations of nuclear conflict and that contemporary nuclear security had introduced dynamics vastly dissimilar to the two-bloc confrontation, a crisis group was formed as a sub-sect of the Global Zero Commission. Its mission is to analyse these predicaments, develop proposals for de-escalation and consult with appropriate agencies to diminish the danger of a nuclear exchange. The Group, an international assemblage of experts from nuclear armed countries and supporters, met for the first time on 5th-6th May 2017 in Vienna. (Details of proceedings may be found here. https://globalzero.org/files/nuclear_crises_group_urgent_steps_june_2017.pdf)

Wink-and-Nod Perils: Proliferation, Non-State Actors and Orwellian Wars

Dangers of nuclear proliferation and the deranging role of non-state actors accessing nuclear technologies has been well acknowledged but more often acted upon with a “wink-a facetious rebuke-and-a nod.” This selective look-away has consequences. The imbroglio in US dealings with Pakistan in the Afghan war exemplifies the penalties. Pakistan, an acknowledged dishonest American partner was, the US establishment asserts, “living a lie.” Pakistan’s military played “both ends against the middle.” It provided logistic conduits for money, while giving financial, material, intelligence and weapons to the jihadists. Indeed, there have been tactical gains but these pale to insignificance faced by the most conspicuous strategic failure: Pakistan providing sanctuary and sustenance to jihadis.  Combat, over the last 16 years (or 38?) in the absence of genuine strategic impetus, has morphed to an “Orwellian” war. And as war rages, Pakistan remains a haven to the highest concentration of terrorist groups while its nuclear fervour advances undiminished.

China has been central to nuclear proliferation in the region and the Pakistan weapon program; from blueprint of a nuclear device, through testing, to the AQ Khan enterprise and now, to tactical nuclear weapons (TNWs). The reasons for China’s profligate orientation may have originally reflected balance-of-power logic. However, the costs are perilous. Are we living another wink?

In strategic persuasion, Pakistan’s military is convinced that the US withdrawal from Afghanistan will leave a devastated, warring Afghanistan and an enfeebled insurgency-wracked Pakistan. They envisage a lonely and losing confrontation against the growing economic and military influence of the avowed enemy, India. This had to be countered by persisting with jihadis as the sine qua non of military strategy. While some have suggested that terror organizations may not be under their control, this is denial of the internals of that state where the nexus between the Army, intelligence service and jihadists is as old as the state. Unmistakably, the Islamic State (IS) has been seduced into the sub-continent; can the world, China and indeed this Group now be blind to the looming jihadist access to a nuclear arsenal?

Technology Intrusions and the Cyber Dimension

Nuclear weapons have put us on a razor’s edge, in part because of our powerlessness to control how political events and technology are driving policy. While technology invites covertness; lethality, precision, stealth and time compression that accompanies it demands transparency. This is the dilemma faced by planners: to balance the impact of technology with the need for openness. In the cyber domain, transparency will reduce hazards of unintended actions as nations prepare to use this arena to manipulate command networks.

The Road to Abolishment

The only way to eliminate the risk of nuclear weapons is through abolition. If this is the leitmotif, NFU posture is its first handmaiden backed by reduced reliance on nuclear weapons and the removal of battlefield and tactical nuclear weapons. This proposition, in toto, was unanimously welcomed by the Nuclear Crisis Group (NCG).

Flash Points.  Nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists is the biggest global concern. Discriminating between terror groups and making them instruments of state policy had to be rejected collectively. In addition to this overarching perspective, the Group identified four priority geopolitical dynamics that risked escalation to nuclear conflagration: the Korean Peninsula predicament, US/NATO-Russia meltdown in relations, South Asia conundrum and U.S.-China confrontation.

Korean Peninsula. The NCG aimed for complete denuclearization through negotiations with North Korea balanced against a calibrated end to US military exercises and provocative deployments in the Republic of Korea and easing of sanctions. China’s role in the North Korean problem had to be leveraged (not only has China fought a war on its behalf but provides existential sustenance).

US, Russia, NATO. Crisis instability between the US, Russia and NATO has taken a dangerous turn, triggered by Russian nuclear war fighting doctrine and statements that the US has neither obligation to limit nuclear-arms nor testing. In this circumstance, the impending US nuclear posture review (NPR) will likely cause disquiet given the current turbulence in West Asia, confused war on the IS in Syria, the ‘perpetual’ wars in Iraq and the AF-Pak region, Russia’s annexation of Ukrainian territory, recalcitrant Chinese activities in the South and East China Sea and increased nuclear activity by North Korea. But the real discounted problem in the entanglement is how to device measures that will prevent a slide back to the early Cold War era.

South Asia Situation.  India has a declared nuclear doctrine; at its heart is NFU and generation of a credible minimum deterrent. India does not differentiate between tactical and strategic nuclear weapons on the grounds that use of nuclear weapons introduces an uncontrollable development. To suggest that ambiguity and First Use provide options, is to suggest that nuclear war fighting, in conventional terms, is an option. This is a denial of the nature of nuclear weapons. With Pakistan there are foundational complications; it has no declared doctrine, while the hold of the “deep state” (the military-intelligence-jihadi combine) on the nation is so smothering that dialogue is confounded by the question “who to dialogue with?” Duplicity and denial on issues related to state support, sanctuary and complicity with terror organisations makes confabulations with civilian government a sterile exercise. Continued collusion with China on nuclear weapons production and proliferation is an area that must be seized. If multilateral constraints are not in place then the probability of these technologies falling into jihadi hands is high.

US-China Relations. US-China relations remain fragile as the latter’s growth and aspirations come in conflict with America’s global influence, as is apparent in the sporadic friction that flares in the South and East China seas. China’s revisionist drive in this expanse and its military modernisation plans and policy has not helped to pacify matters. Rather it has increased the probability of escalation. Its surreptitious nuclear proliferatory enterprises have further exacerbated the situation. While China has, over the years, quite steadfastly adhered to its NFU nuclear policy, it is its support of states such as North Korea and Pakistan that is worrisome.

A Half Way Conclusion 

Fragmentation in geopolitics, rise of bigoted revisionist ideologies, nuclear perfidy of authoritarian dispensations and the end of an overwrought global order makes for fragility in nuclear affairs. As nations see themselves besieged by forces beyond control, it is timely that the Group has raised its collective voice to temper the idealistic nuclear agenda of abolition with a dose of realism that first charts a course across two pragmatic way points: No First Use and removal of tactical nuclear weapons.

The CPEC: Corridor to Chinese Coffers

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This article was first published on the Institute for Peace and Conflict website. 

Is it to China that the economic benefits from CPEC are destined and is this another lease-for-debt deal?

By

Vice Admiral (retd) Vijay Shankar

Misshapen Marshall Analogy

Deceptive arguments are current that urge that the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) finds historic equivalence in the Marshall Plan. The Plan was an American Congressional Act legislated on April 3rd 1948, in the immediate depredations of post-World War II Europe. It sought “to promote world peace (?)…, national interests, and foreign policy of the United States through economic, financial, and other measures necessary for…free institutions to survive consistent with the promotion of the strength and stability of the US.” The key phrases of the Plan were “strength, stability and national interests of the US.” Underlying it was the clash of two opposing ideologies, Communism versus Western Capitalism.

By 1946–1947, the fear of the spread of Communism among the collapsed economies of Europe, spurred the US Congress to approve funding of $13 billion ($189.35b in 2016) over a period of four years for the rebuilding of Western Europe. This life-saving transfusion generated a resurgence of West European industrialization and opened extensive markets that in turn stimulated the American economy. The strategic economic recovery programme quite deliberately precluded any involvement of either the East European economies or the Soviet Union. It resulted in a re-structured economic order that promoted European integration; it also created a vast system of commerce that complimented the domestic economy of the United States. The assertion that the Plan represented American altruism has long been debunked, as the investment in Europe not only kept the United States from regressing into depression, but also set the stage in 1949 for the creation of the mother-of-all military alliances, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). The gargantuan nature of NATO may be gauged by the fact that it’s combined military spending even today accounts for over 70% of global aggregate.

China: No Altruist

In this context, the CPEC is not a bulwark against an ideology; neither does it presage the threat of global armed confrontation between competing blocs, nor does China have the economic muscle to promise rapid materialization of a dominant economic confederacy. So then what is it all about? Pakistan, given the precarious internal security situation that prevails, teamed with venal politics and crumbling infrastructure, hardly provides the inducement for long term massive investment. The Wold Bank’s current economic outlook concludes that Pakistan faces,

“significant economic, governance and security challenges to achieve durable            development outcomes. The persistence of conflict in the border areas and security challenges throughout the country is a reality that affects all aspects of life in Pakistan and impedes development. A range of governance and business environment indicators suggest that deep improvements in governance are needed to unleash Pakistan’s growth potential.”[1]

While short term forecast have registered growth in the region of 4.2 per cent; given the scale, magnitude and expanse of the project the financial hazard of plunging into a debt trap is real, while falling victim to fugacious investors riding sub-sets of the project already appear to be an actuality. After all, the Chinese in their financial dealings have not shown themselves to be altruists. Several contemporary China driven international projects illustrate their covetousness:

Woes of the non-performing Hambantota port project in Sri Lanka, built with a Chinese loan of US$ 1.4 billion, have not come to an end. Even after 80 per cent stake being appropriated by China, a lease charter leading to erosion of ownership of the seaport and loss of ‘sovereignty’ over 15,000 acres of land, neither dividends nor revenues are apparent. It would be interesting to establish how ‘win-win’ the Lankans feel about the project.

Mozambique was promised more than $5 billion from China in two years 2016-18. Loans were funnelled to big construction projects. However, economists point out “projects financed by China do not contribute towards growth. Highways, power projects and railway tracks are built by mandated Chinese firms who bring own workers and materials down to the nails and hammers; credits thus flow directly back to China.” This model that neither invites local participation nor generates wealth within has left the country crippled by a debt payment crisis compounded by economic slowdown, renewed violent conflict and drop in commodity prices (main source of revenue).

Lease-for-Debt

And what of debt repayment? In both cases there appears to be a lease-for-debt deal afoot. The story of China railroading Kenya into arrears and the floundering fate of Tanzania’s $10bn Bagamoyo Port follows the same pattern.

In form, the $50bn CPEC is not just a transportation network. Comprising a portfolio of projects, the physical “corridor” consists of highways, railways, and pipeline systems running along energy nodes driving special economic zones (SEZ) intended to attract investors and entrepreneurs. The North East-South West orientation from Gwadar to Kashgar spans near 3000 kilometres. Three transportation arteries are planned for the project: a western route through Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa; an eastern route through Sindh and Punjab and a central route crisscrossing the other two. A northern highway route connects to Kashgar, via the Karakoram. Implementation is in four parts which include: development of Gwadar Port, investment in road infrastructure, rail and air hook-ups to service the corridor and the creation of energy nodes and SEZs. $35bn is allocated for energy projects while $15bn for the other three elements. The entire portfolio is to be completed by 2030. Here again Chinese companies enjoy priority of mandate in all projects. Infrastructure and energy sectors, the backbone of the project, are government-led initiatives. They are characterised with numerous procrastinations: persistent terrorist attacks in Baluchistan, Sindh and Punjab inspire little confidence in investors while, partisan federal control is making for discord among provinces. Opposition parties suggest, with some veracity, that the government neglects the Western and Central Routes and are focused on the Punjab province.

A Conclusion: China’s Blueprint

For China, the project grants, a much hankered for, 40 years operation rights to Gwadar port, assuring a long-term strategic base in the Arabian Sea that reduces Chinese dependence on the Malacca Straits while addressing the imperative to stimulate pace of development in their restive western region (largely subsidised by the project). Availability of ‘exclusive’ zones for Chinese companies along the corridor may even suggest arrogation of prime economic spaces in what can only be termed as “neoteric mercantilism”. Financially, as suggested by columnist Khurram Husain, the $50bn investment (75% loan and 25% equity) demands debt servicing to the tune of $3.5 to 4bn annually which in turn urges an improbable 7% year on year growth. Already China, exercised by Pakistan’s inability to attract investments, has fashioned a consortium of Chinese companies that has bought out 40 per cent ownership of Pakistan’s only stock exchange. This is possibly the first big price Pakistan is paying in return for investments.

Considering all this, the question then becomes: is it to China’s coffers that the economic benefits from CPEC are destined and is this another lease-for-debt deal? Time will very soon tell.

[1] http://www.worldbank.org/en/results/2013/04/26/pakistan-achieving-results-in-a-challenging-environment

The Misshapen Pivot

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By

Vice Admiral (retd) Vijay Shankar 

(This article was first published in the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies web site on 21 October 2016 and may be accessed at  http://www.ipcs.org/article/china/the-misshapen-pivot-5158.html )

We note, with some, anxiety an unmistakable parallel to the current situation in the Western Pacific with what obtained in the run-up to the 20th Century. An impending face-off between a rising and revisionist China against a loose entente of status-quo powers led by a deflected USA that has set itself the task to pivot into the region and rebalance the strategic situation. All this at a time of convulsions in West Asia and global uncertainty. For the pivot to flounder is to legitimize Chinese illegal actions.

Lessons of History

The world of empires of the 18th and 19th centuries were remarkably well connected, willing to strike compromises that did not upend the status-quo and in turn enjoyed slanted stability. Imperialism of the 19th century thrust political, financial, economic, scientific and religious institutions that we see as underpinning the world system to this day. But beneath this global order run widespread fault lines that can invariably be linked to the nature of the expansionist impulse.

In 1894 China and Japan went to war. The conflict was significant for it marked the first time that a host of imperial powers would become directly involved in a struggle between two sovereign nations far from their own shores. Regardless of how these powers felt about each other, they had strong mercantile interests based solely on open access to China. Victorious Japan sought exclusive hold over China’s Liaotung peninsula as part of the 1895 Treaty of Shimonoseki. Russia, Germany and France all felt that conditions imposed by the Treaty placed in jeopardy their own commercial interests and consequently threatened war unless Japan backed down. In the event Japan surrendered its claim to Liaotung in return for a free hand in Korea and increased war reparations from China. Within two years Great Britain, Germany and France sensing the weakness of The Qing Empire capitalised on the political and economic opportunities and took control of vast local regions. China thereafter rapidly began to fall apart; it suffered two more imperial wars: suppression of the Boxer Rebellion in 1900 and war between Russia and Japan in 1904-05 over ambitions in Korea and Manchuria. Battles were fought on Chinese soil and in the waters of the East and South China Sea. Imperial competition and ‘cozy arrangements’ in the region, as James Joll has pointed out, provided one more enticement for the coming First World War.

The Tearing Tectonic

In coming to grips with that tumultuous period in East Asia a convergence of three geopolitical fault lines may be discerned beneath the larger rift that had been caused by the decay and degeneration of the Qing Empire. The end of Empire generated in China political stresses which pulled apart the state almost in terms of a geological ‘Tearing Tectonic’. While three fault lines: an emerging imperial power in the form of Japan, intervention of existing rival colonial powers sensing large commercial and magistracy interests and the decline of an existing centre of power in Russia simultaneously fractured to release energies that catalysed the speedy collapse of the ‘middle kingdom’.

A French political cartoon from 1898 is most illustrative of the situation. A pastry “Chine” is being divided between Queen Victoria, the German Kaiser, Nicholas II of Russia, the French Marianne cozying-up to the Czar and a Samurai Japan. A powerless Qing official throws up his hands.

571px-china_imperialism_cartoon

“En Chine Le gâteau des Rois et… des Empereurs” “Le Petit Journal”, 16th January 1898

The Unmistakable Parallel

As we examine contemporary geopolitics of the East Asian region we note with some anxiety an unmistakable parallel to the situation that obtained in the run-up to the Twentieth Century with a switch in the main protagonists. The fault lines against a backdrop of a global rift of uncertainty are all discernable.  A rising and revisionist China sensing opportunity for hegemony in the region confronted by a potential entente of status-quo powers, more than likely to include Japan, Australia and India; led by a deflected and hesitant USA, all to the exclusion of a declining and sulking Russia.  This at a time of great convulsions in West Asia when the strategic paradigm of the day (if there is one) is the tensions of the multi polar; the tyranny of a techno-economic combine in conflict with politics of the state; the anarchy of expectations; and polarization of peoples along religio-cultural lines all compacted in the cauldron of globalization. An uncertain geo-political brew, as the world had never seen before, has come to pass under the shadow of the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

The Strategic Pivot

The “strategic pivot” or rebalancing, launched in 2009 by the Obama government, is premised on the recognition that a disproportionate share of political tensions and economic history of the 21st century will be written in the Asia-Pacific region. The key tenet of this strategic reorientation is the need to cultivate a stable and predictable political, economic, and security environment across a region spanning the Indian Ocean to the West Pacific. Unsaid is the central dynamic to build an Entente to contain and balance the rise of China. The military component of the pivot cannot be overemphasized and remains the abiding driver of policy in the region. The strategic importance of the pivot derives from the increased collective concern about China’s military modernization and its larger revisionist objectives.

Theoretically the Asia-Pacific pivot makes strategic sense. However, there is sloth in implementation influenced to some extent, by the situation in West Asia and the unfinished business of Afghanistan and Iraq. Yet allowing these distractions to dilute the strategic priority of the Asia-Pacific could well run the hazard of accelerating a return to an ‘atavistic actuation’ that threatens global stability. As events have unfolded, sloth has granted China a fortuitous time-window to prepare for the impending encounter. It also explains China’s impious haste in development of military infrastructure and artificial islands in the South and East China Sea, operationalizing “Access Denial” strategies, declaring proprietary sea lanes of communication and Air Defence Identification Zones and a cavalier attitude towards The Hague’s verdict on claims in these seas.

Conclusion

The absence of a direct challenge to China’s provocative moves on the East and South China Seas, despite the fact that fundamental principles of international order have been defied, is to allow the idea of the strategic pivot to flounder. This will provide space to China to progress with its own unhinged scheme of a “New Model on Great Power Relations” that creates a de-facto G2 and works to marginalizing of other major stake holders in regional security. Besides such a scheme legitimises China’s claims in the South and East China Sea and in a manners anoints it as the recognised regional hegemon and a ‘system shaper’; suggesting a return to a situation analogous to the pre-20th Century context.