Reports of a massive twenty-five-year investment and security partnership between China and Iran have caused a stir in Washington, suggesting that Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign to isolate Tehran has failed. But the United States is not the only country concerned about the prospect of a Sino-Iranian grand alliance. India has various investments in Iran that could be threatened by the Chinese economic juggernaut.
Even as India and China hold talks to defuse a deadly Himalayan border clash between their troops last month, New Delhi’s next challenge from Beijing is already emerging, over 1,000km (620 miles) away from Indian territory – in Iran.
Australia’s strategy on engaging India has long revolved around the so-called “three Cs:” cricket, curry, and the Commonwealth. In light of the changing status of bilateral relations in 2020, let’s add a couple more Cs to the list: China, and containment of.
India is now rethinking its China policy and looking for ways to build deterrence, especially given the disparity in military and economic power between the two countries. And it now has an opportunity to do this by leading a middle-power response to China in the Asia-Pacific.
An armed conflict will do little to resolve India’s security dilemma along the Himalayan border with China. The coronavirus and the economic downturn caused by currency demonetisation, when coupled with an expensive war, however, limited the latter might be, could lead to a serious downturn in an economy that is already bleeding.
Despite Moscow’s seeming willingness to keep supplying weaponry at short notice—as demonstrated during Singh’s recent visit—New Delhi needs to come to terms with changed global realities at multiple levels. The old Indo-Russian arms transfer nexus is a relic of the past.
In his memoir, The Making of a Frontier, about the five years he spent on the fringes of Jammu and Kashmir in the late 19th century, British officer Col. Algernon Durand observed that “the man on the Frontier sees but his own square on the chess-board, and can know but little of the whole game in which he is a pawn.” When and if we next see clashes on the frontiers of Ladakh, it will be vital to keep this perspective in mind. Not all squares on a chess board are worth fighting over.
While Shashi Tharoor and William Dalrymple were writing best-sellers trashing British colonialism in India, the Chinese, it turns out, were buying up the current British establishment. Recent reports from London indicate how expansive the Chinese infiltration of the British ruling caste has been.
Analysts say Modi’s aggressive tone fits the public mood and the policies of his Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has given a freer rein to the army since taking power in 2014, but he will not risk an all out conflict with his larger and better armed neighbour.
If this crisis really precipitates an inflection point, analysts should observe a revised approach to the U.S.-India relationship where New Delhi undertakes to substantively balance China, Washington accommodates Indian constraints, and both demonstrate a tolerance for some difficult bargains and creative workarounds.
