Makings of a new Cold War

The international scene is currently marked by a deteriorating US-China trade relationship, emergence of a new level of friendship between China and Iran through a long-term strategic pact and a definite operationalisation of Sino-Pak alliance against India, particularly in the months following the abrogation of Art 370 relating to Jammu and Kashmir, by the Indian Parliament.

As the presidential election in the US draws close, the Trump administration is taking on China on multiple fronts -- from the alleged Chinese complicity in concealing facts about the origin and spread of the Corona virus to the aggressive behaviour of China in Hong Kong, South China Sea and Ladakh. The US ordering closure of the Chinese consulate at Houston in July on charges of commercial espionage and the Chinese in turn shutting down the American consulate at Chengdu are ultimate signals of the beginning of a diplomatic break and, in a world not totally disrupted by the pandemic, this would have already created global tension.

President Xi Jinping of China, who is now the ruler of his country for lifetime, has been assiduously building the Chinese economic hold on countries of Asia, Africa and even Europe and consolidating the PLA as the integral Chinese machinery of offence and defence equipped with technology of global supremacy. His mission of making China the second superpower that could take on the US has been made implicitly public in many ways. Significantly, the aggravation of American conflict with China on several issues has occurred in a time period that brought in the deepest convergence of economic and security interests between the US and India under the leadership of Donald Trump and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. There is, therefore, no getting away for India from framing the right strategic set of economic, security and foreign policies in the long term to handle a likely shift of the world towards a new Cold War between the US and China and, at the same time, find its place in the international order -- in keeping with its say in global affairs and the status that it enjoyed as the largest and well-established democracy in the world.

India has to closely watch alignments within the Muslim world, take stock of Imran Khan's government in Pakistan -- with its known subservience to the Pak army -- in the context of its nexus with China that was now evidently at the cost of Pakistan's relationship with the US and review its own military capacity to deal with simultaneous provocations from across the LOC and LAC. There is also the crucial factor of India achieving full recovery after the deep-seated damage caused to its economy by the Corona pandemic, both at the national and global levels. China has suffered the loss too and is exposed to a further hit from the international businesses withdrawing their bases from that country, at least partly because of the US pressure. India is now clearly on the side of the US in the trade conflicts cropping up between the US and China -- the ban put by President Donald Trump on Tik Tok, something that India had already done, is the latest blow to China.

Meanwhile, the Chinese military build-up along the LAC, that led to a clash between the two armies at Galwan on June 15 resulting in the death of 20 Indian military personnel including a Lt.-Col, has set off unprecedented hostility between the two countries that could easily become irreversible -- unless China accepts an effective push back in the Ladakh sector of LAC. There is no indication of this happening -- Chinese seemed to be pursuing the old 'two steps forward one step backward' policy -- and India has therefore to reset its China policy taking all global paradigms into consideration.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's speech from the ramparts of the Red Fort on Independence Day confirmed that India was putting a new policy in place not only on China but also on the entire gamut of international relations taking into account all geo-political developments of significance. The dominant part of the address was devoted to detailing the strategy of economic revival that was being implemented in the wake of the Corona pandemic -- the Prime Minister was right in claiming that India had controlled the damage well. At the core of the revival strategy was the emphasis on rebuilding the indigenous potential, truly becoming 'vocal for local' and pushing the quality of home production to a point where it easily linked up with the global supply chain whenever the opportunity for this came by. He appealed to the foreign investors, particularly the US players, to avail of the opportunities that India with its new emphasis on 'ease of doing business' offered at present. The speech remarkably succeeded in creating an environ of optimism among the people on the economic front.

The Prime Minister, in a succinct manner, also revealed the strategic framework of the national security and defence policy on the occasion. Indicating that India had a complete understanding of the nefarious Sino-Pak alliance working against it, Prime Minister Modi declared that India would deal with the border situation from LOC to LAC and referred to the threats of terrorism and 'expansionism' in this context. The Prime Minister listed measures from drastically cutting down on defence imports in favour of indigenous production -- to encourage self-dependence -- to sourcing the best fighting machinery and accelerating the infrastructure building work along the LAC. He specifically announced a scheme for inducting youth in Indian defence forces in a big way through stepped up NCC training in border and coastal districts as well as in the districts that housed our air bases. The idea is to divide this training work amongst the army, navy and air force. People will have the satisfaction that the Modi government was equally alive to issues of both development and security. Prime Minister Modi, no doubt, is the right man at the right time for the country.