The perils of strategic over-reach

Down the ages, history is replete with examples of nations and conquerors, failing to stem their unquenchable thirst for further annexations and greater glory, falling ultimately to their unbridled ambitions. This is more often than not owing to a strategic overreach. Lessons of history are normally scoffed at in the quest for perennial victories. The examples are many – Alexander the Great, Hannibal, Chengis Khan, Napoleon, Nazi leader Hitler (before and during World War II) and, in recent memory, the sole (and now) decaying superpower of the world, the USA. The American overreach embraced Korea in the 1950s, Vietnam in the 1960s, Iraq in recent years and the US faltered at the altar of prudence in strategising and comprehending the perils and limits of power. The list of those who lust for unrestrained power, beyond the fairness of logic of national aspirations, has now another nation added, unanimously, to its list –with no prizes for guessing. The People’s Republic of China,  to most strategic analysts, the world over, represents “the world’s quintessential practitioner of realpolitik.”

China has boasted, for at least two decades now, a galloping economy enjoying a unique double-digit growth with over a trillion dollars in foreign exchange reserves. Currently the second largest growing economy in the world, it is likely to surpass the financially weary and economically depressed US by 2020. According to the International Monetary Fund estimates, China’s economy was worth 5.4 trillion dollars in 2010 with the US still well ahead with 14.8 trillion, though the US growth was down to 3.8 per cent compared to China’s 9.3 last year.

China’s economic expansion has caused it to become increasingly aggressive, assertive and arrogant in its conduct on the world stage, militarily, politically and also in its economic forays around the globe. China appears not to heed the advice of the architect of its economic growth, the veteran Chinese statesman Deng Xiaoping who had earlier cautioned – “hide your brightness, bide your time.” Some Chinese watchers have opined that though the entire world marvels at the astronomically growing Chinese economy, it is not above diverse dangers to it. Some have even opined that the Chinese economic miracle might implode from a burst of property bubble (similar to Japan a decade back) to runaway inflation to an explosion of social unrest in the face of growing inequality in its society. Like any independent country driven by its financial interests, China is well within its right to take economic initiatives and is now aggressively pushing into the African and the South American region. China has been on the lookout for oil exploration blocks around the world outbidding many corporations including from India. However, this financial muscle has not motivated it to assume certain global responsibilities correspondingly, such as that in climate change or to stop favouring its exporters with artificially weak currency at the cost of other nations.

In its foreign policy endeavours, China has been assiduously making efforts to portray itself as a responsible and mature world player though its record is anything but that. Its propensity of maintaining close links with dictators and totalitarian regimes does not portray it as a lofty global player but as one which continues to pursue its partisan interests unmindful of any morality in international dealings. For example, China maintained its support for Slobodan Milosevic’s regime till the end of this dictator’s rule. In Africa, China stuck by Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe and to Hugo Chavez in Venezuela even when both dictators had graduated to international pariah status. China’s love for dictators was visible during the Arab Spring too. In Egypt and Libya, till the last, China kept criticising anti-Mubarak and anti-Gaddafi pro-democratic forces as mere unruly mobs. In Libya, despite strictures by the UN Security Council, Chinese arms manufacturers endeavoured to sell $ 200 million worth of weapons to Gaddafi’s forces. The very intimate and all encompassing relationship with terror-exporting Pakistan is primarily to promote instability in the Indian sub-continent and to use Pakistan as its proxy in containing India in the region which it sees as its competitor.

China’s burgeoning financial reserves have, unlike India’s, been optimally utilised for gigantic growth in its war-making machinery and in space exploration in pursuit of its unabashed superpower status ambitions. China which has upped the ante in the South China and East China Seas while increasing its maritime activities in the Indian Ocean, however, fails to recognise corresponding Indian trade and energy interests in the Pacific. In a recent instance of provocative behaviour, the Chinese Navy cautioned the Indian Naval ship INS Airavat on its presence in “Chinese waters”, as it was leaving the Vietnamese port of Bha Trang on 22 July. The iNdian ship was very much within Vietnam’s exclusive economic zoneand international waters. Even the Chinese news agency Xinhua had the temerity to criticise a possible Indian exploration venture “in the highly sensitive sea over which China enjoys indisputable sovereignty.” Both in the South China and East China seas, Chinese maritime assertiveness is causing much discomfiture to the ASEAN  community like Japan, South Korea, Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, Taiwan among others. Most of these nations thus look to the US to maintain a sizeable naval presence in these choppy waters with its Pacific Fleet.   That the Indian government has given a befitting diplomatic reply to the Chinese on the INS Airavat incident is encouraging, especially as the India establishment is not exactly known for being combative when it comes to China. It is important in view of continuing muscle-flexing by China, not only in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, but since last year in the sensitive Pakistan Occupied Kashmir and Northern Areas where it is increasing its devious and illegal footprint.

As the Chinese determinedly pursue their plans of encircling India by its ‘string of pearls’ stratagem, both by land and sea, the Government of India and defence planners have much to be concerned about. As we engage China in increasing mutual trade - over $ 65 billion dollars this year - and endeavour to settle our many vexed problems with them, we must not lose sight of the myriad and multiple long-term strategic threats and challenges India faces from its Machiavellian northerly neighbour and accordingly be adequately prepared for peace and progress.

Lt Gen Kamaleshwar Davar, PVSM, AVSM (Retd) was the first chief of the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA)

The views expressed are personal