Agni III: Splashdown in a cup of coffee

Last week India's 'China specific' extended intermediate range ballistic missile, the Agni III, splashed down somewhere off Car Nicobar islands in the Bay of Bengal. This week, two wizened gentlemen from India and China, national security adviser, MK Narayanan and Chinese vice foreign minister, Dai Bingguo, are scheduled to begin a tenth round of discussions to resolve a long standing 'border dispute' between the two countries. The word 'Agni' will be absent from the talks - most likely - though not its presence. Like Banquo's ghost, it is likely to cast a pall over the discussions.

The discussions, slated to take place in the cooling confines of the hill stations of the Nilgiri hills in the south of the country, are going to factor in a new dimension that has so far been absent from the talks - the ability of India to stare down a recalcitrant China that has so far dictated the pace and terms of the talks regarding Tibet and attendant 'boundary' issues.

Another trajectory

Technically, the talks will remain confined to the nitty-gritty of delineating border markings. However, the successful flight of the Agni III, which effectively brings the industrial, military and political heartland of mainland China under its shadow, now takes the argument between the two countries beyond the confines of a 'border dispute' - into a realm where it actually belongs.

The argument concerns the 'dominant power' claims of both the nations, with respect to Asia - and in the case of China, even the world. In particular, the argument concerns the long-standing effort of China to keep India pinned down to its sub-continental confines and India's persistent effort to break out of the shackles of these devious strategies.

Claims and counter claims

For the record, it may be mentioned that India claims China illegally occupies 43,180 sq km of Jammu and Kashmir in the Aksai Chin plateau, including 5,180 sq km illegally ceded to Beijing by Islamabad under the Sino-Pakistan boundary agreement in 1963.

On its part China accuses India of possessing some 90,000 sq km of Chinese territory, including all of Arunachal Pradesh.

To date, China's standing position on resolving the dispute has been to settle for a territorial swap that exchanges the barren, frozen wastelands of Aksai Chin to our northwest, with the populated areas of Arunachal Pradesh to our northeast. This is a solution that China has put on the table ever since the 1950s, even before the infamous 1962 invasion of Tibet.

India, in turn, has ruled out the exchange of any populated areas as part of a border deal.

Tibet

Chinese claims are predicated on the fact that it has 'ownership' or 'suzerainty' over Tibet - a claim that Tibetans themselves do not recognize. Their spiritual and temporal head, the Dalai Lama, has been residing as a refugee in India, along with tens of thousands of Tibetans ever since the Chinese invaded Tibet in the late 1950's.

A few years back, even the other claimant to Tibetan spiritual and temporal loyalties, the Panchen Lama, escaped to India under mysterious circumstances and is now a resident in this land along with the Dalai Lama.

Chinese 'claims' to Tibet are of a nature that does not impress even its own historians. As recently as this year some Chinese historians have pointed out that China's 'historical' claims are not tenable. The venerable Dalai Lama, in an 8 April 2007 interview with CNN-IBN's Karan Thapar has pointed out the farcical nature of these 'claims.'

In the interview, the Dalai Lama points out, "Some time ago, the Chinese government said Tibet was a part of China since seventh century because of marriage. Then eventually, they dropped it and insisted it was since 13th century. Now even on that there are differing views among the Chinese scholars."

The only 'claim' that keeps China in occupation of the plateau, as the Dalai Lama implies, is an 'armed' claim, whereby the Chinese army invaded a land, occupied it and now claims it as its own.

Over the decades, the Chinese have also tried to bolster their case by trying to reduce the native Tibetan population to minority status through the settlement of the Han population from mainland China.

As for Chinese 'claims' on the border between India and Tibet, it is a matter of historical record that between 1956, 1960 and 1962, Chinese maps kept showing three different, and advancing borders, even as its army kept advancing in Tibet. The lines kept changing, particularly in the Ladakh sector, even as their forces kept capturing new territory across the Kuen Lun, the Aksai Chin plateau and the Karakoram ranges.

It is for this reason, nearly three decades after the war, that India still considers the current line of control to be an illegitimate line created through aggression.

The last frontier
The Chinese mainland borders 14 countries and it has been involved in disputes with all of them. By now Beijing has managed to settle all these disputes, except for some minor ones here or there. The long frontier with India remains China's last major unsettled land border, and potentially, it's most troublesome.

To press 'claims,' they have to be tenable in the first place. Since that is patently not the case here, Tibet becomes a losing argument for China. The solution to this problem, for China, has been a persistent refusal to talk or to drag them over an interminable period of time.

This strategy has been made possible, and has also proved to be immensely successful, by keeping India tied down in a persistent game of one-upmanship with Pakistan.

As long as Pakistan has kept India pinned down to local agendas, such as Kashmir, nuclear weapons, missiles etc. it has helped China keep Tibet off the discussion table. With Pakistani antics forever in the forefront, Tibet has remained a non-issue - the repression of its people a forgotten chapter of history. The likes of Richard Gere, and their espousal of the Tibetan cause, provide a touch of exotica to the cause - just that, and no more.

Tibet

Tibet is central to China's Asia policy. The plateau provides China access to the vast oil and gas reserves of Central Asia, as well as to Middle East oil, through the Pakistani port of Gwadar. The plateau holds strategic significance also for the fact that it abuts China's nuclear testing facilities at Lop Nor in the Xinjiang Uighur autonomous province.

The Karakoram Highway (KKH), which connects western China and its largest autonomous region of Xinjiang with the Northern Areas (NAs) of Jammu & Kashmir, all the way through to Islamabad and beyond, is a strategically critical asset for the Chinese. A reconstructed KKH can now handle heavy freight, and will enable China to ship its energy supplies from the Middle East, as well as mineral imports from Africa, to western China, which is its development hub. This alternative supply route will reduce Beijing's dependence on the Malacca Straits.

Beijing and Teheran have signed an agreement to develop Iran's Yadavaran oil field in southern Iran. Under this agreement, China will buy 10 million tons of LNG from Iran each year over the next 25 years. KKH would be the shortest and safest land route to ship Iranian LNG to western China.

With Musharraf's announcement of setting up oil refineries, natural gas terminals and transit facilities in Baluchistan, the KKH assumes added significance as an alternative land link between China and its energy sources. It is Musharraf's stated aim to turn Pakistan into China's "energy corridor."

Given this combination of strategic and economic factors, it is not surprising that China's India and Tibet policy remains an expression of its hard line tendencies.

Strategic initiatives

Matters for India have not been helped by the fact that over the decades, China moved beyond the realms of a conventional confrontation thanks to its nuclear capability. These capabilities allowed it the luxury of dictating the pace of negotiations, and also the timing of 'strategic initiatives' with India.

With Chinese nuclear and missile capability making nonsense of India's vastly enhanced conventional capability (since 1962), India began the arduous process of building its own nuclear and missile forces. To offset China's nuclear advantage, India went nuclear. This promptly became an issue of 'national pride' for Pakistan and predictable rhetoric issued.

Dr AQ Khan's 'Nuclear Wal-Mart' is a much talked about story, but the role played by China in the nuclear and missile proliferation game has received negligible coverage in public media. AQ Khan's grandstanding aside, a fact widely acknowledged by defence observers around the world needs to be taken note of - without China's active participation, Pakistan's nuclear and missile game plan would have been a virtual non-starter.

With Chinese missiles coming into deployment, India came up the Prithvi, its first surface-to-surface missile. Pakistan was immediately in the matching game with a 'Islamic brand' missile, supplied directly by China.

Not surprisingly, along with the nuclear game, the missile game too became an Indo-Pakistan affair, as one 'Islamic brand' missile kept matching an Indian one with boring regularity. These would attract vague attention from defence observers as having a 'remarkable resemblance' to such-and-such Chinese or North Korean missile.

Effectively, India remained pinned down to the antics of China's regional proxy.

At China's end, the nuclearisation of India's own forces, as it successfully mated nuclear warheads to its missiles, failed to change its attitudes radically. The short-range Prithvi and the intermediate range Agni II & I missiles were not in a position to impact the 'mainland' in case of a nuclear one-to-one. The waiting game with China continued.

Testing claims

The splashdown of Agni III in the Bay of Bengal last week is set to change all that. Tested successfully for a range of 3,000 km plus, the Agni III can add another stage and cross the 5,000 km threshold. At 3,000 km plus it already brings Beijing, Shanghai and every significant Chinese military base and industrial installation, along with civilian habitation, within its ambit.

The Agni III is set to test not just Chinese 'claims' on Tibet, but its pretension of being Asia's 'sole super power.' However, all that is in the future, for the Agni III is still a couple of years away from production, and eventual military induction.

That should be alright for Indian defence planners, for Musharraf's grand plans to convert Pakistan into an 'energy and trade corridor' for the People's Republic of China (PRC) is quite a few years away from realization as well. By the time Baluchistan is converted into another 'proxy' province of the PRC, (or goes independent, given its state of affairs) the Agni III will also be ready for induction in a number of variations - land, rail, road, and even as a submarine launched version. The PRC will not be able to get away with proxy games any more.

Agni III has lifted India out of the sub-continental sandbox that Beijing and Islamabad have laboured so hard to keep it confined to in the decades since independence. It may have splashed down in the Bay of Bengal, but the ripples will be evident in the cups of Nilgiri coffee that Narayanan and Dai Bingguo will sip over the weekend.