Chinese Aspirations and Indian Interests: Lessons Yet To Be Learnt From 1962 Dr Subramanian Swamy Historically however for

more than two and a half thousand years, India and China have had good and peaceful relations based on mutual respect and exchange, and in fact never had gone to war till1962. There are no two neighbors in the globe with this kind of peaceful historical background. Europe, for example, has witnessed a long series of wars and conquests over a millennium till mid twentieth century. During the two millenniums of India-China relations there was no other country in the world which mattered so much as these two countries. Both together accounted for over 55% of the world GDP. Today that is not anywhere so. Our two peoples aspirations in this 21st century will lead to some competitive animosity, or peer jealousy, which is to be expected between the two nations even in peace times, and even if it is held by some that there is no fundamental conflict of strategic interests between the two countries. China because of peer jealousy keeps a close watch on India seeking opportunities to strengthen itself at Indias cost, so that it can sustain the credibility of its feigned contempt. The historical China-India hyphenation is today not simply acceptable to the Chinese think-tanks. Peer jealousy today also makes Chinese intellectuals and PLA personnel feign contempt for India, especially because of Indias comprehensive military, political and psychological debacle of 1962. even though the Chinese strategists realize that 1962 cannot be repeated ever again.

The debacle of 1962 however had ended for three decades since, the historical China-India hyphenation that had existed for centuries. But three decades after 1962, thanks to Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao, liberalization, and the Y2K problem which launched the software revolution, put India on high growth rate path, and also as a quality leader on the electronics map globally. In an era of globalization in which economics dominates, the India-China hyphenation has reappeared again with gusto, especially in the USA, and hence kindling of the peer competition in China. Unfortunately, in India the return of Nehruvian smugness on defense issues has returned too. The smugness that this hyphenation is a settled fact can be again rudely exploded if our military capability continues for long to remain inadequate to sustain the hyphenation. Due to this smugness, India defense expenditure has steadily fallen to a dangerously low of 2.3% of GDP, with attendant debilitating corruption, whereas China has maintained a steady expenditure of 6% of GDP throughout the last five decades. Obviously, the lesson of 1962 has yet to be etched in our sub-conscious mind. Today we fluctuate between being panicky when threatened by an editorial in Chinese press, to being complacent when there is bonhomie during a visit of a Chinese dignatory making goody goody speeches. Media coverage reflects this dysfunctional dissonance.

But the reality is that recently the political relations between India and China have soured. Will this lead to a war either by intent or miscalculation? Chinese non-governmental blogs have suggested a possibility. One Indian think tanks prognosis is war anytime from now. But who can be sure? After all, who can afford to forget--on both sidesthe trauma of 1962? For us, 1962 was a multi-dimensional debacle although we Indians happily discovered how united our nation becomes when we are attacked--when other nations in a similar debacle

unravel. Examples of such unraveling are Austro-Hungarian Empire, Europe after World War I&II, Yugoslavia and Pakistan. Chanakya had in our hoary past described this Indian phenomenon of uniting in war when he propounded the concept of Chakravartin and guided his King, Chandragupta, to war far west and 2000 kilometers from Pataliputra, in Sind against the Greeks. Today we must renew our memory of 1962 in fresh strategic perspective and sweat in peace so that we dont bleed hopelessly in war. The Border War in 1962, when all is said and written, was Nehrus fiasco arising from his irrational and personalized conduct of foreign policy. Irrational because Nehru did not distinguish between defense and foreign policy, in fact he made what literally was his fatal error, of making defense depend on foreign policy, and blamed the Chinese perfidy for it when it was all his doing. We now need rationally look at possible and potential threats to India from China, assess the probabilities of these materializing, and then decide how to prepare credibly against each of these potential threats. This is the way the 1962 syndrome needs to be exorcised. Thus, no matter how friendly China may sound diplomatically, if its military capability increases then we have to match it by increasing our military preparedness. To sustain the peer status thus, India must now graduate from oscillating between smugness to neurotically reacting to China on a daily basis, feeding the media with our 1962 psychosis, and instead get down to dealing with China rationally on the various dimensions of threats, and soberly examine how to structure our national security architecture and enhance our military capability. To do that we should clearly differentiate the two facets of national security: First, in defense preparedness, we should never discount any potential threat from any country, and which threat could be multi-dimensional as it is in the case of China. In formulating our defense

strategy therefore, our military capability has to be founded, within our resources, on the threat potential arising from the military capacity of that other country. The second facet of national security is our foreign policy which has to be structured on stated intention of the other nations, and which we through quiet unpublicized discussions and negotiations seek to modify, moderate, and even to make it favorable if possible. This is also called diplomacy. Chinas intention today may not be to go to war with India but merely to needle us to commit foolish acts or behave stupidly by trivial provocative acts to either do something rash as Nehru did in 1962 to declare I have asked the troops to throw the Chinese out without any preparations, or worse like a headless chicken run hither and thither seeking help from other countries, notably the USA. But even if the Chinese intention is of not wanting to provoke a war, we should not relax in defence preparedness because Chinas military capacity to wage war with India, which has vastly increased in recent years, empowers it to do so especially if we are not a match on the battleground. We cannot therefore rely on any countrys stated intentions since it could be a deception to fool us. Intentions are subjective and cannot be easily measured for its reliability and accuracy. But the capacity to wage war is objective since it can be physically quantified in terms of missiles, tanks, battleships, fighter aircraft, troop divisional strength, naval bases, etc. We thus should never be complacent about Chinas capacity to inflict damage to us nor should we, as a large mature and civilized population exhibit a fevered imagination about Chinas assumed evil intentions to harm us, at least not to vocalize it as we are doing today. If we do so it will encourage and raise the morale of all our potential adversaries, and thus in a self-fulfilling prophesy could knee jerk our nation into bad decisions. We should never go

to war by miscalculation because war causes much misery to societies. Hence, let us begin now to sweat in peace by first enumerating the dimensions of Chinas threat. In my cost benefit analysis of India-China relations I would say that, when the risk has been properly factored in, India and China should be strategic partners not jealous adversaries. [The author Dr. Subramaniam Swamy a former Union Cabinet Minister is a Harvardeducated scholar of China, a former Professor of Economics who has made significant contribution in promoting India-China relations since 1978.] - Asian Tribune -