Flashpoints - Notes on the present danger - tensions between Pakistan and India

National Review, April 17, 2000 by Humphrey Hawksley

Pakistan balanced its reliance on the U.S. by seeking a close relationship with China, which is as strong today as it has ever been. China supplies Pakistan with its main battle-field tanks, artillery, and fighter aircraft. It has also been accused of giving Pakistan the technology with which to build nuclear weapons. China denies the allegation, but in intelligence circles it is widely accepted to be the case.

As Kashmir is a flashpoint between India and Pakistan, so there is another flashpoint that could spark a conflict between India and China. Tibet is the simmering volcano wedged between those two countries. In many ways it is more volatile than Kashmir, because of the emotion the Tibetan cause engenders in Western democracies and the sanctuary given to the Dalai Lama and his followers by India. While America's proactive policy over Kashmir is motivated by nuclear concerns that have not yet touched general public consciousness in the West, trouble in Tibet would throw up more difficult choices. Policy would have to be addressed on moral and humanitarian grounds, as it was in Kosovo and Timor, though China is no Serbia or Indonesia when it comes to international relations. Although the Dalai Lama is sworn to nonviolence, the younger generation is not.

Pause for a moment to examine how the strands of global affairs stretch seamlessly from the killing fields of Kashmir, through the restless Tibetan plateau, on to high-tech investment industries in Beijing and Shanghai, and then to Taiwan, with its confident new leaders. Little wonder that President Clinton conceded that the relationship between India and the United States had been neglected for too long, and that he welcomed India's leadership in both regional and world affairs.

Geographically, Tibet and Kashmir are worryingly close and, given the military alliance between Pakistan and China, cannot be taken as separate theaters of policy. Along the Sino-Indian border there are pockets of disputed territory, ranging from desolate land occupied by Chinese troops to swaths of northeastern India claimed by China. The two countries fought a brief border war in 1962, which India lost. Relations have been cool ever since, and the Indian defense minister, George Fernandes, has described China as its most serious potential threat. "China has provided Pakistan with both missiles and nuclear know-how," he says. "China has its nuclear weapons stockpiled in Tibet right along our borders. There has also been a lot of elongation of military airfields in Tibet. Then on the eastern frontier of India with Burma, the Chinese are training and equipping the Burmese army. On the western coast of Burma, there is a lot of naval activity, constructing harbors that can take Chinese ships. There's no doubt in my mind that China's fast-expanding navy, which will be the biggest navy in this part of the world, will be getting into the Indian Ocean fairly soon."

This scenario has now been taken up by policymakers in Washington.

India, a democracy, feels threatened by the nondemocratic governments of China and Pakistan. After courting and engaging China for so many years, the United States is finally acknowledging the long-term challenge from Beijing and seeking to balance that in a new friendship with India, very much as it sought out China as part of its Cold War policy against the Soviet Union.