Posts Tagged ‘India’

Washington Focuses on China While Delhi Drifts

Posted: December 29, 2020 in LKY School
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Going to quickly upload a couple of pieces now in that netherworld between Christmas and New Year, both China focused, but for very different outlets. This first one is for the China-India Brief, which is a bi-weekly newsletter published by the Centre on Asia and Globalisation at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. Am not totally content with everything here to be honest, but China-India relations are going to stay complicated for the near future whatever happens. My understanding is both sides have now factored in a higher level of tension as the established norm between the two of them. It will just be a question of how effectively they are able to manage this.

Washington Focuses on China While Delhi Drifts

  
CIB173Image credit: Flickr/Gage Skidmore

There is a sense in Asia that the arrival of the Biden administration in Washington foreshadows a softening of the US’s stance towards China. Nowhere is the concern more acute than in Delhi, where India fears it might find itself without its preeminent ally against China at a moment when confrontation is all the vogue. But India’s concerns are misplaced. The problems Delhi may have with Washington are not likely to be the product of a shift in America’s view on China. Rather, they will emanate from a more coherent and focused American approach towards dealing with Beijing, as towards Delhi over its numerous domestic problems. 

There will be a change in Washington’s approach towards China, but it is more likely to be a tactical shift than an adjustment in perspective. Beijing has been formally classified in American strategic thinking as the principal adversary in a global confrontation (Moscow scores as a problem just behind it). President Trump’s attempt to cast his political adversary as ‘Beijing Biden’ never resonated. Comment pages and think tank output over the past few years have gone to great lengths to emphasize that the aggressive posture towards China emanating from Washington was in fact a bipartisan push. Few on either side of the aisle has dared to articulate a narrative of cooperation or engagement, with a hawkish perspective that portrayed China as a new Soviet-style adversary on the world stage being the dominant view. 
 
But while this firm shift against China took place in Washington in the shade of an erratic Trump administration, Delhi found itself getting into an ever-tighter fix with Beijing. Constant border irritations escalated to the point that in the summer of 2020 Indian and Chinese soldiers fought a medieval-style battle in contested territory leading to unknown numbers of dead. Fury boiled over as hawks screamed for vengeance and confrontation.  
 
Yet the result has been as inconsistent as could have been expected. On the one hand, there has been a sharpening. The security establishment in Delhi is now minded towards confrontation with greater alacrity. Visions of cooperation with China in Afghanistan are gone, the long-dormant Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar (BCIM) Economic Corridor is stalled (if not defunct), and Delhi is seeking to slowly push China out of its domestic cyber infrastructure in every possible way. India’s military establishment is using this moment to burnish its budget and buy as many new tools as it can. 
 
On the other side of the coin, however, India has continued to engage with China. Most specifically through various multilateral formats that the two share. At the recent Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and BRICS Summits, India has appeared at the appropriate level and sought to avoid bringing its bilateral clash with China to the table. This reflects a broader reality that Delhi continues to acknowledge, namely, that no matter what happens, it will still find itself bordering China, a country on its way to being the world’s second (or possibly) largest economy.  
 
India has always been amongst the most hesitant partners of the Australia-India-Japan-US Quad. Its defence arrangements with the US have improved considerably over the past few years with a series of major agreements, but remain quietly complicated by India’s close relationship with Moscow. Delhi has always sought (understandably) to have its cake and eat it: it engaged with Russia and the US at the same time. It benefitted from stratospheric Chinese growth while also hinting at joining anti-Chinese alliances. And since Beijing saw its future as one intimately bound to Delhi in some way and did not see India as much of a threat, China was willing to let this prevarication go, until the recent confrontation which seems to have tipped the scales in both Delhi and Beijing towards the hawks. 
 
But Delhi’s hedging is going to become more complicated under a Biden administration, though not necessarily for reasons of Biden softening on China. Far from Washington changing on China, we are likely to see a continuation of an aggressive policy towards Beijing under President Biden. The difference will be that it is likely to be delivered with greater coherence and consistency than under President Trump. In fact, we are likely to see a more hardnosed and transactional relationship between the US and China – one  that no longer looks with optimistic lenses towards a world they would like to build together or fantastical bargains that cannot be maintained, but rather a relationship built on realpolitik focused on national interests. Biden will be more able to work with China on certain issues, but these will be framed through a context of importance to Beijing rather than being about American nationalism or global goods. Trade relations will be dealt with in a way that genuinely prioritizes American industries and holds China to account for promises that it has failed to fulfil. The US will continue to push on human rights and will not offer any break on these in exchange for other issues. This will all be delivered alongside Western allies who have been desperately waiting for American leadership. And crucially, the President will not personally hint in meetings at offering a break in his policies to China and will stand behind what his staff have negotiated. 
 
Beyond the difficulties India will have hedging with China is that the Biden hardliners will also come down on Delhi. While India has largely gotten a pass on domestic problems which have been bubbling up under Prime Minister Modi during the Trump administration, under President Biden human rights questions in Kashmir as well as problems in domestic political discourse will be raised. And it is unlikely that Washington will be willing to bargain these away in exchange for a deeper partnership against China. In addition, Washington might actually ask for a harder line towards Russia, something President Trump refused to broach, while fissures between Washington and Delhi on issues like technology openness and access might become bigger. Delhi will find itself under greater pressure from Washington and be unable to exploit space between China and the US.  

Delhi may look at a new Biden administration as a spanner in the works of its relationship with China, casting blame on soft Democrats unwilling to confront Beijing. But this will miss the real problem, which is that the US’s perspective on India has shifted while clarifying on China. Delhi will find itself still hedging with China while Washington has marshalled a new clarity and direction in its policy towards Beijing and the world.

Raffaello Pantucci is a Senior Associate Fellow at RUSI and a Senior Fellow at RSIS.

Indians and Central Asians Are the New Face of the Islamic State

Posted: October 17, 2020 in Foreign Policy
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Last in my catch up posting blast a more recent piece for Foreign Policy looking at a question that has been on my mind for a while which is the growing appearance of Central Asians and Indians in international jihadist attacks. The piece got some traction in the Pakistani press in particular who got quite excited about the focus on India as a source of terrorism including editorials in the Daily Times, the Associated Press of Pakistan, Express Tribune, while Capital TV interviewed me about it and I did a brief recording for the Ambassador’s Brief using Conversation Six platform with the excellent Sam Mullins. This aside, spoke to the South China Morning Post about China-Kyrgyzstan, RFE/RL about China-Afghanistan, and earlier piece with Kyler about Incels for RSIS was reproduced by Eurasian Review.

Indians and Central Asians are the new face of the Islamic State

Terrorists from India, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan were never at the forefront of global jihad before – now they are.

Raffaello Pantucci | October 8, 2020, 6:32 AM

Members of the Islamic State stand alongside their weapons, following their surrender to Afghanistan's government in Jalalabad on Nov. 17, 2019.

As white nationalists across the world have gained prominence through racist, Islamophobic and anti-Semitic acts, the world’s focus on terrorism seems to have shifted. Many experts on extremism now focus heavily on the far-right in its many incarnations as an important driver of terrorist threat. But this myopic approach ignores the dynamism that the Islamic State injected into the international jihadist movement, and the long-term repercussions of the networks it built. In particular, the Indian and Central Asian linkages that the group fostered are already having repercussions beyond the region.

This threat emerged most recently with the attack by the Islamic State in Khorasan Province (ISKP) on Jalalabad prison in early August. The attack showed a level of ambition that distinguished the group from many of the Islamic State’s other regional affiliates. Part of a bigger global push to do something about colleagues rotting in prisons, it was also a way of signaling how the group’s approach to freeing its prisoners differed from the Taliban’s. In ISKP’s eyes, the Taliban are in essence surrendering in their peace negotiations with the U.S. government. But the most interesting aspect of the attack was the roster of fighters involved—a multinational group that included Afghans, Indians, Tajiks, and Pakistanis.

While at first glance this seems unsurprising, the presence of Central Asians and Indians in transnational attacks is a relatively new phenomenon that reflects a shifting pattern in jihadism linked to the Islamic State. Some of the group’s most dramatic attacks—like the Easter 2019 Sri Lanka bombings, the attack on a Turkish nightclub on New Year’s Eve 2017, or the 2017 truck attacks in New York City and Stockholm—revealed jihadism’s persistent appeal to a global audience. Indeed, the rise of Central and South Asian cohorts to the front rank of attack planning is a development with potentially worrying consequences.

Jihadist ideas are not new to Central Asia or India. The civil war in 1990s Tajikistan that broke out in the wake of the country’s emancipation from the Soviet Union was an early post-Cold War battlefield which included jihadist elements. Fighters used northern Afghanistan as a base from which to fight in Tajikistan.

While most of the support for the fighting in Tajikistan emerged from communities in northern Afghanistan who went on to fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban, some disillusioned fighters in the conflict ended up fighting alongside al Qaeda. And for a while, assessments of where al Qaeda would go after its ejection from Afghanistan post-9/11 focused on the Fergana Valley, a region spanning Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan that is home to conservative communities who have clashed with their respective capitals. Groups like the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Jund al Khilafah, the Islamic Jihad Union or various Tajikistani groups provided networks that helped Central Asians get involved in fighting in Afghanistan and Pakistan. But these networks were relatively limited in their impact.

India’s history of jihadism goes back even further. The country was the birthplace of the Deobandi movement, a sect that was a source of ideas for the Taliban among others. And the conflict in Kashmir has long been held up by extremist groups as one of the world’s most long-standing unresolved jihadi conflicts. While most Kashmiris are nationalists furious at New Delhi, their conflict is one that is regularly adopted as a rallying cry by extremists who point to it as one of the many places where Muslims are being abused.

Yet notwithstanding this heritage, neither India nor Central Asia has historically produced many figures in the international jihadist movement, launching attacks far from their borders. Indians have stayed involved in networks in India, or occasionally Pakistan. Central Asians have shown up in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but rarely farther afield. That is changing.

A major attraction drawing young men and women to jihadism has always been the idea of participating in a transnational religious movement and an epic global struggle. To focus only on a parochial local level misses the larger canvas of their narratives. This appears to be a gap that the Islamic State identified and filled.

A major turning point in Indian and Central Asian involvement in the global jihadist movement was Syria.

A cauldron that continues to draw people in, it is a clear and significant marker in the international jihadist story. The battlefield was one that drew in Muslims from almost 100 different countries and from every continent. This included Indians and Central Asians, though their experiences were markedly different.

The Central Asians integrated well into the conflict, serving alongside both Islamic State and al Qaeda-affiliated groups. For example, Tajikistani former Colonel Gulmurod Khalimov rose to be a senior Islamic State commander. Large groups of Central Asians fought on the battlefield. In contrast, the few Indians who made it to the Levant had a different experience. Many received bad treatment at the hands of their Arab hosts, who tended to look down on them—reflecting the status of South Asians as poor laborers in much of the Arab world. This racism did not stop a significant number of Indians being drawn to the group, however. A more thriving community of Indian fighters made it to the conflict in Afghanistan to fight alongside ISKP there.

Since the Islamic State’s emergence, Central Asians have been involved in repeated attacks in Turkey, including the assault on Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport in June 2016 and the high-profile massacre at the city’s Reina nightclub on New Year’s Eve 2017, as well as attacks using vehicles that were driven into crowds in 2017 in Stockholm in April, and New York City on Halloween that year, as well as an underground bombing in St. Petersburg.

For Indians, the international role has been more limited, with Indians for the most part appearing in attacks in Afghanistan and in limited numbers on the battlefield in Syria. The attack on the prison in Jalalabad follows the earlier decision by ISKP to use an Indian fighter to attack a Sikh gurdwara—a place of worship—in Kabul. Seen as “polytheists,” Sikhs are regarded as an acceptable target by the Islamic State like many other religious groups, though the decision to use an Indian attacker likely reflected a desire by the group to highlight their connection to India in particular.

The Islamic State officially announced the creation of an affiliate in India last year but has been hinting about involvement in Kashmir for years. The group was likely in part rejected by local Kashmiris who have long seen foreign Islamists as complicating factors in their struggles against the Indian state. However, it now seems as though the group is quite openly talking about its involvement. Al Naba, the Islamic State’s regular publication, recently listed the martyrdom notices of three Kashmiris who had reportedly fallen fighting for the group. These individuals join the growing numbers of Keralans and other Indians who are now reported to have died or fought alongside the Islamic State.

While the absolute numbers are small, this is an entirely new trend. Indians involved in external jihadist attacks have until now been the exception. The few Indians who pursued jihad tended to do it at home in a limited fashion, often with links across the border to Pakistan. Only a few ventured beyond, like Dhiren Barot, a British-raised Hindu convert who was close to 9/11 organizer Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and was ultimately jailed for a plot to detonate a bomb in the U.K. in 2005.

This is surprising, considering that India is home to the world’s third-largest Muslim community. However, today’s new generation of jihadists, is driven by a range of economic, political, and ideological factors.

Both Central Asia and India are home to large communities of young men who go and work abroad, sending home remittances that are a crucial pillar of local economies. It is often among these diaspora communities where radicalization takes place—for the Indians in the Gulf, for the Central Asians in Russia. In the COVID-blighted world, this workflow has slowed down, hurting economies, but also creating a pool of underemployed young men at home and abroad.

This comes in the context of a tense political environment. In India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has advanced a series of policies promoting a Hindu nationalist narrative openly hostile toward Muslims. There has since been a notable uptick in jihadist propaganda toward India. In Central Asia, governments may not be stoking the same fires, but there has been an active pursuit of political opponents across the region. While there are numerous programs in place seeking to counter violent extremism, it is not always clear how effective they are, nor is it clear they are able to deal with problems of radicalization amongst diaspora communities.

And there is the continuing question of what will happen to the fighters from these countries who went to Syria and Iraq. Some may try to come home, but others may end up fostering new networks which create problems elsewhere.

The danger is that there may be an increasing number of Indian and Central Asian links to plots outside their regions. Earlier this year, German authorities disrupted a network of Tajiks linked to cells in Albania and in contact with the Islamic State in both Afghanistan and Syria. They were reportedly under orders to launch an attack in Europe. Other Central Asian cells have been reportedly disrupted across Europe, and authorities in Ukraine have made numerous arrests of fighters fleeing the collapsing battlefield in Syria.

India has seen less such activity, though there were Indian links to the 2019 Sri Lanka Easter attacks. Like many violent Islamist extremists, a Southern Indian cell involved appears to have followed the sermons of Indian prominent extremist preacher Zakir Naik, whose speeches have helped radicalize numerous different jihadists around the world.

Most of the current attention on new terrorist groups focuses on the extreme right—something that is understandable given the deeply polarized political environment in the western world. But violent Islamist threats have not gone away, and are transforming. The story of Central Asian and Indian jihadism is one that has historically received too little attention. Emerging from domestic environments that are creating more opportunities for disenfranchisement and radicalization to take place, they are exactly the sort of threats which may slip under the radar until it is too late.

Raffaello Pantucci is a senior associate fellow at Britain’s Royal United Services Institute and a visiting senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. He is the author of We Love Death As You Love Life: Britain’s Suburban Terrorists. Twitter: @raffpantucci

Crumbling China-India relations suggests escalation will continue

Posted: October 14, 2020 in South China Morning Post
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As ever, have let a lot of time pass since my last posting, but have not been delinquent in my writing. Am struggling with some longer pieces, this time of enforced immobility has been of mixed usefulness in being productive in this regard. In any case, first up another short piece for the South China Morning Post, this time looking at the China-India clash which has not resolved itself but seems to be settling in to a higher level of tensions as the norm.

Crumbling China-India relations suggests escalation will continue

China has never taken India seriously, while New Delhi has never made a clear choice about what it wants from relations with Beijing. The possibility of miscalculation is growing

China and India continue to talk past each other. China still does not regard India as a serious power, while New Delhi is prodding Beijing in areas of great sensitivity.

Security planners on both sides appear willing to accept higher tensions in their bilateral relationship, but the clash in the Galwan Valley shows this can get out of hand. The space between escalation and miscalculation is closing, and a dangerous new normal is establishing itself across the Himalayas.

China has never taken India seriously. This irritates New Delhi, which can feel Beijing’s condescension. China has also increased activity around India without considering what that looks like to its neighbour. With growing Chinese economic and security activities in almost every country around India, it is no wonder New Delhi sees what looks like encirclement.

India, on the other hand, has continually hedged and never defined what it wants from its relationship with China. In some contexts, its choices speak to a desire for close engagement – from entering the BRICS bloc, the Russian-India-China grouping or the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s love-in meetings with President Xi Jinping.

At an economic level, Delhi has welcomed some Chinese investment. It tried to engage with parts of China’s Belt and Road Initiative it liked, such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank or the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar Economic Corridor.

At the same time, India has bristled at China’s close relationship with Pakistan, sought a closer strategic relationship with the United States and other Chinese adversaries and tried to limit some Chinese investment in the country. The global backlash against TikTok first emerged in India, which accounts for a huge part of the application’s users.

The two Asian giants bump into each other across the Himalayas, where they share an unclear border. Both claim they want to resolve this, yet little movement has been achieved. This border has become the focus of the current clash in which soldiers on both sides have died and no clear resolution appears likely any time soon.

Rather, the discussion now appears to be an acceptance of higher tensions across this disputed border, with both finding ways of strengthening their position and jostling against the other. The tensions have moved into every other part of their bilateral relationship.

The result has been a confused emboldening by Delhi. Planners talk about how things cannot go back to normal with Beijing, but it is not always clear where they want them to go. Economic resistance to China is tempered by reality, while there is a clear limit Delhi sets to the other alliances it wants to forge against China. It wants confrontation with Beijing, but maybe not as aggressively as Washington is pushing.

Worryingly, Delhi has injected Tibet into the narrative. The press is full of stories of Tibetan soldiers in the Indian armed forces. The death of one Special Frontier Force officer, Tenzin Nyima, in an explosion near Pangong Tso turned into a major news story following leaks in the Indian press about the unit. A political leader in Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, Ram Madhav, attended and tweeted about the funeral.

All of this led to more posturing by Beijing. Official media reports ever grander military statements and exercises in the region near the border with India. Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokespeople continue to reject any Indian claims while calling their own bellicose posturing merely routine behaviour.

From Beijing’s perspective, the confrontation with India is being manipulated by Washington. Rather than treat Delhi as a direct competitor with agency, it sees India being pushed towards such action by the United States.

The result is a repeat of a continued Chinese position on India – one of faint derision. Beijing does not take India seriously but rather sees it as acting at others’ behest.

This means Beijing does not seriously engage with Indian concerns while overlooking the provenance of potential threats. Now that Beijing has created a new context of tension on its border with India, it will not back down – especially as it does not think India is doing this on its own behalf.

It seems unlikely tensions will escalate into nuclear conflict. However, India playing the Tibet card prods Beijing in a very sensitive place. Meanwhile, China’s refusal to take India seriously exacerbates Delhi’s sense of needing to do more to get China’s attention.

The space for miscalculation is growing, and both are increasingly doing things to the other in a way in which they are more likely to misjudge reactions. This fisticuffs over the Himalayas has the potential to escalate further.

Raffaello Pantucci is senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London

Why China is becoming the bogeyman in its border lands

Posted: September 20, 2020 in South China Morning Post
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Next a piece for the South China Morning Post looking at what’s happening to China in its immediate neighbourhood.

Why China is becoming the bogeyman in its border lands

Chinese people, embassies and projects are increasingly the target of separatist and terrorist violence as protests against Uygur treatment grow

As a big player, China’s mere presence and support for the authorities in the region makes it a target for local anger

Raffaello Pantucci

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When you become a big power, you become a big target. This is a lesson Beijing is increasingly learning. While much of China’s concern is with tension and anger from the West, there is an undercurrent sweeping through China’s immediate periphery which illustrates how this can become a sharper local problem.

China’s southern and western borders are increasingly marked by countries where angry minorities are focusing their rage on Beijing. In some extreme cases, this is resulting in terrorism. The most dramatic cases are in Pakistan and Indonesia.

Earlier this year, Sindhi and Balochi separatists announced an alliance to fight against China and Pakistan. While Sindhi groups have been fairly limited in targeting China, Balochi groups have undertaken high-profile attacks – with little success, admittedly – on the Chinese consulate in Karachi, Karachi Stock Exchange and a hotel at the Chinese investment project in Gwadar.

The groups, which also claim to target the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, are angry at Beijing for supporting the federal government in Islamabad, therefore supporting their oppression.

In Indonesia, the case is more multilayered. Crack security forces recently arrested groups associated with the al-Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiah network for planning attacks on Chinese targets. The groups were reportedly fearful of Communist infiltration and saw Chinese shop owners in Banten as targets for retaliation.

This followed the stabbing of former security minister Wiranto last year and the arrest of a man linked to Islamic State who reportedly also discussed the targeting of Chinese in Banten.

Meanwhile, Indonesia’s Mujahidin Indonesia Timur, an Isis-linked terrorist group, has connections with Uygur networks that have fled China and has reportedly provided training for them in Southeast Asia.

There is little evidence of the group ever launching attacks against China, although they were linked to plots in Indonesia and an ambitious plan to launch a rocket attack from Batam on the Marina Bay Sands hotel and casino complex in Singapore.

A backdrop of anti-Chinese anger has existed in Indonesia for a long time. The country’s ethnic Chinese community has repeatedly been the target of violence. In many ways, local jihadists are merely building off this history.

But China is now a very different power on the world stage, and these Indonesian groups’ propaganda is often coloured by anger against China’s treatment of its minority communities in Xinjiang.

Across the region, China has faced attacks linked to militant networks. The unresolved case of the Erawan shrine bombing in Bangkok was blamed on Turkish-Uygur networks, for example. And the Chinese embassy bombing in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, was undertaken by Uygur networks with links to Syria.

China stands accused of manipulating separatist groups for its goals, and this exacerbates anger from the local authorities and minorities. In Myanmar, China (or the local Yunnan authority) has a long history of discretely supporting ethnic armies.

This is a source of frustration for the powerful Myanmese military, which recently went on a public campaign complaining about Beijing’s support for some of the many ethnic armies fighting the state. In India, similar accusations have been levelled at Beijing’s support for Assamese separatists.

Here, the support is much harder to pin down, and the groups have very little track record in terms of effectiveness. And of course, Delhi is continually angry at Beijing’s support for Pakistan and the many anti-India groups that operate from its territory.

But anger against China is not simply at state level. Smaller protests are emerging among a growing mix of non-state groups in both Bangladesh and India. Over the weekend, a group gathered in Dhaka to protest against the plight of Uygurs.

In India, one of the political branches of the Naxalite movement, the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation, wrote a long treatise in its magazine which condemned China’s treatment of Uygurs, placing it on a par with India’s treatment of its minorities in Kashmir and elsewhere.

There have also been similar tensions in Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia, where there have been protests, discussions of targeting of China sotto voce, and displeasure at how China has handled repatriated Uygurs. Security officials complain that they have never received adequate answers about where repatriated Uygurs end up.

To China’s north, in Central Asia, there is a similar but different story. China is a distinct source of local anger to varying degrees, but these tensions are often manipulated by local political actors. In some cases, communities are angry at China’s treatment of minorities in Xinjiang – mostly when they come to communities linked to the large Kyrgyz or Kazakh diaspora that live within Xinjiang and get caught up in China’s camps system.

In others, locals protest against Chinese projects as a way of attacking the local government. Other foreign investors face such protests as well, but those against China have been most consistent in recent years.

This, in many ways, articulates Beijing’s bigger problem. It is becoming the bogeyman across its land borders. In some cases, it is making things worse through its manipulations, but mostly, it is a by-product of Beijing becoming the big player in the yard. This attracts negative attention and means China is going to find itself increasingly dragged into local problems.

The old logic of non-interference, where people do not find you objectionable, will no longer hold water. By being present and supporting the local authorities, you are going to be a target for local anger which might previously have been directed solely at the capital. Your mere presence is “intervention”. This is one of the costs of becoming a great power.

Raffaello Pantucci is senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London

Beware the spirit of the Wolf Warrior

Posted: July 1, 2020 in Straits Times
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A bit late posting my latest for the Straits Times, this time digging into the question of nationalism and the problems it causes countries using the lens of the Wolf Warrior mentality in Beijing as the entry point. Still crashing to finish some bigger projects, hoping to have more time for other writing soon!

Beware the spirit of the Wolf Warrior
Summoning the forces of nationalism anywhere in the world invites the risk of a bite-back

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The film Wolf Warrior 2 has managed that special feat of entering the lexicon.

Wolf Warrior has become the byword for a mood in Beijing that sees little reason to stand down before adversaries. Its primary audience is domestic, showing the Chinese public they are living in a strong country built by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). But this sort of narrative is also dominant globally, where political leaders are stoking nationalist and nativist fires at home to bolster themselves.

Such narratives rarely stop at borders, however, and usually create friction abroad. This can constrain government options as they seek to please domestic audiences. Nowhere is this clearer than in the current stand-off between New Delhi and Beijing where cool heads are struggling to maintain control.

Wolf Warrior 2’s key message was clearly stamped in its final scene, where against a backdrop of a Chinese passport, words appeared saying: “To citizens of the People’s Republic of China, when you find yourself in danger in a foreign country, do not give up hope. Please remember, behind your back, will be a strong and powerful motherland.”

This film is aimed at a Chinese audience – something that is important to remember when considering what the point of the so-called Wolf Warrior diplomacy is. It is not something aimed at the rest of the world, but at Chinese citizens to show them their motherland’s strength.

The specific phrase “Wolf Warrior diplomacy” appears to have been coined in July last year, in a BBC Chinese article that explored a Twitter spat between then charge d’affaires at the Chinese Embassy in Islamabad, Mr Zhao Lijian, and former US national security adviser Susan Rice.

Now a senior spokesman with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mr Zhao at the time ran one of the most prominent and prolific Chinese government official Twitter accounts. He was at the forefront of a growing mood in Beijing that the film seemed to encapsulate – of a China that was no longer hiding and biding its time, in Deng Xiaoping’s phrase, but was rather standing tall and thrusting itself into prominence on the international stage.

The aggressive posture Mr Zhao encapsulated was intended to show that China was no longer being pliant, but was taking the rhetorical fight to the enemy.

Chinese people will often receive a mixed message at home – on the one hand, they see their country getting rich and leaders talking of national rejuvenation, but then abroad they see they are treated as a second-tier power with anger directed at them.

The extraordinary growth at home and hostility abroad do not seem to fit together, and actually undermine the CCP’s messaging to its own people about how well things are going. Stoking nationalist fires helps strengthen the public’s positive feelings towards their government.

This is a global problem. In the United States, President Donald Trump has made a domestic virtue out of attacking allies. The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s spending, decoupling from China, withdrawing the US from international agreements – these are all policy decisions that he has championed to his voter base, heedless of the impact or appeal to allies.

In London, the entire Brexit conversation was predicated on the fact that Europe was a millstone to British ambition. Similar narratives can be found in almost every European capital. Leaders pandering to their political bases have long blamed a distant and abstract Brussels as the source of domestic problems. Yet, in a world of superpower confrontation, the idea of walking away from what could be one of the most powerful alliances on the planet seems absurd.

And in Delhi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has harnessed Indian and Hindu nationalism to win resounding election victories. Globally, however, it has brought him condemnation with concerns about human rights of minorities in the country and the troubles in Kashmir.

Stoking these fires can be dangerous after a certain point. By getting people worked up at home about mendacious or evil foreigners, you create a context not only for racism to thrive at home, but also for your citizenry to pick fights for you abroad.

In Kazakhstan, China is having to deal with the fallout. In mid-April, a series of articles emerged on the Chinese Internet that suggested many of China’s neighbours wanted to “return” to China. The implication was that they were all so envious of China’s success that they wanted to renounce their own nationhood to become part of greater China. Produced by a click-bait farm in Xi’an, they appeared to be an attempt to monetise the nationalist mood at home.

When one article referring to Kazakhstan came to the attention of Kazakh netizens, however, it created an uproar, surfacing as it did against a backdrop of growing concern about Chinese influence in their country. The public anger that followed led to its Ministry of Foreign Affairs hauling China’s ambassador in to give him a dressing down. The ambassador in turn expressed anger at the stories, claiming that the entire event was being stirred up by Western media – all done on Facebook, blocked in China.

In Ladakh, we might now be seeing the apotheosis of this problem. With strong nationalist sentiment stirred up at both ends, China and India are facing off at a moment when the popular sentiments in both countries are being agitated by strongman national leaders against each other.

In this light, an admission of large loss of life in conflict is something that neither side wants to accept without consequences. The public has been brought up on narratives of how strong they are and how weak the other is. There is a danger domestically if this does not fit with what they see. Both sides are constrained in their choices as a result. They have to keep the public happy, yet at the same time are concerned about escalating into a larger conflict.

The danger is in some ways best captured by the experience of Wu Jing, the director and star of the Wolf Warrior movies.

In the wake of the runaway success of the second movie, he became a talking point on Chinese social media. Among the many stories that circulated was the rumour that he was from Hong Kong, and that his wife was an American green card holder and his son had United Kingdom citizenship – somewhat contradictory, given the nationalist tone of his blockbuster. In an echo of the “birther” scandal in America around President Barack Obama’s right to contest the presidency, Wu’s mother had to post on Weibo photos of their Chinese passports. The nationalist fires that his film had fanned ultimately circled back to burn him. This is the danger that such nationalistic narratives can create. Uncontrollable anger at home which limits your options abroad.

Raffaello Pantucci is a senior visiting fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies.

Could China and India be heading for war?

Posted: June 12, 2020 in Prospect
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A new article for Prospect magazine in the UK which ran in the magazine with the slightly more apt title ‘Great Power Play at Himalayan Heights’. Continuing the spate of China related pieces have been working on, this looks at the current dust-up between China and India in Doklam. Have a few longer Central Asia pieces in the pipeline (as well as a Webinar or so which are being planned as I type), as well as some bigger terrorism pieces coming soon. As ever, welcome any feedback!

Could China and India be heading for war?

Flare ups at the border need to be handled with caution
by Raffaello Pantucci / June 11, 2020 / Leave a comment

Indian National Security Adviser Ajit Doval, right, talks with Chinese State Councillor Yang Jiechi before their delegation-level meeting in New Delhi, India. Photo by Manish Swarup/AP/Shutterstock

In the late summer of 2017, I was sat in the sumptuous lobby of one of Beijing’s luxury hotels with a Chinese military contact, catching up about current events over tea and cakes. A dust-up between China and India over Doklam, a plateau high in the disputed mountain ranges that China shares with India and Bhutan, was winding down, with both Beijing and New Delhi eager to calm tensions. With a dismissive wave my Chinese colleague said it did not really matter anyway as “winter is coming and it will resolve the situation. The Indian soldiers are old, while our PLA [People’s Liberation Army] boys are young and fit.”

This image of a vigorous China and creaky India is one that Beijing loves. Both may be rising Asian powers, but China is leaps and bounds ahead of India economically. And it is hard not to form such an impression from a visit to the respective capital cities. Beijing is a booming metropolis where the old has been swept away for the new. Giant glass skyscrapers loom over a crowded web of concrete. In contrast, New Delhi is green and dusty, with unfinished or ageing construction linked by bumpy and poorly marked roads.

But it was India’s desire to improve its infrastructure that set off the latest flare up between the two nations in May. The construction of a road on the Indian side of the disputed Line of Actual Control (LAC) led to a Chinese reaction, with Chinese soldiers suddenly appearing to pick fights with their Indian counterparts at various points on the disputed border. Stones, sticks and punches were thrown with some reports suggesting that soldiers on both sides had to be evacuated due to their injuries.

The state-controlled Chinese press downplayed the incident, blaming the Indians for trying to change the situation on the ground. The more vibrant Indian media was full of chatter, with retired Indian officials competing with guesstimates as to how many Chinese soldiers had invaded Indian territory. A row over a road has now turned into the most serious flare-up between the two powers in years.

The question is, why? India and China are not natural allies, but both realise there are economic benefits to be had by working together. As Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi put it, “the Chinese ‘dragon’ and the Indian ‘elephant’ must not fight each other, but dance with each other. In that case, one plus one will equal not only two, but also eleven.”

The answer is likely to be found in the China that Xi Jinping has been building—a country that sees itself as a strong and leading power on the world stage; that no longer feels it needs to bow down to others and is able to stand up to the omnipotent United States. This helps explain China’s aggressive push out in every direction—menacing Taiwan, asserting itself over Hong Kong, strengthening maritime claims in the South China Sea—and the combative “wolf warrior” diplomacy that has captured international imagination.

Xi has telegraphed his intent a number of times. At an Army Day celebration in 2017, he told gathered military leaders: “Today, we are closer to the goal of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation than any other time in history, and we need to build a strong people’s military now more than any other time in history.”

The current standoff is the end product of this aggressive mood and a desire to lash out in the wake of Covid-19. What is perhaps most worrying is that it is not certain whether Beijing was aware of the details of the attack until it had happened. While it is unlikely that PLA commanders in China’s south would have the temerity to launch an attack against their neighbour without orders, it is possible they pushed further than their bosses may have initially intended. Given the low regard they have for Indian forces, a quick prod across a disputed border would both show Beijing they were doing their bit while also reminding the Indians of their dominance in the region.

The problem is the ill will that is generated. As Tanvi Madan, an expert at the Brookings Institution, put it, even before the current clash “anti-China sentiment has gone mainstream” in India. An app that promised to remove all Chinese apps from a smartphone was downloaded 4.7m times in just five days in India before it was banned by Google.

China has likely strengthened the hands of its enemies over its southwestern border. This is an entirely unnecessary outcome that is mostly the product of Beijing’s arrogance towards Delhi and the hubristic mood that President Xi has been fostering.

Seen from UK, Kashmir fits the global roster of causes for Jihadists elements

Posted: March 9, 2020 in Observer Research Foundation
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Somewhat belated catch up posting for another new outlet, this time the excellent Indian think tank Observer Research Foundation’s (ORF) Raisina Debates forum. The piece looks at a longstanding issue of interest, Pakistan’s links to UK jihad, something you can read a lot more about in my earlier book and am sure will be a continued feature of my research.

Seen from UK, Kashmir fits the global roster of causes for Jihadists elements

Kashmir, Jammu and Kashmir, reorganisation of Kashmir, Article 370

Over a month has now passed since the Indian government made the dramatic step of changing Kashmir’s constitutional role and while the move has stirred emotions, we have not seen the outburst of violence that was expected. While it is difficult to know exactly what is going on in Kashmir and there are deep humanitarian concerns, sat in London the concern that is always present is how this might echo back into the UK. The UK has a sad history of links to violence in Kashmir, from the murder of Ravinda Mhatre in 1984 through to the London Bridge attacker from December last year. In between we have had radicalised Brits blowing themselves up in Srinagar, involved in terrorist linked kidnappings, as well as others arrested as they try to cross the line of control. The UK has a more intimate connection than others to what happens in Kashmir, meaning an eruption of violence or instability there is something that is watched with a very attentive eye.

The history of the UK’s link to Kashmir is a long and sad one. Born in part out of a dam construction in Mangala in the 1960s, this led to the displacement of a large population from the Pakistani part of Kashmir who migrated to the UK. This created a community which over time became the first link in a chain migration which left the UK in a situation whereby roughly three quarters of its Muslim population of around 3 million is of Kashmiri origin.

While the positive side of this connection has been to enrich the United Kingdom with a dynamic community that has contributed positively to the country, the negative side has been to inextricably link the United Kingdom to the persistent troubles that take place in Kashmir. This has over the years articulated itself in large-scale protests in the UK, the murder of Indian diplomats, fundraising for Kashmiri causes (mostly charitable, but also terrorist organizations like Lashkar-e-Taiba or Jaish-e-Mohammed), as well created a path to militancy which led to terrorist attacks in Kashmir and which al Qaeda took advantage of to launch a number of failed and successful terrorist attacks against the West. 

The most recent articulation of this was found in the case of Usman Khan, the troubled young man who lashed out against those who were helping rehabilitate him. Of Pakistani heritage, but born in the UK, Khan was arrested in 2010 as part of a terrorist cell whose most mature plot was a plan to attack the London Stock Exchange on Christmas Day. The group was one with deep links into the UK’s jihadist milieu with links around the country. Ultimately, they were prosecuted for a variety of acts, with the LSE plot the one which attracted most attention.

In fact, one of the more concerning elements was the part of the plot to which Khan was linked. Drawing on his Kashmiri family and heritage, Khan’s intent (along with a group of his colleagues from Stoke) was to try to establish a terrorist training camp in Pakistan. The intent was to establish an institution that would outwardly appear “a normal madrassa” but which would train warriors. Their goal, as was later summarized in court, was “the express contemplation of terrorist operations in the UK to be perpetrated by some graduates of the training camp at some future date: the imposition of Sharia in Kashmir was not the limit of the group’s aspirations.” Khan’s own lawyer characterized him as a 19 year old young man “whose ambition was to bring Sharia law to Pakistan controlled Kashmir”, though he also made on to make the point about how fanciful this planning was pointing out that “it was highlight unrealistic to suppose that the authorities in Pakistan would allow a teenager from Stoke to impose Sharia law.”

This lack of credibility aside, the fact remained that for Khan, Kashmir was a mobilizing cause. The space for militancy that it provided gave the young man a place and way into being involved in violent jihadist activity. He was in many ways tracing a path that had been seen repeatedly before in the United Kingdom, where young British men of South Asian heritage were stirred up by a combination of local preachers and global events to reach into their Kashmiri heritage to try to find links to militancy. This was seen in the early story of the network around the July 7, 2005 bombing plot against London as well as numerous others.

The connection has stretched beyond terrorist violence. In the wake of the recent decision in Jammu & Kashmir, there have been numerous protests in London and Birmingham, including some that have turned violent. While the protests have not been of a scale that has been seen previously, they come from a history of such incidents in the wake of any major event in J&K. For Britain’s Kashmiri community, watching from afar what is happening to their brethren in India is a source of great concern. It leads to calls for action in Parliament, pressure on the government and regular protests. 

But this political activity in some ways is not the problem. There are numerous expatriate communities in the UK who regularly protest about events going on back home. What is more worrying is the link that we have seen occasionally emerge with links to militancy. And while care has to be taken to make a direct correlation (mobilization for Kashmiri causes does not always equate to international terrorism), there is a long history of Kashmir providing ideological motivation or a practical first step for people to become involved in international terrorism. Prime Minister Modi’s moves and elevation has been a source of great concern and source of mobilization amongst the South Asian jihadist community in the UK. There is an inevitable link between turmoil in Kashmir and trouble in the UK. The timeline along which this can take place can be long, but the consistent feature is that these things resonate. 

And seen from Kashmir, anger against Delhi is something which gets articulated through an international lens. While the stories of ISIS in Kashmir appear to be largely overblown, graffiti in Srinagar identified in ORF’s own Kabir Taneja’s recent book on ISIS shows how locals articulate their anger using the language of ISIS even if they have little direct connection to the group itself. The point is that Kashmir fits into the global roster of causes which jihadists will summon as rationales for action. For the UK, however, the link is more immediate.

Seen from London, the Modi government’s decision is a human rights dilemma which is wrapped up in a potential security threat (both regionally and at home). The consequences may take months or years to play out, but there can be no doubt that some impact will eventually be felt.

India’s actions in Kashmir could have bloody consequences in the UK

Posted: August 9, 2019 in Telegraph
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More catch up posting, this time a short piece for the Telegraph reflecting on the Indian action in Kashmir. It draws on a point made previously a few times, and doubtless something that will return to in the future. Hard to tell at this stage how things are going to play out, but there will undoubtedly be consequences of some sort.

India’s actions in Kashmir could have bloody consequences in the UK

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Indian security personnel stand guard along a deserted street during restrictions in Jammu, August 5, 2019 Credit: Reuters

In February 1984, the deputy head of the Indian Consulate in Birmingham was grabbed as he got off the bus heading home with a cake for his daughter’s birthday. The next day, Kashmiri nationalists announced that they had kidnapped him and were demanding a ransom and the release of a Kashmiri leader in Indian custody. The Indian government refused and Mhatre was brutally murdered. Three decades later in 2005, the Kashmiri connection came to life once again when a group of British born young men blew themselves up on the London public transport system murdering 52 innocent commuters. Their journey to Al Qaeda training camps had started through Kashmiri oriented ones.

This sad history of violence shows how intimately the UK is tied to the waves of violence that occasionally pulse through Kashmir, and shows why attention needs to be paid to what is happening in there now. The newly crowned BJP government led by Narendra Modi won a landslide election victory on May 23 on a platform of revoking a key part of the constitution which defined Indian controlled Kashmir as separate to the rest of the country. This reclamation has come at a moment when violence in Kashmir appears to be sharpening as the Muslim majority population chafe against rule from Delhi.

The Indian government’s assessment of the potential impact of this decision can be seen in the fact that the Internet has been largely cut off and the mass deployment of thousands of soldiers into the region. Over the weekend thousands started to stream away from the region near India’s border with Pakistan after the government issued a series of warnings about potential violence.

They are right to be concerned. Quite aside the fact that internecine violence between different ethnic and religious communities in India has in the past resulted in mass death and violence, this region often acts as a flashpoint between India and Pakistan. Since 2015 there has been an growing number of terrorist attacks against Indian security forces which has resulted in an escalating level of response by the Indian government against Pakistan. While there is some evidence of cross-border support from Pakistan, they are able to exploit genuine and growing anger in Kashmir at the moment.

This move by the government in Delhi is unlikely to do much to tamp this down. Rather, it is likely to exacerbate people’s fears that Delhi is going to open the region more to re-settlement by non-Muslim populations from elsewhere in India. The region’s special status will feel further under threat and create a context that will become a further flashpoint between India and Pakistan. These are two nuclear armed states who have shown in the past few years an escalating pattern of armed confrontation over incidents starting in Kashmir.

This has hugely dangerous consequences for one of the most populated parts of the world. But it also resonates in the UK. Talk to any MP who represents a constituency with a substantial South Asian population, and they will tell you about the degree to which issues in the subcontinent show up regularly in their surgeries. At one point, a Kashmiri focused political party managed to claim city council seats in Birmingham on a platform largely focused on Kashmir. The UK is right to be deeply proud of its South Asian communities (both current Chancellor and Home Secretary claim this proud heritage), but unfortunately there are difficult politics attached. What happens in Kashmir resonates in the UK.

Raffaello Pantucci is Director of International Security Studies at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI)

‘To suggest that India rejects the Belt and Road Initiative in its entirety would be wrong’

Posted: January 3, 2019 in Fortune
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A couple of quick posts begin the year of separate pieces that emerged towards the end of last year. On a more geopolitical bent than some of my previous work, but reflects a broader trend in my work. First up is an interview that I did with the magazine Fortune in India about India’s views and response to the Belt and Road.

‘To suggest that India rejects the Belt and Road Initiative in its entirety would be wrong’

Raffaello Pantucci from the London-based think tank The Royal United Services Institute explains what India has got right and what it has got wrong about the initiative.

By HINDOL SENGUPTA,  7 min read
fortuneindia-2018-12-9c7548fd-bc63-4fd3-a0e3-0fb468900439-pken63

China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has created a stir around the world. Will this multi-country infrastructure and investment project, which conservative estimates put at around $1 trillion, transform the global power structure or will it trap numerous countries in debt leading to chaos? And what does it mean for India? In London, Hindol Sengupta spoke to Raffaello Pantucci, director of international security studies at The Royal United Services Institute, for some answers. Edited excerpts:

What do you think most people are getting wrong about the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)?

What’s most missing in the discourse is often perspective from these countries (the countries through which the project runs) and which reflects their interests. We should be wary of superimposing our external interpretation or perception on them. For instance, this entire point about debt traps. Now there are issues about debt, but it is not really about China trying to trap these countries into debt. It is more about the capacities and issues within these countries. Two problems happen while analysing the BRI: one, people tend to think of it as one grand strategy as opposed to lots of things happening in diverse ways in lots of places; and [two], try to superimpose that view or superimpose the view of the bigger U.S.-China clash that is happening now onto this. But both are not quite correct. There are many nuances that get lost when we cut in that way.

What are the most interesting nuances in the Indian subcontinent that are being missed out in the BRI analysis?

On the India side, there is a tendency to think that India does see this as a big, hostile thing [in] its entirety, whereas I would say that the reality is in fact India can never sign up to the BRI project in its entirety because the China-Pakistan corridor cuts through disputed territory [Pakistan-held Kashmir]. But there are other elements in the vision like the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), like investment into third locations, and like Chinese investment into India that the Indian government quite likes and would like to foster. In Pakistan, once again we talk about the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) as one overarching thing whereas, in reality, these are a number of smaller projects. And even the loans are of various kinds—some are loans given by Chinese banks to Chinese companies to complete projects, others are loans given to the Pakistani government as a concessionary rate, and then the Pakistani state hires companies on projects. We have a habit of treating these as one big block whereas actually these are a bunch of different projects being handled in different ways and with different kinds of reactions on the ground in Pakistan. In some regions, you see some tensions and local pushbacks on the ground in Pakistan like in parts of Balochistan; in some others, like in parts of Punjab, people are quite happy about these projects.

In this scenario, how do you look at the insurgent attack on the Chinese consulate in Karachi (in November 2018) for which Pakistan blamed India?

That incident did not surprise me in the least. If you track recent incidents in Pakistan, there have been more and more direct attacks on Chinese interests in Pakistan by militant groups. We recently had an incident where a bomber of the BLA (Balochistan Liberation Army) targeted a busload of Chinese engineers. The BLA has been very clear that they are targeting Chinese interests in the country. The accusations against India have a long history. The thing that worries me is that while it is impossible to say whether there is any merit to these accusations, what is certainly true is that there is a lot of anger in Balochistan, which has been there for a long time. What they have now realised is that attacking the Pakistani state hasn’t really delivered any results. They have realised that if we attack the foreigners we will get more attention internationally, and we are attacking the Pakistani state’s biggest ally; and that in itself might deliver some results for us. It is erroneous to blame this on India or Afghanistan, and it is impossible to know for sure if there are any elements from these countries lurking in the background, but what we can say for certain is that there is real anger in Balochistan, and it has now decided that targeting the Chinese gets some sort of a reaction.

If this flares up, what does it mean for CPEC?

The underlying logic of CPEC would remain and this will remain an irritant to that. If the Chinese put more pressure on the Pakistanis to stop this kind of attacks, you will see a much stronger crackdown on the Balochi groups by the Pakistani forces. CPEC remains important and within Pakistan, CPEC has become kind of synonymous with Pakistani national economic rejuvenation, and that’s important for the whole region. Chinese companies will have much greater security around their assets and they might struggle on sending large numbers of engineers to Pakistan if these sorts of attacks escalate. But China is big; they will still find some people to send and its unlikely that these kinds of attacks would bring some sort of a grinding halt to the CPEC. A major attack might mean that the Chinese might [have] some of their security forces on the ground, but largely they would want the Pakistanis to solve this.

What ramifications does China’s stringent actions on the Uighur Muslims—including ‘re-education camps’—in the Xinjiang region have on its ties with Central Asian countries, Pakistan and the BRI?

What has been depressing is the lack of response from the Muslim world on this issue. Whatever comments there have been has largely come from Western capitals, and some from Malaysia. This is mainly because those countries do not want to upset China. But there have been some tensions in Central Asian countries some of whose citizens live in China and who are getting caught up in these issues in the Xinjiang region. What we have seen is concern, for instance, in Kazakhstan, where people are worried about these measures in China making their influence felt in their own country. There is pressure from the people in some of these countries for their governments to bring up these issues with China. This is not what the governments want to do because they want economic ties with China. This friction will grow.

How will the BRI project impact India’s future relations with China and Pakistan?

Clearly, in the Indian strategy vision, China is the biggest threat they look out and see. You see this in all kinds of things, in the strategic military purchases of India, in the so-called ‘necklace of diamonds’, in its relationship with Japan and the U.S. But notwithstanding all of this, we still see India hesitate to let the relationship with the Chinese to blow up into a full-fledged confrontation. That’s why we haven’t seen the Quad [Quadrilateral Security Dialogue; the strategic coming together of the U.S., India, Japan and Australia] really live up to its expectations. This is because none of the countries want this to become very confrontational and seem like a great front against China. Because they realise that they have other business with China. The U.S. has been trying to push things towards a confrontational direction, but the other countries realise that they must engage with China, its rise is happening around their borders. It is a very complicated picture. The real question going forward is how India will accommodate China’s rise, but also that China must learn to handle India’s rise and take its concerns more seriously. They have historically really looked down on India and treated India in a really disparaging fashion. This has led to angry confrontations and a sense in India that it just not taken seriously enough. I think there is a rebalancing that will happen [between the two]. And if that happens successfully, it could be massively beneficial to both. But at the moment it seems to be that national pride in both countries means that they are butting against one another but if these two great powers can figure out a way to work together and how, their growth models would intertwine with another.

What is the low-hanging fruit that India and China can pick off to better their relationship?

The low-hanging fruit could be Afghanistan. If India and China could agree that they would partner in Afghanistan, you could see a real game changer on the ground in that country with hugely positive effects. The other is why does India and China have to see projects in the surrounding island countries as threats? Why not jointly build infrastructure projects using the AIIB or the BRICS Bank, which could again lead to cooperation.

From China to Central Asia, a regional security bloc’s long, slow march towards an alternative world order

Posted: July 11, 2018 in South China Morning Post
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More belated catch up posting from my occasional column in the South China Morning Post, this one published at the same time as the SCO Summit and G7 in Charlevoix.

From China to Central Asia, a regional security bloc’s long, slow march towards an alternative world order

The world’s attention was on Singapore and Charlevoix but the future may have been in the Chinese city of Qingdao

PUBLISHED : Monday, 18 June, 2018, 8:45am
UPDATED : Wednesday, 20 June, 2018, 2:18pm

COMMENTS: 13 

Raffaello Pantucci

While the world was captivated this week by the globetrotting show of US President Donald Trump, another summit just days earlier suggested what an alternative world order might look like.

Various heads of state from member nations of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) met in the Chinese city of Qingdao for the bloc’s annual heads of state meeting.

The SCO’s activities have been limited in the decade and a half since it was formed but this year’s summit had some significant moments.

First and foremost was the presence of – and handshake between – Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Pakistani President Mamnoon Hussain. While the membership of the two regional rivals is likely to be a major block to future activity, the presence of their leaders showed some of the organisation’s potential. Modi’s attendance alone signalled that the world’s biggest democracy wanted to maintain strong links to this archetypal non-Western institution to make sure it had all of its international bases covered.

The event was also an opportunity for two of the West’s biggest pariahs, Iran and Russia, to grandstand.

In the past Beijing has sought to tamp down efforts by Iranian leaders to transform the summit into a chance to bash the West. Back in 2010, President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad was so disappointed by the SCO’s refusal to admit Iran over fears of antagonising the West that he skipped the summit in Tashkent and instead attended the Shanghai Expo. But in Qingdao, the group chose to unite to highlight their displeasure at renewed Western sanctions against Iran and the collapse of the Iran nuclear deal.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has also regularly used high-profile summits in China to show disregard for Western sanctions and the optics around Putin’s attendance were similar to many other previous events, though this time are topped with a medal for his “friendship” with China.

On the sidelines of the summit, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced that “no matter what fluctuations there are in the international situation, China and Russia have always firmly taken the development of relations as a priority”. On live television he then proceeded to give the Russian leader a gold medal lauding him as “my best, most intimate friend”.

Awkward phrasing aside, this is a clear signal that China is siding with Moscow in tensions between Russia and the West. While Beijing might not always approve of Moscow’s disruptive behaviour on the international stage, the reality is that the two powers will, under their existing leaderships, always stand together against the West.

And this signal by Beijing was the most notable point about this entire summit.

China has long treated the SCO with the reverence required of an institution that brings together the heads of state of a number of its allies and which it helped name, while at the same time disregarding it as a functional organisation. Beijing has been unable, for example, to realise some of its key ambitions with the group. China has sought to push the SCO towards greater economic integration and activity, something resisted by other members fearful of China’s further encroachment into their territories.

Moscow sees the SCO as a way to try to control Chinese efforts in Central Asia while the Central Asians broadly view it as a possible way to maintain a balanced conversation with their giant neighbours. Meanwhile, powers like Iran, India or Pakistan see it as an alternative international forum that they want to be involved in.

With the accession of India and Pakistan most observers in China fear that the organisation’s already limited ability to operate is going to be even further reduced.

Yet none of this detracts from the fact that for Beijing it is a forum which they are hosting which now brings together the leaders of over a third of the planet’s population. They are clearly the dominant player within it, and it is a forum in which Western powers cannot meddle.

This gives Beijing the perfect opportunity to show its stature on the world stage and its efforts to offer a more stable alternative world order to the chaotic one that is most vividly expressed by the Trump administration.

The SCO may have done remarkably little beyond hold big meetings and China’s activity in all of the SCO member states at a bilateral level is infinitely more significant than its efforts through the bloc.

But at the same time, this is a forum that has consistently met and only grown. Under its auspices, China has managed to slowly encroach on Russia’s military and political dominance in its own backyard, and has now persuaded the world’s biggest democracy that it is an important group to be involved in.

This slow march forwards stands in stark contrast to the imagery and disputes to emerge from the G7 summit in Charlevoix. And while the Western media may have largely ignored events in Qingdao for events in Canada and Singapore, the rest of the world is paying attention. An alternative order might be starting to crystallise, or at least one that has potential to deeply undermine the West’s capacity to determine the future of world affairs.

Raffaello Pantucci is director of international security studies at the Royal United Services Institute in London

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