THE GIST of Editorial for UPSC Exams : 25 JULY 2019 (India's shifting strategic concerns (The Hindu))

India's shifting strategic concerns (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 2 : International Relations
Prelims level : Shimla Conference
Mains level : India needs to do as the U.S. and China get busier in the subcontinent

Context

• The U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest gaffe has introduced another thorn in what is now clearly an unsettled India-U.S. relationship.
• While India’s hand is not as strong as we sometimes believe it to be, there might be opportunities to leverage the international situation further down the road.

What are the perceived advantages?

• If we step back and evaluate the India-Pakistan equation over the past five years, what stands out is that both sides proceeded from a perception that each holds an advantageous position.
• India’s confidence emanated from Mr. Modi’s electoral victory in 2014 that yielded a strong Central government and expectations of stable ties with all the major powers.
• Mostly overlooked in India, Pakistani leaders too have displayed confidence that the international environment was moving in a direction that opened options for Pakistan that were unavailable in the previous decade.
• This included the renewed patterns of Pakistan’s ties with the U.S. and China, with the latter reassuring Pakistan and, most importantly, the Army on their respective strategic commitments and bilateral partnerships.

Pakistan’s leverage

China’s angle

• Historically, U.S. policymakers have always sought to restore the alliance with Pakistan whenever Islamabad’s ties with China became stronger. India has borne the brunt of this recurring geopolitical dynamic.

Situation in Afghan conflict

• Much of Pakistan’s contemporary leverage can of course also be traced to the ongoing phase of the Afghan conflict. It fended off the most dangerous phase when U.S. policy might have shifted in an adversarial direction, or instability in the tribal frontier areas might have completely exploded.
• So, both India and Pakistan perceive themselves to be in a comfortable strategic position.

Pakistan’s benefactors

• Both the U.S. and China have overlapping interests in regional stability and avoidance of a major subcontinental conflict.
• While each maintains deep ties with Pakistan for different reasons, it is unclear to what extent their longer term interests coincide with India, which seeks a structural transformation in Pakistan’s domestic politics and external behaviour.
• The U.S. and China appear content with, or probably prefer, a Pakistan with a strong Rawalpindi, along with competent civilian governance structures and an elite with a wider world view.
• For China, a stable Pakistan can be a partner in the Belt and Road initiative and future continental industrial and energy corridors.
• In sum, both the U.S. and China seek a strong, stable and secure Pakistan that controls its destabilising behaviour because that undermines their wider regional interests. For the U.S., a revisionist Pakistan pulls India inward and away from potential India-U.S. cooperation on Asian geopolitics.
• For China, it undermines its industrial and connectivity projects in Pakistan, while negatively impacting India-China ties.

What is the India’s Stance?

• Maintaining that India has the right and the capacity to adopt an active defence posture that is, blocking the flow of cross-border terror by proactive operations on the Line of Control (LoC) along with reserving the option for more ambitious punitive strikes in response to major terrorist attacks on Indian military targets would play an important part in shaping how third parties view Indian interests and thereby assume constructive roles in managing Pakistani behaviour.

Conclusion

• If India ever asks third parties to assist in the region, it should be for a cessation of Pakistan’s proxy war in Kashmir, and, once an atmosphere of peace has been established, to persuade Pakistan to accept the LoC as part of a final territorial settlement similar to the offer by Indira Gandhi in the 1972 Shimla negotiations.

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Prelims Questions:

Q.1) With respect to “Sonali”, recently seen in news, consider the following statements:
1. It is a low-cost bio- degradable cellulose sheets.
2. It has been developed by the West Bengal Jute Mills Corporation (WBJMC).

Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
A. 1 only
B. 2 only
C. Both
D. None

Answer: A
Mains Questions:
Q.1) Why India needs to do as the U.S. and China get busier in the subcontinent?