At Astana SCO, pitfalls to avoid

One hopes India goes places, and as a nation of 1.25 billion people it certainly deserves to do so. But in this virtually unknown Indian’s view, the nation also needs to take careful note of the long-term implications of a plan sought to be foisted upon us by China. The Chinese analyse and examine the future for upto 50-100 years, well beyond two future generations and over the horizon. This culture doesn’t exist anywhere else.

We begin with China’s first salvo at the new “invitees”, even before their arrival, before the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Astana, Kazakhstan, this week — where Prime Minister Narendra Modi will lead the Indian delegation. A clear message to fall in line, even before the party starts! Why? As the old cliché goes, a “new arrival is a rival”, specially if one happens to be a “big” gun.

Thus, in a typical blow-hot-blow-cold psychological war, the not-so-suave statement from Beijing stands out: “India, Pakistan to become full members of Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) at Astana (Kazakhstan) summit”. But there’s a caveat: keep bilateral issues out of SCO.

In a clear warning, directed more at India than “all-weather friend” Pakistan”, Beijing foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying used a rather cryptic semantic: “Hope India and Pakistan strictly follow the charter of SCO and the idea of good neighbourliness to uphold the SCO spirit, improve their relations and inject new impetus to the development of the SCO”. Watch the word “strictly”.

It’s a warning. Beijing knows fully well that “all-weather friend” Islamabad will follow it, so it’s really a word of caution to India — not to counter Pakistan. This isn’t the UN General Assembly, it’s the SCO! Indeed, an effective pre-empting of all potential “situations” — putting the onus of future failures, disagreements, dissension, disputes, confrontations within the multilateral SCO squarely on “Indian intransigence” in (the certain) case of Pakistan raising the “K” word. Seen another way, it reflects China’s confidence pertaining to the eruption of the India-Pakistan bilateral dispute, which is bound to spill over to overshadow other matters on the agenda. As in the past.

If Pakistan could repeatedly raise, recite and rant the “K” word at the annual UN General Assembly ritual every September, why not at SCO? After all, it’s only a club of six (now eight) nations, 50 per cent (four out of eight) landlocked, with China and Russia as dominant members, with access to the sea! And now add Pakistan’s 567-nautical mile coastline and India’s 4,104-nautical mile coastline.

To start with the fundamentals: the SCO began in 1996, well after the Soviet Union’s collapse, when China, the sole Communist power of substance, felt threatened by the sole capitalist superpower-led West, and decided to take it on.

Understandably, in the ensuing political chaos, social disruption and economic collapse of all 15 new states, born out of the USSR’s demise, the hardest hit were landlocked nations of the great Euro-Asian heartland, which suddenly emerged as a political buffer between a shrunken Russia and an aspiring China.

Hence, the Shanghai Five (China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan) was founded on April 26, 1996. With changing times, however, the five became six — with Uzbekistan joining it on June 15, 2001. And there it stood, till it decided to induct India and Pakistan into the group on July 10, 2015.

As both India and Pakistan signed the “memorandum of obligation” on June 24, 2016 in Tashkent, the decks are being cleared for their induction into SCO. One may recall, coincidentally, 51 years ago, in the same Tashkent of a then-undivided USSR, India and Pakistan signed a peace accord on January 10, 1966, under the watchful eye of then Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin, that came to be known as the Tashkent Declaration.

Unfortunately, it did not bring any glory to the Indian political leadership or their professional advisers, as it ended in failure with New Delhi ceding its own legal, bona fide territories like that of Jammu and Kashmir’s Haji Pir pass and a few more areas to Pakistan, thus legalising Pakistan’s illegal occupation of J&K. The Tashkent Declaration hit the nadir of Indian diplomacy and polity. As things stand, it has to be realised that the SCO essentially began as “security and military alliance” between six states, four of which are landlocked; one (Russia) with poor access to the sea and a China of a large swathe of remote, difficult, arid land mass and a border that is one of the biggest and gravest challenges to its leaders. There is nothing new to believe it’s no longer a military-security alliance.

Moreover, one has to remember that all members of the SCO also fall in the list of China’s targeted members of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). If so, is the SCO then a duplication of the BRI, or vice versa?

If, as Beijing claims, BRI/CPEC is “strictly economic” in its objectives, so be it. Then where does SCO stand? The key feature and spirit of the SCO is military-cum-security, not economic. Could it then be referred to as a China-led Nato of the Euro-Asian heartland?

If so, it will definitely disrupt India’s strategic calculations. After hundreds of years of land-fixative defence and military thinking and policy due to at least 40 major invasions during past 1,000 years via the wild lands of India’s northwestern gates, New Delhi had just started looking to the sea.  One only hopes the SCO will not, once again, drag India in the opposite direction: to what has historically been one of the world’s most turbulent areas.

The SCO may have everything, but it doesn’t have access to the Indian Ocean. China made the mistake of building the CPEC road to Gwadar through Indian land. China doesn’t want to repeat that error in the SCO.

The “make India join” plan may have many disadvantages, but in Chinese eyes the advantages far outweigh them. The SCO is no UN, and it will be far easier to make India fall in line by the collective voice, might and will of eight proximate neighbours, under China, than by a resolution passed by remote UN General Assembly of 188 distant countries. Or so it hopes.

One can only wish that India doesn’t fall into China’s El Dorado trap by leaving the operational flexibility of a wide-open ocean, to be entangled in a well-known, difficult landlocked terrain of bloodshed and feud.