CONFLICTING GEO-POLITICAL LANDSCAPECONFLICTING GEO-POLITICAL LANDSCAPE OF ASIAOF ASIA

Keshav Prasad Bhattarai

Reputed foreign policy analyst Walter Russell Mead has concluded that the geo-political theory and the heartland doctrine developed by English geographer Halford Mackinder more than one century earlier has “ stormed back to the center stage”. The aggressive foreign and defense policy posture reflected by the United States, Russia, China, Japan and Iran, have mainly contributed to this.

Obviously, since Mackinder published his theory in 1904, the world has seen two world wars, unparalleled economic growth than any time in human history, followed by unprecedented advancement in science and technology, but the crux of his theory has always been relevant. The United States, a marginal power has become the sole super power that has the resources and ability to change the course of events in every part of the world and has been engaged in the Eurasian Heartland for decades. Many countries from the inner or outer crescent of the heartland, have ascended to primacy: the world has changed much — more than anyone could have anticipated, but the Heartland was not forgotten, although the focus has not been consistent.

However, as Mark Twain has said, “History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.” And indeed, history has begun to rhyme. Therefore, analysts have begun to remember and read Mackinder with new enthusiasm. According to Eldar Ismailov and Vladimer Papava, Mackinder asserted that the European civilization was the result of many centuries of struggle against invasions from Asia and was stimulated by the need to respond to the pressure coming from the center of Asia.

Mackinder termed the center of Eurasia as a “Pivot Area” and in 1915, according to Saul Bernard Cohen, another English geographer, James Fairgrieve, introduced the word “Heartland” that Mackinder later also began to use.

While Mackinder suggested that if any Eurasian land power — Germany, Russia, or China — controlled the Pivot Area or Heartland, it could control the whole world.

According to Cohen, eleven years after Mackinder introduced his theory, Fairgrieve opined, “China was in an excellent position to dominate Eurasia”.

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Since the fall of Soviet Union, the US and Western Europe, taking Russia as a defeated power, made continued advances in extending NATO and EU membership to the newly independent countries of the Eastern Europe – traditionally considered to be countries under the spheres of Russian influence. NATO also took pride in locating its anti-missiles system in Poland and Czech Republic. The US and the West also realized the vital strategic significance of Central Asian countries, which was fully exploited during the US-led war on Afghanistan against Taliban rule and Al Qaeda’s terrorist network.

Its strategic location, coupled with a huge reserve of natural resources (mainly gas and oil) could have given Central Asia a new destiny by joining the energy markets of Western Europe, China and South Asia. Russia, jointly developing fuel supply routes with Central Asian countries while building strong strategic partnership with them, could ensure sustainable prosperity to the region as a whole. This could also help smooth the supply of fuel and energy to the hungry Western Europe, China and South Asia. But, unfortunately, this has been thwarted by the al Qaeda’s terrorism, NATO’s Eastern Europe mission and China’s exceptional rise followed by deep sense of Russia’s national humiliation. Putin’s rise to power with an aim to return Russia to its past glory, gave Central Asia- a new geo-political focus.

Since Ukraine crisis, while the West is busy in launching sanctions after sanctions against Russia — giving the Eurasian Heartland a new primacy in its policy — Russia in turn has begun to deepen its strategic partnership with China. For its part, the US is consolidating its influence near the heart of a rising China, a bellicose Russia, an emerging India, and the most volatile region of the world –the Middle East.

Defense Partnership and Alliances in the HeartlandDefense Partnership and Alliances in the Heartland

Last May, Russia secured a gas supply contract with China that is worth some $400 billion over the next 30 years. According to the New York Times, that is the biggest deal in the history of the natural gas industry. Additionally, the deal offered Putin the urgent political and economic confidence at a time when Russia’s European customers were reducing their reliance for Russian gas.

The most important thing, however, is that the deal helped bring the two major powers closer, and to form a stronger counterweight to the US and Europe, at a time when both China and Russia are having tensions with the western countries.

Additionaly, China has exhibited enthusiasm in creating new regional global bodies such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), as well as

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BRICS, to satisfy its rising strategic ambition. In the last week of August, according to RIA Novosti, army chiefs from Shanghai Cooperation Organization member countries (Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan) discussed the regional security problems where Chinese President Xi Jinping expressed his satisfaction for the expanded military cooperation between the member countries.

Just a few months earlier in April, in a meeting of top SCO security officials at Dushanbe, Tajikistan, China’s Minister of Public Security warned about new threats to the security of member states, and proposed to set up a joint security center to deal with the challenges they are experiencing.

On August 24-29, SCO member countries also participated in a military drill at Inner Mongolia- China, which according to RIA Novosti, was the largest exercises so far.

There is also the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) with member countries (Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan) aiming to promoting multilateral solutions to security and economic challenges.

For decades, Russia and China have competed with each other. China was a strategic partner of the US during the Cold War since 1970s, but with the collapse of Soviet Union and the emergence of a number of independent states in Central Asia, there have been left few spaces for Russia and China to continue their old rivalries. Had the West not taken Russia as a defeated country, Russia would have engaged more in East, Central, and South Asia and there would have remained a greater chance of competition between Russia and China to assert their political influence in the region. This would have offered a fair degree of strategic maneuverability for the US and Europe, but instead the over ambitious West forced both Russia and China to seek out each other to to get closer by sorting out their differences and lay the ground for a grand strategic combination that could last for decades (as witnessed by the above-mentioned gas deal between the two countries).

Stefan Halper in his thoughtful and provocative book, Beijing Consensus, says that the Peoples Bank of China — now six times the size of the World Bank — is financing infrastructure and energy development with low interest loans to countries in Africa, Latin America, and Near East and in Central Asia. Halper further adds, “China, in effect, provides a path around the west making Western standards and institutions less relevant.”

China has the money and the Russia has a huge armory. Although, the majority of the arms in Russian arsenals are not as advanced when compared to the Americans and Europeans, but by assembling Chinese

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electronic components in the weapons via a possible joint venture in the defense industry sector could go a long way toward meeting these inadequacies.

Major Asian Power: Groping their way Amid Major Asian Power: Groping their way Amid ExtremismExtremism

China’s Xi Jinping and India’s Narendra Modi both have a deep sense of the greatness that their countries enjoyed prior to the Industrial Revolution. Together, they seem to have a firm grip on the politics of their countries and are expected to remain at the helms of power for at least a decade from now. Their strong commitment to the rejuvenation of their countries, have earned broad political and moral support for them from among their people. Upon this backdrop, the world is focused on the nature of the relationship between these two major Asian powers — one with the world’s second largest economy and the other with the world’s largest democracy.

There are strong arguments that China and India must work together and find a new modality for their relations in regions of strategic concerns from Central to South and East Asia. Following in this vein, joint ventures and partnerships between the two countries — with India’s booming world class service sector and China’s  large manufacturing sector with the vibrant market for a billion plus people — could bring unlimited and sustainable prosperity for the two countries.

Moreover, the two countries share a major security interest in Pakistand – a region that India claims is a source of Muslim terrorism especially in the Jammu-Kashmir region, as well as in other parts of India extending from Delhi to Mumbai. That concern is shared by China, as Akhilesh Pillalamarri recently reported in The Diplomat, China has become worried about the surge of terrorist activities from Muslim separatists located near the border with Afghanistan and Pakistan that has killed over 100 people, including the murder of a pro-government imam in the largest mosque in the region.

Muslim militancy has become a major security threat to both countries. Uyghur, an ethnic Muslim militancy in the far western region of Xianjiang, as The Economist says, is similar to separatist movement in Russian Chechnya. The discontent in that region is spilling into the open.

China claims to have found some ties between Uyghur radicals in Xinxiang and militants in Pakistan. The violent strategies such as suicide bombings and indiscriminate killings of civilians adopted by Uyghur seem to have been learned in Pakistan and in other conflict-torn countries like Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq. Pillalamarri in the same article published on August 13, says

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that the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, the most important subgroup of which is known as the Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP), also operates from the North Waziristan — a region largely remaining out of the Pakistani government’s control.

Because of this, the Chinese military is reported to have engaged in halting the flow of terrorists from Pakistan up the Karakoram Highway and Khunjerab Pass into Xianjiang.

Obviously, Pakistan itself has been a long sufferer of Islamic extremism. Extremist elements in Pakistani army and intelligence agencies, followed by political parties that are ideologically based on radical Islam, has been a continuous source of democratic instability of Pakistan. Whenever, Pakistan has democratically elected a government that stands firm against the Islamic extremist, the Pakistani army, its intelligence agencies and radical political parties have combined to overthrow the democratic government and impose Army rule.

Currently, Pakistan is in turmoil, following the opposition movement led by the party of cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan and the religious preacher Tahir-ul-Qadri. They have vowed to bring down the Nawaz Sharif government, which according to the Washington Post, marks “the first successful civilian transfer of power in Pakistan’s history”. If Pakistan sustains its hard won democratic credibility, it can help to invigorate the new regional environment initiated after Narendra Modi came to power in India and might show a bold face against terrorism.

Strategic Asia: Test Case for India and ChinaStrategic Asia: Test Case for India and China

If peace returns in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and both countries can check Islamic militancy in their territories to build a vibrant democracy, South Asia, China and Central Asia could become the core of the 21st Century world.

Given that India and China lead the new century, some magnanimity is expected from them. The future of a country can never be allowed to become a hostage to its bitter history. Take for example Germany, which has successfully shed its historical animosities with countries like Russia, France, and the United States and has marked a new history to live, work and prosper with them. Japan–US relations is another example. Immediately after the Peace Treaty, Vietnam and America could discard the untold amount of the bitterest part of their history. However, China and Japan in East Asia, have maintained a most disappointing state of relations between them.

A news story published in China’s ruling Communist Party’s publication, Global Times, during Narendra Modi’s recent visit to Japan, unveils the

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prevailing distrust between Asia’s three major economies and military powers. On September 2, Global Times in its OP-ED page presented the whole picture of the relations of these three countries this way: “China’s GDP is five times that of India’s. Mutual trust between Beijing and New Delhi, facing strategic pressure from the north, is difficult to build as there is also an unresolved border conflict between the two.”

The Chinese tone of strong displeasure over Modi’s visit to Japan and overtures expressed there by the two Prime Minister sis revealed as thus: “After all, Japan is located far from India. . . It is South Asia where New Delhi has to make its presence felt. However, China is a neighbor it can’t move away from. Sino-Indian ties can in no way be counterbalanced by the Japan-India friendship.”

Yes, China has much more money than India, and it has certainly more advanced weapones than that of India. It has also set a stunning example for the whole world on how a country can find a path of development and create an untold amount of prosperity. Consequently, it has eliminated millions of people from poverty and misery and has helped people around the world to be relieved from poverty. Indubitably, humanity is proud of China’s economic progress.

But, to lead the 21st Century, only money and advanced arsenals is not enough. China has to primarily create and build some prestigious space within its neighborhood, based upon the values of governance and friendship. Good neighborly relations extending from Japan to Afghanistan and Central Asian countries by mending cracks and conflicts there  will only help China gain the global leadership it deserves.

Furthermore, China has grown out of the present global order created by the United States after World War II — and has gained the power and wealth from it that the country is currently enjoying.

No other country in the world has developed the political, economic, moral, and military capabilities to replace the US with a new one thus far.

China perhaps can do this, but it must learn that it is the very American values that have helped the US to attain the predominant global position it holds today and that its economy and military power are only subsidiary to those values.

Therefore, both China and India have to reconcile with the present day world order, while making huge efforts to improve this world order and make it better by being peaceful, prosperous and justice based. If it is engaged in following a course of military arrogance against its neighbors for small

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patches of land, and extending its aggressive defense posture, then China’s other interest will be hampered with respect to securing its larger interests of peace and prosperity within its defined territory and the region it belongs to. The same also applies to India.

Eurasia Review, SEPTEMBER 4, 2014

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