Beijing’ s Cat’s Paw 26 March 2015
China may
improve relations with India, but not at Pakistan’s expense.
Is China’s alliance with Pakistan in trouble?
Pakistan’s recently announced intention to invite Chinese President Xi Jinping
as chief guest at their joint military services parade and subsequent
postponement has encouraged some to see cracks in the relationship. Like
periodic reports about China’s unhappiness with Pakistani militants’ role in
training and arming Xinjiang;s jihadi Uighurs or Beijing’s supposed distancing itself from Islamabad on
the issue of Kashmir, this more recent flurry is also much ado about very
little. Pakistan’s security situation
and President Xi’s busy calendar may delay his first visit more than Islamabad
would like, but the Sino-Pak friendship is based on too long a history of
strategic cooperation to be affected by minor irritants.
If china decides to develop formal alliances,
Pakistan would be the first place we would turn. It may be the only place we
could turn. This seemingly total trust in Pakistan is rooted in intimate and
unwavering collaboration over decades from which both countries have benefited.
It is also based, small writes, On China’s steady, long-term commitment to
ensure that Pakistan has the capabilities it needs to play the role that China
wants it to. Mao passed away shortly after meeting Zulfikar ali Bhutto and
blessing nuclear cooperation with Islamabad. His funeral in September 1976
provided the occasion for AQ Khan, father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb, to meet
china’s top nuclear official in Beijing. Their secret collaboration has since
enabled Pakistan to build an arsenal of warheads and long-range nuclear capable
missiles. On the other hand Pakistani transfer of pilfered western know-how-from
centrifuge design to US Tomahawk and stealth helicopter technology-has given
China bility to leapfrog the West.
Pakistan has also benefited from China’s close
collaboration with Washington against Moscow while helping china with its own
contacts. Small notes that Kissinger joked with Chinese leaders that the best
way to contain India’s ambitions was to arm Pakistan and Bangladesh with
nuclear weapons. Like its earlier role in facilitating secret US and Chinese
contacts leading to opening of relations, Pakistan’s privileged ties with Saudi
Arabia (which at the time had no diplomatic relations with Beijing) enabled it
to arrange secret meetings between Saudi and Chinese officials. It eventually
culminated in the sale of Chinese long-range nuclear capability: warheads
produced by Pakistan could presumably be made with Chinese-built Saudi missiles
if Riyadh wished to do so. Ties between Beijing and Islamabad flourish in
asymmetric warfare as well. Small shows that China was “intimately involved in
Pakistan’s history of using irregular forces as an instrument of its military
strategy. One of the two sides’ closest areas of tactical cooperation. That
cooperation with Pakistan involved the supply of arms not only to the
anti-Soviet mujahideen, but also to Naga, Mizo and assamese insurgents battling
central rule by New Delhi. While brutally suppressing Uighhurs and urging
Pakistan to do the same, China itself has maintained contacts with ihadi groups
offering moneyand small arms in exchange for pledges not to target China or
support Unighur separatists.
Today, facing a nascent alliance between India, the
US and Japan, Beijing may indeed seek to improve relations with New Delhi, but
this will not happen at the expense of its all-weather friend. Whether or not
Xi Jinping attends a parade in Rawalpindi this year,Beijing alliance with
Islamabad remains rock solid.
To Conclude China follow the “Principle” enemy’s enemy is the best
friend
Grateful to Nayan Chanda
