Former National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra has stated that information inputs from China suggest that its analysts envisage a two front attack against India by China and Pakistan within the next four to five years. Mishra urged the Prime Minister to focus not only on a 9 per cent growth rate but devote equal attention to security threats from China. Mishra could be mistaken. The government seems to have taken care of any security threat from China. It has consciously made India into a proxy of China, willing to act according to Beijing’s bidding. If New Delhi is becoming Beijing’s puppet, why should China attack India?

The Copenhagen summit clinched India’s new role as China’s proxy. Even before the summit Jairam Ramesh scampered to China to cozy up to Beijing in order to forge a joint front for climate change. What was the need to do that? 

After the summit Ramesh said that differences between the developed nations led by America and the developing nations arose mainly because of the “deficit trust” that the West had with China. He claimed that no such deficit trust existed with India. He was entirely correct. India’s pollution level is many, many notches lower than China ’s. India has no real problem with international verification except of unequal and non-reciprocal arrangements that might infringe on its sovereignty. Then why on earth did India latch itself to China’s coat tails?

At Copenhagen Premier Wen Jiabao urged India to stand firm with China for a united stand against western pressure. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh gave assurance he would. Why? India could easily have held firm to its own position with greater acceptance by both the West and the G77 nations without incurring the displeasure caused by the opaque, non-transparent and polluting role of China. Perhaps the government was disarmed by some private assurances given by China? That seems to be the case judging from the euphoria that gripped official and media circles by Premier Wen’s assurance given just before the Copenhagen summit that China will not interfere in South Asia or in the internal affairs of India. But China has always claimed that it never interferes in the affairs of South Asia or of India. After Wen’s assurance will China stop issuing paper visas to Kashmiris from the Valley? Will China stop bullying road builders on our territory in Laddakh and force them to stop work? Will China stop encroaching at several points along the border? Will China stop arming and strengthening Pakistan against India? 

Apparently not. After Copenhagen summit a Chinese Defense official justified Beijing’s sale of warships and submarines to Pakistan on the ground that India was receiving similar systems from the US and Russia. On the face of it this is unexceptionable. Why should China not have the right to arm Pakistan to ensure that it can maintain an adversarial role against India? Is this interference in South Asia? Technically, no. Actually, it confirms the hyphenation of India and Pakistan by Beijing. It confirms China’s role in beefing up Pakistan’s intransigent attitude against India. Therefore without “interfering” China is helping maintain the status quo in South Asia as India remains encircled by hostile nations aided by China. One cannot blame China for pursuing a policy that it perceives to be in its interest. 

But what about India? Does it have the faintest perception of the policy that would suit its interests? That does not seem to be the case. Possibly India is emboldened to pursue its demeaning, self-destructive role because of approval by its mentors in the US. These mentors are the ones that cheer on India to achieve a 9 per cent growth rate without any attention to its national security and self-respect. These mentors are the dominant group of America’s corporate world which destroyed America’s pre-eminent global economic position, which compromised America’s security, which helped launch unjust wars in Asia, which are attracting public criticism from US citizens who are beginning to even question the system, and which made America more unpopular in the rest of the world than ever before. These mentors belong to what this scribe has always described as the real Axis of Evil comprising America’s corporate world and China. 

Will the government ever de-link itself from this evil axis and from the coat tails of China? Fat chance! Beijing has invited Foreign Minister SM Krishna to China in the first week of April 2010. The Ministry of External Affairs has gratefully accepted the invitation. China’s Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said that Copenhagen marked a “new beginning” in the bilateral relations between China and India. How right he was. Now India, like Pakistan, is part of China’s camp. China will now be much better placed to bring about accord between its two squabbling proxy nations of South Asia, India and Pakistan. Unless of course this servile government miraculously develops a spine.