In his article, “Cultivating brevity and calmness” (Jan 8), Ayaz Amir appeared to be implying that Indian army chief Gen Deepak Kapoor’s declaration of his country’s new military strategy to fight on two fronts was nothing out of the ordinary.

Military chiefs do not usually harp on the warring potential of their countries, unless there are reasons, and Gen Kapoor doing so has a lot to do with President Obama’s visit to China in November 2009, which clearly marked the beginning of a new Sino-US strategic relationship.

The West and the US have quietly backed India as a counterpoise to China, and India sees benefits in this role similar to the benefits of its left-leaning “neutralism” during the Cold War.

The benefits under “neutralism” were directly proportional to how cold the Cold War got; the colder it got, the more the benefits. On the other hand, the benefits in the “counterpoise” role are inversely proportional to the state of Sino-US relations: the more they develop less the benefits for India.

President Obama’s acts and policies are leading towards Sino-US relations turning into a strategic partnership, and he could well be the harbinger of the redundancy of India’s “counterpoise” role.

India’s concerns, however, are more than just the redundancy of this role. India must be more concerned that the stronger the strategic flavour of Sino-US relationship, the less it would render India’s chances of stamping its place as a major power in Asia and the dominant power in South Asia.

What Gen Kapoor was doing when he enunciated India’s new military doctrine was announcing, on his government’s behalf, that despite a new level of Sino-US relationship, India’s importance as a dominant regional power and a future world power cannot be ignored.

India can be predicted to use further equivocal measures to convey the above. It can emphasise its powerful presence and reach through further stagy actions, or startling statements, including those on its economic power.

For Indians, the need to proclaim its military power in the aftermath of President Obama’s China visit, before India parades it on Jan 26 to mark its Republic Day, was clearly greater than the negative fallout from the statement being interpreted as belligerent.

To get a handle on India’s concerns and unease on the growing Sino-US ties, one has to delve a little into the past. India has tried to act as mother hen towards its smaller neighbours in the region, but Pakistan has been the spoiler. China, while not smaller than its neighbour, let India act as the principal Asian power during the period it remained ostracised by the West under US influence. This suited China, for it gave it time to develop internally. When China began to emerge on the world scene as a major player, the Indian chant of “Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai” of the 1950s died.

A perspective of Indian sensitivity to Pakistan, and for the past many years also to China’s relations with the US, is provided by the US visits of two Indian prime ministers – Pundit Nehru in 1961 and Manmohan Singh in 2009. The similarity between the two visits nearly fifty years apart is uncanny, although one concerns US-Pakistan relations and the other US-China relations. The paradigms of the two visits match exactly, almost to the button.

Nehru had arrived pouting, much as Manmohan Singh did. It was Jack Kennedy then, a Democrat who had taken over in January of that year as president from Republican Eisenhower, who held office for eight years. It was Barack Obama in 2009, also a Democrat, who took over as president in January from Republican George W Bush, who held office for eight years.

Nehru was displaying annoyance at what India saw as a change in the Democrats’ attitude towards Pakistan after Ayub Khan’s successful state visit four months earlier. Perhaps also at the visit of Bashir, the camel-cart driver from Karachi, who was Vice President Lyndon Johnson’s guest a month earlier, and took America by storm with his homilies. Between them, President Ayub and Bashir the camel-cart driver had made 1961 the year of Pakistan in the US.

India felt Pakistan had benefited unfairly from eight years of supportive Republican rule and Nehru held Kennedy responsible for the shift in his party’s traditional hard line towards Pakistan. Kennedy found Nehru “brooding,” “stoical,” and “arrogant,” and termed the Indian prime minister’s visit as the “worst state visit I ever had.”

However, nothing out of the way was done to soothe Nehru until October 1962 when he ordered his army to evict the Chinese from “Indian territory.” This triggered the easily roused anti-China passion of the US of that period, and after that there were no bounds to US support for India.

Like Nehru in November 1961, Manmohan Singh arrived pouting in November 2009 less than a week after President Obama’s return from his China visit. He was displaying annoyance with events in China during Obama’s just concluded visit. India was unhappy with Obama’s attitude, which to India was a sign of the mounting importance of China for the US under the Obama administration.

India was irritated at Obama declaring that China has an important role to play in South Asia. It was upset with references to South Asia and India-Pakistan relations in the joint communiqué, such as “the US and China are ready to strengthen…co-operation on issues related to South Asia”; and on India-Pakistan relations, such as “they (the US and China) specifically pledged to support improvement and growth of relations between India and Pakistan.” India viewed Obama’s not receiving the Dalai Lama during his US visit as appeasement of China.

For India, the mention of a role for China in South Asia is bracketing India with Pakistan and Afghanistan, which India regards as gross denigration of its self-appointed role of dominant power in the region. India is resentful that the US and the West are not treating it as an upcoming global power at par with China. The aftermath of Obama’s China visit has raised the spectre for India of it playing second fiddle to China in South Asia, which it considers its backyard, and this must be a worrisome new dynamic for India.

During the Cold War India tried to promote the notion that all Asia was watching the democratic experiment in India, and the communist one in China, and Asia will go the way of the experiment that succeeds. The US was the chief buyer of this notion, and despite its left-leaning neutralism, India remained one of the countries most indulged by the US.

India has come out second best in the experiment it said all Asia was watching, not for reason of its democracy but for the Chinese leaders’ vision, their pragmatism and their timely shift in policies. That the change in the US attitude towards China — from extreme hostility to grudging respect, to strictly functional relationship, and which under Obama is showing signs of transforming into strategic relationship — is disconcerting for India should not be a great surprise.

The US, for all its sermons on democracy, is more concerned with political, economic and strategic advantages of any relationship, and China scores heavily over India on all these. Even if India scores heavily on democracy and, but for its abysmal record in Kashmir, perhaps also on human rights.

The Indian prime minister during his state visit to Washington must have looked for signs from the US side of substance, not form, on the concerns in his mind as to whether the US will continue to attach the same high priority to a strategic relationship with India as it did in past. It is hardly likely that whatever signs there were have pleased him.

With Sino-Indian relations acquiring a strategic dimension, India’s role as “counterpoise” to China will be considerably reduced. It will have to move on own steam and work harder to be worthy of the high regard that its size, its potential and, most of all, its democracy, undoubtedly merit.

The writer is a retired corporate executive. Email: husainsk@cyber.net.pk