Chan Akya of Asia Times says India will not take part in WW III, when it happens, against the Muslim Fundamentalists of the world, because of the Muslim Fundamentalists in India.
PART 1: World War III - what, me worry?
By Chan Akya
Sam Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations is now being made operational in the Middle East, thanks to the neo-conservatives' vision of the West triumphing over Islam. The end game that most right-wing observers look to now is a conflagration that sees the West take on Islam, supported by a coalition of willing allies in Africa and Asia. Meanwhile, Islam counts on its army of the faithful to lend support.
Be that as it may, I believe that both the West and Islam overestimate their hold on, if not their importance to, the Chinese and Hindu civilizations. The prospect of World War III, rather than
forcing them to choose sides, is more likely to cause policy paralysis, despite the fact that both India and China stand to benefit from the conflagration. While it is in their interest to cause an outright war between the two sides, they are more likely to engage in navel-gazing.
Neither the West nor Islam has covered itself with glory as far as China and India are concerned. While the Chinese would consider the West as hurting it more particularly in the past 100 years, for India the balance tilts more against Islam. This observation is more pertinent when seeing the eventual place the two societies envisage for themselves in the world. It is interesting to note that while their philosophies are different, the basic outcome has been the same, namely that both China and India were splendidly isolated from the rest of the world in the heyday of their civilizations. There is little moral justification for either country to support the West or Islam.
Early Indian and Chinese explorers found little to occupy them in their journeys outside of their countries. The contact between Chinese and Indian cultures led to the export of Buddhism from India. In a study of Buddhism's reach, we can gauge how the two cultures would react to a changing world.
The India that Prince Gautam was born into was dominated by the Hindu system, albeit one run by the principles of Manu, rather than the more egalitarian Vedic culture. The doctrine of Manu was a product of the Aryan conquest of the ancient peoples of India, including the Dravidians in the south of the country. In this world, with its multifaceted rituals and barbaric animal sacrifices, the arrival of Buddhism portended substantial changes. The language of the ruling classes, Sanskrit, was quickly subsumed by the language of Buddhism, Pali.
As the first great emperor of India, Ashok, converted to Buddhism, ancient Hindu culture suffered its first real shock in 1,000 years. The response was revolutionary more than evolutionary, with the country's ruling classes quickly removing public practices forbidden in Buddhism, such as animal sacrifices. The kinder, gentler culture that arose from this period did not have to wait long for its turn to revenge. The ascetic principles of Buddhism were simply incompatible with running a large country that was already a melting point for various races. This failure to impose discipline was to cost Ashok's followers dearly, ending the dynasty barely 100 years after his death.
Still, the damage to Hindu culture was done. With a weaker resolve at the center, regional kingdoms became more powerful, in a development that was not to reverse for 1,000 years. That left the individual kingdoms more vulnerable to the onslaught of a new group of invaders from the West, namely Islam. As smaller kingdoms quickly crumbled against the onslaught of Islam, Hindus took refuge behind the apparently cosmetic differences. They were also helped by the historical fact that while Islam unites in times of defeat, victory is often fatal for Muslims.
Thus it is that from the 9th through the 13th centuries Islamic conquerors of northern Indian states usually found themselves under siege from their co-religionists. The most famous battle of all during the period featured the Mughal leader Babur against a Muslim ruler, Ibrahim Lodi, on the other side of Panipat. Furthermore, to pay for the various battles, Muslim rulers had to impose various taxes on their populations. I believe this was the main reason for their lack of enthusiasm in converting the Hindu population to Islam. The second reason was of course the ultimate in scorched-earth policies that history has ever known, namely the mass incidents of sati (female suicides) in kingdoms that Muslims conquered. In any event, Islam left alive a culture that would in future pose a great threat.
Buddhism also weakened the patriarchal Chinese culture, but did provide a benefit in that it acted to homogenize cultural practices across the country. Thus people in southern China could relate to their northern cousins more than previously was possible, because of the role of Buddhist monasteries and temples. The common schools for monks, in Tibet and other places, provided China with its first glimpse of mystic as against practical religion.
The key development in China's history, though, was under the Emperor Qin, who unified the country through substantial warfare combined with a common language. The resulting monolith of an empire was able to shrug off the Muslim warlords from Central Asia with relative ease, particularly when compared with the problems that a splintered India down south faced. For this reason, Islam generally treated China and its culture with grudging respect, quite unlike its view of other cultures.
This state of affairs remained for a long time, until the West gained enough technical mastery of weapons first developed by China to take on the Chinese empire. It is at this point that China's relative insularity was to go against the country - a failure to observe and learn from the decline of Hindu civilization against Islam. The Western conquest of China followed a pattern similar to that of India's decline, namely gradual wars in the periphery that weakened central authority, finally culminating in an assault across the country.
There are today not enough Christians or Muslims in China to push the country in the direction of supporting either the West or Islam in any global conflagration. However, a resurgent West poses more of a threat to China's patriarchal culture, which is not very different from the centralized authority-driven culture of Islam. Given that, it is more likely that China would tilt toward supporting Islam, as its weapons-proliferation efforts over the past few years have shown.
The missile used by Hezbollah this month to sink an Israeli ship was an Iranian variant of a Chinese Silkworm; similar ancestries can be established for many of the medium- and long-range weapons currently in the hands of Islamic tyrants. It is also noteworthy that the only working nuclear weapons in the Islamic world belong to Pakistan, and are almost entirely reverse-engineered from actual Chinese bombs. This leads me to conclude that an escalation of the conflict in the Middle East would eventually necessitate the West to demand adequate support from China, failing which the country itself could become a target. The waxworks of Beijing are likely to grant enough concessions to the West to avoid being attacked, and then lie in wait for their revenge.
The Indian situation is more precarious. While much of the country's right-wing intelligentsia would push it to war against Islam, there is enough of a fifth column in place to thwart the country's historic quest for vengeance. India's Muslims number more than any other country's in the world with the exception of Indonesia. Add to these the populations of both Pakistan and Bangladesh, and Indian military might is in essence boxed in.
Neither the Indian air force nor the army can offer much assistance to the West. The only aspect of Indian military that the West may benefit from is also its least developed one, namely the Indian navy. I do not see the likelihood of India playing any role in a direct confrontation between Islam and the West, and therefore it is more likely that it sits on the sidelines waiting for the West to do its job.
PART 2
China and India in World War III
By Chan Akya
I wrote in Part 1 (World War III - what, me worry?, July 25) on the subject of how China and India would fail to react in the event that the West and Islam proceed toward a full conflagration, even if such a conflict would be a heaven-sent opportunity for both powers to fully realize their own strategic objectives. While current events dictate an eventual conflict, a number of factors will have to fall in place before World War III does break out. The roles for North Korea, Taiwan and Pakistan are falling into place in this conflict, and it is using these cards that the West and Islam can play the two ancient civilizations.
I predict that future generations of Indians and Chinese will literally worship George W Bush and Osama bin Laden for having pushed
the West into a disastrous conflict with Islam. An escalation of terrorist attacks against Christian and Jewish powers has already caused the moral compass to tilt against Islam. It appears only a matter of time before either the United States or Israel uses weapons of mass destruction against an Islamic power, albeit for preemptive rather than offensive purposes.
That Iranian nuclear establishments will be bombed in the next few months is by now a foregone conclusion. If the US decides to use conventional but lethal force, rather than risk allowing Israeli bombing of Iranian facilities, the moral compass shifts back in favor of Islam.
President Bush has failed to finish the job with bin Laden, leaving the mess for someone else to handle - eerily echoing the same failure of his father to depose Saddam Hussein, which necessitated his current misadventure in Iraq.
Assuming that the US does attack Iranian facilities, how does the progress to an all-out war between Islam and the West take place?
We have to recognize that no established Islamic power has the ability to strike outside of its immediate border. The armed forces of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iran have no capacity to inflict meaningful harm on the West. The sole exception is Pakistan, which is why the global terrorist brotherhood will probably focus more of its attention on this country than any other in the next few months.
The key strategic aim here would be to secure a working nuclear weapon. Sensing an opportunity to unite against greater enemies, we have seen in July cooperation not only between Hamas and Hezbollah, but also potentially with bin Laden, if the recent train bomb attacks that killed almost 200 in India were orchestrated by al-Qaeda as is being claimed.
It appears more than a coincidence that both Israel and India were attacked at the same time - I expect that moves to drag Pakistan into outright war against the West are already under way.
Perverse logic
Pakistan is ruled by President General Pervez Musharraf, who is focused almost exclusively on his own survival. Casting his tent with the West after September 11, 2001, was a stroke of genius that immediately opened up Western coffers that had been unavailable since the country's nuclear tests in 1998.
Still, keeping local militants on his side has involved the obvious barter of border peace with India, in other words by leaving the Kashmir issue unresolved. This serves as a rallying call for the faithful, and to the extent that disaffected youth plan carnage in India rather than in Karachi, the general is left with breathing room. In return for letting them operate, it appears the terrorists promised to keep a relatively low profile until the end of this year - that is, after the US elections in November.
However, I believe that the plan has backfired. Just as Syria failed to show much control over Hezbollah, Pakistan has lost control of its militants, who now appear to work directly with al-Qaeda command structures. The turning point could well have been the Pakistani army attacks in the Pashtun areas that were undertaken to keep the US happy in its "war on terror".
Disenchanted that the Pakistani army could kill its own creations, Kashmiri militants appear to have bypassed the army, going straight to the Taliban and perhaps even to bin Laden. This explains the attacks on both Srinagar (grenade explosions that killed nine) and Mumbai on the same day, a move that seems to have caught even the Pakistani army by surprise, if its state of readiness in the days preceding the attacks is any indication.
A continuation of such attacks on Indian targets will embarrass the Pakistani army, while any ham-fisted attempts to collar the terrorists will likely backfire in a similar way the conflict in Waziristan did. (The conflict began in 2004 when the Pakistani army began its search for al-Qaeda in the mountainous Waziristan tribal areas.)
The Pakistani army will find soon that the costs of keeping Musharraf in power outweigh the benefits, particularly if no arms supplies materialize from the US. At that juncture, and disguised as a coup, there is every chance that a nuclear weapon will go missing. This weapon will be to World War III what Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip was to World War I.
China can't, India won't
Rather than India, I believe the West would turn to China if this eventuality were to arise. The chief reason, as I wrote before, is that India's 150 million Muslims in essence rule out any chance of direct Indian involvement in the battle.
China, on the other hand, has a big role to play, because of its influence on both Pakistan (which has weapons of mass destruction) and North Korea (which has the projectiles capable of delivering them). While many commentators have joked about the accuracy of North Korean missiles, claiming for example that the safest place in the world is the target, such humor falls flat if the projectile is armed with a nuclear weapon.
Many Pakistani generals study and train in China, and the country has provided key technologies. If China were to prove unwilling to cooperate, as it finds more in common with Islam than the West, then the US and Europe are likely to use the Taiwan card. No Chinese leader can survive Taiwanese independence; the event might well prove catastrophic for the Chinese Communist Party itself. Under the circumstances, its desire to prevent a split would push China to support the West, much as it might prefer to do the opposite.
What can China actually do, though, if nuclear weapons go missing in Pakistan? Beyond the initial stage of assessing responsibility, China can also pinpoint other locations for safeguarding - this is the reason that I do not expect the entire nuclear arsenal of Pakistan to fall into the hands of the Islamist powers.
Since the 1998 Pakistani nuclear tests in 1998 showed that the weapons had Chinese origins, Beijing has been constantly pressured to maintain a close watch on locations and access. Thus it becomes imperative for the West to use China as a preventive measure rather than a cure.
Enough pressure on China combined with obdurate Pakistani leadership may push Chinese confrontation against Pakistan, starting with an abrogation of the friendship treaty. That leaves China free to pretend that a conflict involving Pakistan does not necessarily extend to itself. The People's Liberation Army has sufficient strike power, but that's only so long as the enemy drives in through the Gobi Desert.
I repeat that despite all the historical reasons that India's right wing would extend, there is no chance of the country participating in a war between the West and Islam. Failing to find an ally that will directly occupy Pakistan and Iran, the West will be left with no alternative but to attempt this on its own, with the US, Russia and the United Kingdom providing a bulk of the manpower.
The outcome will be a sufficient weakening of both the West and Islamic power over the following 20 years.
