Opinion Shangri-La Dialogue

At the end of the day,it was not clear if either US Defence Secretary Robert Gates or the Chinese defence minister General Liang Guanglie was successful in reassuring the top Asian officials assembled in Singapore.

After a rocky 2010,which saw Washington and Beijing repeatedly confront each other,the message of bilateral harmony in 2011 was certainly welcome if not entirely convincing. For many in Asia,the tensions between rising China and an America on the decline are structural and cannot be papered over by nice words.

Too much harmony,according to some in the region,will mean the United States is incapable of resisting the new hegemon on the horizon. Too much conflict,others fear,would put the Asian nations in a cleft stick.

Gates,who was on his last trip to Asia as defence secretary,sought to convince the region that the large budget deficit at home will not lead to a reduced American military presence in Asia. Gates urged Asian leaders not to underestimate American resilience and outlined a number of moves that will make US military strategy in Asia a robust one.

If the Asians were looking to Gen Liang,the first defence minister to appear at the ten year-old Shangri-La dialogue,for a message of military restraint,they were disappointed. While he insisted that China’s defence policy was “defensive” in orientation,he did not answer specific regional concerns on a range of issues from the implications of Chinese military modernisation to its muscular maritime assertion.

As the Asian security environment becomes increasingly uncertain,India remains an enigma for much of Asia and the Pacific.

While much of Asia wants wants India to contribute to regional balance of power,many nations are frustrated by the difficulties of engaging the Indian defence establishment in a sustained dialogue and productive cooperation. If India wants to signal more purposeful security engagement with Asia and the Pacific,it could start by making the Shangri-La Dialogue part of the defence minister’s annual calendar.

This year,India was represented by Minister of State Pallam Raju,last year by National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon,and the year before by the Admiral Sureesh Mehta,the chief of naval staff. An annual visit by the Indian defence minister accompanied by a high-powered delegation could provide the vehicle for raising Delhi’s strategic profile in Asia and the Pacific.

The Pamir Group?

Barely days before US Special Forces located and killed Osama bin Laden deep inside Pakistan on May 2,there were reports that Islamabad was pressing Kabul to abandon a declining America and latch onto a rising China.

While Pakistan has denied the reports and China has projected itself as a bridge between Washington and Islamabad,there are interesting ideas afloat on how Beijing can build an exclusive regional cooperation framework with Pakistan and Afghanistan. “China,Pakistan and Afghanistan need to form a Pamir group,a strategic trilateral partnership to support sustainable peace and prosperity in the region”,Li Xiguang wrote this week. Li,who directs the Centre for Pakistan Studies at the prestigious Tsinghua University in Beijing,said the “the Pamir countries could revive the Silk Road with China’s intensifying its investment in building a network of roads,energy pipelines,electric grids and other infrastructure connecting Afghanistan and Pakistan with China”.

“Serving as a mediator to bring peace between the warring factions of the region,China can work collectively with Afghanistan and Pakistan to stop violence among the local people,helping an Afghan government that makes all fighting peoples and factions sit at the table for political settlement and national reconciliation”,Li added.

Libyan diplomacy

Afghanistan is not the only place China wants to mediate. It has already stepped out in Libya. Beijing has confirmed that its officials were making contact with the Libyan rebels and their transitional government in Benghazi. China will also receive Gaddafi’s foreign minister Abdelati al-Obeidi in Beijing this week.

Some time ago,this column reported on the ongoing debate in Beijing about taking a pro-active approach to the Libyan crisis. Chinese critics of the traditional policy of non-intervention have argued that Beijing must focus on helping resolve the civil wars and regional conflicts in faraway lands.

Those calling for a bolder Chinese foreign policy insisted that a rising power must go beyond the urgent evacuation of nationals from war-zones and find ways to protect its long-term interests — commercial and strategic. India must adopt a similar pro-active approach in Libya,besides expressing its reservations about the Anglo-French intervention.

The writer is a senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research,Delhi