A new Cold War? — Post-Covid, New Delhi must respond to changed strategic environment

It may be one of the great myths of contemporary history that the Cold War ended with a Western victory over the Communist bloc, with the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall. There’s little doubt that one side did declare victory. However, what few noticed at the time is that the other side didn’t concede defeat. It’s a mistake to take Mikhail Gorbachev as representative of the Communist bloc; he has many more followers in the West than he does in Russia or China.

In fact the event that mirrored the fall of the Berlin Wall, occurring the same year but at the other end of the Eurasian landmass, was the massacre that took place when Beijing sent in troops and tanks to shoot down student protesters gathered in Tiananmen Square, and alongside razed the ‘Goddess of Democracy’ – a statue the students had erected. Perhaps it’s a mark of the entrenched Eurocentrism of most observers, that they lent greater geopolitical weight to events unfolding in Berlin than to near-contemporaneous ones in Beijing.

China’s leaders had noted the weakness of the Soviet economy (and their own), and supreme leader Deng Xiaoping had already put China on a course to perestroika. But with the Tiananmen Square massacre, Deng essentially signalled that glasnost was not going to be part of the package (indeed, this was seen to be Gorbachev’s mistake). In its place, Deng coined the slogan “hide your strength, bide your time”. In other words, if the West thinks it won the Cold War, indulge them in that notion for a while. Till China is in a position to throw off Western dominance and reshape the world in its own image, thereby preserving the primacy of the Chinese Communist Party (CPC).

We know what happened next. A strategic consensus emerged in the West to engage China, essentially carrying forward the 1972 Nixon-Mao rapprochement with the help of which, it was thought, the US had split the Communist bloc and ‘won’ the Cold War. The CPC used the opportunity to craft China’s stunning rise, which has turned the country into an economic, technological and military superpower.

Meanwhile, America remained fixated on its old Cold War foe, Russia; 9/11 also happened, and America embroiled itself in military adventures in Iraq and elsewhere in a fruitless “war on terror”. Xi Jinping arose in China and concluded, to cadge a phrase from a popular Bollywood film, “apna time aaya”. There was no more need to hide China’s strength.

One of many unfolding instances of what the new Chinese assertiveness means was demonstrated when Australia sought an independent investigation of how Covid-19 originated, something that ought to be a matter of course. China responded by suspending beef imports from Australia and threatening to cut off student and tourist flows (both significant sources of revenue in Australia). The message is clear. If you’re in China’s neighbourhood you need to toe the CPC’s line. Don’t expect a rules based order.

The massive suffering caused by Covid-19, and its presumed origins in and initial concealment by China, mean that the gloves are currently off between the West and China. For what lies ahead the perceptive prognosis of Shi Yinhong, professor of international relations at Renmin University who also advises China’s State Council, is as good a guide as any: “Different from the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union, the new Cold War between the US and China features full competition and a rapid decoupling. The US-China relationship is no longer the same as that of a few years ago, or even a few months ago.”

The post-Covid world will thus confront India with a changed strategic environment that policy makers will need to adapt to. New Delhi adapted well to changed geopolitics following the Berlin Wall collapse: It moved beyond its erstwhile Soviet leaning non-alignment, improved relations with the West and launched economic reforms at home. Will it be able to adapt again?

An obvious opportunity arises out of the West’s need to decouple economically from China. New Delhi could seize this opportunity by embracing economic reforms and shifting to a significantly higher plane of productivity and growth than that seen over the last decade. A prerequisite for this is finding a quick exit from today’s stifling lockdowns, which have crippled the Indian economy.

But make no mistake: The rise of a subcontinent sized polity that begins to equal China’s capacities, in China’s immediate neighbourhood, isn’t something the latter will take to kindly. It will respond to enhanced geopolitical rivalry, or a new Cold War, with a drive to bring all of Asia under its strategic umbrella. The CPC sees Pax Sinica as another version of Pax Romana, with all roads leading to Beijing – witness how the BRI is structured. Witness also how India-China trade already has a ‘colonial’ structure – with India sending forth mostly raw materials and importing manufactured goods (while incurring a steadily rising trade deficit, currently a whopping $57 billion).

Thus, New Delhi shouldn’t expect any exemptions from China’s current mode of “wolf warrior” diplomacy. Doklam, or currently rising tensions along the LAC, which could lead to a faceoff worse than Doklam, are only a preview of things to come. Instead, South Block must develop the tools and the capacity to resist the CPC’s strategic pressure. This will require making some hard choices, and the will to stick to them.

After all, China too made some hard choices in its rise to superpower-dom. Such as when it decided to tilt towards Pakistan against India about half a century ago when India and China were roughly equivalent powers, and has stuck to that choice through thick and thin, restricting India’s rise.