Can interdependence provide security to the people of India?

Why not?

I attended an online talk last year where a distinguished person shared his uncertainty with strategic balancing in the geopolitical context. That inspired me to do some reading up and I slowly homed onto the fundamental arguments for strategic balancing in three concepts : One is the age old belief that the big fish eat the small fish. In other words, the powerful will exploit and terminate the weak who oppose them. This led to the concept of the social contract, where the weak then pooled in their resources to buy the protection which some strong persons could provide them. As the populace increased, these turned into armies which protected not only the people from external aggression, but also the resources that their land held – water, minerals, fertile soil etc. And when the needs of the people exceeded the resources they held, the armies looked outwards to forcefully capture and provide it to them.  So, land boundaries started being demarcated because the armies needed to know the red lines which outsiders must not cross. As the need and tussle for limited resources grew, disputes were inevitable.

The third is the Thucydides Trap which draws on a Greek general’s theory that war between the kingdoms of Sparta and a growing Athens was inevitable. This theory was popularized by the American political scientist Graham Allison in the latter part of the last century, where he found that in 16 similar circumstances in history, 12 ended up in war.  It worked well in the Cold war too, because it appeared that only by balancing the strengths of the US and USSR could there be peace. But where the US and China are concerned, many scholars are now not too sure.

Without delving into which scholars believe what and why, lets use the content in the preceding paragraphs to make our own intelligent guesses.  Is there a common thread in the Greek and subsequent kingdoms and the US-USSR Cold war? My humble finding and guess is that in all these cases, neither side was dependent on the other. And since they needed more resources to grow, warring was justified and inevitable to protect and grow their people.

Now let’s say, both Sparta and Athens had ample avenues to grow and obtain more resources. But to do this, Athens needed Spartan people to build bridges and Sparta needed Athenian people to build boats. Would war between them have been inevitable?

I was at a seminar recently, where many distinguished scholars pressed for Japan to provide India with defence technology. Obviously to counter China. But, I was stunned by the Japanese diplomat’s views. He said that Japan was using interdependence and wider and deeper  people-to-people interactions with China to build security.  It seemed incongruous at first, but it seemed to click as my earlier findings matched!! So I asked the distinguished panelists why India could not do the same with China. I was given a hesitant and vague answer that the diplomatic route had already been tried.

After the seminar, a distinguished person of defence background shared that China’s trade surplus meant that India was vulnerable and hence we needed to counter that. I wasnt too sure if he meant by building defence capabilities or other means. Since the world opened up over two decades ago through the WTO, trade has been driven primarily by the people, not governments. And as I had learnt, trade is a positive sum game where both parties benefit. The buyer, because he receives goods that he needs at a competitive price and the seller, because he is receiving money ( or goods he needs) by supplying those which are surplus to his needs. Indian firms, had a headstart in mobile phones around the early 2010s, but the cheaper I-phone like Chinese phones, still sold and benefitted Indian buyers because they were more suited to their needs and budgets.

So though the Indian government blames China for the trade deficit, it is simply because Indian manufacturers have not used Indian strengths to deliver competitive goods which the Chinese people need. This need can be deeply understood only when more is known about the Chinese people and their market. And as for the threat of weaponising trade, China with a world market, could easily have diverted the small Indian portion of supply of cellphone parts (and many other goods which Indian manufacturers needed) to other countries like Vietnam and Malaysia. But did they?

An article in the Times of India today brings the sad news that there are no more journalists of China and India in each other’s countries. Apparently this and many other damaging effects are due to the devious Chinese advance into East Ladakh in 2020 during the COVID break out. But, I am puzzled. Didnt COVID break out in China first? And could not the highly professional Indian forces have dealt with the COVID challenge better than the Chinese? Why be so petulant about it?

Also, did not news of the Chinese advance start coming in around late February and even reached Rahul Gandhi by April? Had COVID really spread in India by then? Surely, such a large move would have come at a cost. So there must have been strong reasons for it. What were they? Why is it that three years down, we dont have even a theory? Is it not important to know why it happened, so we can better understand what is driving our adversaries and then the industry and defence forces can better prepare for future threats?

So would the people of India benefit more from isolating from China, thus breeding distrust and sacrificing development for more defence capabilities? Or more from building interdependence which reduces threats and enables more development, trade and prosperity?

Are there any angles that I have missed ? Do share! It helps enrich our collective insights!