If ever an objective history of South Asia's major strategic events is written, the year 2019 will be remembered as a watershed year. The chain of events that began with the Pulwama suicide bombing (February 2019) and that finally led to the abrogation of Article 370 (August 2019) significantly tipped the strategic balance in India’s favour.&nbsp;

2014 onwards, India left the debris of ‘strategic restraint’ behind and redefined the conflict dynamics in terms of its new National Security Advisor (NSA) Mr Doval’s ‘doctrine of defensive offence.’ It was a significant doctrinal shift which found its first manifestation in Uri surgical strikes (2016). Fed on India’s decades of defensive force posture, Pakistan did not realise it until Balakot happened.&nbsp;

Further, in its more sophisticated form, venturing beyond the strict military domains, the doctrine of ‘defensive offense’ found its finest expression in the abrogation of Article 370, leaving Pakistan and China, the expansionist and revisionist brotherhood of Asia, in a quandary; a state of fix, rendering them not only increasingly clueless about a future course of action but also extremely vulnerable to strategic and tactical blunders.&nbsp;

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&nbsp;

Quite expectedly, such blunders have flown from Beijing and Rawalpindi in an unrestrained manner, with a desperate intent to reclaim the strategic edge against India. However, they have only exposed and weakened them further in the war of narratives.&nbsp;

Faced with embarrassing disasters in diplomatic assaults against India, bitter internal political turbulence, a worsening economy, and fierce resistance in Gilgit-Baltistan, Pashtun areas, and Baluchistan, Islamabad has openly started alleging India of fomenting terror in Pakistan. However, the fact is that it was the abrogation of Article 370, which took the winds from Pakistan's sails.&nbsp;

What has changed after August 5, 2019?

After the historical embarrassment of 1971 that ripped off a geographical portion from Pakistan, which had been in the forefront of the entire Pakistan movement, masterminds of GHQ Rawalpindi could never come out of the shock and, after that, single-mindedly focussed on disturbing and ultimately occupying Kashmir.&nbsp;

Also Read | <a href="https://www.wionews.com/south-asia/pakistan-pm-imran-khans-kashmir-campaign-bombs-at-islamic-meet-346206">Pakistan PM Imran Khan's Kashmir campaign bombs at Islamic meet</a>

Fully understanding the impossibility of defeating India in a conventional war, ISI masterminds began exploring the sub-conventional tactics to gain a strategic edge over India. To that end, the insurgency in Punjab offered a ready ground to destabilize India with a minimum effort and investment.&nbsp;

For Pakistan, gaining a foothold in Afghanistan to secure ‘strategic depth’ against India's advancing armies in the event of a conventional war was undoubtedly a prerequisite for a long-term hybrid and proxy war against India.&nbsp;

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The 1980s brought the much-needed American support for Pakistan in arming and training Mujahideens against the Soviets and facilitated Pakistan with a firm foothold in Afghanistan. The American GIs were leaving Kabul in 1988 after the Soviet withdrawal. for Pakistan, the stage was ripe for diverting the Afghan Jihadis towards Kashmir. Massive petrodollar funding and a decade-long Afghan experience in running proxies came in handy to stir up an armed insurrection in Kashmir.

The ISI-sponsored bloody phase of jihadi terrorism that began in the 1990s continued unabated, costing thousands of innocent lives. Over the last three decades, Pakistan's proxy war increased in intensity and ideological fervor.&nbsp;

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During the last three decades, the militancy in Kashmir, although it had its phases of ups and downs, was strategically planned and executed by masterminds located on the other side of the Indian border. India experimented with a range of counter-terrorism measures, bringing sporadic periods of relief.&nbsp;

However, the broader trajectory was about Pakistan creating and strengthening a supporting constituency thriving in a fertile ecosystem of Islamism, separatism, and terrorism. Adversary's success manifested itself in its complex yet robust capabilities to shake the Indian state during the unrest of 2016, post-Burhan Wani's encounter death. The Kashmir valley was engulfed with massive civil unrest and agitation within a few days, with casualty figures of 42 in the first week itself.

Moreover, something entirely financed and orchestrated by Pakistan's deep-state was projected by Pakistan as gross human rights violations by an occupied force in Kashmir. Burhan Wani, a self-proclaimed supporter of the Islamic Caliphate in Kashmir and Hizbul Mujahideen commander, was portrayed as a young and innocent hero dying for a cause in front of Kashmiris and the world community. Pakistan had not only created a highly radicalized social milieu that made Jihadism a dominant narrative but also excelled in the war of narratives, convincingly selling its lies for years to an array of civil rights activists, governments, and scholars in the west.&nbsp;

However, in one masterstroke of August 2019, India gave a crushing blow to Pakistan's three decades of investment in Kashmir. It was something that Pakistan's intelligence machinery did not anticipate. As a result, they were handicapped from achieving their 'Destabilizing Kashmir project' in the absence of Article 370, which acted as a catalyst till then. Article 370 was an edifice, an overarching umbrella under which Pakistan's proxy jihadists, assets in the media, academic, religious, cultural bodies, mainstream politics, academia, and the administration thrived and flourished.&nbsp;

Though India displayed some clarity about its understanding of how detrimental Article 370 was to safeguarding its key interests in Kashmir, when it denuded the article of much of its teeth in the 60s, over time, Delhi lost the clarity and became increasingly myopic in its understanding. A narrow vision led the focus on eroding Sheikh Abdullah's base and install a pliable government through democratic means, even if that involved pampering radical Islamists and separatists.&nbsp;

In parallel, Pakistan's propaganda machinery and its assets in the mainstream politics of Kashmir had skillfully crafted the narrative of Article 370, being the bedrock of Kashmir's identity. Its proxies instilled the popular consciousness with the imaginary fears of central government populating the state with outsiders in the absence of 370.&nbsp;

On the Indian side, successive political dispensations increasingly became entrapped in the narrative mentioned above sold by Pakistan's proxies. As a result, Delhi could never give serious thought on India's strategic interests in Kashmir. For decades, Article 370 was an untouchable default status that was supposed to be guarded till eternity.&nbsp;

Today, a year after its abrogation, Pakistan has lost the patronizing, protective, and enabling superstructure. The Pakistani proxies in Kashmir face the most significant existential crisis. The ecosystem of Islamist radicalization, separatism, and terrorism carefully created with lies, deceit and violence appears to be collapsing like dominos.

Interestingly, the façade of Article 370 under which Pakistan's proxy movement thrived was in itself fragile. Article 370 was a temporary and transient feature of the Indian Constitution, which could be amended or abrogated within the Indian parliamentary framework.&nbsp;

The autonomy guaranteed to Kashmir under the provisions of the article helped Pakistan in propagating its agenda to sell the fabricated story of Kashmir being a disputed territory.&nbsp;

Further, the militancy and separatist movement, which flourished under the patronage of Article 370, strengthened Pakistan's version of Kashmir as a disputed territory in the eyes of the world community and the local Kashmiris.&nbsp;

However, after its demise, the smokescreens have vanished, and not only the strategic experts but also the ordinary voices of Kashmir have openly started questioning, discussing, and condemning Pakistan's illegal and violent annexation of a part of Kashmir in 1947, the genesis of the Kashmir conflict.&nbsp;

Contrary to the annual condemnation of October 26, 1947, the day when Indian armies entered Kashmir, as a 'black day,' this year, to everyone's surprise, public squares of Srinagar were spattered with hoardings condemning October 22 as a 'black day', the day when Pakistan's Kabailis attacked Kashmir&nbsp;

The post-370 Kashmir has witnessed an intense crackdown on Pakistan-supported radical Islamist organizations like Jamaat-i-Islami and separatist organizations. National Investigation Agency’s (NIA) onslaught on terror financing has cracked the financial backbone of terrorism.&nbsp;

The security forces have neutralized the entire terrorist leadership of the local and foreign terrorist orgaizations. The recruitment of new terrorist cadres has drastically come down. Infiltration has become nearly impossible. The mainstream politicians and separatists like the Hurriyat stand exposed as entities who sustained the widespread resentment against India by indulging in massive corruption and mal-governance on the one hand and squarely putting the blame on Delhi's step-motherly treatment.&nbsp;

NIA's action against many of them in terror-related cases further confirms their dubious loyalties in the popular perception.

In Kashmir, a new political leadership with a nationalist outlook is emerging at the grassroots. Pakistan's desperate attempts to orchestrate terror attacks, civil unrest, and rally the diplomatic community against India on global platforms, have failed miserably. Organisation of Islamic Co-operation (OIC) has disappointed Pakistan and refused to bandwagon with it on several occasions.&nbsp;

There are no buyers in the Western World for Pakistan's foul cries over the abrogation of Article 370. The United States and most European states convincingly approved India's Kashmir move as a dire necessity to prevent Jihadist terrorism from taking deeper roots in Kashmir on the pattern of Syria and Iraq. &nbsp;

Except for the backing of Turkey and China, Pakistan stands isolated. Further, the residents of Gilgit-Baltistan have become fiercely vocal against Pakistan's demographic engineering and in its decision to declare the region as its sixth province, in an abject surrender to China's dictators.&nbsp;

Local resistance against the forcible occupation of Gigit-Baltistan and flooding the area with Sunni extremists has not only intensified, but it has also become a subject-matter of serious discussion in the western capitals. In Pakistan Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (PoJK), similar fears have given rise to a strong resistance movement.&nbsp;

On the issue of cross-border terrorism, Pakistan knows it well that post-2014, India's approach has changed. &nbsp;Now Delhi responds with surgical strikes and air raids, and one more Pulwama will most certainly be reciprocated with something way bigger than Balakot, which Pakistan cannot afford.&nbsp;

Further, the post-370 Kashmir has also started seriously questioning China's illegal possession over Aksai Chin. Recent India-China stand-off and Pakistan's continuous ceasefire violations have cleared the vestiges of any doubts lasting about the China-Pak duo's collusion and expansionist threat in the near future.&nbsp;

Internally, India’s Kashmir move has led to a massive embarrassment for Imran Khan's government and the Pak army. The Opposition has alleged Imran Khan's government of surrendering to India. Today, in the form of Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM), Pak army and the 'selected' PM Imran Khan's government face a compelling popular protest movement.&nbsp;

The situation has turned alarming for Pak army because, in addition to the mainstream political parties, it also includes ethical nationalist entities such as Pashtun Tahafuz Movement and Baluchistan National Party, hitherto seen as antithetical to the very idea of Pakistan.&nbsp;

Further, PDM is demanding minimising the role of Pakistani army and intelligence agencies from the political and developmental matters, a direct challenge to the mighty army. Bajwa and Imran, both, are at the lowest ebb of their credibility.&nbsp;

For decades, the Pakistan army used Kashmir to grab a disproportionate share in the national budget and cultivate hyper-nationalism and Islamism. Under the latter as a cover, GHQ Rawalpindi crushed all the religious, cultural, and linguistic minorities.&nbsp;

The ghosts of those massacres in Baluchistan, Pashtun lands, and Sindh are returning to haunt Pakistan. &nbsp;It is a reminder for Pakistan that internal turmoil is rooted in its birth and the fundamental philosophy of its existence, and a redux of 1971, is possible.&nbsp;

Nevertheless, Pakistan's generals refused to learn from the past and continue to publish substandard conspiracy theories blaming India for its internal problems. It appears as though Rawalpindi's is pushed back to the pavilion since the abrogation of Article 370, and Pakistan's grand new strategy is concocting lies of India aiding terrorism on Pakistani soil from Afghanistan.&nbsp;

Some Pakistani generals blame India's intelligence brass for reversing the 'paradigm of terror' by inciting Pashtuns, Baluchis, and Sindhis. However, the fact is that the 'paradigm of terror' created by ISI masterminds has boomeranged and backfired, something which was bound to happen.&nbsp;

Despite the turn of events, a frustrated Pakistan openly advocates the revival and strengthening of a terrorist base against India. By doing so, they stand exposed as sponsors of terror in the region.

 
Why everyone missed the elephant in the room?

Today, one feels astounded why even the astute strategic analysts could not foresee the aftershocks of abrogating Article 370

The answer lies in the fact that the overwhelming political posturing surrounding BJP's long-held objective of repealing Article 370 more or less precluded an objective and scholarly analysis of its long-term strategic implications in South Asia and beyond.&nbsp;

India's intelligence czars, diplomats, and mighty bureaucrats of North Block saw it as a political prop, an unrealistic and unattainable dream, finding its best utility in garnering votes during elections. Such a notion was firmly entrenched in their minds when the last Vajpayee-led BJP government refrained from tampering with article 370.&nbsp;

Among India's civil society, security experts, IR scholars, and public intellectuals making even a reference to abrogating Article 370 was shunned and led to condemnation and banishment as a right-wing fascist. For Pakistan, it came handy to believe that Indians would never think of this far-fetched dream given their three-decade-long vulnerabilities to the complex web of false and fictitious narratives projected by their deep-state and doing so quite successfully with the western capitals, activists, scribes, and scholars.&nbsp;

As a result, serious scholarly analyses of scraping Article 370, more or less, remained a taboo in the academic and strategic world. &nbsp;At best, it remained a fanciful dream of Hindu-nationalist groups, and at worst a strategic blunder something which the majority of India's diplomats, spies, scribes scholars, and bureaucrats, trained in the socialist left-overs of cold-war era traditions, would abhor as totally uncharacteristic of India's idealistic approach in strategic affairs. &nbsp;

Such a trend continues even after more than a year has passed since the abrogation of Article 370. In India's strategic and political community, one still comes across a tendency to condemn the move as an ill-thought action resulting from the lack of strategic vision, which will only add to India's security challenges.&nbsp;

Maybe dubious loyalties, ulterior motives, vested political interests, individual biases, ideological barriers, and nonetheless inadequate analytical skills can provide a better explanation for this aversion to engaging in an objective analysis of the strategic implications of Delhi's Kashmir move and give the due credit to those who planned and implemented such a master strategic and diplomatic stroke.&nbsp;

It can be stated with an absolute certainty that post-2014, New Delhi has changed, and the change is firm, decisive and irreversible. &nbsp;Nevertheless, the doctrinal shift in India’s strategic approach is still evolving in its myriad aspects hence; maybe it is too early to define its long-term strategic implications.&nbsp;

However, it is certain that under no circumstances Pak establishment can indulge in Pulwama or Mumbai like adventures anymore. Whether one more Mumbai or Pulwama will cost Pakistan Baluchistan or not, is yet a matter of conjecture and grapewine in the intelligence world. Nevertheless, it is giving sleepless nights to Pakistani generals.

To conclude, Pakistan’s Kashmir Project has lost its steam. In the global arena, it will not be long before General Bajwa's Pakistan is blacklisted. In the future, maybe the situation could turn worse, with Pakistan facing a threat from internal unrest and revolts.&nbsp;

(Disclaimer: The views of the writer do not represent the views of WION or ZMCL. Nor does WION or ZMCL endorse the views of the writer)

If ever an objective history of South Asia's major strategic events is written, the year 2019 will be remembered as a watershed year. The chain of events that began with the Pulwama suicide bombing (February 2019) and that finally led to the abrogation of Article 370 (August 2019) significantly tipped the strategic balance in India’s favour.

If ever an objective history of South Asia's major strategic events is written, the year 2019 will be remembered as a watershed year. The chain of events that began with the Pulwama suicide bombing (February 2019) and that finally led to the abrogation of Article 370 (August 2019) significantly tipped the strategic balance in India’s favour. 2014 onwards, India left the debris of ‘strategic restraint’ behind and redefined the conflict dynamics in terms of its new National Security Advisor (NSA) Mr Doval’s ‘doctrine of defensive offence.’ It was a significant doctrinal shift which found its first manifestation in Uri surgical strikes (2016). Fed on India’s decades of defensive force posture, Pakistan did not realise it until Balakot happened. Further, in its more sophisticated form, venturing beyond the strict military domains, the doctrine of ‘defensive offense’ found its finest expression in the abrogation of Article 370, leaving Pakistan and China, the expansionist and revisionist brotherhood of Asia, in a quandary; a state of fix, rendering them not only increasingly clueless about a future course of action but also extremely vulnerable to strategic and tactical blunders. × Quite expectedly, such blunders have flown from Beijing and Rawalpindi in an unrestrained manner, with a desperate intent to reclaim the strategic edge against India. However, they have only exposed and weakened them further in the war of narratives. Faced with embarrassing disasters in diplomatic assaults against India, bitter internal political turbulence, a worsening economy, and fierce resistance in Gilgit-Baltistan, Pashtun areas, and Baluchistan, Islamabad has openly started alleging India of fomenting terror in Pakistan. However, the fact is that it was the abrogation of Article 370, which took the winds from Pakistan's sails. What has changed after August 5, 2019? After the historical embarrassment of 1971 that ripped off a geographical portion from Pakistan, which had been in the forefront of the entire Pakistan movement, masterminds of GHQ Rawalpindi could never come out of the shock and, after that, single-mindedly focussed on disturbing and ultimately occupying Kashmir. Also Read | Pakistan PM Imran Khan's Kashmir campaign bombs at Islamic meet Fully understanding the impossibility of defeating India in a conventional war, ISI masterminds began exploring the sub-conventional tactics to gain a strategic edge over India. To that end, the insurgency in Punjab offered a ready ground to destabilize India with a minimum effort and investment. For Pakistan, gaining a foothold in Afghanistan to secure ‘strategic depth’ against India's advancing armies in the event of a conventional war was undoubtedly a prerequisite for a long-term hybrid and proxy war against India. × The 1980s brought the much-needed American support for Pakistan in arming and training Mujahideens against the Soviets and facilitated Pakistan with a firm foothold in Afghanistan. The American GIs were leaving Kabul in 1988 after the Soviet withdrawal. for Pakistan, the stage was ripe for diverting the Afghan Jihadis towards Kashmir. Massive petrodollar funding and a decade-long Afghan experience in running proxies came in handy to stir up an armed insurrection in Kashmir. The ISI-sponsored bloody phase of jihadi terrorism that began in the 1990s continued unabated, costing thousands of innocent lives. Over the last three decades, Pakistan's proxy war increased in intensity and ideological fervor. × During the last three decades, the militancy in Kashmir, although it had its phases of ups and downs, was strategically planned and executed by masterminds located on the other side of the Indian border. India experimented with a range of counter-terrorism measures, bringing sporadic periods of relief. However, the broader trajectory was about Pakistan creating and strengthening a supporting constituency thriving in a fertile ecosystem of Islamism, separatism, and terrorism. Adversary's success manifested itself in its complex yet robust capabilities to shake the Indian state during the unrest of 2016, post-Burhan Wani's encounter death. The Kashmir valley was engulfed with massive civil unrest and agitation within a few days, with casualty figures of 42 in the first week itself. Moreover, something entirely financed and orchestrated by Pakistan's deep-state was projected by Pakistan as gross human rights violations by an occupied force in Kashmir. Burhan Wani, a self-proclaimed supporter of the Islamic Caliphate in Kashmir and Hizbul Mujahideen commander, was portrayed as a young and innocent hero dying for a cause in front of Kashmiris and the world community. Pakistan had not only created a highly radicalized social milieu that made Jihadism a dominant narrative but also excelled in the war of narratives, convincingly selling its lies for years to an array of civil rights activists, governments, and scholars in the west. However, in one masterstroke of August 2019, India gave a crushing blow to Pakistan's three decades of investment in Kashmir. It was something that Pakistan's intelligence machinery did not anticipate. As a result, they were handicapped from achieving their 'Destabilizing Kashmir project' in the absence of Article 370, which acted as a catalyst till then. Article 370 was an edifice, an overarching umbrella under which Pakistan's proxy jihadists, assets in the media, academic, religious, cultural bodies, mainstream politics, academia, and the administration thrived and flourished. Though India displayed some clarity about its understanding of how detrimental Article 370 was to safeguarding its key interests in Kashmir, when it denuded the article of much of its teeth in the 60s, over time, Delhi lost the clarity and became increasingly myopic in its understanding. A narrow vision led the focus on eroding Sheikh Abdullah's base and install a pliable government through democratic means, even if that involved pampering radical Islamists and separatists. In parallel, Pakistan's propaganda machinery and its assets in the mainstream politics of Kashmir had skillfully crafted the narrative of Article 370, being the bedrock of Kashmir's identity. Its proxies instilled the popular consciousness with the imaginary fears of central government populating the state with outsiders in the absence of 370. On the Indian side, successive political dispensations increasingly became entrapped in the narrative mentioned above sold by Pakistan's proxies. As a result, Delhi could never give serious thought on India's strategic interests in Kashmir. For decades, Article 370 was an untouchable default status that was supposed to be guarded till eternity. Today, a year after its abrogation, Pakistan has lost the patronizing, protective, and enabling superstructure. The Pakistani proxies in Kashmir face the most significant existential crisis. The ecosystem of Islamist radicalization, separatism, and terrorism carefully created with lies, deceit and violence appears to be collapsing like dominos. Interestingly, the façade of Article 370 under which Pakistan's proxy movement thrived was in itself fragile. Article 370 was a temporary and transient feature of the Indian Constitution, which could be amended or abrogated within the Indian parliamentary framework. The autonomy guaranteed to Kashmir under the provisions of the article helped Pakistan in propagating its agenda to sell the fabricated story of Kashmir being a disputed territory. Further, the militancy and separatist movement, which flourished under the patronage of Article 370, strengthened Pakistan's version of Kashmir as a disputed territory in the eyes of the world community and the local Kashmiris. However, after its demise, the smokescreens have vanished, and not only the strategic experts but also the ordinary voices of Kashmir have openly started questioning, discussing, and condemning Pakistan's illegal and violent annexation of a part of Kashmir in 1947, the genesis of the Kashmir conflict. Contrary to the annual condemnation of October 26, 1947, the day when Indian armies entered Kashmir, as a 'black day,' this year, to everyone's surprise, public squares of Srinagar were spattered with hoardings condemning October 22 as a 'black day', the day when Pakistan's Kabailis attacked Kashmir The post-370 Kashmir has witnessed an intense crackdown on Pakistan-supported radical Islamist organizations like Jamaat-i-Islami and separatist organizations. National Investigation Agency’s (NIA) onslaught on terror financing has cracked the financial backbone of terrorism. The security forces have neutralized the entire terrorist leadership of the local and foreign terrorist orgaizations. The recruitment of new terrorist cadres has drastically come down. Infiltration has become nearly impossible. The mainstream politicians and separatists like the Hurriyat stand exposed as entities who sustained the widespread resentment against India by indulging in massive corruption and mal-governance on the one hand and squarely putting the blame on Delhi's step-motherly treatment. NIA's action against many of them in terror-related cases further confirms their dubious loyalties in the popular perception. In Kashmir, a new political leadership with a nationalist outlook is emerging at the grassroots. Pakistan's desperate attempts to orchestrate terror attacks, civil unrest, and rally the diplomatic community against India on global platforms, have failed miserably. Organisation of Islamic Co-operation (OIC) has disappointed Pakistan and refused to bandwagon with it on several occasions. There are no buyers in the Western World for Pakistan's foul cries over the abrogation of Article 370. The United States and most European states convincingly approved India's Kashmir move as a dire necessity to prevent Jihadist terrorism from taking deeper roots in Kashmir on the pattern of Syria and Iraq. Except for the backing of Turkey and China, Pakistan stands isolated. Further, the residents of Gilgit-Baltistan have become fiercely vocal against Pakistan's demographic engineering and in its decision to declare the region as its sixth province, in an abject surrender to China's dictators. Local resistance against the forcible occupation of Gigit-Baltistan and flooding the area with Sunni extremists has not only intensified, but it has also become a subject-matter of serious discussion in the western capitals. In Pakistan Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (PoJK), similar fears have given rise to a strong resistance movement. On the issue of cross-border terrorism, Pakistan knows it well that post-2014, India's approach has changed. Now Delhi responds with surgical strikes and air raids, and one more Pulwama will most certainly be reciprocated with something way bigger than Balakot, which Pakistan cannot afford. Further, the post-370 Kashmir has also started seriously questioning China's illegal possession over Aksai Chin. Recent India-China stand-off and Pakistan's continuous ceasefire violations have cleared the vestiges of any doubts lasting about the China-Pak duo's collusion and expansionist threat in the near future. Internally, India’s Kashmir move has led to a massive embarrassment for Imran Khan's government and the Pak army. The Opposition has alleged Imran Khan's government of surrendering to India. Today, in the form of Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM), Pak army and the 'selected' PM Imran Khan's government face a compelling popular protest movement. The situation has turned alarming for Pak army because, in addition to the mainstream political parties, it also includes ethical nationalist entities such as Pashtun Tahafuz Movement and Baluchistan National Party, hitherto seen as antithetical to the very idea of Pakistan. Further, PDM is demanding minimising the role of Pakistani army and intelligence agencies from the political and developmental matters, a direct challenge to the mighty army. Bajwa and Imran, both, are at the lowest ebb of their credibility. For decades, the Pakistan army used Kashmir to grab a disproportionate share in the national budget and cultivate hyper-nationalism and Islamism. Under the latter as a cover, GHQ Rawalpindi crushed all the religious, cultural, and linguistic minorities. The ghosts of those massacres in Baluchistan, Pashtun lands, and Sindh are returning to haunt Pakistan. It is a reminder for Pakistan that internal turmoil is rooted in its birth and the fundamental philosophy of its existence, and a redux of 1971, is possible. Nevertheless, Pakistan's generals refused to learn from the past and continue to publish substandard conspiracy theories blaming India for its internal problems. It appears as though Rawalpindi's is pushed back to the pavilion since the abrogation of Article 370, and Pakistan's grand new strategy is concocting lies of India aiding terrorism on Pakistani soil from Afghanistan. Some Pakistani generals blame India's intelligence brass for reversing the 'paradigm of terror' by inciting Pashtuns, Baluchis, and Sindhis. However, the fact is that the 'paradigm of terror' created by ISI masterminds has boomeranged and backfired, something which was bound to happen. Despite the turn of events, a frustrated Pakistan openly advocates the revival and strengthening of a terrorist base against India. By doing so, they stand exposed as sponsors of terror in the region. Why everyone missed the elephant in the room? Today, one feels astounded why even the astute strategic analysts could not foresee the aftershocks of abrogating Article 370 The answer lies in the fact that the overwhelming political posturing surrounding BJP's long-held objective of repealing Article 370 more or less precluded an objective and scholarly analysis of its long-term strategic implications in South Asia and beyond. India's intelligence czars, diplomats, and mighty bureaucrats of North Block saw it as a political prop, an unrealistic and unattainable dream, finding its best utility in garnering votes during elections. Such a notion was firmly entrenched in their minds when the last Vajpayee-led BJP government refrained from tampering with article 370. Among India's civil society, security experts, IR scholars, and public intellectuals making even a reference to abrogating Article 370 was shunned and led to condemnation and banishment as a right-wing fascist. For Pakistan, it came handy to believe that Indians would never think of this far-fetched dream given their three-decade-long vulnerabilities to the complex web of false and fictitious narratives projected by their deep-state and doing so quite successfully with the western capitals, activists, scribes, and scholars. As a result, serious scholarly analyses of scraping Article 370, more or less, remained a taboo in the academic and strategic world. At best, it remained a fanciful dream of Hindu-nationalist groups, and at worst a strategic blunder something which the majority of India's diplomats, spies, scribes scholars, and bureaucrats, trained in the socialist left-overs of cold-war era traditions, would abhor as totally uncharacteristic of India's idealistic approach in strategic affairs. Such a trend continues even after more than a year has passed since the abrogation of Article 370. In India's strategic and political community, one still comes across a tendency to condemn the move as an ill-thought action resulting from the lack of strategic vision, which will only add to India's security challenges. Maybe dubious loyalties, ulterior motives, vested political interests, individual biases, ideological barriers, and nonetheless inadequate analytical skills can provide a better explanation for this aversion to engaging in an objective analysis of the strategic implications of Delhi's Kashmir move and give the due credit to those who planned and implemented such a master strategic and diplomatic stroke. It can be stated with an absolute certainty that post-2014, New Delhi has changed, and the change is firm, decisive and irreversible. Nevertheless, the doctrinal shift in India’s strategic approach is still evolving in its myriad aspects hence; maybe it is too early to define its long-term strategic implications. However, it is certain that under no circumstances Pak establishment can indulge in Pulwama or Mumbai like adventures anymore. Whether one more Mumbai or Pulwama will cost Pakistan Baluchistan or not, is yet a matter of conjecture and grapewine in the intelligence world. Nevertheless, it is giving sleepless nights to Pakistani generals. To conclude, Pakistan’s Kashmir Project has lost its steam. In the global arena, it will not be long before General Bajwa's Pakistan is blacklisted. In the future, maybe the situation could turn worse, with Pakistan facing a threat from internal unrest and revolts. (Disclaimer: The views of the writer do not represent the views of WION or ZMCL. Nor does WION or ZMCL endorse the views of the writer)

Pakistan's lost asymmetric war in Kashmir against Doval’s defensive offence

China’s recent intrusions in Galwan Valley and Pangong Tso, once again prove that after years of bending over backwards to accommodate or somewhat appease China, India has not yet learned any meaningful lessons about the Chinese strategic mindset. After annexing Tibet, Mao said, Tibet is the palm, and now they must get the five fingers- Ladakh, Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan, and Arunachal Pradesh. However, India's early leadership was perceptive enough to visualize this and act accordingly by warming up to the five fingers and in Sikkim’s case by integrating it with India in 1975. &nbsp;

Looking Back&nbsp;

In 1954, India and China signed the Panchsheel agreement. With it, also began, India’s implied support to the doctrine of the “One-China” policy. However, CCP’s expansionist designs continued to simmer and manifested in Chinese inroads in Tibet and later in Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh. The betrayal and debacle of 1962 shattered Nehru, ultimately leading to his demise and sending India into a phase of what this author would prefer to call “strategic depression.” India became inward-looking, insanely skeptical of foreign powers, and obsessed with putting its own house in order. After 1962, China and India went through a long phase of uneasy silence, apart from the clashes of 1967 when the Indian army routed the Chinese in Nathula, killing hundreds of PLA soldiers and the Chinese attack on the Assam Rifles patrol party in 1975 at Tulung La in Arunachal. &nbsp;

The Long era of Appeasement&nbsp;

In 1988, Rajiv Gandhi’s China visit after the Sumdorongchu standoff (1986) ‘broke the ice’ and resumed bilateral ties after three decades. In 1993, PM Narsimha Rao visited China and signed the Border Peace and Tranquility Agreement. &nbsp;

In 1996, China agreed upon a range of CBMs with India in the military field along LAC. Following it was the border trade agreement of 2003 to promote border trade through Nathu La and develop friendly ties. In 2005, India-China signed the Agreement on the Political Parameters and Guiding Principles for the Settlement of the Boundary Question, in 2012, the agreement on border tri-junction (India, China, and Bhutan), and in 2013, the agreement on border defence and cooperation. &nbsp;

India continued with its policy of engaging China and accommodating Chinese concerns in the naïve hope of resolving border disputes, weakening China’s ties with Pakistan, and harness the strengths of civilizational-cultural ties. In 2015, India extended the privilege of electronic visas to Chinese citizens on arriving in India and removed China from the list of the “countries of concern” to attract more Chinese investment. It resulted in massive dumping by Chinese firms doubling the trade surplus to $60 billion per year. In 2018, Delhi refused an official contact with Dalai Lama and Tibet’s India-based government-in-exile. However, Chinese intrusions continued. In 2013, the Chinese made incursions in Depsang valley, indulging in provocative military action. In 2014, during Xi Jinping India-visit, PLA made incursions in Ladakh’s Chumar area and in 2017, in Doklam plateau, resulting in a 73-day long stand-off between the two armies. &nbsp;

Lessons from the Past&nbsp;

After 22 rounds of special-representative level meetings to settle the boundary dispute, the CCP shows no intent to resolve the border dispute. The flare-ups in Doklam, Depsang, Chumar, Ladakh, and intensifying pressure on Nepal and Arunachal Pradesh clearly suggest that CCP is still chasing Mao’s dream of occupying the five fingers. &nbsp;

On the Indian side, it appears that there is a deep-rooted policy ambiguity about China. Whether China is an adversary or a friend continues to remain an unanswered question at the policy level? India’s powerful foreign ministry mandarins have advocated the policy of positive engagement with China, over the last 30 years. India’s dominant left-wing academic and journalistic community, many of whom are now baying for Chinese blood, have consistently held that India and China have an economic interdependence, and India cannot economically grow without China. &nbsp;

The recent skirmishes have once again proved that both groups are living in a fool’s paradise. After decades of written agreements and CBMs, China still encroaches into Indian territory, making a complete mockery of goodwill and appeasement shown by India. In the economic realm also, Delhi’s foreign policy mandarins preferred engaging China either through BRICS or by joining the AIIB (Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank). However, it hardly brought any favorable change in China’s strategic behaviour. &nbsp;The trade, investment, and economic relationship have mostly hovered around India importing cheap consumer goods from China. China has not transferred any technology to India. It has had a detrimental effect on the local innovation and entrepreneurship and increased India’s dependence manifold. Even though India has a trade deficit of $60 billion, it has failed to leverage it on the strategic front.&nbsp;

Over the Chinese side, the strategic thought has been consistent, i.e., to keep the borders vague and make continuous inroads laying sovereign claims to more and more territory. Chinese have deliberately continued with the policy of keeping LAC vague and widening the military and economic gap with India so that it can negotiate on its terms in the future. &nbsp;

It is not hard to discern the pattern of “two-steps forward and one-step backward” in Chinese policy. Moreover, China agreed to a range of things in the bilateral agreements with India; however, they continued to misinterpret them and change the goalposts when it suits them. As recently as 2018, China agreed to Delhi’s offer of an annual informal bilateral summit. However, such goodwill gestures had no impact on China’s intrusions. After the Doklam standoff, China built permanent structures and enhanced its deployments gaining control of most of the barren plateau claimed by India’s ally, Bhutan. Interestingly, China agrees to the bilateral summits and diplomatic engagements because it aligns well with its “engagement with containment” strategy with India. &nbsp;

India has to learn from Tibet’s and its own experience that deception, surprise, and concealment is a fundamental aspect of CCP’s strategic thought, diplomacy, and military policy. The reason lies in the devious expansionist intent, the essence of the CCP’s strategic thought process. It originates from the genesis of CCP, its inherent ideological totalitarianism, deterministic approach, and the revanchist attitude, rooted in historical grudges and frustrations. Also, China’s expansionist intent is not merely India-specific and confined to the political domain. China’s bullying and arm-twisting in the South China Sea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Eastern Turkestan also emanates from the same imperial DNA of CCP.&nbsp;

In the economic sphere, China’s torturous loans sending nations into debt-trap, demographic engineering in Gilgit-Baltistan to secure CPEC, violation of environmental norms in African countries, and supporting dictators, oppressors, and human rights violators in Central Asia strengthens its expansionist credentials. On the home front, extreme levels of information control, suppression of religious and cultural minorities, in particular, the treatment meted out to Uighurs in the reeducation camps of Xinjiang and the lunatic mission to homogenize China with Han Chinese population remind one of the fascist regimes of Hitler and Mussolini and the horrors of the holocaust. Perhaps a little digression, but the author believes that if the world powers do not unite against the racist and fascist regime of CCP led by Xi, humanity may witness another holocaust. &nbsp;

Reportedly, the recent Ladakh incursions were planned months ago after India abrogated article 370. Also, it is pertinent to mention that there is a strong likelihood of China-Pakistan working in tandem preceding the recent incursions. During his field visit to Kashmir for a research project on terror financing, the author’s interlocutors informed that PLA cadres and officers were moving with Pakistan’s patrol parties near the LoC. They were assisting the Pak army in installing advanced air defence systems and missiles near the LoC. Also, departing from the past, the PLA officers were meeting the militant commanders of Lashkar and Jaish in the training camps in PoK. China and Pakistan’s intelligence and security establishment has evolved into an intricate and robust network cooperating and collaborating at multiple levels and on multiple fronts. Further, India’s appeasement and meek response to its intrusions ended up whetting China’s voracious appetite for grabbing more territory, instead of placating it. Also, since it feels secure that India is unlikely to retaliate strongly, frequent incursions in India help in whipping up the nationalist sentiment on the home front where CCP faces increasing unpopularity and resentment.&nbsp;

The Road Ahead

As long as CCP continues to exist, China will be India’s adversary, and it would be irrational for India to trust China in the future. Under the Mao’s reincarnate Xi Jinping, CCP has long-term imperial ambitions of world domination, and hence China’s errant behaviour is likely to abate in the future unless India abandons Dalai Lama, accepts a completely subordinate status and act accordingly, willingly surrenders Arunachal and whatever new claims of sovereignty that will float from Beijing, as per their strategic interests. &nbsp;The policy of engagement or a long era of appeasement since 1988, in Brahma Chellaney’s words, has proved to be a Himalayan blunder and a monumental disaster. &nbsp;Now the question arises- what should be India’s future course of action? Certainly, no engagement &nbsp;!! Beyond that, Delhi needs a multi-pronged and a long-term strategy to contain China.&nbsp;

&nbsp;(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed above are the personal views of the author and do not reflect the views of ZMCL)

China’s recent intrusions in Galwan Valley and Pangong Tso, once again prove that after years of bending over backwards to accommodate or somewhat appease China, India has not yet learned any meaningful lessons about the Chinese strategic mindset.

China’s recent intrusions in Galwan Valley and Pangong Tso, once again prove that after years of bending over backwards to accommodate or somewhat appease China, India has not yet learned any meaningful lessons about the Chinese strategic mindset. After annexing Tibet, Mao said, Tibet is the palm, and now they must get the five fingers- Ladakh, Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan, and Arunachal Pradesh. However, India's early leadership was perceptive enough to visualize this and act accordingly by warming up to the five fingers and in Sikkim’s case by integrating it with India in 1975. Looking Back In 1954, India and China signed the Panchsheel agreement. With it, also began, India’s implied support to the doctrine of the “One-China” policy. However, CCP’s expansionist designs continued to simmer and manifested in Chinese inroads in Tibet and later in Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh. The betrayal and debacle of 1962 shattered Nehru, ultimately leading to his demise and sending India into a phase of what this author would prefer to call “strategic depression.” India became inward-looking, insanely skeptical of foreign powers, and obsessed with putting its own house in order. After 1962, China and India went through a long phase of uneasy silence, apart from the clashes of 1967 when the Indian army routed the Chinese in Nathula, killing hundreds of PLA soldiers and the Chinese attack on the Assam Rifles patrol party in 1975 at Tulung La in Arunachal. The Long era of Appeasement In 1988, Rajiv Gandhi’s China visit after the Sumdorongchu standoff (1986) ‘broke the ice’ and resumed bilateral ties after three decades. In 1993, PM Narsimha Rao visited China and signed the Border Peace and Tranquility Agreement. In 1996, China agreed upon a range of CBMs with India in the military field along LAC. Following it was the border trade agreement of 2003 to promote border trade through Nathu La and develop friendly ties. In 2005, India-China signed the Agreement on the Political Parameters and Guiding Principles for the Settlement of the Boundary Question, in 2012, the agreement on border tri-junction (India, China, and Bhutan), and in 2013, the agreement on border defence and cooperation. India continued with its policy of engaging China and accommodating Chinese concerns in the naïve hope of resolving border disputes, weakening China’s ties with Pakistan, and harness the strengths of civilizational-cultural ties. In 2015, India extended the privilege of electronic visas to Chinese citizens on arriving in India and removed China from the list of the “countries of concern” to attract more Chinese investment. It resulted in massive dumping by Chinese firms doubling the trade surplus to $60 billion per year. In 2018, Delhi refused an official contact with Dalai Lama and Tibet’s India-based government-in-exile. However, Chinese intrusions continued. In 2013, the Chinese made incursions in Depsang valley, indulging in provocative military action. In 2014, during Xi Jinping India-visit, PLA made incursions in Ladakh’s Chumar area and in 2017, in Doklam plateau, resulting in a 73-day long stand-off between the two armies. Lessons from the Past After 22 rounds of special-representative level meetings to settle the boundary dispute, the CCP shows no intent to resolve the border dispute. The flare-ups in Doklam, Depsang, Chumar, Ladakh, and intensifying pressure on Nepal and Arunachal Pradesh clearly suggest that CCP is still chasing Mao’s dream of occupying the five fingers. On the Indian side, it appears that there is a deep-rooted policy ambiguity about China. Whether China is an adversary or a friend continues to remain an unanswered question at the policy level? India’s powerful foreign ministry mandarins have advocated the policy of positive engagement with China, over the last 30 years. India’s dominant left-wing academic and journalistic community, many of whom are now baying for Chinese blood, have consistently held that India and China have an economic interdependence, and India cannot economically grow without China. The recent skirmishes have once again proved that both groups are living in a fool’s paradise. After decades of written agreements and CBMs, China still encroaches into Indian territory, making a complete mockery of goodwill and appeasement shown by India. In the economic realm also, Delhi’s foreign policy mandarins preferred engaging China either through BRICS or by joining the AIIB (Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank). However, it hardly brought any favorable change in China’s strategic behaviour. The trade, investment, and economic relationship have mostly hovered around India importing cheap consumer goods from China. China has not transferred any technology to India. It has had a detrimental effect on the local innovation and entrepreneurship and increased India’s dependence manifold. Even though India has a trade deficit of $60 billion, it has failed to leverage it on the strategic front. Over the Chinese side, the strategic thought has been consistent, i.e., to keep the borders vague and make continuous inroads laying sovereign claims to more and more territory. Chinese have deliberately continued with the policy of keeping LAC vague and widening the military and economic gap with India so that it can negotiate on its terms in the future. It is not hard to discern the pattern of “two-steps forward and one-step backward” in Chinese policy. Moreover, China agreed to a range of things in the bilateral agreements with India; however, they continued to misinterpret them and change the goalposts when it suits them. As recently as 2018, China agreed to Delhi’s offer of an annual informal bilateral summit. However, such goodwill gestures had no impact on China’s intrusions. After the Doklam standoff, China built permanent structures and enhanced its deployments gaining control of most of the barren plateau claimed by India’s ally, Bhutan. Interestingly, China agrees to the bilateral summits and diplomatic engagements because it aligns well with its “engagement with containment” strategy with India. India has to learn from Tibet’s and its own experience that deception, surprise, and concealment is a fundamental aspect of CCP’s strategic thought, diplomacy, and military policy. The reason lies in the devious expansionist intent, the essence of the CCP’s strategic thought process. It originates from the genesis of CCP, its inherent ideological totalitarianism, deterministic approach, and the revanchist attitude, rooted in historical grudges and frustrations. Also, China’s expansionist intent is not merely India-specific and confined to the political domain. China’s bullying and arm-twisting in the South China Sea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Eastern Turkestan also emanates from the same imperial DNA of CCP. In the economic sphere, China’s torturous loans sending nations into debt-trap, demographic engineering in Gilgit-Baltistan to secure CPEC, violation of environmental norms in African countries, and supporting dictators, oppressors, and human rights violators in Central Asia strengthens its expansionist credentials. On the home front, extreme levels of information control, suppression of religious and cultural minorities, in particular, the treatment meted out to Uighurs in the reeducation camps of Xinjiang and the lunatic mission to homogenize China with Han Chinese population remind one of the fascist regimes of Hitler and Mussolini and the horrors of the holocaust. Perhaps a little digression, but the author believes that if the world powers do not unite against the racist and fascist regime of CCP led by Xi, humanity may witness another holocaust. Reportedly, the recent Ladakh incursions were planned months ago after India abrogated article 370. Also, it is pertinent to mention that there is a strong likelihood of China-Pakistan working in tandem preceding the recent incursions. During his field visit to Kashmir for a research project on terror financing, the author’s interlocutors informed that PLA cadres and officers were moving with Pakistan’s patrol parties near the LoC. They were assisting the Pak army in installing advanced air defence systems and missiles near the LoC. Also, departing from the past, the PLA officers were meeting the militant commanders of Lashkar and Jaish in the training camps in PoK. China and Pakistan’s intelligence and security establishment has evolved into an intricate and robust network cooperating and collaborating at multiple levels and on multiple fronts. Further, India’s appeasement and meek response to its intrusions ended up whetting China’s voracious appetite for grabbing more territory, instead of placating it. Also, since it feels secure that India is unlikely to retaliate strongly, frequent incursions in India help in whipping up the nationalist sentiment on the home front where CCP faces increasing unpopularity and resentment. The Road Ahead As long as CCP continues to exist, China will be India’s adversary, and it would be irrational for India to trust China in the future. Under the Mao’s reincarnate Xi Jinping, CCP has long-term imperial ambitions of world domination, and hence China’s errant behaviour is likely to abate in the future unless India abandons Dalai Lama, accepts a completely subordinate status and act accordingly, willingly surrenders Arunachal and whatever new claims of sovereignty that will float from Beijing, as per their strategic interests. The policy of engagement or a long era of appeasement since 1988, in Brahma Chellaney’s words, has proved to be a Himalayan blunder and a monumental disaster. Now the question arises- what should be India’s future course of action? Certainly, no engagement !! Beyond that, Delhi needs a multi-pronged and a long-term strategy to contain China. (Disclaimer: The opinions expressed above are the personal views of the author and do not reflect the views of ZMCL)

Time for an assertive force posture against China

Usually, Australian newspapers are hardly read in India. However, recently, the Australian portal The Daily Telegraph’s article, in a befitting reply to the Chinese Consul General’s letter alleging it of &nbsp;“ignorance,” “prejudice,” and “arrogance,” in its reports and opinions on China’s response to Covid-19, went viral in Indian social media circles. It unleashed debates on the post-corona world order among the Indian intellectuals generally obsessed with Pakistan and its jihadist wars in India. &nbsp;It seemed as if the article awakened the usually insular Indian masses from their civilizational slumber and got them seriously thinking about the threat posed by China to the rules-based world order.&nbsp;

The western world got its taste of the world order with the &nbsp;“Chinese Characteristics” only in the recent past as they came to know of the horrors of Xinjiang’s “vocational training centers,” muscle-flexing by Chinese Navy in the South China Sea, and China’s unfair trade practices. However, India tasted the bitter pill in 1962 only, when Mao’s China backstabbed India’s statesman-philosopher PM Nehru, hell-bent on harnessing the strengths of Indo-Chinese civilizational ties, by starting a war in Himalayan peaks that not only brought India’s growing global stature to a grinding halt, but also shattered Nehru from within, ultimately leading to his untimely demise, leaving India’s nascent democracy leaderless. &nbsp;

China and Corona have shaken our notions of stability and made us all apprehensive and fearful of the world order with the so-called “Chinese characteristics.” &nbsp;The world community’s faith in China’s intentions, institutions, innovations, inventions, and investments has shattered almost beyond redemption. World leaders have raised the pitch in favour of finding new alternatives to reduce the economic dependence on China and new alliances to protect the rules-based order against the depredations of revanchist China. However, the current state of frenzy and panic may mislead even the sanest minds and lead us to blame the “country China and its people” for all the mayhem. &nbsp;&nbsp;

However, anyone with primary exposure to Asian history will understand that not China and its people, but China’s Communist Party (CCP) is an existential threat to rules-based world order, standing firmly on the twin pillars of liberal democracy and free and fair trade. Any systematic thought about deterring China has to begin with differentiating between China and the Chinese Communist Party, the two entities primarily at ideological and foundational crossroads. Hence, &nbsp;we must all refrain from any frenzied racial outburst against China as a country, and its people as it is likely to play into the hands of CCP, giving it a powerful weapon to mobilize popular support by rousing nationalist sentiments.&nbsp;

At the most fundamental level, the CCP has devastated China’s great civilizational legacy and ethos. The great Chinese civilization derives its vibrancy and soul from the spiritual legacy of the Buddhist and &nbsp;Confucious thought, preaching peace, a quest for spiritual purity, love, and respect for contrary thoughts and belief-systems. Despite its lofty claims to restore China’s rightful place in the world, CCP’s totalitarianism and extremism, in essence, is a complete undoing of all the paramount values China’s glorious civilization stands for. Not long ago, CCP’s Mao-led party-state massacred Buddhists and decimated their monasteries in Tibet, and implemented the “great leap forward,” leading to the death of tens of millions of its people in the devastating famines that followed it. Later, insecurities emanating from the fears of a popular revolt against his authority due to the devastating famines, Mao brought “cultural revolution” to get rid of all the “bourgeoisie elements.” However, in effect, the despot wanted to silence all the dissidents and critiques, leading the purges of millions of his ideological opponents. And, with them, China’s break with its spiritual and cultural refinements of Buddhist-Confucious past was complete. Today, CCP’s mind-games with complex jargons like “whole-process democracy” &nbsp;and “benevolent rule,” which it also calls “democracy with Chinese characteristics,” are simply to counter the western challenge to its dictatorial political system by orchestrating ideological foundations to prove its political system, superior to the western one. However, such expressions are mere outer trappings to protect a corrupt political system and governance model existing under fragile foundations and a perpetual threat of popular revolt, for being inherently anti- ‘Chinese.’ &nbsp;

CCP’s world order stands for forced disappearances and displacements, politically-motivated purges, persecution of ethnic and religious minorities, fake news and disinformation campaigns, supporting despots and rogue states, and encouraging their nuclear blackmail, &nbsp;and shielding UN-designated terrorists and terror-sponsoring nations at the UN bodies, and crushing human rights. Its “economic aggression” &nbsp;strategy includes theft of trade secrets and intellectual property, unfair trade practices hindering the access of foreign companies to Chinese markets, and forced technology transfers.&nbsp;&nbsp;

At home, CCP has created the most intrusive public monitoring and &nbsp;Orwellian high-tech surveillance state. With the state-controlled media, rigid internet censorships, face recognition technology, and draconian restrictions on a free debate on religious and political issues in the Universities, the CCP silences public criticism and maintains a firm grip on the information flow in China. It has prevented the exposure of Chinese society to all outside influences by denying access to foreign intellectuals, media persons, and independent observers from the UN bodies and global NGOs. The respect for privacy is anathema for CCP. Not long ago, CCP’s repressive state machinery massacred thousands of students demanding democracy in Tiennman square. In Xinjiang province, home to around 13 million Muslims of Turkic, Uyghur and Kazakh ethnicities, CCP runs the most sophisticated and high-tech detainment camps, in the name of “vocational education centers, where the inmates are subjected to rigorous indoctrination to rid them of all Islamic influences. CCP treats Islam like a ‘mental illness.’ Those observing fundamental Islamic practices such as Namaz, Rozas, and beards find themselves in the detainment camps. &nbsp;

CCP’s hatred for democracy and human rights does not stop at its frontiers. In the last few years, CCP has brazenly extended its vision of anti-human rights and anti-democratic political and governance model beyond its borders. China’s party-state uses its economic clout to silence all those entities, including companies, countries, individuals, NGOs, and academic institutions, who criticize its human rights record. &nbsp;OIC countries, usually vocal about the Muslim causes across the globe, conveniently turned a blind eye to Xinjiang and applauded China’s counter-terrorism measures that have led to a “stronger sense of fulfilment, happiness, and security. &nbsp;Hence, what happens in &nbsp;Xinjiang, stays in Xinjiang, thanks to the overriding economic interests of OIC nations. Major BRI-recipient Pakistan’s PM Imran Khan often frets and fumes on twitter over sporadic incidents of Islamophobia in India. However, he preferred to keep silent over Xinjiang, while his diplomats lauded China for “providing care to its Muslim citizens,” thanks to China’s “no-strings” grants and diplomatic support. &nbsp;

Chinese business organizations can hardly dare to ignore the dictates of CCP. When Houston Rockets’ General Manager displeased the Chinese government by supporting Hongkong protesters on social media, all of the 11 official Chinese business partners of the National Basketball Association suspended ties with the league. Similarly, the sheer number of Chinese students and on Western campuses and large research grants are powerful enough to dissuade them from displeasing China by allowing debates and seminars on China’s human rights abuses and repression, with the participation of Chinese dissidents. &nbsp;Recently, a “powerful person” in the Harvard management stopped Teng Biao, a Chinese dissident and a visiting fellow at Harvard Universit, from holding an event on his and other dissidents’ experiences of human rights abuses in China. &nbsp;

CCP’s state is selling high-tech surveillance technology to 60 states with weak privacy protections, including dictatorships such as Zimbabwe, Philippines, and Kyrgyzstan. China also intimidates UN member countries to support its position in international bodies. At UNHRC, China has been consistent in obstructing the passage of UN resolutions and sanctions against its cohorts like Venezuela, Myanmar, and Saudi Arabia, for gross human rights violations.&nbsp; &nbsp;

In its BRI ambit, China is supporting corrupt and ruthless dictators with “no-strings-attached loans,” in complete disregard for their track-record of environmental safety and human rights abuses. Such dubious and clandestine loans also come easy in return for the recipient country’s support and silence over China’s repression and Human Rights violations. China has invested 62 billion dollars in &nbsp;CPEC (China-Pakistan Economic Corridor), a part of BRI, China’s multi-trillion dollar infrastructure project. Its terror-sponsoring ally Pakistan has displaced the local Shia Muslims in PoJK (Pakistan Occupied Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan), opposing Chinese investments and encroachment of their lands. In one of the most shameless attempts at demographic engineering, they have colonized the area with Wahhabi extremists, Pak army veterans, and terrorist cadres, quite expectedly, China has been a supporting accomplice in such heinous crimes against humanity. Those who oppose are silenced through a plethora of ISI’s (Pakistan’s dreadful spy agency), covert measures including tortures and targeted killings. At the UNSC and FATF, in addition to supporting dreaded terrorists like Hafiz Saed and Masood Azhar, China has shielded Pakistan with impunity, preventing the global bodies’ action against it for financing and sponsoring terrorism in Kashmir. &nbsp;Further, Chinese loans have sent many countries into a never-ending debt trap.&nbsp;

It’s time to confront China&nbsp;

Until the last year, the strategists were concerned about the Chinese threat to the world order. However, after COVID-19 killing thousands across the globe, &nbsp;CCP has revealed itself as not merely a threat to the world order. Instead, in its new or real avatar, it comes out as an existential threat to the entire humanity. As I am writing this piece, China has already found a berth at UNHRC despite its blemished human rights record, &nbsp;aggressed in the Sikkim’s (India) Naku La, and intruded with its coastguard into the waters of Japanese-controlled Senkaku islands. &nbsp;

Further, the way CCP’s party-state has spread disinformation about the origin of the virus, manipulated WHO, influenced or maybe coerced prestigious media houses and influential think-tanks to project it as a savior in its corona-mitigation efforts, vehemently resisted an independent investigation into the origins of the virus, threatened Australia with trade sanctions for advocating an inquiry into the virus’ origins, and intimidated the EU’s external action service to drop the reference to its global disinformation campaign to improve its image, in its report, hardly leaves any doubt about CCP’s future intent to upset the world order and methods it will employ to achieve that. &nbsp;

With Xi Jinping’s eternal presidency, the CCP has gone back to the era of Mao-styled strong man rule. This time it commands robust economic strength, state-of-the-art technology in communications and defense, and a revanchist desire; hence, the tremors are spreading across the globe. Corona is just a glimpse into what lies ahead. Also, China braces the world’s fastest declining population, corona crisis and economic slowdown, which will result in job losses and a fall in the standards of living. It will result in public protest and outrage against the government, demanding more political participation. Most likely, Xi-led CCP will double down with more repression, censorships, purges, and a hyper-nationalist foreign policy. In the international arena, it may result in China firming up its ties with despots and terror-sponsoring nations by giving them nuclear technology, aggressive incursions in the South China Sea, and brazen subversion of international conventions, treaties, and institutions. &nbsp;

Hence, it is time to confront CCP. Moreover, the confrontation has to be holistic. From a principled stand against its human rights abuses and strategically thought-out efforts countering its economic and military aggression to a systematic campaign exposing CCP and its inhuman side, the world community has to deter CCP on every front. It has to be a united effort. With Americans in a self-imposed diplomatic quarantine mode, Australia, Japan and India have a lot to contribute, in saving China and the rest of the world, from a revanchist regime that refuses to respect life and play by the rules.&nbsp; 
 
(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed above are the personal views of the author and do not reflect the views of ZMCL)&nbsp; 
&nbsp;

Usually, Australian newspapers are hardly read in India. However, recently, the Australian portal The Daily Telegraph’s article, in a befitting reply to the Chinese Consul General’s letter alleging it of “ignorance,” “prejudice,” and “arrogance,” in its reports and opinions on China’s response to Covid-19, went viral in Indian social media circles.

Usually, Australian newspapers are hardly read in India. However, recently, the Australian portal The Daily Telegraph’s article, in a befitting reply to the Chinese Consul General’s letter alleging it of “ignorance,” “prejudice,” and “arrogance,” in its reports and opinions on China’s response to Covid-19, went viral in Indian social media circles. It unleashed debates on the post-corona world order among the Indian intellectuals generally obsessed with Pakistan and its jihadist wars in India. It seemed as if the article awakened the usually insular Indian masses from their civilizational slumber and got them seriously thinking about the threat posed by China to the rules-based world order. The western world got its taste of the world order with the “Chinese Characteristics” only in the recent past as they came to know of the horrors of Xinjiang’s “vocational training centers,” muscle-flexing by Chinese Navy in the South China Sea, and China’s unfair trade practices. However, India tasted the bitter pill in 1962 only, when Mao’s China backstabbed India’s statesman-philosopher PM Nehru, hell-bent on harnessing the strengths of Indo-Chinese civilizational ties, by starting a war in Himalayan peaks that not only brought India’s growing global stature to a grinding halt, but also shattered Nehru from within, ultimately leading to his untimely demise, leaving India’s nascent democracy leaderless. China and Corona have shaken our notions of stability and made us all apprehensive and fearful of the world order with the so-called “Chinese characteristics.” The world community’s faith in China’s intentions, institutions, innovations, inventions, and investments has shattered almost beyond redemption. World leaders have raised the pitch in favour of finding new alternatives to reduce the economic dependence on China and new alliances to protect the rules-based order against the depredations of revanchist China. However, the current state of frenzy and panic may mislead even the sanest minds and lead us to blame the “country China and its people” for all the mayhem. However, anyone with primary exposure to Asian history will understand that not China and its people, but China’s Communist Party (CCP) is an existential threat to rules-based world order, standing firmly on the twin pillars of liberal democracy and free and fair trade. Any systematic thought about deterring China has to begin with differentiating between China and the Chinese Communist Party, the two entities primarily at ideological and foundational crossroads. Hence, we must all refrain from any frenzied racial outburst against China as a country, and its people as it is likely to play into the hands of CCP, giving it a powerful weapon to mobilize popular support by rousing nationalist sentiments. At the most fundamental level, the CCP has devastated China’s great civilizational legacy and ethos. The great Chinese civilization derives its vibrancy and soul from the spiritual legacy of the Buddhist and Confucious thought, preaching peace, a quest for spiritual purity, love, and respect for contrary thoughts and belief-systems. Despite its lofty claims to restore China’s rightful place in the world, CCP’s totalitarianism and extremism, in essence, is a complete undoing of all the paramount values China’s glorious civilization stands for. Not long ago, CCP’s Mao-led party-state massacred Buddhists and decimated their monasteries in Tibet, and implemented the “great leap forward,” leading to the death of tens of millions of its people in the devastating famines that followed it. Later, insecurities emanating from the fears of a popular revolt against his authority due to the devastating famines, Mao brought “cultural revolution” to get rid of all the “bourgeoisie elements.” However, in effect, the despot wanted to silence all the dissidents and critiques, leading the purges of millions of his ideological opponents. And, with them, China’s break with its spiritual and cultural refinements of Buddhist-Confucious past was complete. Today, CCP’s mind-games with complex jargons like “whole-process democracy” and “benevolent rule,” which it also calls “democracy with Chinese characteristics,” are simply to counter the western challenge to its dictatorial political system by orchestrating ideological foundations to prove its political system, superior to the western one. However, such expressions are mere outer trappings to protect a corrupt political system and governance model existing under fragile foundations and a perpetual threat of popular revolt, for being inherently anti- ‘Chinese.’ CCP’s world order stands for forced disappearances and displacements, politically-motivated purges, persecution of ethnic and religious minorities, fake news and disinformation campaigns, supporting despots and rogue states, and encouraging their nuclear blackmail, and shielding UN-designated terrorists and terror-sponsoring nations at the UN bodies, and crushing human rights. Its “economic aggression” strategy includes theft of trade secrets and intellectual property, unfair trade practices hindering the access of foreign companies to Chinese markets, and forced technology transfers. At home, CCP has created the most intrusive public monitoring and Orwellian high-tech surveillance state. With the state-controlled media, rigid internet censorships, face recognition technology, and draconian restrictions on a free debate on religious and political issues in the Universities, the CCP silences public criticism and maintains a firm grip on the information flow in China. It has prevented the exposure of Chinese society to all outside influences by denying access to foreign intellectuals, media persons, and independent observers from the UN bodies and global NGOs. The respect for privacy is anathema for CCP. Not long ago, CCP’s repressive state machinery massacred thousands of students demanding democracy in Tiennman square. In Xinjiang province, home to around 13 million Muslims of Turkic, Uyghur and Kazakh ethnicities, CCP runs the most sophisticated and high-tech detainment camps, in the name of “vocational education centers, where the inmates are subjected to rigorous indoctrination to rid them of all Islamic influences. CCP treats Islam like a ‘mental illness.’ Those observing fundamental Islamic practices such as Namaz, Rozas, and beards find themselves in the detainment camps. CCP’s hatred for democracy and human rights does not stop at its frontiers. In the last few years, CCP has brazenly extended its vision of anti-human rights and anti-democratic political and governance model beyond its borders. China’s party-state uses its economic clout to silence all those entities, including companies, countries, individuals, NGOs, and academic institutions, who criticize its human rights record. OIC countries, usually vocal about the Muslim causes across the globe, conveniently turned a blind eye to Xinjiang and applauded China’s counter-terrorism measures that have led to a “stronger sense of fulfilment, happiness, and security. Hence, what happens in Xinjiang, stays in Xinjiang, thanks to the overriding economic interests of OIC nations. Major BRI-recipient Pakistan’s PM Imran Khan often frets and fumes on twitter over sporadic incidents of Islamophobia in India. However, he preferred to keep silent over Xinjiang, while his diplomats lauded China for “providing care to its Muslim citizens,” thanks to China’s “no-strings” grants and diplomatic support. Chinese business organizations can hardly dare to ignore the dictates of CCP. When Houston Rockets’ General Manager displeased the Chinese government by supporting Hongkong protesters on social media, all of the 11 official Chinese business partners of the National Basketball Association suspended ties with the league. Similarly, the sheer number of Chinese students and on Western campuses and large research grants are powerful enough to dissuade them from displeasing China by allowing debates and seminars on China’s human rights abuses and repression, with the participation of Chinese dissidents. Recently, a “powerful person” in the Harvard management stopped Teng Biao, a Chinese dissident and a visiting fellow at Harvard Universit, from holding an event on his and other dissidents’ experiences of human rights abuses in China. CCP’s state is selling high-tech surveillance technology to 60 states with weak privacy protections, including dictatorships such as Zimbabwe, Philippines, and Kyrgyzstan. China also intimidates UN member countries to support its position in international bodies. At UNHRC, China has been consistent in obstructing the passage of UN resolutions and sanctions against its cohorts like Venezuela, Myanmar, and Saudi Arabia, for gross human rights violations. In its BRI ambit, China is supporting corrupt and ruthless dictators with “no-strings-attached loans,” in complete disregard for their track-record of environmental safety and human rights abuses. Such dubious and clandestine loans also come easy in return for the recipient country’s support and silence over China’s repression and Human Rights violations. China has invested 62 billion dollars in CPEC (China-Pakistan Economic Corridor), a part of BRI, China’s multi-trillion dollar infrastructure project. Its terror-sponsoring ally Pakistan has displaced the local Shia Muslims in PoJK (Pakistan Occupied Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan), opposing Chinese investments and encroachment of their lands. In one of the most shameless attempts at demographic engineering, they have colonized the area with Wahhabi extremists, Pak army veterans, and terrorist cadres, quite expectedly, China has been a supporting accomplice in such heinous crimes against humanity. Those who oppose are silenced through a plethora of ISI’s (Pakistan’s dreadful spy agency), covert measures including tortures and targeted killings. At the UNSC and FATF, in addition to supporting dreaded terrorists like Hafiz Saed and Masood Azhar, China has shielded Pakistan with impunity, preventing the global bodies’ action against it for financing and sponsoring terrorism in Kashmir. Further, Chinese loans have sent many countries into a never-ending debt trap. It’s time to confront China Until the last year, the strategists were concerned about the Chinese threat to the world order. However, after COVID-19 killing thousands across the globe, CCP has revealed itself as not merely a threat to the world order. Instead, in its new or real avatar, it comes out as an existential threat to the entire humanity. As I am writing this piece, China has already found a berth at UNHRC despite its blemished human rights record, aggressed in the Sikkim’s (India) Naku La, and intruded with its coastguard into the waters of Japanese-controlled Senkaku islands. Further, the way CCP’s party-state has spread disinformation about the origin of the virus, manipulated WHO, influenced or maybe coerced prestigious media houses and influential think-tanks to project it as a savior in its corona-mitigation efforts, vehemently resisted an independent investigation into the origins of the virus, threatened Australia with trade sanctions for advocating an inquiry into the virus’ origins, and intimidated the EU’s external action service to drop the reference to its global disinformation campaign to improve its image, in its report, hardly leaves any doubt about CCP’s future intent to upset the world order and methods it will employ to achieve that. With Xi Jinping’s eternal presidency, the CCP has gone back to the era of Mao-styled strong man rule. This time it commands robust economic strength, state-of-the-art technology in communications and defense, and a revanchist desire; hence, the tremors are spreading across the globe. Corona is just a glimpse into what lies ahead. Also, China braces the world’s fastest declining population, corona crisis and economic slowdown, which will result in job losses and a fall in the standards of living. It will result in public protest and outrage against the government, demanding more political participation. Most likely, Xi-led CCP will double down with more repression, censorships, purges, and a hyper-nationalist foreign policy. In the international arena, it may result in China firming up its ties with despots and terror-sponsoring nations by giving them nuclear technology, aggressive incursions in the South China Sea, and brazen subversion of international conventions, treaties, and institutions. Hence, it is time to confront CCP. Moreover, the confrontation has to be holistic. From a principled stand against its human rights abuses and strategically thought-out efforts countering its economic and military aggression to a systematic campaign exposing CCP and its inhuman side, the world community has to deter CCP on every front. It has to be a united effort. With Americans in a self-imposed diplomatic quarantine mode, Australia, Japan and India have a lot to contribute, in saving China and the rest of the world, from a revanchist regime that refuses to respect life and play by the rules. (Disclaimer: The opinions expressed above are the personal views of the author and do not reflect the views of ZMCL)

China is not just a challenge to the liberal World Order, but an existential threat to humanity

Author

Zee News Rajasthan

Editor

Abhinav Pandya

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