Caught between American and Chinese patronage

In a test of nerves, both India and Pakistan are locked in an ongoing military standoff to test each other's resolve. This resolve is built in a broad strategic environment driven by the two great powers, China and the United States.

Both powers hold the major cards and drive the moves on the regional chessboard on which both India and Pakistan act as pawns. Both India and Pakistan play a subordinate role to these larger regional and global powers in their bilateral relationship as well as in the regional conflicts.

The US views the geopolitical competition in the region as a competition between the free and the regressive vision of the world. But that is the US version of the competition; the Chinese version is different.

China views a definite shift in the balance of power between itself and the US, which has continued for the last few decades but has now reached a culminating point. Today, China views this balance of power as a strategic stalemate — a state in which both countries wield comparable power.

The US supports India's leadership role in the region as a counterweight to China and to prevent China from reordering the Indo-Pacific region to its advantage. This American patronage of India is as good a reality as the Chinese patronage of Pakistan. It is in this context that one must view the current grand strategies of not only the US and China but also of Pakistan and India as the subordinates of these two great powers.

Put simply, any grand strategy is the use of power by any state to secure its interests. When the strategic interests of Pakistan and India are aligned with those of China and the US, respectively, then there is sound logic in believing that the grand strategies of both Pakistan and India are part of the overall regional grand strategies of the two great powers.

The US grand strategy in the region encompasses: preventing Asia from being dominated by a single or collation of hegemons; using India to strengthen the US strategic standing in the region; supporting India in its 'act East policy' by helping it expand its leverage over the Indian Ocean Rim States; and preventing a large-scale conflict between Pakistan and India.

China's grand strategy in the region is built around the concept of preventing any damage to its economic rise in the region. Both China and India are rising powers, and both rely on seaborne trade and import of energy as two big aspects that sustain their economy, and both rely on transiting Indian Ocean.

Hence, dominating the Indo-Pacific is not a choice but a built-in strategic necessity for China as a shield against America's growing presence and interest in the region, and for India as an American ally to prevent that from happening. In the immediate context, China faces an economic warfare unleashed by the current Trump administration. China confronts this American strategy with its famous strategic approach of biding time. It is allowing the American tariff war to run its course with expectations that it will falter as the US faces domestic economic upheaval.

Broadly speaking, even in the era of the bipolar world, the world did not witness the two great powers –the US and the Soviet Union - directly clashing with each other. Given this precedent, it is unlikely that any other two great powers — like the US and China — will clash with each other now. Both the US and China will continue to purposefully employ the instruments of power at their disposal to compete and contest each other, and the two most relevant instruments of power to extend their interests seem to be diplomatic and economic.

Not so in the case of India and Pakistan. Sitting on the brink of a conflict, the two countries need to remind themselves of all the proxy wars that were fought during the Cold War era, which only furthered or damaged the interests of the Soviet Union or the US. Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan are just the three examples of what became of the nations that fought the proxy wars on behalf of those great powers. The time to learn that lesson is now.

The grand strategies of the US and China in the region are dominated by the economic component of their strategies. The ideological component dominates the grand strategies of India and Pakistan, which does little else but drive them towards a collision course. Both these countries espouse political, security and ideological doctrines that are at odds with how China and the US pursue economic growth as the main pillar of their grand strategies.

The US views the return of the great power competition as its motive to execute its 'pivot to Asia' strategy, as it is here that the two other great powers, China and Russia, with revisionist tendencies, reside. The American support for India is unquestionable and will not be held back. China will also not allow Pakistan to be subjected to Indian military blackmail.

Unlike China, which allows the US tariff war to take its course, Pakistan cannot afford to allow the Indian military pressures and its security strategy against Pakistan to run its course. Pakistan's declared policy of quid pro quo plus against the Indian threat is the most important deterrent that prevents the Indian strategy from furthering, as it fears the Pakistani retaliatory response.

If India does try to initiate a limited war, then the response by Pakistan will drive the war into an unlimited strategic time and space, something that both the US and China would not wish to see. War from there will not deescalate but only escalate as the Indian notion of viewing Pakistan as a state that will comply under Indian military pressure and military operations is built on a wrong premise.

The strategic audience of this brewing conflict is no longer just the Indians and the Pakistanis; it is now the entire world, and there is much at stake for the world to allow this conflict to take place.