Have To Live With It: But Here’s The Silver Lining
Normality can be very
sweet, especially when smatterings of it returns after more than sixty days. No,
The Wuhan Virus is not going away. It will infect and kill people for at least
a year or two going forward.
Lockdowns and
quarantines will continue, but in stubborn retreat, issuing dire threats, as it
is pushed back to ever narrower domains. The method, like the affixing of
medieval leeches, is much less effective than the proverbial silver bullet. It slows the spread,
yes. But the cost-benefit is haywire, and so, the world has resolved to live
with the virus.
Will it postpone the US presidential elections,
just as it did the Tokyo Olympics? By months, a whole year? Probably.
This is President Donald Trump’s opportunity
to not only turn the tables on China, but decisively win another term in
office. Will it be a full four year term, or will he have to minus the months
of postponement? Could the Democrats, if they win, take a softer line with China?This is a most unusual year. We will just have to wait and see.
Various medicines
existing and repurposed, have been pressed into service. They try but do not
cover the spectrum of the disease. Many infected have co-morbidities,
complicated by management protocols of their own.
Immunity building is probably the best defence. And being
young, or at least reasonably fit. The protocols: hand washing, sanitiser usage,
masks, social distancing, avoiding crowds. These are sometimes difficult to implement
amongst rebellious populations. Highly populated regions like ours are doubly
challenged. We are also served by inadequate facilities- transport, hospital
beds, border crossings, liquor, no money.
Vaccines are still
under development or in human trials, with little chance of any hitting the
market much before the last quarter of the year.
The virus does kill
exposed people of all ages and not just the elderly or the already sick. But
not very many. The death rate has stayed between 3-5% globally. Even numbers in
need of critical care have not exceeded 5% .
These are infinitely
better statistics than past pandemics like cholera and the plague. Or even the
Spanish Flu of a 100 years ago. And the recovery rates are improving steadily.
Unfortunately, recovery rates are not man bites dog news. In India it has inched up to 41% and
rising.
But the Wuhan Virus has
been the banana peel of stepped on banana peels for its originator. From an
ascendancy that seemed unstoppable, even inevitable. Particularly, given the
extraordinary manufacturing and infrastructure building successes of the Red
Chinese. To a downfall, that is like being thrown off from the highest point of
the Three Gorges Dam.
China is definitely on
the back foot, wolf warring notwithstanding. This has been so sudden and
dramatic that it is hard for the Communist Party and its President Xi Jinping to
swallow.
It has made it not only
belligerent, but also a little irrational. China is now claiming entire
countries in addition to mere portions of other sovereign nations including
India. This, in addition to its relatively long standing programme to gird the
world with its roads and train lines, dominate every ocean with its blue water
navy. It has built artificial islands to extract tolls of passage on international
sea lanes. It flies aircraft over the South China Sea and uses navy ships and
armed fishing boats to patrol it.
It is presently bullying
Australia, Leaning on Nepal, pressuring Bangladesh, making Sri Lanka sit on the
fence, insulting Africans, Arabs, South East Asians and Europeans who don’t toe
its line of innocence on the virus.
And most absurdly, it frequently
threatens the United States with war, monetary withdrawal, and trade sanctions.
It is launched on a
disastrous course to steam-roller all democracy and dissent in Hong Kong. It is
sailing aircraft carriers in the narrow sea lanes near Taiwan to make its
intent clear.
But two things have
changed overnight for Xi Jinping’s Red China. One: people who have shied away
from potential conflict in the past are no longer backing down. Two: everyone has
stopped indulging China despite its money, muscle and importance in the global
supply chain.
China is rapidly, like
a house on fire, losing business, manufacturing contracts, commercial and diplomatic influence.
Red China was sworn to
uphold the autonomy of Hong Kong for 50 years from just before the millennium.
But it does not care for solemn treaties with Britain. Tibet, which it overran
under Mao, while the international community looked away, has surfaced again in
the news. America now wants to see it independent.
And Taiwan, the
Republic of China, is in contention once again to be regarded as the true owner
of a unified democratic China. Will the Communist Party of Red China be ousted in its turn?
Certainly, the newly
elected second term government in Taipei is not interested in any form of
rapprochement. It wants no part of Beijing’s one country two systems offer. It
is on the side of an autonomous Hong Kong. Britain too has opened a path to
citizenship for 300,000 of its people.
All this has happened
in six months. These changes have come
at the cost of thousands of lives sickened or lost. The global economy is in tatters.
The silver lining is in
the new world order that is emerging. China is no longer a contender to take over
the world. It will suffer horrendous economic degradation and internal
insurrection. If it decides to use its military, the process will, if anything
be accelerated.
So, true to this new
template, China will probably back off from its aggressive intrusion at several
points into Indian Ladakh. It is stymied by a corresponding Indian build up and
its strategic advantages. Quite apart from infantry, artillery and armoured
divisions, Indian fighter planes are close by and can deploy with ordnance from
multiple airfields. Chinese airports in Tibet are far apart, vulnerable, their
fighters visible to our satellites, out in the open. Most of the Chinese planes anyway are on the
other side of the country, thousands of kilometres away, protecting Beijing.
China is rightly concerned
that India may, in future cut off its access to Tibet. India is resolutely
building substantial border infrastructure, roads, all weather tunnels,
railways, to mirror Chinese activity over years of building such facilities in
Tibet. And it has flatly refused to stop doing so. India is also building
roads, airstrips, bridges, other infrastructure all along the long LaC with
China.
There is a profound shift
in India’s military perceptions and foreign policy vis a vis China, provoked by decades of bullying and use of Pakistan
as proxy. Many treaties and written understandings on the status of the LaC
have been flouted. The McMahon Line is
not accepted. Older British treaties are
not honoured either.
But now, as Sikkim, Doklam
and now Ladakh demonstrate, India will not be pushed. It has closed the
military gap disparity with hardware,
software, infrastructure and the creation of regiments trained and equipped to
operate at high altitudes.
The current Chinese
apprehension over Ladakh, recently converted into a Union Territory by India,
is not unfounded. It is India’s stated objective in parliament to reclaim the
parts of Akshai Chin that belong to it.
China’s vassal states,
North Korea and most notably the bankrupt state of Pakistan cannot survive
without Chinese patronage. Pakistan doubly so, because of American reluctance to fund it. The much
impoverished finances of its erstwhile supporters from West Asia are another
problem.
A resolution against
China’s crack down in Hong Kong has already been initiated by the United States
in the UNSC. This will result in crippling economic sanctions. Hong Kong will
not remain a global financial capital under Red Chinese domination.
These changes are all
to the advantage of India. It will suffer much less from terrorism starved of
funding. It will soon be in a position to reclaim PoK and Gilgit Baltistan,
most likely via another UNSC resolution.
Armed with the Security
Council’s reiteration of India’s legitimate claim over PoK and
Gilgit-Baltistan, India will move to take possession. This will entail a
minimum of bloodshed and military conflict, as a consequence. The Shia people
of the region, long suppressed by Sunni Pakistanis, will welcome the development.
It will give a fillip to independence movements in Balochistan, Pakhtoonistan and
Sindh.
The reclaiming of PoK and Gilgit Baltistan will dramatically change the calculations of both China
and Pakistan with regard to the $60 billion CPEC. And China’s access to Gwadar
Port via Pakistan and Balochistan.
The CPEC can only survive with the cooperation
of both India and Balochistan in future. When China falls, Pakistan, as we know
it today, must also fall. It will make for a more peaceful South Asia.
(1,449 words)
For: Sirfnews
May 29th, 2020
Gautam Mukherjee
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