Word: indianness
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...Elephant and Dragon I read with interest your essay on Sino-Indian tensions [Aug. 31]. It is clear that a major conflict between India and communist China would pose a very serious global threat. Yet I share the view that the long-term survival of India as a multicultural nation is more securely assured than that of communist China. Like all totalitarian states, China has decided to ensure the power of the central state by subduing all local cultures and languages. A vast country like India, with ancient traditions, many languages and several religions, has to tread a narrow path...
...safeguard its vast appetite for oil and other natural resources, particularly those drawn from Africa, China has embarked upon a "string of pearls" strategy, building ports and listening posts around the Indian Ocean rim. Beijing's projects span from the Malacca Straits to the Cape of Good Hope and many places in between, including countries that were once in India's sphere of influence. A massive deep-sea port being built by Chinese funds and labor at Hambantota, at the southern tip of Sri Lanka, has in particular riled Indian analysts. With a $1 billion facility also under construction...
...country's first nuclear submarine in July and purchased new destroyers from Russia and the U.S. Still, China's plans to build aircraft carriers and boost its own submarine fleet far outstrip that of New Delhi. India has expanded defense contacts and exchanges with a host of strategic Indian Ocean countries and archipelago nations such as Mauritius, Seychelles, Madagascar and the Maldives as well as engaged in naval exercises with other East Asian and Southeast Asian nations that are wary of China's growing stature, such as Japan and Vietnam. But China also maintains solid relationships with many of these...
Conflict, though, is not inevitable. It's natural for rising powers to extend their reach and rub up against each other. China and India, says C. Uday Bhaskar, director of the National Maritime Foundation, a think tank attached to the Indian navy, need to "evolve some kind of modus vivendi as they establish themselves in the Indian Ocean." But few can divine what that may look like. Part of the problem is that despite booming trade between India and China, there is little political understanding between their governments. "They engage very superficially," says Pant. "There's rarely consensus...
...article in the March-April issue of Foreign Affairs by Robert Kaplan, a prominent American writer and strategic thinker, suggested that the U.S., far and away still the world's preeminent military power, could be the chief "balancer" and "honest broker" in the Indian Ocean. But that idea has been received icily in Asia, with many governments seeing the U.S. as a nation in decline, marooned in costly adventures abroad and led by an Obama Administration that is less willing to confront the aggressive posturing of a rising giant like China. It would be better, says Bhaskar, for India...