How the CPEC affects the stopping power of the Himalayas, how the MSR en- hances China’s naval power projection capabilities in the Indian Ocean, and how these and other BRI corridors offer China access to alternative trade routes that are less vulnerable to potential Indian disruption have all been evaluated in the previous parts of the thesis. The conclusion for these factors was that they do tilt the balance of power between to India’s disadvantage, but in themselves not to a substantial degree that would fundamentally undermine India’s security. Where a relatively more significant power shift to China’s favour was detected is its role as a source of investment and a leading power in regional integration. This last section of the thesis’s analytical part puts these changes into each other’s context, and evaluates if they together change the fundamental geopolitical characteris- tics of South Asia and the Indian Ocean Region in a way that, as sort of a synergic effect, goes beyond the mere sum of their individual impacts.
The South Asian mainland and the Indian Ocean Region can be described as a closed, ‘self-contained’ world (Friedman 2008) and a ‘relatively closed strate- gic space’ (Brewster 2017: 270), respectively. While the notion that the Indian Subcontinent is effectively an ‘island’ (Friedman op. cit.) that is completely im- penetrable for substantial land forces may be an exaggeration in the light of Chi- na’s sizeable forces on the Tibetan Plateau trained and equipped for mountain warfare (se e.g. Joshi 2011a: 561–562; Holslag 2009: 819–820), but as Section 4.1 showed, India’s formidable geographical barriers to the north still limit the scope of forces China could potentially deploy against it. In such a relatively comforta- ble geopolitical configuration India’s primary geopolitical objective is to control (directly or indirectly) the majority of the Subcontinent’s population and land- mass (Friedman op. cit.). This, despite Pakistan’s hostility, is has largely been achieved by the modern-day Republic of India in the sense that it has no peer competitor situated within the region.
Once the necessary level of control over South Asia is secured, analysts of Indian geopolitics (ibid; Panikkar 1954, cited by Brewster 2017: 275–276) continue,
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the next imperative is the creation of a maritime defensive zone. This is motivat- ed not only by security but also economic concerns: similarly to China, India is highly dependent on IOR SLOCs when it comes to international trade and energy supply (Hornat 2016: 432; Holslag op. cit.: 825). The Indian Ocean, sealed by con- tinental landmasses from all direction, is accessible on sea only via a handful nar- row maritime chokepoints, such as the Suez Canal and the Bab-el-Mandeb from the Mediterranean, the Strait of Hormuz from Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Malacca from the Western Pacific Ocean, and the Cape Route from the Southern Atlantic Ocean. Also, its Eurasian littorals are sealed by high- altitude mountain ranges, extensive deserts, and dense jungles from the hinter- lands. Because of this, large Eurasian land powers like China or Russia have tradi- tionally been absent from the IOR, which instead was dominated by distant mari- time powers like the Portuguese, the British, or more recently the United States (Brewster 2017: 271–272). From India’s perspective, the U.S. is not considered a realistic security threat (Tellis 2015: 493), but New Delhi’s long-term aim is to ‘in- herit’ regional naval dominance from its currently stronger partner (Brewster 2017: 287). Preserving the Indian Ocean closed to other major maritime contend- ers is essential for that goal to be met.
Not allowing any hostile or potentially hostile external power breaking through the Himalayas and becoming dominant in the Indian Ocean is, there- fore, a vital interest of India. While its impact on the short-term military balance is limited, the BRI compromises both of these two geographical barriers at the same time, by enhancing the presence of the same, potentially hostile power in both regions. Strengthening overland connection between China and the Indian Ocean may not turn the current naval balance of power there upside down in the short term. But given China’s considerable edge in overall material capabilities (ISS 2018: 249–259, 260–266; Al. Acharya 2015: 363–365; Bajpai 2015: 27–28; Sri- dharan 2015: 703–706), its newly solidified position in littoral South and South- East Asia still puts it in a favourable position for an incremental naval build-up in the longer term. Fears of a possible war on two fronts, one in the west against Pakistan and one in the north and northeast along the LAC against China has
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been present in Indian strategic thought ever since the 1962 Sino-Indian war and the rise of the Sino-Pakistani alliance. Joshi (2011a: 568) refers to Indian analysts who, fearing that the training and equipment of the Indian Armed Forces would barely live up to such a challenge, even call for an ‘Asian Schlieffen Plan’ to pre- vent this scenario from coming true. With the substantial strengthening of Chi- na’s blue-water power projection capabilities in the Indian Ocean the possibility of a war on three fronts would emerge. Even in the light of the possible absolute economic benefits, this may be a risk India is not willing to take, or only with meaningful guarantees against the military utilisation of MSR, CPEC, or BCIM facilities.
It is important to note that, similarly to some other dimensions addressed in this thesis, the geopolitical transformation of South Asia and the Indian Ocean is difficult to quantify as long as the exact capacity of overland transportation corridors and maritime facilities is uncertain. Considering the limited accessible statistical data and military information, and the somewhat speculative nature of the secondary literature, the conclusion of this section is similar to those about trade security, economic influence, and land and maritime military forces: a moderate shift in the balance of power is taking place, and its direction is clearly disadvantageous for India. This shift, on the other hand, is not massive enough to entirely undermine India’s very favourable central geopolitical position in South Asia and the Indian Ocean region.
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Conclusion
The Sino-Indian relationship is a topic of analysis where thorough and rigorous studies rarely justify bold, categorical conclusions about ‘hostility’ and ‘rivalry’ or ‘friendship’ and ‘partnership’. The complex and multi-layered relations of these two Asian giants are fundamentally shaped by economic interdependence but also by deep distrust and power competition. In this sense it can perhaps be compared only to the similarly complex and sometimes paradoxical Sino-U.S. re- lations, at least when bilateral relations between major powers are concerned.
This thesis has also analysed a wide range of dimensions in which the Belt and Road Initiative affects the relation of the two countries, but at the same time it has limited its theoretical approach to a rather narrow structural realist per- spective. Considering the findings of the previous analytical sections, it concludes that in the short term the BRI only slightly strengthens China’s ability to project military power in India’s northern neighbourhood and the Indian Ocean, and on- ly slightly reduces India’s ability to retaliate with the disruption crucial sea lines of communication. However, it further strengthens China’s role as a major trade partner, source of investments, and driver of regional integration along the BRI macro-region; therefore, if economic and military aspects are all taken into ac- count, it moderately tilts the relative distribution of power between the two countries further to China’s favour.
This analysis, as it has been indicated early in the theoretical section, has two main limitations. First, due to the lack or scarcity of certain statistical data and the confidential and opaque nature of most relevant military information made the quantification of certain variables extremely hard or impossible. In some cases these gaps in the primary sources could be filled with estimations and forecasts in the secondary literature, but such methodological compromises nec- essarily limit how bold and confident conclusions the analysis can result in.
On the other hand, and somewhat paradoxically, even these difficulties in the empirical evaluation have led to some relevant findings: they unveiled further important gaps in the literature, and highlighted the somewhat speculative na-
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ture of some major claims about the topic that have been made in the literature and the public discourse. The Literature Review in this thesis presented many of these exaggerated claims about the security threat the BRI poses to India (e.g. Sibal 2017; Vasan 2016; Gupta 2015; Krupakar 2015), but also rather optimistic ones (e.g. Palit 2017; Jacob 2017) about how beneficial the BRI would be for India. Either due to the lack of supporting data, or due to stronger contradicting evi- dences, the analytical chapters demonstrated that from a security point of view the BRI is indeed rather disadvantageous for India, but not in a game-changing way, as infrastructural projects like the CPEC and the MSR somewhat reduce but by no mean eradicate India’s initial geographical advantage to dominate South Asia and (at least against China) the Indian Ocean. On the other hand, expecting significant economic gains from the project is a quite logical assumption, actual forecasts about these gains, however, are in fact surprisingly scarce. Identifying these gaps in the literature is just as relevant a part of the conclusion of this the- sis as its answer for the original research question.
The second limitation of the thesis is its narrow focus one, the structural, dimension of the BRI’s implications for India and its region. Other key dimen- sions that were intentionally ignored or simplified in this analysis include the real motivations behind the initiative on China’s part, the role of perceptions and misperceptions in the two countries’ disagreement and distrust, the amount of potential economic gains India loses by opting out form the Belt and Road Initia- tive. All these undeniable important questions belong to future research projects. It is not the claim of this work that a structural realist analysis explains all im- portant aspects of international relations in the Asia-Pacific or the narrower topic of India’s reaction to the Belt and Road Initiative. The case it makes is that this structural dimension is indeed a very relevant aspect of the topic, which should be taken into account by any genuinely comprehensive analysis that, either from a neoclassical realist or a liberal viewpoint, aims to assess both the advantages and disadvantages of the BRI from India’s perspective.
The policy relevant implications of the conclusion of this thesis, of course, have to be considered in the context of the aforementioned limitations. Nonethe-
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less, even this methodological construct allows for some further conclusions and careful recommendations. While thoroughly evaluating how the Belt and Road Initiative affects the relative distribution of power between India and China, the additional question arises whether India has any realistic means to prevent its implementation. This question may be just as important as the research question of this thesis itself: if the answer is negative to the former but affirmative to the latter, they together lead to an uneasy but very plausible conclusion. This indi- cates that New Delhi would still be better advised to be pragmatic, accept the in- evitable loss of relative power, join the BRI, and take the absolute economic gains in the form of infrastructural development; because the alternative India would have is to abstain from the initiative, lose the absolute gains—and still suffer a disadvantageous power shift.
Some recent diplomatic developments in fact suggest that similar consider- ations are working within the Indian government. In late April Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Wuhan, China, and agreed on easing border tensions as well as increasing cooperation on eco- nomic and regional development (Ministry of External Affairs 2018; Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2018). This does not necessarily mean that India will formally join the Belt and Road Initiative anytime soon, but may easily show more pragmatism with respect to the Bangladesh–China–India–Myanmar (Liu 2018); while China may come to terms with India’s strategic hedging against the BRI’s negative im- plications by cooperating with the U.S., as long as this cooperation remains on a largely bilateral basis (Gupta 2018). This would not be a strategic shift on either side, but as another commentator noted, China and India may for a while reposi- tion themselves on the ‘“friend” side of “frenemy”’ (Park 2018). Eventually, if India ambitions to narrow the power gap between itself and China substantially, there is but one way of doing so: implementing meaningful economic reforms and per- petually over-performing China in terms of development.
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List of Maps
Map 1 – The Belt and Road Initiative (source: HKTDC 2018)
*
Map 2 –China’s ‘String of Pearl’ in the Indian Ocean (source: Marantidou 2014)
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Map 3 – The China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (source: Haq 2015)
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