On March 7, China unveiled a new Anti-Secession Law in its third session of the 10th National People’s Congress meeting. The law legalizes China to take military action against the renegade province, Taiwan. The full text of the Anti-Secession Law stated a three-point scenario for ‘‘non-peaceful action’’ against Taiwan. It says that China will attack Taiwan if the forces clamouring for Taiwan’s independence ‘‘under any name or by any means’’ create the ‘‘fact of Taiwan’s secession from China’’, if there is ‘‘occurrence of major incidents entailing Taiwan’s secession from China’’ and if ‘‘possibilities for a peaceful reunification are completely exhausted.’’

Taiwan has strongly opposed the Anti-Secession Law and called it as China’s ploy to annex Taiwan and unilaterally change the status quo. The pro-independent groups have opposed Chen Shui-bian’s moderate tone in Cross-Strait relations and demanded that the government should counter anti-secession law with an anti-annexation law, which would state that Taiwan is a sovereign country.

A careful reading of the full text of the Anti-Secession Law indicates that the proposal on taking non-peaceful means to stop Taiwan’s Secession from China by the Taiwan Independent force, comes in the fourth and the last section of the text. This is in tandem with China’s earlier positions on Taiwan reunification as codified in the 16th Party Congress Report of 2002. It vindicates China’s three positions on when to attack Taiwan that is if Taiwan declares independence, if there is foreign intervention in Cross-Strait relations and if there is indefinite postponement of re-unification goal.

Second, the section on Achieving National Reunification Through Peaceful Means, clearly points at the significance of peaceful reunification both for China and the world. It says, ‘‘A reunification by peaceful means best serves the fundamental interests of all Chinese people, the Taiwan compatriots included, as it is conducive to fostering a warm affection among compatriots on both sides, to peace and stability in the Taiwan Straits and the Asia-Pacific region as a whole, and to the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.’’ The draft proposal in fact, mentions a five-point formula to create peace and stability in the region and promote Cross-Strait relations.

Third, the full text does not mention any time-table for unification with Taiwan or for taking aggressive military action to thwart Taiwan from going independent. In fact, the law mandated that ‘‘the state shall exert its utmost to protect the lives, property and other legitimate rights and interests of Taiwan civilians and foreign nationals in Taiwan.’’

As against the legalization of use of force against Taiwan, the anti-secession law is basically meant to reinforce the status quo position on Cross- Strait relations. The three-point scenario for ‘‘non-peaceful action’’ is intended to thwart the pro-independent groups from campaigning for independence.

It is also intended to prevent Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian from enacting a new Constitution for Taiwan by 2008. China looks upon the revision of the Constitution as a declaration of Taiwan’s independence and unilateral change in the status quo. In February 2005, the US came out with a US-Japan joint statement indicating Taiwan as a common security concern for both countries. This joint statement is not directly linked with proposed Anti-secession Law, but against China’s increasing military power. It is meant to contain China’s rising influence in the region. The overall US policy on Cross-Strait relations is based on strategic ambiguity. This strategic ambiguity perpetrates status quo on Cross- Strait relations. Strategic ambiguity helps balance competing US interests in China and Taiwan, and maintain credibility, peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region.

China, with its developmental nationalism and pragmatic foreign policy, is not supportive of military action against Taiwan. It will severely jeopardize China’s image building exercise as a responsible and peaceful power. More so, China’s development is contingent on the continuance of a stable economic world order. Its economy is increasingly intertwined with the world’s economic growth and therefore it is in China’s interests to maintain peace across the Straits. Therefore, present policy both in China and the US, is to maintain the status quo.

Further, the status quo position is increasingly becoming the hallmark of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party in Taiwan whose party ideology supports independence of Taiwan. In fact, Chen Shui-bian’s second Presidential inaugural speech reiterates that Taiwan would not declare independence, would not change the national title, would not insert two-state theory into Constitution, would not promote a referendum to change the status quo regarding independence or unification, and would not abolish the national unification guidelines. The February 2005 Chen-Soong 10-point joint statement also reflects a conciliatory position adopted by DPP and it is decreasing its aggressive pro-independent stand, of course under the Chinese threat.

In sum, the Anti-secession Law — rather than being primarily a non-peaceful law — reinforces China’s stand on maintaining status quo on Cross-Strait relations.

By targetting the IT industry, terrorists are revealing that the Indian economy may increasingly be their target

The elimination of the Delhi based Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT) cell on 6 March 2005, could possibly indicate a new trend in Pakistan-based terror operations in India. Preliminary reports indicate that these terrorists were intending to strike against the Indian Military Academy (IMA) and the IT infrastructure especially in Bangalore using the network of the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). A couple of issues emerge from the episode. First, is this an indication of widening of the area of operations by the LeT and similar groups away from Jammu and Kashmir and North India to relatively un-touched peninsular India? Secondly, do the plans of the captured terrorist suggest a change in the nature of targets from tactical to strategic, indicating increasing complexity of conceptual planning and hence institutional involvement?

Jammu and Kashmir is undergoing a rather harsh and prolonged winter snow fall season. Like the tsunami, unpredictable mother nature seems to have purged any possibility of an escalation of terrorist activity. Further, the Indo-Pak Composite Dialogue Process (CDP) process (agreed to in January 2004) has shrunk the political space for high-intensity, high-frequency terror operations. It is quite possible that the political and geo-climactic factors may have forced the terrorists to shift areas of operation southwards and if possible perform a repeat of the 12/13 attack on the Parliament. Though, there have been sporadic incidents involving J&K terrorist (like LeT) operating in areas like Hyderabad, the phenomenon could not be termed as wide spread, possibly due to logistical reasons. The planned future intentions of the LeT cell captured in Delhi may indicate just such a spread.

The choice of targets certainly raises a new warning. It is known that the IT industry has been one of the success stories contributing to the growing vitality of the Indian economy. The amount of RDX captured (10.5 kgs along with detonators) provides clues to the nature and explosive power of the planned operation. However, a pertinent question needs to be answered - was blowing up few buildings of the Polaris company the only aim of the now failed operation, or was there a larger objective? A strike against a leading IT company and its aftermath would have no doubt lead to many tactical counter-operational and intelligence measures. But it would have also left a certain wariness in the investor market, particularly in the FDI sector, which is very sensitive about security of its assets give the experience in Iraq, Afghanistan and certain African locations. A planned strike at IMA, Dehradun is indicative of similar operations by the Zarqawi group in Iraq.

As a first choice, the facts point towards the culprit state actor - Pakistan. The Delhi police has claimed that with the capture of Pakistani nationals along with incriminating documents, passports, the operation provides direct evidence of Pakistani involvement in country wide terrorist activity. Recent media reports also indicate a relative increase in the arrests of Pakistani spies in Delhi and other areas of strategic importance. The information being traded by these enemy agents cover a range of issues of national security importance including defence installations, industrial infrastructure, R&D institutions etc. It seems that despite the Indo-Pak dialogue, increasing people-to-people contact, cricket matches and CBMs, Pakistani intelligence agencies and/or Pakistan leadership does not intend to lose that vital strategic advantage gained through terror leverages mustered over the decades. From their point of view it sounds to be a logical and viable state-craft option.

To extend the analysis, if one partially absolves Musharraf’s Pakistan of an all out covert war in the current context, involvement of a larger terrorist entity like the Al Qaeda with rogue Pakistani support seems to be the second probability. Traditionally, analysts have believed that India does not appear high on the Al Qaeda’s priority list. Possibly, Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Gaza, West Bank and the USA remain the priority targets. An increasing pressure in North West Pakistan by the US and Pakistani agencies (under duress), may be forcing Al Qaeda hierarchy to look for other alternatives as an operational exigency. It is known that Nepal and Bangladesh have been comfortable hiding places for terrorists for some time now.

However, Nepal with its current political crisis and Bangladesh with its politico-religious configuration of governance have invited increasing international scrutiny. Bangladesh has actually started responding to the Indian pressure to clean-up its territory of terrorist elements. This could be uncomfortable for the terrorist entities either residing in these countries or operating from their soil. It needs little elaboration that Pakistani agencies are also under ‘‘friendly’’ obligation to rehabilitate these old associates in a productive manner.

In the past Al Qaeda had possibly left J&K to its junior partners like LeT, Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), Hizbul and Harkat variants. However, under the present circumstances, the ‘‘big guys’’ may be deciding to drop-in and take charge of operations in India, though not directly. This may explain the strategic target selection by the terrorist captured in Delhi. It is known that Al Qaeda had developed an elaborate strategy of purging the US economy through various complicated ‘‘fiscal attacks’’ ranging from disrupting fund supplies to targeting banking infrastructure and stock market mechanism. Was something similar under planning in case of the LeT cadres operating out of Delhi?

It does seems obvious that in both scenarios, the first beneficiary of such a wide planned terror act will be Pakistan. As a secondary effect, Al Qaeda gains will be at present limited to the larger jihadi success in the region. It is natural to be alarmist in threat assessment and probably safer as well, but given the past history of the involvement of Pakistan backed terror syndicates in attacking the Indian state and society, it is difficult to ignore the aforementioned possibilities. We may not have the colour code threat indicators as yet, but the terror bar seems to be showing spikes and presumably the Indian security establishment would have raised these concerns with Condoleezza Rice during her visit to Delhi.

The next four weeks will be very eventful for advancing India's relations with the major powers as Delhi prepares to receive US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (March 16), Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi (end-March) and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (early April).

While there are distinctive issues that are specific to each of these bilateral relationships, the over-arching template as to how India will engage with the major powers and its overall external relations was provided in a landmark speech by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in end-February at the India Today Conclave in New Delhi.

The major theme was the assertion of a renewed confidence about India and the manner in which it will recover its "lost space in the global economy and our economic status in the comity of nations".

Linking India's current economic potential and abiding aspirations with the Nehruvian vision of free India's foreign policy as articulated in December 1947 wherein Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru had cautioned that "ultimately, foreign policy is the outcome of economic policy", Dr Singh provided the much-needed clarity regarding the determinants that ought to normatively underpin a nation's foreign policy.

Noting that the global environment has never been "more conducive for India's economic development than it is today", the Prime Minister drew the axiomatic linkage with security and added that "the response of other countries to our national security concerns is being shaped by perceptions of business and economic opportunities."

In their own way, the USA, China and Japan have emerged as major nodes of India's trade, technology and investment opportunities and, notwithstanding certain areas of divergence, with all these nations on specific security and strategic issues, the shared economic domain is too compelling to be ignored in how the bilateral ties evolve in the near future.

And the inescapable reality is that India's bilateral relations with each of these states will have a non-linear impact on the relationship with the other two. In other words, the manner in which the Rice visit advances the India-US strand will have its own impact on India's ties with both China and Japan and vice versa.

However it would be misleading to infer from the above that the Prime Minister's template is only about economics -- an area where his expertise is globally acknowledged -- both as the Finance Minister who steered India's hesitant liberalisation era and as the Governor of the Reserve Bank before that.

A careful content-analysis of the speech would indicate that Dr Singh has made certain old and radical political and strategic assertions about India's orientation and relevance in the international comity.

In keeping with his own persona, the assertions are confident and firm, albeit conveyed in a persuasive manner. Reiterating the resilience of India's multiple diversities and the manner in which the 'idea of India' has prevailed over the centuries, Dr Singh identifies openness, both in economic policies and in the social fabric as the cardinal values that need to be nurtured.

Asserting that "the test of the vibrancy and resilience of a democracy is not just the ability to conduct elections and convene legislatures. It lies in a society's ability to communicate with itself and with the outside world through civilised modes of interaction. We are, like any real democracy, an argumentative society. The right to disagree and the freedom to debate is a hallmark of such societies."

Dr Singh added an important caution for the domestic polity when he noted with concern the emergence of communalism and majoritarianism in the Indian body politic. The Achilles heel nature of these two trends and the extent to which they distort the societal ozone layer will be the litmus test for India, as Gujarat demonstrated in 2002.

In what may be termed as a bold departure, the Prime Minister rejected any form of authoritarianism and welcomed the movement towards democracy in states like Afghanistan and their "long awaited tryst with peace."

Referring to economies in transition and the manner in which the international community provides support for such transition, he introduced a new phrase into the political lexicon which may well become part of the Manmohan doctrine -- 'Societies in Transition.'

Dr Singh suggested that developed democracies should assist such societies in their transition to becoming more open constituencies and the relevance for the southern Asian region with its many non-democratic regimes is self-evident.

The inference that follows is not that India will export democracy to China -- that is a transition that the Chinese people and their leaders will have to steer -- but a signal that India can and will play a part in the transitions that are underway in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere.

The convergence with the current Bush agenda that seeks to democratise the Greater Middle East is discernible but it is also evident that India will proceed in this endeavour in its own manner and not as part of any band-wagon.

However, democratisation is not restricted to states but to the management of the global system as well and Dr Singh refers to seeking "the reform and democratisation of multilateral institutions" -- read the UN and its Security Council -- where the correspondence with Japan is clear.

Yet another reiteration that is valuable is the commitment to universal nuclear disarmament that should dispel any perception that India has diluted its stand on this long term goal. India's profile as a responsible nuclear power has been high-lighted and these are areas that are relevant to all major powers against the backdrop of emerging nuclear challenges that were not envisaged by earlier regimes and agreements.

The post-Cold War years resulted in a period of considerable turbulence and uncertainty as well-defined referents and paradigms were swept away and most nations, including India, groped for the appropriate framework or template to underpin their orientation and values by which they would deal with the external world.

Dr Singh's February articulation will provide the core of what may later be defined as the Manmohan doctrine -- and the challenge will be in the next few weeks when these principles will be put into practice.

India-Pakistan interaction, in recent days, is fast losing its familiar flavour of distrust and bitterness. This is not to deny, however, that one can still identify the inertial sense of rancour, the propensity to misunderstand and misinterpret each other within the dialogic track that has completed one year. But, this time round, there is certainly a precipitate will on both the sides to engage each other, to diversify the nodes of interaction and to treat each track-one interaction as part of a ‘process’ not ‘event’, as the Indian Foreign Minister so aptly put during the course of the dialogue not long ago. Howsoever haltingly the process is hurtling along, the incremental advances are there for all to see, i.e., the willingness to re-open Srinagar-Muzafarabad bus-link after almost 58 years, the decision to revive the Munabao-Khokrapar rail-link and above all, the shedding of Indian inhibition on the gas-pipeline issue.

The thorns remain however. The spoilers are getting impatient on the margins. The issue of Kashmir everybody knows can turn the applecart. The move to re-start the bus-link between the two parts of Kashmir has divided the public opinion in Pakistan. Excepting Benazir Bhutto’s Peoples’ Party, and of course, the ruling PML(Q), being touted as King’s party, no other political party or group welcomed the step. The Indian decision to climb down on the issue of use of Indian passport by Kashmiris travelling to the other side has been interpreted by them as an adroit move to scuttle the Kashmir issue. The chief commander of the Hizbul Mujahideen and the leader of the United Jehad Council, Syed Salahuddin even said that the Pakistani government was playing with the blood of the mujahideens fighting in Kashmir. The sacrifices of the freedom fighters are being wasted, said the spokesman of the right-wing Jamiat-ul-Ulema-i-Islam (Fazlur). Musharraf and his men have assured the people of Pakistan that the core interests of Pakistan — an allusion to the Kashmir issue and the safety of the strategic assets of Pakistan — shall be protected, even if the gates between the two Kashmirs were to open.

Meanwhile, the Baglihar issue (the hydro-electric power-plant India is undertaking on river Chenab) has strayed out of the bilateral track. Pakistan has injected a third negotiator into the process by seeking the help of the World Bank to mediate between the two countries as the Bank had initially mediated and was a guarantor to the Indus Water Treaty between the two countries in 1960. India has requested continuation of bilateral negotiations over the issue but has taken no exception to Pakistan’s appeal to the World Bank. Pakistan has also brought in the issue of Kishenganga project on Neelum river in the Gurez valley, where India is seeking to divert the course of the river through a tunnel to the Wullar lake. The discussions on Kishenganga are going on. However, the India-Pakistan differences over Baglihar and Kishenganga have not affected the rhythm of the ongoing talks.

The trajectory of the process of dialogue seems to be on a positive track even if many analysts, in the US (Stephen Cohen, George Weinbaum, Hussain Haqani, Ashley Tellis etc.) and Pakistan, have come out with their observations, recently in a conference organized by the US Institute of Peace, that there is no future for the India-Pakistan dialogue. The irreconcilable differences over Kashmir and the ideological divergences between the two state-systems will soon upset the process, they have concluded.

The proliferation of tracks in the ongoing process of dialogue, however, suggest otherwise. The connect between the two Punjabs, the movement of retired soldiers, theatre groups, writers, poets, parliamentarians, students, political personalities, cine-stars and businessmen across the India-Pakistan borders, the effusive bonhomie between the people of India and Pakistan reveal the urge of the two people to come together in spite of their differences. They meet, argue inconclusively over Kashmir, convince each other about their mutually exclusive perceptions and depart with tears in their eyes, hoping against hope that such opportunities for fights would be there for all time to come.

Is it because they feel that years of separation have failed to wipe out the bonds that unite them? Is it because they want to take maximum advantage of the thaw that has set in between India and Pakistan? Is this because there is a mutual realization of the human costs of protracted sense of bitterness? The leaders of the two countries will have to register this surge of goodwill between the two people, the spontaneous flow of empathy for one another across the borders. It is easier to provoke hatred than to inspire love. The negativity in India-Pakistan relationship, the inertia of the politics of partition, is mostly an elite construct. The elite has managed to sell this idea of hatred to the people in Pakistan quite successfully. As some Pakistani observers (Adeel Khan, Khaled Ahmed) have concluded, the people of Pakistan are more united in their hatred against India than their love for themselves. The official histories of both the states have sought to villainise each other. One is reminded of the observations of Vajpayee during his trip to Pakistan as foreign minister in 1978 that the leaders of India and Pakistan have to shape political opinion rather than fall victims to it. The constituency of hatred has to be quarantined and its impact on statecraft has to be identified and evaluated.

At the same time, the leaders of the two countries will have to take their best step forward in each of the bilateral meets and shun the temptation to withdraw and reap political capital at the domestic level out of an exclusivist-moralist position. As the process shows signs of progress now, it is necessary to take the following points into account, to keep it afloat.

• Peace between India and Pakistan is an achievable end and supremely beneficial for the two peoples even if it may not serve short term political interests of the leadership within the two countries.
• Open the doors, inter-lock the ties, emphasise on common advantages and make the process irreversible.
• Do not let the process be straitjacketed around a label or a bumper sticker, i.e., ‘composite dialogue’, ‘core-issue-centred’.
• Factor in the political costs at respective internal levels while talking about ‘flexibility’.
• Avoid points of saturation and allow proliferation of tracks of engagement. It will take lot of time and patience to balance the trust-deficit. The only way it can happen is through continued engagement. No magician’s wand will dispel the thick layer of distrust built up over the years.
• Try to reconcile exclusivist historiographies in both the countries.
• Do not seek to adopt or replicate any other models (ref. the Sino-Indian model). Every relationship has its own dynamic, its own socio-cultural history and political reflexes. India-Pakistan relations emit strong emotive signals.
• Recognise the failures and fallacies in policies and approaches uninhibitedly, i.e., use of terrorism as an instrument of foreign policy or HR violations in Jammu and Kashmir.
• Demonstrate maturity in fulfilling nuclear responsibilities.
• Resist the temptation of issuing public statements either to pressurize the other or to guard or expand constituency at home and build upon the available level of mutual trust, howsoever meagre it may be.

The onset of the present peace process is likely to pay huge economic dividends and ensure stability in both the countries. Peace is the crying need of the hour. The leaders will have to realise that they hold the keys to peace and they owe it to their people.