Why Russia's getting involved in the China-India border dispute
When the foreign ministers of India and China agreed to de-escalate tensions along their disputed border, there were three countries - not two - eager to take credit for the breakthrough.
"We are very happy that Moscow has presented a platform to Russia, China and India to have this very productive, fruitful meeting whose goal is to stabilise the situation on the border between India and China," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told a local reporter after the talks, which took place on the sidelines of the recent Shanghai Cooperation Organisation meeting in Moscow.
While experts remain sceptical over how great a breakthrough the agreement really represents for China and India, given that thousands of their troops at the border remain within firing range of each other, for Russia the optics surrounding the meeting could be viewed as a victory itself.
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Suddenly, Moscow found itself once again on the centre stage of geopolitics - and in case there were any doubts, there was even an official photo shoot featuring Lavrov with his Indian and Chinese counterparts, S. Jaishankar and Wang Yi, standing either side of him.
Foreign ministers: India's S. Jaishankar, Russia's Sergei Lavrov and China's Wang Yi in Moscow. Photo: EPA alt=Foreign ministers: India's S. Jaishankar, Russia's Sergei Lavrov and China's Wang Yi in Moscow. Photo: EPA
Observers say Russia's eagerness to facilitate the talks should be seen as its latest move to raise its profile in South Asia.
As Alexey Kupriyanov of IMEMO, a non-profit institute of the Moscow-based Russian Academy of Sciences, pointed out, "Russia is returning to South Asia for a variety of reasons". Chief among them appears to be a desire to return to big politics and regain some of the influence Moscow lost during the disastrous decades of the 1980s and 1990s when its ill-fated decision to invade Afghanistan was followed by the collapse of the Soviet Union and an economic crisis.
Since Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000, Russia has openly mourned the loss of its great power status and has worked hard to regain its influence, beginning in West Asia and Africa. Now, it seems, its attention is turning to South Asia.
Against this backdrop, the meeting between Jaishankar and Wang and their agreement to turn down the heat in the increasingly deadly stand-off along their countries' undemarcated 3,488km border could be seen as one of Moscow's more high-profile diplomatic victories of recent years. After all, it had apparently succeeded where the United States had failed - with both India and China having previously refused an offer by US President Donald Trump to mediate.
To some minds, the scenes were reminiscent of another win for Moscow in November two years ago, when it hosted an 11-country dialogue aimed at bringing peace to Afghanistan (ironically to some critics, given the Soviet history).
US President Donald Trump's offer to mediate between India and China was rebuffed. Photo: EPA alt=US President Donald Trump's offer to mediate between India and China was rebuffed. Photo: EPA
On that occasion, the Russian initiative was aimed at countering an attempt by the US to cut Moscow out of the Afghan dialogue. Outmanoeuvring Washington, Moscow succeeded in involving all the countries affected by Afghanistan's instability in an effort to find a solution and emerged with great diplomatic credit in the process. Significantly, among the countries Russia engaged in the talks was India.
For P.S. Raghavan, chairman of India's National Security Advisory Board and India's ambassador to Russia from 2014 to 2016, "Russia's engagement with South Asia has both tactical and strategic elements".
Tactically, said Raghavan, Russia's engagement in Afghanistan was meant to counter American and Western pressure along the country's perimeter. Moscow believed the US was trying to destabilise Russia by encouraging Islamic State militants to leave Afghanistan and move to Central Asia, he said.
But Russia's broader, strategic aim was to bring about Putin's vision for Russia to play a bigger role in global affairs as the leader of a "Greater Eurasia" community of nations, Raghavan said. To do this, Russia realised it needed to draw nations that were once adversaries into a cooperative relationship. "It recognises that both India and China are critical to this effort," he said.
He added that Putin's plan was to place China in "a web of ties, institutions and balances" that would prevent it from exercising hegemony in the region, something that would be unacceptable to countries like India and Japan.
Russian wariness of Beijing's hegemonic tendencies dates back to the 1960s and 1970s, when the two were locked in a contest to be the world's leading socialist society. However, Raghavan said, US and European sanctions had pushed Russia into its tight embrace of China. Meanwhile, its overtures to New Delhi were because it realised that "without India, there can be no Eurasian partnership".
As part of its vision, Russia has also reached out to most other South Asian nations, barring Bhutan, which has diplomatic relations with none of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.
In Bangladesh, itself no stranger to India-China tussles for supremacy, Russia is to build the country's first nuclear power plant in Rooppur, near Dhaka. Under a trilateral agreement, India has also been roped in to train personnel, share experience and for consulting.
"Our country's policy is to engage all major powers," said Masrur Reaz, of the Policy Exchange of Bangladesh think tank. "As long as it helps Bangladesh, we welcome [Russian involvement]."
Similarly in Sri Lanka, a nuclear cooperation agreement signed with India in 2015 could now be widened to involve Russia too, say officials in New Delhi.
The Russia-Sri Lanka relationship goes back many years, to when Moscow helped supply the Sri Lankan army with military hardware during its decades-long fight against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelamseparatist group. During that period, which spanned from 1976 to 2009, Russia often blocked Western-sponsored UN resolutions against Colombo on human rights and war crimes. Russia is also a big market for Sri Lankan tea and Russian tourists to Sri Lanka have increased in recent years.
A Russian Mi-17 helicopter in Afghanistan. Photo: AP alt=A Russian Mi-17 helicopter in Afghanistan. Photo: AP
In Nepal, Russia is hoping to cooperate with the country's hydroenergy sector and has supplied it with M-17 helicopters that are well-suited to the mountainous region. The two countries are also exploring investment and joint ventures in sectors beyond energy.
"Russia's presence in South Asia has always been strong, centred around India," said former Indian foreign secretary Kanwal Sibal. He pointed out that India has long been the biggest buyer of Russian arms, and the two countries have held regular military exercises on land and at sea and annual summit meetings since 2000. Energy is also an area of expanding cooperation.
Russian leaders saw the 21st century as an Asian one that would bring great opportunities for Moscow to do business and invest in South Asia and vice versa, added Kupriyanov.
Russia hopes for joint exploration of energy and minerals in Nepal and infrastructure development in Sri Lanka and seeks to expand cooperation with India - which has already invested US$1 billion in Russia's "far east" - into areas beyond energy.
"What is new now is Russia's overtures to Pakistan," said Sibal.
In recent years, the two countries have begun to repair their bilateral relations, which were damaged when Pakistan played a key role in Washington's rapprochement with China in the 1970s and soured further in the 1980s when Islamabad encouraged jihad against Soviet troops in Afghanistan.
The hope is that they can return to the sort of partnership they enjoyed in 1965, when Moscow brokered peace in Tashkent after the India-Pakistan war and was involved in numerous infrastructure projects in Pakistan.
Russia and Pakistan are talking of constructing a gas pipeline between Lahore and Karachi using Russian expertise at a cost of US$10 billion and Russia has sold Pakistan helicopters for use in its fight against terrorism. Sibal said Russia's motive was in part to balance the strengthening India-US relationship and New Delhi's increasing purchases of American arms.
Russia also carries out military exercises with Pakistan and claims engaging Pakistan will help it prevent terrorism spreading westwards from Afghanistan to Central Asia. While Sibal argued that this could be an attempt to promote reconciliation in Afghanistan, he said New Delhi was concerned that its rival Pakistan would draw Moscow more deeply into South Asian politics.
The Indo-Russian-developed BrahMos missile. Photo: AFP alt=The Indo-Russian-developed BrahMos missile. Photo: AFP
Others in India argue that the arms cooperation between Russia and India cannot be compared with that between Russia and Pakistan. They point to the Indo-Russian-developed BrahMos missile that can strike any Pakistani city, or the S-400 air defence system India is buying from Russia that will enable it to intercept any missile, aircraft or drone coming from Pakistani air space and gives it a clear advantage over its long-term rival.
Russia has also supported India's decision to revoke the special status and limited autonomy of Jammu and Kashmir while China has strongly opposed this and backed Pakistan on the matter.
Kupriyanov said Russia would prefer to take a balanced position in the growing tensions between the US and China that some have likened to a new cold war. He said to do this it needed partnerships with countries that were neither part of the Global West nor ready to become vassals of China. "India is seen as a natural ally for it," he said.
However, given the extensive interests of both the US and China in the region, balancing the two is no easy task.
China in particular posed a "strategic challenge", said Raghavan, pointing to Beijing's Belt and Road Initiative to bind Eurasia in a China-centred network of infrastructure.
Meanwhile, the US has significant links with India as part of its maritime Indo-Pacific strategy that some believe is aimed at containing China. However, Raghavan said these links did not extend to the Eurasian land mass.
"This is where Russia comes in," he said. "We share the same land mass and very complex Russia-India-China dynamics."
Raghavan said that while Russia was committed to supplying India with the latest military technologies, it took care that this did not spoil its strategic partnership with China. While Russia saw the two relationships as mutually beneficial, he said that it did not want to be seen as China' junior partner.
This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
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