Ukraine war: how India-China cooperation can help remove nuclear threat and ease tensions between US and Russia

Even as border disputes and other issues remain unresolved, Asia’s two major powers have a mutual interest in bringing about a ceasefire in Ukraine and ending the threat of nuclear war

C. Uday Bhaskar

Published: 3:30am, 30 Mar 2022

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The unannounced visit of Foreign Minister Wang Yi to New Delhi last Friday was the first visit by a senior Chinese minister since the tense military stand-off between India and China in mid-2020 along the contested Line of Actual Control (LAC) in the Ladakh region of the Himalayas.

At the time, Chinese troops moved into areas along Pangong Lake that are part of the Indian claim line. This was a violation of the 1993 agreement to maintain peace and tranquillity along the LAC.

Beijing sought out last week’s visit. However, the tenor was already set when Wang made an uncharacteristic reference to Kashmir during his visit to Pakistan, where he was a special invitee at the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) summit last Tuesday. Delhi rejected this reference to India’s domestic matters.

Wang’s visit to India did not lead to any breakthroughs in the territorial dispute, but neither was there a breakdown in the troubled bilateral relationship. The subtext was that China is keen to set the territorial dispute aside and resume engagement on other tracks.

However, India remains steadfast in seeking complete troop disengagement from the LAC for discussions on de-escalation to take place, something on which China has not budged.

Given the significance of the visit, Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar personally briefed the media, saying: “I was very honest in my discussions with the Chinese Foreign Minister, especially in conveying our national sentiments on this issue. The frictions and tensions that arise from China’s deployments since April 2020 cannot be reconciled with a normal relationship between two neighbours.”

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India and China are unlikely to arrive at a modus vivendi on the LAC soon, and how they manage their trade and economic ties after the Ukraine war remains uncertain. Globalisation and current trade protocols are in danger of being jettisoned, given the severity of the sanctions levied against Russia.

The economic consequences of the Ukraine war and the collective effort it will take to repair and rewire globalisation as it is now understood will be colossal. Both China and India will be buffeted by this turbulence and have to decide how much of their national resources and prestige they wish to expend over relatively barren geography and pursue competition rather than cooperation.

The complex, tangled territorial dispute along the LAC is part of the colonial legacy that the two Asian giants inherited in the late 1940s.

Subsequently, the two nations clashed in a border war in October 1962 against the backdrop of the Cuban missile crisis that brought the United States and the Soviet Union dangerously close to nuclear war. It was a combination of political prudence and plain luck that ensured the world did not breach the Hiroshima-Nagasaki taboo of August 1945.

The nuclear strand has come back into focus in the Ukraine war in a disturbing manner, even as the Sino-Indian territorial logjam remains intractable.

In the early stages of the invasion, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his senior ministers repeatedly warned of Moscow’s nuclear capabilities, saying that they could escalate to de-escalate by resorting to weapons of mass destruction if Russia’s leadership perceived a threat to its existence.

Unfortunately, the statement by US President Joe Biden on Saturday that “Putin cannot remain in power” raises concerns about regime change in Moscow being a war objective. The spate of denials and clarifications from Washington might not assuage the Kremlin’s anxiety.

China and India have a distinctive locus in relation to the nuclear disequilibrium and US-Russia tensions. It is worth remembering that when Ukraine renounced its nuclear weapons after the disintegration of the Soviet Union in late 1991, the US, Russia and Britain guaranteed Kyiv’s territorial integrity in the 1994 Budapest agreement.

In 2013, soon after President Xi Jinping assumed office, Beijing also became party to this pledge. The statement of 2013 noted that, “China pledges unconditionally not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear Ukraine, and under the conditions of Ukraine suffering an invasion using nuclear weapons or suffering the threat of such kind of invasion, to provide Ukraine with corresponding security guarantees.”

For its part, India played an unusual role in the Korean war that pitted the US and its allies against the Soviet Union, China and North Korea. Washington warned Beijing through Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru that the US was prepared to attack Manchurian bases with atomic weapons if China did not sign a truce.

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The Hiroshima cloud loomed large and had to be avoided at any cost despite the breakdown in Washington-Moscow relations. Under the aegis of the United Nations, India enabled and steered the establishment of the Neutral Nations Repatriation Commission and was able to broker a cessation of hostilities and a return of prisoners as anxiety over possible superpower escalation receded.

In terms of Russia’s war in Ukraine and the level of violence, Wang’s visit to Delhi indicated that China and India have similar objectives. Jaishankar noted: “We had a common element which was that both of us agreed on the importance of an immediate ceasefire, as well as a return to diplomacy and dialogue.”

If Asia’s two major powers can play an effective role in reducing the current tensions between the US and Russia, bring about a ceasefire and remove the nuclear threat from the table, the citizens of the world will be able to breathe a sigh of relief.

Commodore C. Uday Bhaskar is director of the Society for Policy Studies (SPS), an independent think tank based in New Delhi