India’s negotiators ought to be commended for their efforts in ensuring a successful border disengagement at Pangong.
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In the aftermath of the India-China agreement reached on February 10 for pullback in the Pangong Lake area, there has been much speculation about the gain and loss for India. Some have averred that the mutual withdrawal amounts to the creation of a “buffer zone on Indian territory”.
Others have alleged it to be a “surrender of Indian territory”. Yet others have questioned the withdrawal of India’s presence along the Kailash range on the South Bank of Pangong since it enabled India to dominate the Chinese garrison at Moldo.
Things are moving
Another charge has been levelled — of inadequate budgetary allocation for defence in the face of a “two front war”. The fact of the matter is that the increase in the outlay for capital procurement announced by the Finance Minister on February 1 for FY 2021-22 represents a 18.75% jump over the previous financial year, the highest in 15 years.
Moreover, the government has enhanced the delegated financial powers up to ₹200 crore in senior ranks below the rank of vice chief as well, to facilitate procurement. Improved procedures and oversight have ensured better utilisation with no surrendering of funds over the last four years.
The charge that India is not according proper priority to national security is baseless. Military modernisation, indigenisation and defence exports are top priorities. The building of long overdue roads, bridges, culverts and other infrastructure in the border areas, in mission mode, has spurred mobility and capacity for a rapid induction of forces.
The Darbuk-Shyok-Daulat Beg Oldi (DSDBO) Road has facilitated seamless access all the way up to Sub-Sector North (SSN) which abuts the Karakoram Pass and the Siachen Glacier. It has provided an axis for developing lateral roads towards India’s frontline in Eastern Ladakh.
Another example is the eponymous Atal Rohtang Tunnel, approved by the government of Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The Tunnel, inaugurated in October 2020, makes for a much shorter logistics loop connecting the Middle and Western Sectors of the India-China boundary on the Indian side.
Many defence reforms recommended by the Naresh Chandra Committee have been implemented in recent years. The creation of the Department of Military Affairs (DMA), the appointment of the Chief of Defence Staff, and, the soon-to-be-a-reality Theatre Commands, are but a few examples.
The buffer zone stands
India has not surrendered any land in Galwan, Pangong or Depsang since the border crisis broke out in April/May 2020. The assumption that the disengagement implemented at Pangong, especially that the temporary moratorium on patrolling by both sides will result in a buffer zone entirely “in our area”, is incorrect.
India has neither accepted the unilateral definition of China’s so-called Line of Actual Control (LAC) of 1959 nor its subsequent mutants. As such, a buffer zone on the other side of any so-called Chinese LAC is still a buffer zone on India’s side, given that India regards the whole of Aksai Chin as an integral part of its territory. By using the benchmark of the so-called Chinese LAC to identify India’s territory and China’s, the naysayers are actually legitimising the illegal Chinese presence across the LAC.
During the late 1950s and early 1960s, the idea of a mutual pullback by 20 kilometres, which would have resulted in buffer zones, had been proposed by China and rejected by India. Later, India had accepted the modified “Colombo Conference Proposals” mooted by six non-aligned countries in December 1962 after the war, which would have permitted Indian civilian administration to be present alongside the Chinese in the vacated areas.
China had reservations and backed out in March 1963 after initially acquiescing. It was ready to consider them only as a basis for further bilateral negotiations. Much water may have flown down the Chip Chap, Galwan and Chang Chenmo rivers since then, but it is not as if pullbacks and buffer zones have never been considered before.
The pullback on the North Bank of Pangong has resulted in the Chinese ceasing their patrolling between Fingers 4 and 8 for the first time in several decades. After the 1962 debacle, Indian patrols limited themselves to visiting Finger 8, which evolved as the de facto Indian line in this sector, but this access too was restricted by vehicle-mounted Chinese patrols along that stretch in recent decades.
Given that China perceives its line to run further west of Finger 3, India has done well to maintain its permanent presence at the Dhan Singh Thapa Post near Finger 3 on what the Chinese regard as their side of the LAC.
As former Northern Army Commander Lt. Gen. D.S. Hooda has stated in a recent opinion piece, by agreeing to relocate east of Finger 8, the PLA is pulling back from its claimed “customary boundary line” and “this is definitely not a minor concession”. It is, as he has pointed out, in line with India’s consistent demand to restore the status quo ante that existed in April 2020.
Different implications
The word status quo ante in regard to the India-China boundary matters has different implications for the ground situation depending entirely on the timeline being referred to. In seeking a restoration of status quo ante on the North Bank of Pangong with reference to April-May 2020, the advantage secured by India on the South Bank was naturally a plus point, and put to good effect by Indian negotiators.
If the retention of the heights along the Kailash range is deemed so important for leveraging concessions elsewhere, as some claim, why is it that no previous government acted to occupy the heights earlier, including during the face-off in Depsang in 2013?
After all, differences over the LAC are hardly new. The fact is that Indian troops secured the heights on the South Bank precisely to offset China’s “first mover” advantage on the North Bank. Moreover, if India’s objective is to achieve status quo ante, India too would logically be required to revert to its pre-April 2020 status.
The potential linkage between the heights of the Kailash range and Depsang, or for that matter Gogra and Hot Springs, cannot be arbitrarily conjured up. The situation in the pockets of differences is sui generis.
At the end of the 10th round of the India-China Corps Commander Level Meeting, the two sides have positively appraised the smooth completion of disengagement at Pangong, acknowledging that it was a significant step that provided a good basis for resolving the remaining issues along the LAC.
Instead of commending our military and External Affairs Ministry negotiators for their efforts in ensuring a successful disengagement at Pangong, some commentators have questioned the absence of “iron-clad agreements” for resolving the differences at Depsang or Gogra/Hot Spring, which are still being discussed.
The negotiators ought to be given a chance. The truth is that there were no iron-clad guarantees in any of the agreements and protocols signed so far either, whether in 1993, 1996 or in 2005. Bilateral differences are best negotiated from a position of strength as has been done at Pangong, while maintaining high vigil and striving for positive outcomes elsewhere.
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The United Nations has shaped so much of global co-operation and regulation that we wouldn’t recognise our world today without the UN’s pervasive role in it. So many small details of our lives – such as postage and copyright laws – are subject to international co-operation nurtured by the UN.
In its 75th year, however, the UN is in a difficult moment as the world faces climate crisis, a global pandemic, great power competition, trade wars, economic depression and a wider breakdown in international co-operation.
Still, the UN has faced tough times before – over many decades during the Cold War, the Security Council was crippled by deep tensions between the US and the Soviet Union. The UN is not as sidelined or divided today as it was then. However, as the relationship between China and the US sours, the achievements of global co-operation are being eroded.
The way in which people speak about the UN often implies a level of coherence and bureaucratic independence that the UN rarely possesses. A failure of the UN is normally better understood as a failure of international co-operation.
We see this recently in the UN’s inability to deal with crises from the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, to civil conflict in Syria, and the failure of the Security Council to adopt a COVID-19 resolution calling for ceasefires in conflict zones and a co-operative international response to the pandemic.
The UN administration is not primarily to blame for these failures; rather, the problem is the great powers – in the case of COVID-19, China and the US – refusing to co-operate.
Where states fail to agree, the UN is powerless to act.
Marking the 75th anniversary of the official formation of the UN, when 50 founding nations signed the UN Charter on June 26, 1945, we look at some of its key triumphs and resounding failures.
Five successes
1. Peacekeeping
The United Nations was created with the goal of being a collective security organisation. The UN Charter establishes that the use of force is only lawful either in self-defence or if authorised by the UN Security Council. The Security Council’s five permanent members, being China, US, UK, Russia and France, can veto any such resolution.
The UN’s consistent role in seeking to manage conflict is one of its greatest successes.
A key component of this role is peacekeeping. The UN under its second secretary-general, the Swedish statesman Dag Hammarskjöld – who was posthumously awarded the Nobel Peace prize after he died in a suspicious plane crash – created the concept of peacekeeping. Hammarskjöld was responding to the 1956 Suez Crisis, in which the US opposed the invasion of Egypt by its allies Israel, France and the UK.
UN peacekeeping missions involve the use of impartial and armed UN forces, drawn from member states, to stabilise fragile situations. “The essence of peacekeeping is the use of soldiers as a catalyst for peace rather than as the instruments of war,” said then UN Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, when the forces won the 1988 Nobel Peace Prize following missions in conflict zones in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Central America and Europe.
However, peacekeeping also counts among the UN’s major failures.
2. Law of the Sea
Negotiated between 1973 and 1982, the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) set up the current international law of the seas. It defines states’ rights and creates concepts such as exclusive economic zones, as well as procedures for the settling of disputes, new arrangements for governing deep sea bed mining, and importantly, new provisions for the protection of marine resources and ocean conservation.
Mostly, countries have abided by the convention. There are various disputes that China has over the East and South China Seas which present a conflict between power and law, in that although UNCLOS creates mechanisms for resolving disputes, a powerful state isn’t necessarily going to submit to those mechanisms.
Secondly, on the conservation front, although UNCLOS is a huge step forward, it has failed to adequately protect oceans that are outside any state’s control. Ocean ecosystems have been dramatically transformed through overfishing. This is an ecological catastrophe that UNCLOS has slowed, but failed to address comprehensively.
3. Decolonisation
The idea of racial equality and of a people’s right to self-determination was discussed in the wake of World War I and rejected. After World War II, however, those principles were endorsed within the UN system, and the Trusteeship Council, which monitored the process of decolonisation, was one of the initial bodies of the UN.
Although many national independence movements only won liberation through bloody conflicts, the UN has overseen a process of decolonisation that has transformed international politics. In 1945, around one third of the world’s population lived under colonial rule. Today, there are less than 2 million people living in colonies.
When it comes to the world’s First Nations, however, the UN generally has done little to address their concerns, aside from the non-binding UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples of 2007.
4. Human rights
The Human Rights Declaration of 1948 for the first time set out fundamental human rights to be universally protected, recognising that the “inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world”.
Since 1948, 10 human rights treaties have been adopted – including conventions on the rights of children and migrant workers, and against torture and discrimination based on gender and race – each monitored by its own committee of independent experts.
The language of human rights has created a new framework for thinking about the relationship between the individual, the state and the international system. Although some people would prefer that political movements focus on ‘liberation’ rather than ‘rights’, the idea of human rights has made the individual person a focus of national and international attention.
5. Free trade
Depending on your politics, you might view the World Trade Organisation as a huge success, or a huge failure.
The WTO creates a near-binding system of international trade law with a clear and efficient dispute resolution process.
The majority Australian consensus is that the WTO is a success because it has been good for Australian famers especially, through its winding back of subsidies and tariffs.
However, the WTO enabled an era of globalisation which is now politically controversial.
Recently, the US has sought to disrupt the system. In addition to the trade war with China, the Trump Administration has also refused to appoint tribunal members to the WTO’s Appellate Body, so it has crippled the dispute resolution process. Of course, the Trump Administration is not the first to take issue with China’s trade strategies, which include subsidises for ‘State Owned Enterprises’ and demands that foreign firms transfer intellectual property in exchange for market access.
The existence of the UN has created a forum where nations can discuss new problems, and climate change is one of them. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was set up in 1988 to assess climate science and provide policymakers with assessments and options. In 1992, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change created a permanent forum for negotiations.
However, despite an international scientific body in the IPCC, and 165 signatory nations to the climate treaty, global greenhouse gas emissions have continued to increase.
Under the Paris Agreement, even if every country meets its greenhouse gas emission targets we are still on track for ‘dangerous warming’. Yet, no major country is even on track to meet its targets; while emissions will probably decline this year as a result of COVID-19, atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases will still increase.
This illustrates a core conundrum of the UN in that it opens the possibility of global cooperation, but is unable to constrain states from pursuing their narrowly conceived self-interests. Deep co-operation remains challenging.
Five failures of the UN
1. Peacekeeping
During the Bosnian War, Dutch peacekeeping forces stationed in the town of Srebrenica, declared a ‘safe area’ by the UN in 1993, failed in 1995 to stop the massacre of more than 8000 Muslim men and boys by Bosnian Serb forces. This is one of the most widely discussed examples of the failures of international peacekeeping operations.
On the massacre’s 10th anniversary, then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan wrote that the UN had “made serious errors of judgement, rooted in a philosophy of impartiality”, contributing to a mass murder that would “haunt our history forever”.
If you look at some of the other infamous failures of peacekeeping missions – in places such as Rwanda, Somalia and Angola – it is the limited powers given to peacekeeping operations that have resulted in those failures.
2. The invasion of Iraq
The invasion of Iraq by the US in 2003, which was unlawful and without Security Council authorisation, reflects the fact that the UN is has very limited capacity to constrain the actions of great powers.
The Security Council designers created the veto power so that any of the five permanent members could reject a Council resolution, so in that way it is programmed to fail when a great power really wants to do something that the international community generally condemns.
In the case of the Iraq invasion, the US didn’t veto a resolution, but rather sought authorisation that it did not get. The UN, if you go by the idea of collective security, should have responded by defending Iraq against this unlawful use of force.
The invasion proved a humanitarian disaster with the loss of more than 400,000 lives, and many believe that it led to the emergence of the terrorist Islamic State.
3. Refugee crises
The UN brokered the 1951 Refugee Convention to address the plight of people displaced in Europe due to World War II; years later, the 1967 Protocol removed time and geographical restrictions so that the Convention can now apply universally (although many countries in Asia have refused to sign it, owing in part to its Eurocentric origins).
Despite these treaties, and the work of the UN High Commission for Refugees, there is somewhere between 30 and 40 million refugees, many of them, such as many Palestinians, living for decades outside their homelands. This is in addition to more than 40 million people displaced within their own countries.
While for a long time refugee numbers were reducing, in recent years, particularly driven by the Syrian conflict, there have been increases in the number of people being displaced.
During the COVID-19 crisis, boatloads of Rohingya refugees were turned away by port after port. This tragedy has echoes of pre-World War II when ships of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany were refused entry by multiple countries.
And as a catastrophe of a different kind looms, there is no international framework in place for responding to people who will be displaced by rising seas and other effects of climate change.
4. Conflicts without end
Across the world, there is a shopping list of unresolved civil conflicts and disputed territories.
Palestine and Kashmir are two of the longest-running failures of the UN to resolve disputed lands. More recent, ongoing conflicts include the civil wars in Syria and Yemen.
The common denominator of unresolved conflicts is either division among the great powers, or a lack of international interest due to the geopolitical stakes not being sufficiently high. For instance, the inaction during the Rwandan civil war in the 1990s was not due to a division among great powers, but rather a lack of political will to engage.
In Syria, by contrast, Russia and the US have opposing interests and back opposing sides: Russia backs the government of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, whereas the US does not.
5. Acting like it’s 1945
The UN is increasingly out of step with the reality of geopolitics today.
The permanent members of the Security Council reflect the division of power internationally at the end of World War II. The continuing exclusion of Germany, Japan, and rising powers such as India and Indonesia, reflects the failure to reflect the changing balance of power.
Also, bodies such as the IMF and the World Bank, which are part of the UN system, continue to be dominated by the West. In response, China has created potential rival institutions such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.
Western domination of UN institutions undermines their credibility. However, a more fundamental problem is that institutions designed in 1945 are a poor fit with the systemic global challenges – of which climate change is foremost – that we face today.