Modi’s Visit to Central Asia
To reconnect with the Eurasian market, India needs to explore the option of a direct land-link through China, i.e., reviving the traditional Ladakh-Xinjiang axis as the natural gateway to Eurasia.
- July 06, 2015 |
To reconnect with the Eurasian market, India needs to explore the option of a direct land-link through China, i.e., reviving the traditional Ladakh-Xinjiang axis as the natural gateway to Eurasia.
Modi’s activism is welcomed in Central Asian countries, though they know that India has already missed the bus and it has a lot of catching up to do.
Joining SCO could help India get out of the current tight geopolitical spot - wedged between a wall of Pakistani hostility and fear of cooperating with China.
In today’s India, the narrow nationalism, if not paranoia, built on the burden of 1962 seems only artificial. But, can Modi and Xi move beyond this burden and change the bilateral discourse? Modi needs to be metaphysical not just pragmatic.
Nehru fought for Mongolia’s status at the United Nation. Today, Modi’s India has greater economic strength to nurture the relationship with Mongolia.
India should continue to play the Afghan game but no longer by showering financial largesse but by deploying its skills of political manoeuvring.
Answers to all of Afghan problems can easily be found within the regional context. But the Afghan leadership is not likely to uphold the regional choice now.
President Ghani has extended an open invitation to the US for an open-ended military presence in Afghanistan and has also virtually expressed a readiness to play the role of a ‘frontline state’ for any future American contingency.
The US will continue to do what it can for blocking rapprochement between India and China or Japan and China for it knows the danger of its loss of a dominant role in Asia. Despite all the distortions of time and space, the hard geographic reality of Asia will triumph just as it happened in Europe.
The Peshawar school massacre does not appear to be a simple tit-for-tat game; it has an intricate link to the Afghan endgame in which Pakistan wants to be the victor.