In its nuclear diplomacy and rhetoric, the Clinton administration has seriously
     underestimated the depth of India's mistrust of China by focussing instead on
     India-Pakistan relations, or on the domestic imperatives of the new Indian
     government.

     The core of India's emerging security dilemma is simple. The more China rises as a
     power and the more the US government emphasises friendship with China, the
     stronger will be India's concern. The Clinton administration has so far failed to see
     the link between China's moves and America's China policy on the one hand and a
     burgeoning Indian concern on the other.

     Nothing can convey the depth of India's mistrust of China more than a story
     embedded in India's psyche and resurfacing now as the US plunges into a
     passionate affair with China.

     After India's defeat in the 1962 war with China, a cultural event took place in Delhi.
     Prime Minister Nehru was presiding and Lata Mangeshkar, India's equivalent to
     Frank Sinatra and one of the greatest figures in the nation's popular culture, sang a
     song that has since become known to millions of Indians. "O my countrymen do you
     have enough tears for those who died for the country?" (Ai mere watan ke logon.)

     As he heard the song, Nehru wept. At the age of 73, a man who had spent more
     than 10 years in jail for opposing the British Raj, who nursed the nation back to
     health after the wounds of partition in 1947 and who worked 16-18 hours a day,
     seldom complaining of fatigue, broke down in full public gaze.

     His tears reflected the fact that India's defeat in the 1962 war with China was the
     greatest failure of Nehru's public life. In the 1950s, Nehru invented the slogan
     "India-China brotherhood" and turned it into a corner-stone of India's foreign policy.
     He was fond of arguing that in the new era China and India, the two great Asian
     civilisations, both victims of imperialism, were entwined in a fraternal embrace.

     Mao's reply was war. India was abysmally prepared. The strategic emphasis was
     on peace, not fighting and India's defence expenditure was paltry. Hundreds of
     soldiers, most of whom did not have even warm clothes, froze to death on the
     Himalayas.

     After the China debacle, Nehru's health deteriorated rapidly and he died within 18
     months. In October 1964, barely four months after his death, China conducted its
     first nuclear tests, rubbing salt into India's wounds.

     India's nuclear programme was born in response. It is folly for the Clinton
     administration not to recognise this. India is determined to ensure that
     unpreparedness never costs the country another humiliation at China's hands. To put
     it simply, a powerful, rising and nuclear China, indulged by the US, requires a
     nuclear India for four reasons:

         The 2,000-mile-long border remains unsettled. The negotiations of recent
         years have shown a weaker India accommodating itself to a powerful China
         for the sake of peace. Since the opening of the Chinese economy, Marxist
         ideology is being increasingly replaced by culture as the glue of the Chinese
         nation. China's geography is part of that cultural view, according to which all
         of Taiwan, the South China Sea, Tibet and parts of India belong to the
         Chinese civilisation as it was constructed in the middle years of the last
         dynasty. Chinese officials claim Arunachal Pradesh, a north eastern Indian
         state, as part of China's historic territory". China also continues to occupy
         part of Kashmir, something rarely mentioned in American discussions of the
         region. 

         The rising energy needs of a growing Chinese economy are unlikely to be met
         domestically. In recent years, China's economy has grown at 10 per cent a
         year, but its oil production has grown at only 7 per cent annually. Middle
         Eastern oil remains the cheapest source of energy for China. Pipelines
         through central Asia are expensive and dangerous, for they will pass through
         the Moslem part of Chinese territory and China's Moslems are already
         restive. An enhanced Chinese naval presence off the coast of Burma is a
         logical consequence of this fact. A Chinese naval presence in the Indian
         ocean can only be a matter of concern for India.

         China has been the main supplier of nuclear technology to Pakistan. Pakistan
         is not and cannot be, a strategic threat to India without Chinese support. The
         powerful pro-China business lobby in the US makes matters worse from an
         Indian perspective. It leads Indian decision makers to doubt than in the event
         of a Chinese threat, America will provide security to India. Instead, given its
         business interests in China, the US is likely to push India towards
         compromises with China. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Soviet
         security umbrella over India has disappeared. India must now look after itself.

         Challenges to China's current political elite are likely to increase, as a civil
         society is born out of rising prosperity. How will China's leaders respond to
         internal challenges to their rule? Bowing out, like Indonesia's Suharto, is
         almost inconceivable. External adventures have often been used to prop up
         tottering authoritarian regimes. Unless a legitimately elected government takes
         power in China, Chinese leaders are capable of inflicting at least as much
         harm on other nations as they do on their own people. Given that the Great
         Leap Forward of 1958-61 led to 25m-28m deaths from starvation, millions
         more were victims in the cultural revolution that followed and, even in the
         post-Mao period, tanks rolled out against protesting students in Tiananmen
         Square, this is an alarming thought. Apart from the Communist party, the
         People's Liberation Army is the only powerful nation-wide institution in
         China. With a domestic record and structure like this, can a non-democratic
         China be trusted to be an advocate of international peace? India, Vietnam,
         Taiwan and even Japan have reasons to be concerned. Until India believes
         that its security concerns with respect to an authoritarian China are
         recognised, peace in south Asia is impossible. Pakistan is not the primary
         focus of India's strategic thinking any more.