US & South Asia - Articles

US Secretary of State, Colin Powell?s announcement on 18 March 2004 granting Major Non-NATO Ally (MNNA) status to Pakistan surprised India but it is not the only country for which this event has implications. China has reasons to follow the situation closely being no stranger to having Major Non-NATO allies in its neighbourhood. Japan, South Korea, the Philippines and Thailand are MNNAs of the US. Further, in September 2002, the US Congress designated Taiwan as a "non-NATO ally", despite there being no formal relations between Washington and Taipei. This move came just a month before Jiang Zemin?s visit to the US, but there was hardly any protest by the Chinese either during the visit or later. However, Pakistan's new status raises interesting possibilities for China's involvement in the region.

 

China has invested heavily in its relationship with Pakistan. The critical component of this relationship, namely, conventional military support and clandestine nuclear technology transfers occurred when US-Pakistan relations seemed at their best during the 1980s. So the situation of Pakistan being warmly embraced by the US once again is not new to Beijing. Moreover, the MNNA status does not directly affect Chinese relations with Pakistan. Ã‚  While it allows Pakistan to obtain excess American military equipment on a priority basis, these will need to be paid for by Pakistan, whether or not the US government's loan guarantee scheme under MNNA comes into effect. The Chinese announcement of a US$12million interest-free loan to the Pakistan military during the 22 March visit of their Defence Minister, Cao Gangchuan, is a gentle reminder that the Chinese have always delivered in practical terms. Similarly, cooperative research and development programmes between the US and Pakistan, even in conventional arms seem unlikely given the recent revelations of nuclear proliferation by Pakistani scientists. There are however ongoing projects between Pakistan and China for the manufacture of tanks and aircraft. Indeed, Pakistan has often relied on military supplies from China during times of American refusal or sanctions.

 

The impact on China of MNNA status to Pakistan will be more in terms of what Musharraf will do to return the American favour as well as how he manages to keep hardliners in Pakistan at bay over increasing American interference. These actions are not necessarily against Chinese interest. First, Musharraf has to act even more strongly against Al Qaeda supporters in Pakistan, which is not necessarily a bad thing for China, given its own problems in Xinjiang. Second, MNNA status allows him to make the usual noises against India on Kashmir to placate domestic opinion. This leads to two possibilities: India will be tied down by increased terrorist activities in Kashmir, come summer, or India will be forced to move with greater speed on resolving outstanding problems with China, particularly the border issue, once its elections are over. Either way, China cannot lose.

 

Pakistan has hastened to assure China that there would be no negative fallout on its relations with China. The Chinese should be concerned about a few things though. Soon after announcing the MNNA status for Pakistan, Powell expressed American intentions to discover whether Pakistani officials were aware of A Q Khan's sales of nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea. This is a can of worms that must lead to questions about the transfer of nuclear technology by the Chinese, in the past. Similarly, Musharraf's statements on 21 February at the handover of the Hatf-III missile and, on 6 April, to officers at the General Headquarters, Rawalpindi that Pakistan's nuclear capability would not be rolled back and would be "enhanced" should give the Chinese cause for some concern. Considering that he made these statements on important occasions involving the Army's top brass, can they be dismissed as rhetoric? Where will he get support for this enhancement? Not the US for sure. This leaves open China and North Korea for the suspicious to point at and China could do without a bad press at the present juncture.

 

Irrespective of Pakistan's MNNA status, Pakistan will continue to occupy an important position in the Bush administration's war on terror. This is the crux of China's problem, that Pakistan, China's "best friend in the South Asian region," is becoming a major theatre of action for the Americans and one from where they could project themselves northwards to Central Asia and other regions of Chinese interest and concern. Indeed, it is too much to expect that American presence in Pakistan will not have an impact on the "time-tested friendship" of Pakistan and China.