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Hissing Dragon-Squirming Tiger:
Comparisons, Negotiations
and Attitudes
continues...
As per Liu Yang and Guo Feng (1998), India seeks to achieve ‘hegemony in South Asia, contain China, control the Indian Ocean, and strive to become a military power in the contemporary world.’ However,
as per a Chinese military assessment of 1998, China was higher in overall
defense capability, with a score of 48.32 compared to India’s 41.37, and the only area in which China was inferior to India was in naval power. India was then assessed overall as ‘a sort of half-scale Japan.’
But what else besides the boundary and the Tibet/Dalai Lama issues affect political China-India geo-strategic relations? Is Tibet the only issue? A few other factors will also have their part to play. One is
the buffer zone/‘backyard theory’ factor, of which Tibet is a constant part. Another is Pakistan and the Pakistan-China ‘all-weather’ special relationship. Yet others are (2) the USA, (3) Japan-China-India or the once-proposed USA-Japan-Australia-India quadripartite strategic ‘understanding’, and (4) Russia.
BUFFER STATES AND THE ‘BACKYARD’ THEORY
The ‘Backyard Theory’ or ‘Strategic Backyard Theory’ derives from every country’s desire to create an island of peace for itself, insulating itself by creating a ‘buffer zone’ around it.
This ‘Strategic Buffer’ isolates
it from coming into direct conflict with neighbouring expansionist powers. By putting that ‘buffer’ under its political and military patronage, and thereby regulating that ‘buffer’ country’s foreign affairs to the extent possible, and by almost coercing it to give the first country preference in all matters, the creator of the ‘buffer’ seeks to protect
itself.
Other words have been used to describe this buffer: some prefer to
call it their ‘strategic backyard’, as the USA does when talking about its
interests in the Caribbean Sea and in Central America. Where the
‘buffer zone’ between two powers happens to be a space occupied by an
entire nationality, or a country by itself, that nation or state often
becomes, willy-nilly, a ‘buffer state’. Prof. Martin Wight has defined
these as follows:
To be continued.....