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Hissing Dragon-Squirming Tiger:
Comparisons, Negotiations
and Attitudes
continues....
This explains a lot of the more recent history of the Indian subcontinent and its adjoining regions from about 1860 onwards. While the ‘Great Game’ against the expansion of the Russian Empire into Asia is undoubtedly the motivation, the methods of the British in India
clearly fit this explanation: the Anglo-Nepal War, the military expeditions into Afghanistan and the creation of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), and the Younghusband Expedition into
Tibet in 1904.
Pakistan’s attempts to control Afghanistan through the proxy conquest by the Taliban, and the description of Afghanistan as
Pakistan’s ‘strategic depth’ by the Pakistani Army Chief of the time,
Gen. Mirza Aslam Baig, need also to be seen in the same light.
Imperial China had in the past been no different, with its first expedition by the
famous general Pan Ch’ao (Pinyin: Ban Chao) of the Eastern Han
Dynasty to conquer eastern Turkestan, as far back as the late First
Century CE. Prof. Wight further amplifies: ‘Buffer states may therefore
be divided into trimmers, neutrals and satellites. Trimmers are states
whose policy is prudently to play off their mighty neighbours against
one another.
Neutral are states without an active foreign policy at all;
their hope is to lie low and escape notice. Satellites are states whose
foreign policy is controlled by another power. If the weaker state has
formally conceded this control by treaty, so that in law as well as in fact
it has surrendered a measure of its sovereignty, it is known as a
protectorate.
The gradation from trimmer to neutral, from neutral to
ally, from ally to satellite, is obscure and uncertain. Fluctuations of
power make most buffer zones unstable and ambiguous. A policy
adopted by a great power to preserve the neutrality of a buffer state may
be seen its rival as reducing the buffer state to a satellite; and the buffer
state may be seen by the same statesman, in different circumstances, as
either a defensive bulwark or a springboard for further expansion.’
China-India relations from 1900 till 1962 on the issue of Tibet were clearly within this description.
To be continued...