India-China standoff

The good thing about the nihilistic Indian media narratives - relentlessly negative - over the military standoff in eastern Ladakh is that the government largely disregarded them. One hopes that a de-escalation of tensions is on the cards.

Nihilists and cynics are best shunned, especially when they also happen to be Sinophobes with a tunnel vision of the contemporary world situation who blithely overlook that China is a major player in the superpower league.

Some dominant narratives have even demanded that the Indian Army should give a "bloody nose" to the People's Liberation Army. The assumption appears to be that the current US-China tensions catapult India into a position of great strategic advantage at a time when China stands "isolated" and its internal politics is in disarray.

Unsurprisingly, some American analysts who wielded influence in the Washington Beltway in the bygone pre-Trump era have also jumped into the fray to hustle India, counseling that the country should not waste any more time to "join the rest of Asia in figuring out how to deal with the newest turn in China's salami-slicing tactics, which now distinctively mark its trajectory as a rising power."

However, the Indian leadership has held a steady line so far to seek a peaceful resolution of the tensions on the northern border. More than a month ago, when the Chinese build-up began, National Security Adviser Ajit Doval spotted it like "a cloud, as small as a man's hand," as the Bible says, and post-haste engaged with Chinese Politburo member Yang Jiechi, reportedly on May 6.

No doubt an inflection point has been reached - a time of significant change in the direction of the curvature ahead for the SinoIndian relationship. Significantly, Doval didn't wait for Donald Trump's mediatory offer - which sailed into view only three weeks later - to contact Beijing directly at the highest possible level next only to Xi Jinping.

Trump said Washington had "informed both India and China that the United States is ready, willing and able to mediate or arbitrate their now raging border dispute."

Now, it is a stunning offer. By offering to mediate, Trump displayed his interest in being objective and impartial. He signaled he won't take sides - stretching further, he doesn't intend to wade into the India-China tensions as such or get entangled in it.

The Indian analysts who are raring to give a bloody nose to the PLA - many of whom also happen to be cheerleaders of the US-Indian "partnership" - fail to understand the meaning of Trump's mediatory offer. If India takes "police action" - as Jawaharlal Nehru once vowed - it will have consequences no less disastrous than what we Indians faced six decades ago.

Today, "police action" against China means war with a superpower where India will not be at liberty to prescribe its parameters or timeline.

Don't India's "China experts" read newspapers? The prognosis worldwide is that India is cruising toward the epicenter of the Covid19 pandemic, while on the other hand, the World Bank says the Indian economy is due to shrink by more than 3% by year-end.

Besides, there is another side to all this - the unpredictability and inconstancy of US-China relations, which has profound implications for Indian policymaking.

Prima facie, nothing would suit Trump better than to join his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's roadshow on the Communist Party of China and make the Ladakh tensions a golden opportunity to lock India in as a US ally to confront China.

But Trump is disinterested. This can only mean that Trump takes a 360-degree view of the USChina relationship.

Stephen Roach at Yale University, formerly the chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia and a noted China specialist, wrote a thoughtful essay in Bloomberg this week how the tension between saving and the current deficit in the US economy is assuming a new criticality with the pandemic, as the crisis-related expansion of the federal deficit is galloping away, by far outstripping the fear-driven surge in personal savings.

Roach sees a tipping point ahead and domestic savings plunging - that is, if the US-China trade tensions effectively tax beleaguered US consumers, which, combined with a weaker dollar, would make external funding of the saving deficit impossible to sustain, especially if Trump indeed presses ahead with his "poorly timed wish for financial decoupling from China."