The China Factor in the India-Pakistan Conflict

The war clouds in South Asia have receded following high-level U.S. diplomatic efforts and some armtwisting of Pakistani and Indian leaders. However, concerns over the outbreak of a conflict between India and Pakistan have not completely disappeared. War is still possible given General Musharrafs inability, if not unwillingness, to deliver on his promise to stop permanently terrorist incursions into Indian-held Kashmir and Indias position that it retains the right to take military action if this promise remains unfulfilled. The India- Pakistan crisis has also highlighted once again the long shadow that Asias rising superpower, China, casts on the Indian subcontinent, especially at a time of heightened tensions. In fact, Beijing has long been the most important player in the India-Pakistan-China triangular relationship. Since the Sino-Indian border war of 1962, China has aligned itself with Pakistan and made heavy strategic and economic investments in that country to keep the common enemy, India, under strategic pressure. Interestingly, Chinas attempts to improve ties with India since the early 1990s have been accompanied by parallel efforts to bolster Pakistani militarys nuclear and conventional capabilities vis-a-vis India. It was the provision of Chinese nuclear and missile capability to Pakistan during the late 1980s and 1990s that emboldened Islamabad to wage a proxy war in Kashmir without fear of Indian retaliation. While a certain degree of tension in Kashmir and Pakistans ability to pin down Indian armed forces on its western frontiers is seen as enhancing Chinas sense of security, neither an all-out India-Pakistan war nor Pakistans collapse would serve Beijings grand strategic objectives.