The Security Dilemma and India–China Relations

ABSTRACT

This article examines whether the concept of a security dilemma is useful in understanding the trajectory of India–China relations over the past seven decades. It considers several phases through which this relationship has passed and it argues that the security dilemma has never been at work. The relationship is characterized not by a security dilemma but by fundamental conflicts of interests. These have been exacerbated or ameliorated by changes in domestic politics and the wider strategic context. Going forward, too, these factors are likely to influence relationship.

Disclosure statement

The author affirms that there is no conflict of interest in publishing this article.

Notes

1. A rare, dissenting note is sounded in Alastair Iain Johnston, “How New and Assertive is China’s New Assertiveness?” International Security 37, no. 4 (2013): 37–48.

2. Robert Jervis, “Cooperation Under the Security Dilemma,” World Politics 30, no. 2 (1978): 187.

3. For a thorough discussion, see, Keir Lieber, War and the Engineers: The Primacy of Politics Over Technology (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005).

4. This view of strategy is best elaborated in Lawrence Freedman, Strategy: A History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).

5. Charles Glaser, “The Security Dilemma Revisited,” World Politics 50, no. 1 (1997): 171–201; Randall Schweller, “Neorealism’s Status-Quo Bias: What Security Dilemma?” Security Studies 5 (1996): 90–121.

6. For one example of the range of reasons for which great powers have gone to war, see, David Welch, Justice and the Genesis of War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).

7. Shiping Tang, “The Security Dilemma: A Conceptual Analysis,” Security Studies 18 (2009): 587–683, especially 598–603.

8. Adam P. Liff and G. John Ikenberry, “Racing Towards Tragedy? China’s Rise, Military Competition in the Asia Pacific, and the Security Dilemma,” International Security 2, no. 39 (2014): 61.

9. Srinath Raghavan, War and Peace in Modern India: A Strategic History of the Nehru Years (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 233.

10. Ibid., 234.

11. Cited in Sarvepalli Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography, vol. 2 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1979), 176.

12. Rudra Chaudhuri, Forged in Crisis: India and the United States since 1947 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 47–69.

13. Raghavan, War and Peace in Modern India, 241.

14. Ibid., 245.

15. All quotations in this section, unless specified otherwise, are from Raghavan, War and Peace in Modern India, 249–304.

16. John Garver, “China’s Decision for War in 1962,” in New Directions in the Study of China’s Policy, ed. Alastair Iain Johnston and Robert Ross (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009), 114–15.

17. Andrew B. Kennedy, “India’s Nuclear Odyssey: Implicit Umbrellas, Diplomatic Disappointments, and the Bomb,” International Security 36, no. 2 (2011): 120–53.

18. Gyalo Thondup, The Noodlemaker of Kalimpong (New York: Public Affairs, 2015).

19. Srinath Raghavan, 1971: A Global History of the Creation of Bangladesh (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2013), 195.

20. Ibid., 196–97.

21. Ezra Vogel, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2011), 269, 278.

22. Zorawar Daulet Singh, Himalayan Stalemate: Understanding the India-China Dispute (New Delhi: Straight Forward Publishers, 2012), 21–22.

23. John Garver, Protracted Contest: Sino-Indian Rivalry in the Twentieth Century (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001), 102–06.

24. For an overview of these interlocked challenges, see, Srinath Raghavan, “At the Cusp of Transformation: The Rajiv Gandhi Years, 1984–1989,” in The Oxford Handbook of Indian Foreign Policy, ed. David Malone, Raja Mohan, and Srinath Raghavan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 117–30.

25. Entry of 19 December 1988, Natwar Singh, My China Diary 1956–88 (New Delhi: Rupa, 2009), 120–21.

26. Shivshankar Menon, Choices: Inside the Making of India’s Foreign Policy (New Delhi: Penguin, 2016), 22.

27. J.N. Dixit, My South Block Years: Memoirs of a Foreign Secretary (New Delhi: UBS Publishers, 1996), 235–47.

28. Menon, Choices, 23–30.

29. Priyanjali Malik, India’s Nuclear Debate: Exceptionalism and the Bomb (New Delhi: Routledge, 2009).

30. James Mann, About Face: A History of America’s Curious Relationship with China, from Nixon to Clinton (Vintage, New York, 1998); Patrick Tyler, A Great Wall: Six Presidents and China (Public Affairs, New York, 2000).

31. Shyam Saran, “China in the Twenty-First Century: What India Needs to Know about China’s World View,” K. Subrahmanyam Memorial Lecture, August 2012, 17–18.

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Srinath Raghavan

Srinath Raghavan is Senior Fellow, Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi. He is also a Visiting Professor at Ashoka University. He is the author of several books, including Fierce Enigmas: A History of the United States in India (New York: Basic Books, 2018).