The Pieces are Falling into Place

Excellent. It looks like someone out there has the same ideas as me, and that is very good for the world. Yes, I did just stroke my ego - apologies!

You see, when nations cannot come voluntarily into an agreement, such as the EU block, then the only thing left is to maintain a balance of power. I don't think the balance of power strategy is very stable, but its better than imbalance, which is explicitly and inherently unstable.

I have long thought that the key to maintaining peace in Asia is... India. Sorry India, I know you don't want this kind of attention -- India is "neutral." But the fact is, there are two emerging superpowers in Asia, and one is India. The other, obviously, is China. But where China is an international bully, India is not. China persecutes, exterminates, and cracks down on non-Han Chinese within its borders ; India is the ultimate plural society, with more personal freedoms than even Western nations, and has shown no signs of seeking global power. Who would I ally with? The one who is not liable to violate my nation's sovereignty or that of my nation's allies.

Its great that America is nurturing a good relationship with China, but that unfortunately leaves the balance of power unaddressed. China grows powerful almost exclusively because of the goodwill of America, while other countries in Asia start to feel squeezed as China applies ever-increasing pressure. With regard to India, it appears China is pursuing a strategy of "encirclement." China moved with phenomenal speed to build close ties with Sri Lanka and build up Sri Lanka's infrastructure. Here's an article about that. As usual, China seems to be rewarding bad behavior, as just a month ago the Sri Lankan "president" dissolved parliament and arrested his opposition. Another example is China's close ties with Nepal, after decades of backing a Maoist movement -- which was really terrorism -- and yet another example is China's backing the PAD in Thailand (People's Alliance for Democracy), which, ironically, seeks to abolish universal suffrage in Thailand. How very Chinese... Other examples include various countries in the Middle East (naturally; China wants oil) and of course China's illegal military bases in the Philippines.

So two questions arise: What is China's motivation, and are they really trying to "encircle" India or is it just a general push for influence in the region? I can't answer the second question, but its moot anyways, since either way, India is the key to balancing power in Asia. To the first question, I can see two possible answers. One, that maybe China seeks to put pressure on India because India is the home of the Dalai Lama. Perhaps if the Dalai Lama were to fall out of grace with India, then China would ease up the pressure? The Dalai Lama is the focal point of the nation of Tibet; as such, the Dalai Lama is an obstacle to China's indisputable mastery of Tibet. The other possible motivation for China's encircling India is that they seek to keep India from interfering with China's goal of Asian hegemony. China has explicitly said that they do not seek hegemony, which means very clearly that they DO seek hegemony - remember two things: its China, and its diplomacy. China glorifies a certain time in its past where it had forced all other Asian nations to pay tribute to China. This is the basis for much of China's territorial claims; if they paid tribute, then they belonged to us. China now seeks a modern form of the old tribute system -- China provides the loans for construction, and countries pay back the loans for the next century. And they are still trying to expand their borders. The only obstacle to China's goal is India -- India may be able to compete with China for providing those loans.

Now throw in the fact that both China and India are getting their first aircraft carriers this year, and you start to see a picture of competition that may not be so friendly. Luckily, as I said in the beginning of the blog, other people can see this picture just as easily as me, and now this article shows that Russia seeks to build closer ties with India. Russia is helping India build nuclear power plants. Russia has a lot to lose if China's power is not checked. China's population: more than a billion ; Russia: 140 million. China could snap up all of Siberia and Russia could do nothing about it. Therefore, Russia needs friends. Russia needs to orchestrate a balance of power so that China doesn't go berserk.

Now if only we could get South Korea and Japan to cooperate more...