From Protracted Conflict to Strategic Partnership between China and India: Can India and Pakistan Follow the Same Path?
Saira Khan
March 26, 2008
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The two regional protracted conflict rivals of Asia, India and China, have found ways to become strategic partners in the twenty-first century. This research probes what explains this change and whether or not the engagement strategies employed by them can produce similar results if used in the India-Pakistan bilateral relations? This paper argues that although at the strategic level nuclear weapons detonation by India in 1998 was instrumental in developing a strategic balance between the rivals and within a few years a stable security environment emanated in the conflict offing, creating a setting stage for the exploration of possibilities of partnership in the economic, trade, and political realms, one of the major contributing factors in the partnership has been the soft power that both China and India possess. While the two Asian giants share common attributes such as strong military, population, economy, and information technology, among others, soft power in the form of culture, education, and values/ideals pertaining to open economies has forced them to look beyond the dynamics of the intractable conflict and find a common ground to work together. Both are mature states in all of these domains due to which the domestic political/institutional differences did not create an impediment to substantive strategic cooperation. There is political resolve in both countries in maintaining long-term friendship, enhancing cooperation, and achieving common developments. This is the exact opposite of the India-Pakistan case. While India is strong in soft power capabilities, Pakistan lacks strength in this domain and remains even less interested in developing the attribute. Consequently, even though both India and Pakistan realize that cooperation on different levels is possible, attainable, and beneficial to both parties and have progressed in attaining some of their stated goals of cooperation as part of the composite dialogue, in the presence of asymmetry in soft power resources, they are unable to comprehensively tap the unexplored opportunities to becoming strategic partners in this century.
The paper is structured in the following manner: The first section discusses various sources of power in general and intangible or soft power in particular. The second section draws a connection between hard power, soft power, and strategic partnership or accommodation policies. The third is a case study on the India-China strategic cooperation. The focus here is on the role of soft power in enhancing cooperation between them. The next section uses the principle thesis of the paper connecting soft power to strategic cooperation against the India-Pakistan case and argues that strategic cooperation lacks in this case because of the absence of soft power in Pakistan. A final section provides concluding remarks and some policy recommendations.
