We cannot and should not make China an enemy: Nicholas Burns

Live Mint , Saturday, December 07, 2013
Correspondent : Amrit Raj & Elizabeth Roche
New Delhi: Terming China a “unique development case”, former US undersecretary of state for political affairs Nicholas Burns on Friday said that both India and the US cannot and should not make China their enemy.

“China will be the most important relationship for the US in the next half-a-century and so would be with India. While we are partners with China we are also strategic competitors,” said Burns who is currently professor of the practice of diplomacy and international politics at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

Burns served the US government between 2005-08 as under secretary of state for political affairs, the state department’s third-ranking official when he led negotiations on the US–India Civil Nuclear Agreement.

Burns emphasised that while China has been growing its military and economic powers, both India and China should have dialogue on issues such as climate change, terrorism, non-proliferation and crime cartels. At the same time, both India and the US should be strong enough, politically and militarily, to disagree with the Asian giant.

The comments come against the backdrop of a spike in tensions between Japan and China over Chinese territorial claims on an island group in the East China Sea known as the Senkaku islands in Japan and the Diaoyu islands in China.

Last month, China said aircraft flying over the islands have to take permission from it. The US responded by flying bomber planes over the air space without any permission, and Japan and South Korea followed suit.

US vice-president Joe Biden has been on a visit to the region to cool tensions between Asia’s top two economies. India, too, shares disputed borders with China dating back to their 1962 war. The two sides were locked in a stand-off in April that took three weeks to resolve and almost derailed a visit to India by Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang in May.

“China has been growing its defence budget, modernizing its nuclear weapons. It has a definite aggressive policy in East Asia and no one agrees to that. China has overplayed their hands in South China sea. As a private citizen, I can say that the US is going to stay in the region. We will build up our security cooperation in the region and most definitely with India,” Burns said.

Former foreign secretary Shyam Saran, who also worked on the nuclear deal with the US, said that it cannot be denied that India’s relationship with China is “adversarial” in nature and that India needs to safeguard its interests in the region.

“China’s accumulation of power is accelerating at a pace that India has not been able to comprehend… Yet, there are a lot of issues such as trade with East asia, the sea line that connects us with the Pacific, which are of extremely important to us. There is a strong desire in South-East Asia that India should increase its economic and security profile and I think India will have to take cognizance of that in the region,” Saran said.

Saran said that India will be building countervailing coalition with countries such as Japan and Indonesia, adding, “And this countervailing coalition could become a containment coalition, if needed.”

 
SOURCE : http://www.livemint.com/Politics/179gIhvFTmjr4eq5xC7FrO/We-cannot-and-should-not-make-China-an-enemy-Nicholas-Burns.html
 


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