India-China and North Korea-South Korea: The Tale of two summits

India-China and North Korea-South Korea: The Tale of two summits

FPJ BureauUpdated: Thursday, May 30, 2019, 06:31 PM IST
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Last week, the world witnessed two summits between two separate sets of  leaders whose countries have been locked in bitter recriminations and even armed conflicts in the past. Both summits promised much, but, yielded little by way of tangible bars appreciably reducing tensions in the respective regions. The meeting between the North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un and the President of South Korea Moon Jae-in attracted worldwide attention because the stakes for world peace were far higher. The meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Chinese President Xi Jinping held much significance for the two neighbours. It was informal and unstructured. The two leaders met in the scenic resort of Wuhan without aides and held a free-wheeling dialogue on everything that has embittered the ties between the two Asian giants.

The setting for both the summits was noteworthy. This was the first time any North Korean leader had stepped into the South while Moon, too, took a symbolic step into the North. The meeting took place in the no-man’s land with a battery of aides and diplomats in attendance on either side. President Trump could not help boasting that he had acted as a key catalyst. The Kim-Moon meeting was a structured affair with a joint communiqué reflecting the desire of the two leaders to end the decades-long stand-off and work towards peace and normalcy on the Korean Peninsula. The South has progressed much in all spheres of human activity and it is natural for it not to want to preserve it. The North is an impoverished and close country under the boot of the military dictator and it is natural for it to shake off the shackles of poverty and squalor before the impoverished people rise up in rebellion. Therefore, it seeks to restore ties with the South. But the sticking point is the nuclearisation of the North and its threat to rain missiles on its prosperous neighbours. The Americans have a huge stake in ensuring that Kim abandons the nuclear programme, especially when he claims to have built long-distance missiles which can hit key US cities.

But, even if the stringent economic sanctions are beginning to bite, it is unlikely that Kim would surrender his trump card without extracting a huge price from the US-led alliance. Concerns of Japan will have to be taken on board in any agreement that the Americans might bless after Trump meets Kim at an undetermined location in the next couple of days. It is remarkable that though the armed hostilities in the Koreas had ended in 1953, the North and the South technically are still at war. Kim, being a tricky customer, is unlikely to abandon his nuclear programme unless the entire Korean peninsula is denuclearised and foreign troops withdrawn from the region. This, in turn, would raise the hackles of the Japanese who have been at the receiving end of the North Korean vile and much else all these years. All eyes will now be on the coming Trump-Kim meeting.

As for the Modi-Xi summit, the decision to try and not repeat a Doklam-like stand-off is welcome. Both sides can gain nothing from weaponising their differences and bitterness. China’s might be a five-time bigger economy and a much larger army, but an armed conflict can result in inflicting huge costs on both nations. The border dispute can be solved by the designated special representatives of the two countries in a spirit of give and take. As Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale said at the end of the-day summit, ‘both sides have the maturity and wisdom to handle the differences through peaceful discussion within the context of the overall relationship, bearing in mind the importance of respecting each other’s sensitivities, concerns and aspirations’.

At a time when China is on the threshold of becoming a global power, it is in its own interest not to derail that process by adopting an aggressive stand against India. Resolving all outstanding differences with India in a peaceful manner can help it dissolve past reservations and enmities and allow it to play a greater role in global affairs. That Pakistan is unlikely to be happy at the Modi-Xi jaw-jaw does not require iteration, but what is really going to rile the Islamabad-Rawalpindi axis is the announcement from Wuhan that India and China would jointly work on an economic project in Afghanistan.

Pakistan has all along behaved as if Afghanistan is its own backyard and India has no business even lending humanitarian aid to that god-forsaken country. Being the two largest countries, it augured well that in Wuhan the two leaders searched for common ground on such key issues as terrorism, climate change, etc. Building trust between the two militaries, as decided in Wuhan, remains vitally contingent first on the leaders of the two countries building mutual trust and understanding. In that direction, the summitry in Wuhan was well worth the effort.

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