The People's Republic of China is, in many ways, as obvious a challenger to the power of the United States today as the Soviet Union was in the 1970s and 1980s. Yet there is one big difference: Even if politicians and op-ed writers in the US inveigle against China's trade policies, the two countries are very, very far from the all-pervasive animosity that marked the last years of the Cold War. There could be many reasons for this. But one far-from-small contributor is the role of Hollywood.
In the 1980s, the American film industry produced a near-endless succession of movies in which the Soviets were the adversaries, a large proportion of them apparently starring Sylvester Stallone, Rambo II & III and Rocky IV among them. Effectively, Hollywood ensured that everyone understood that the Russians were the bad guys. Today, by contrast, any character from mainland China in a big-budget movie out of Southern California is likely to be sympathetic. They have to be; the People's Republic is a giant market, is it not? The operation of the market economy has made all-out confrontation much less likely by drafting the cultural production industry as a mouthpiece for peace instead of war.
This contrast should be kept in mind as one examines the latest confrontation between India and Pakistan - a confrontation that has spilled over into India's own film industry. Duelling films, one with Pakistani cast and crew members, have led to demands for boycotts and for purity, and counter-calls for the industry to serve as an agent for integration. But what really matters here is the reminder that, if we want policy that vastly reduces the scope of future confrontation, the integration of markets is not something that should be reversed. In particular, Pakistani decision-makers who automatically assume that Bollywood movies are dangerous should instead recognise that becoming a market that needs to be appeased will ensure that the Hindi-language cultural industry becomes a force for peace.
Indian decision-makers are being even more short-sighted. It has been reported, for example, that the prime minister's office and the commerce ministry are revisiting India's 1996 decision to grant Pakistan "most favoured nation" or MFN trade status. The foreign ministry's spokesman, Vikas Swarup, told a press conference that a review "based on our security and trade interests" was on - because "terror cannot be the commodity exported". Mr Swarup has, of course, a fine turn of phrase. But the idea that he is selling is strange. The truth is, of course, contrariwise: Were trade to actually increase to reasonable levels - or even stop going through Dubai - it would decrease the likelihood of terror attacks, not increase them.
Greater trade and economic integration between India and Pakistan has one resolute enemy: The Pakistani military. This is no surprise; the Pakistani army has a talent for self-preservation, if not for winning wars. It recognises that its own position in Pakistani society - and its control over some of the most profitable sections of the domestic economy - depends upon it being the bulwark against a hostile India. A trading India cannot, by definition, be a hostile India. In addition, a trading India would mean that there are significant sections of Pakistani society that would benefit from trade - and turn into an increasingly powerful coalition against confrontation. This is part of what underlies the business-friendly Nawaz Sharif's relative softness towards New Delhi, and his government's consequent low-level friction with the brass at Rawalpindi (which may have spilled over into open defiance last week, according to a report by Cyril Almeida in Dawn.) You do not have to personally trust either Sharif brother to coldly calculate where their real interests lie, and see that ensuring their government is stable is in India's interest, too.
We struggle, today, with the fact that New Delhi possesses few levers with which to influence Pakistani behaviour. That is why we have spent over a decade whining about the US' refusal to bring Pakistan to heel; that is why we reacted with over-the-top relief to reports of "surgical strikes" across the Line of Control that appear to have done little or nothing to degrade actual capabilities. The obvious task, therefore, is to build up such levers. One way, certainly, is the Chidambaram-Doval way - to re-create the networks within Pakistan, including with separatists in Balochistan, who could serve New Delhi's purposes. That is, in my opinion, short-sighted. But, even if not, it is hardly the only lever we should seek to create. Economic levers, such as China and the US have over each other, are far more capable of maintaining the peace - and serving as threats, if it was to come to that.
Many argue in objection to this view that India-China trade has exploded, but our bilateral relations are no smoother. This is because it is just trade that has exploded (and that too one-way). Nor is the Indian market large enough for China, the world's factory, to be overly worried if it goes away. It is inter-locking investment and co-dependence, such as China and the US now have, which creates incentives for peace.
It is worth noting that Pakistan is urgently in need of such investment. It cannot rely on the People's Republic, however much it may imagine it can. All the noise about the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor or CPEC has obscured the fact that many of these investments are struggling to get off the ground. Khurram Hussain reported last week, also in Dawn, that pricing and rates of return are stymieing movement on several projects. This is something that Indian capital is much more able to deal with, given our own domestic conditions. China sees Pakistan essentially as one road among many to the Arabian Sea; India would see Pakistan not just as a profitable investment destination, but a destination the stabilisation of which is a crucial step towards our own rise as a power.
In many ways, the benefits of opening up trade and investment are so lopsided that it is no wonder that the Pakistani military worries about it. What is mystifying is that it is not a priority for India. We could not be hurt by it under any assumptions whatsoever, given the relative size of our economies. Yet we continue to move slowly on reducing non-tariff barriers to trade, for example. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has sporadically spoken of the possible benefits from the two neighbours trading. He should recognise that it is doubly important to speed up economic integration when times are tough.
m.s.sharma@gmail.com
Twitter: @mihirssharma
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