Xi Jinping has followed the GHQ Rawalpindi guidebook on how the arsonist can pretend to be the firefighter where Ukraine and Gaza are concerned, writes Prof. Madhav Das Nalapat
General Pervez Musharraf succeeded in convincing George W. Bush that Pakistan was not part of the problem in Afghanistan but essential for the solution. This was when it had been clear throughout the 1990s that GHQ Rawalpindi had not jettisoned its 1980s policy of boosting the Taliban but was continuing to support the extremist militia.
President Bill Clinton formed an administration riddled with fellow travellers of the Sino-Wahhabi lobby that was successful in pursuing a pro-Pakistan policy that opposed India on Kashmir and on issues such as technology transfer to, or development of nuclear power by, India. His final gift to GHQ Rawalpindi was to give the soon-to-be-ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif a face-saving exit from Kargil.
Had the people in Pakistan understood the dimensions of the defeat by India of the Pakistan military in the Kargil war, Musharraf could not have sold the untruth that his army was “stabbed in the back” by Nawaz Sharif in Kargil war despite being on a winning trajectory. In fact, the situation was catastrophic for the Pakistan army.
However, the untruth of the army being done in by Nawaz Sharif gave Musharraf cover to oust the civilian administration of Nawaz Sharif and install open military dictatorship on 12 October 1999. Sharif had done his job by being the scapegoat for Kargil and was disposable, as was Imran Khan later when it became clear by February 2023 that the former cricketer could not persuade the US and its allies to once again lavish kinetic and non-kinetic assistance on a massive scale to Pakistan.
By choosing Pakistan rather than India as its ally in the Afghan war in 2001, President Bush made inevitable the day when, twenty years later, the US surrendered Afghanistan to the Taliban. GHQ Rawalpindi ensured in plain sight during the next twenty years that the Taliban not merely survived the US assault on it but grew strong enough since its rout in 2001 to emerge as the most powerful force in the country by 2015.
Xi Jinping has followed the GHQ Rawalpindi guidebook on how the arsonist can pretend to be the firefighter where first Ukraine and later Gaza are concerned. Just before the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian army began in February 2022, he had a meeting in Beijing with President Vladimir Putin and it is impossible to believe that he was not informed of the impending war by his Russian friend.
Since the invasion began, CCP General Secretary Xi has ensured that the Russian war machine has been given the help it needed to ensure that the proxy war between NATO and Russia on the territory of Ukraine went on despite unprecedented support from that alliance for Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s war objectives. As matters stand, the Ukraine war will drag on, exactly what Xi Jinping seeks to ensure that US attention and activity get diverted from East Asia back to Europe.
Even if Trump were to cease US help to Ukraine, some NATO members may remain committed to carrying on the ultimately hopeless war that they have been waging against Russia in Ukraine since 2022. Xi would like the Russia-Ukraine war to continue so that the attention of the members of NATO would continue to be diverted.
Even after the conflict ends, resources from within NATO members will need to commit to the rebuilding of Ukraine rather than to strengthening force postures in the Indo-Pacific and ensuring Taiwan is finally given the attention and resources needed to deal with a PRC invasion. Unless Taiwan does get the requisite quantity of weapons and is assured of direct involvement of Japan and the US on its side during such an existential conflict, the island country would need to endure much dev astation in the course of a PLA invasion.
According to sources aware of planning exercises within the PLA Taiwan War Room, which has been set up in a small inland city close to the east coast of China, those involved in scenario building for an invasion and occupation of Taiwan believe that disillusionment with existing conflicts such as Gaza and Ukraine are leading to a war fatigue among the public within US and other NATO countries which would be strong enough by 2026 to ensure that public protests against direct involvement in a Taiwan war are substantial.
The Taiwan War Room of the PLA believes that should the US stay outside the conflict and avoid a direct kinetic role, anti-war groups in Japan would be strong enough to prevent that formidable military power from intervening.
It needs to be added that the agitprop machinery of the CCP is skilled in ensuring such street protests and antipathy to conflict, after years of success in boosting the levels of participation and violence of such protests in the US and its allies through the efforts of CCP offshore networks. A prolonged war is what the Taiwan War Room seeks to ensure in Ukraine and Gaza, behind the pacifist CCP camouflage of public statements and diplomacy.
Despite visible and rising support by China for Russia since the start of the Ukraine war, leaders from the NATO and EU member states continue travelling to Beijing to try and persuade Xi to use his influence over Putin to make the latter stop the war by accepting some of Ukraine’s peace terms. The latest peacemaker from the EU is Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary.
In 2023, Hamas launched a terror attack on Israel that made inevitable a strong response from the IDF to destroy the military wing of Hamas or face an existential threat to Israel. Its military capacities are what has kept Gaza under the control of the terror group since it eliminated Fatah in the strip during 2007.
From the manner in which the planning of the attack took place, including targeting a music festival in which thousands of youth participated to knowing that the security around the event and in the next door village was lax, it was clear Hamas had outside help.
From the start, the CCP has made no secret of its support for Hamas, and by bringing together all the Palestinian factions both extremist and peace-oriented in Beijing just weeks ago, the CCP has ensured that Hamas and others opposed to the existence of Israel among the Palestinian factions were, as a consequence of the unity conference, assisted in spreading to the West Bank as well and not just Gaza.
This raises the prospect of fresh waves of terror attacks on Israel from such groups, including from within the West Bank. As a consequence, the battle between Israel and some of the Palestinian factions intent on violence against the Jewish state is likely to outlast even an end to the war in Gaza. With the Palestinian Unity conference at Beijing, in which Mahmoud Abbas was absent, the conflict between the IDF and sections of the Palestinian factions seems headed towards becoming another “Forever War”.
Republican Vice-Presidential nominee J.D. Vance is correct when he states Taiwan is more essential to US security than Ukraine. He would be the Vice-President of a President who in his previous stint in the White House made his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo sign an Instrument of Surrender at Doha in November 2020
Such a boon to the Taliban was operationalised by President Biden soon after he assumed the US Presidency. China now occupies some of the key military facilities set up by the US in Afghanistan since 2001, including the Bagram military base.
Only an end of the Ukraine and Gaza wars by the close of the year would ensure that US resources in particular get diverted to Taiwan and other hotspots in the Indo-Pacific before preparations are complete for a kinetic attack by the PLA. As yet, unless the PRC gets subjected to much more substantive pressure from the US and its key allies through economic and other measures than is presently the case, Xi remains on track in his thus far successful efforts at ensuring that the Ukraine and Gaza wars continue.
The effort is for such a state of affairs to go on until the Taiwan War Room serving the CCP determines that direct or even Ukraine-level US involvement to a kinetic assault on a country indispensable for the security of the Indo-Pacific is no longer politically feasible for the US President because of growing public pressure within to not get into a conflict with the other superpower.
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