Wednesday, November 05, 2008

more on the coming water wars

nov 4th, 2008

i take this to mean the chinese strongman told this blighter that the brahmaputra diversion is on track and that he could go jump in a lake.

On Wed, Nov 5, 2008 at 10:27 AM, Brahma

See last paragraph in this story:

 

Finally, Pranab calls China a challenge

5 Nov 2008, 0220 hrs IST, Indrani Bagchi, TNN

 

NEW DELHI: The rise of China is a strategic challenge to a rising India. After years of dancing around this central factor in India's foreign policy, foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee, for the first time, has described China as a security "challenge and a priority", but significantly not as an opportunity.

India, said Mukherjee, would have to develop "more sophisticated ways of dealing with these new challenges posed by China".

Addressing the National Defence College on Monday, Mukherjee outlined India's security challenges. "To my mind, the foremost among these would be (a) to cope with the rise of China; (b) maintenance of a peaceful periphery; and (c) managing our relations with the major powers."

Shorn of the excitement of the $60billion bilateral trade figures and a "strategic partnership", Mukherjee described the current phase of India-China ties in stark terms, calling it only "a somewhat normalised relationship".

Ten years after Atal Bihari Vajpayee blamed China's proliferation activities as one of the reasons for India going overtly nuclear, India is again articulating its concerns. In the meantime, the world has changed, as have both India and China. As a homogenous and focused China powered ahead in economic development, funnily enough, so did heterogeneous and chaotic India, to the extent that both countries are now being seen by the world as the twin engines of global growth. But with its growth trajectory intact, fears are growing in many parts of the world that China's rise may not always be "peaceful" as its leadership promises.

Mukherjee said, "We are today faced with a new China. Today's China seeks to further her interests more aggressively than in the past, thanks to the phenomenal increase of her capacities after 30 years of reforms. There are also new set of challenges which China poses such as the strategic challenge as China develops its capabilities in outer space; the geopolitical challenge as it reaches out to various parts of the globe in search of raw materials and resources."

India is not yet fully equipped to deal with the challenges that China poses. For instance, during his return flight from Beijing last week, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told journalists that his conversation with Chinese president Hu Jintao focused a lot on the future of trans-border rivers. While India does not articulate this concern often, it's clearly very high priority.

 

 

 


From: Rajeev Srinivasan
Sent: Wednesday, November 05, 2008 10:24 AM
Subject: the coming water wars

 

nov 4th, 2008

china's diversion of the brahmaputra will happen in this context, and is reason enough for war.

http://viewswire.eiu.com/index.asp?layout=EBArticleVW3&article_id=1613834346&rf=0


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