16 May 2017

** CHINA CHALLENGES GROTIUS’S ‘MARE LIBERUM’-(FREEDOM OF THE SEAS) WITH ‘MARE CLOSUM’ AND SCS CLAIMS— WILL WE SEE COLD WAR 2.0 BETWEEN US ALLIES & INDIA VS CHINA-RUSSIA & PAKISTAN & TRIBUTEES AT BARF 14/15TH MAY IN BEIJING ? By IDF on May 13, 2017


India has declined an invitation to join Border and Road Forum (BARF) in Beijing on 14/15th May as USA and its allies have done. Is it green shoots of Cold War 2.0 in rising power China challenging Super Power USA ?

This is an IDF analysis of China under its military and political Chairman XI Jinping and India under a confident RSS supported PM Narendra Modi who is clearly driving India higher with US support, to stand up to China and tame China’s ally Pakistan, and wrest Occupied Kashmir for India where a CPEC is being built by China.

China the hare and democratic India the tortoise have risen, Communist China has risen faster. The economic and military rise of India under PM Narendra Modi worries China, looking to topple USA as a super power with two sparring International camps in the world’s Geo-Economic and Geo-Political landscape in a new form of competition in the East.

Super power USA under autocratic President Trump rides, like an Elephant and wants to tame China and North Korea that China and Russia support. The grass may get trampled, as India Pakistan animosity has peaked especially in the troubled Kashmir valley. The PDP party in power is isolated and BJP wants Kashmiris to succumb as as India’s Army has been hurtling fire on Pakistani bunkers with success, accepting deaths of its souls as the price to pay, fo combing operations.

China’s political cum military leader Xi Jinping (wife Maj General Peng Liyuan) invited Indian and world leaders and delegates to BARF from 14th May to sell successes to nations to join the revived Maritime Silk Road (MSR) and One Belt One Road ( OBOR) with a war chest of billions. China has invited Afghanistan and Nepal who has agreed to link in to China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and Ambassador Lou in Delhi offered to add India in the label later rescinded in media when snubbed, typical Chinese tactic not to lose face.

Many Indians have suggested India could gain by joining as CPEC is in part of POK( Gilgit Baltistan) which will accrue to India in the long term as PM Modi said on 15th Aug at the Red Fort, and Rand Corporation predicts but Pakistan is bent on playing with fire.


When India’s FS Jaishankar confirmed India would not attend BARF Beijing asked to berth a submarine in Sri Lanka. Was it to embarrass PM Modi who was the Chief guest for UN Vesak day on 12TH May as part of PM’s dynamic ‘Neighborhood First Policy’ to surround Pakistan. Sri Lanka declined PLA(N) submarine but the message was a PLA (N) submarine is lurking in the Indian Ocean. The IN and USN must be tracking.

IDF emphasizes Chinese and Indians are like chalk and cheese in physical make up (yellow vs brown, tall vs short, slit eyes vs round eyes), food habits, cultural and religious ways or the way the two look at ‘strategy’.

Chinese look at ‘GO’ a long term strategic board game to surround. Indians look at Chess to check mate. Indians Ahimsa ( non-violence) is giving way to pride in Hindutva Karmic fatalistic beliefs to beat China’s Kaisu policy ( never to lose) and the Chinese faith in the teaching of masters like Sun Tzu and Lao. Chinese do not like to lose face.

Indians lean on legal arguments when confronted . After years of not going to International courts, it is on test in the ICJ at Hague on 15th May Advocate Salve will prove ex Cdr Jadhav in Pakistan custody is a businessman who was abducted in Iran and not a spy. Pakistan may boycott ICJ just as Singapore stumped lawyer Palkhiwala’s argument when PM Lee Kuan Yew warned he would cane over staying Indians in the 1990s. Singapore Court ruled Singapore has the right to make its laws despite Vienna and other conventions. China boycotted UNCLOS ITLOS hearings on South China Sea in 2015 with game plans.


At BARF China will highlight successes in Greece’s Piraeus port and how it helped Greece to economic health and will support Middle East with pipelines (aka CPEC). A container train from London to Yiwu in China succeeded for connectivity as in Asia, with power projects and pipelines. China has now offered Nuclear power plants to Indonesia.

It is evident USA JAPAN INDIA SINGAPORE and allies like Australia in the Pivot have taken on CHINA RUSSIA PAKISTAN & its friends and allies who pay tribute to China just like in the Cold War days USA and SOVIET UNION received from two camps.

USA’S President Trump has warned Pakistan for creating ‘India Pakistan tension’ and supporting Taliban which is gaining grounds in Afghanistan and taken Kunduz. This manifestation will come alive at the Border BARF as the US camp has ganged up and shunned the invitation. China will lean on Sun Tzu to break the ganging as it did to the ASEAN Code of Conduct.

The same grouping is aligned lined in the affairs of Afghanistan and Middle East especially Syria and Yemen where Saudi Arabia finds itself in a dilemma and supports Pakistan in Sunni vs Shia, and Pakistan’s Gen Raheel Shariff advises a Sunni army for Saudis. President Trump is going to visit Mid East to personally meet leaders and be at G7 at Taormina , Sicily on May 26–27. Both camps are jockeying for maritime power as in Cold war in the 21st Century in the East.

China’s String of Pearls was scoffed at by India’s strategists when IDF wrote about the Chinese stratagem of board game ‘Go’ to surround India. Its extended to MSR , OBOR and CPEC reflected in the philosophy in Sun Tzu’s classical ‘Shi’–sovereignty. Jinping has added modernity, Chinese International banks and Remembi for stability. Indian leaders of RSS detest Western ways.

China had Deng Xiaoping who led China in the 1970-80s and “Set The Template For China’s Rise”, and can be compared to PM Narendra Modi who had led India only for three years and India has risen. Deng survived the deprivations of Mao’s Long March and had vowed that the ‘100 years of Humiliation’ that China had seen with Britain’s’ Opium war and Western domination will never repeat and cautioned his people to ‘Bide your Time’. Deng felt China must change the rules set by USA for the world. PM Modi plans to move faster on Indian rules with USA’s support.

Magna Carta, was the greatest historical declarations which compelled King John to accede to the demands for civil and religious liberty. Dutchman Hugo Grotius (1583- 1658) was admitted to the bar aged 16 and he scripted “Mare Librum,” in which he defended the freedom of the sea and the maritime rights of his country against the arrogant Portuguese and British maritime power in suppressing the commerce of other nations in European waters.

China has taken a opposite tack to stop religious and political liberties but allowed Chinese to become rich. China has forced “Mare Clausum,” like Malaysia has announced for the Malacca Straits to close seas, and China looks to Lao and Machiavelli’s ideal biographies to rise and today’s leaders including PM Modi seem to be following these too with shades of Chankaya the Chatur and Hindutva.


The US has challenged Malaysia’s restriction on military manoeuvres with weapons in its EEZ and requirement of prior notification for passage of nuclear-powered vessels in its territorial sea as unlawful, contravening customary international law.

Xi Jinping claims the South China Seas and could use its trump card of the largest island Taiping (Itu Aba) which currently belongs to Taiwan and is habited with a C-130 runway and Coast Guard. China may make Taiwan a party to ITLOS-UNCLOS claim. China has changed names in Arunachal to claim, and has changed Taiwan’s name to “Zhongguo Taipei” instead of “Zhonghua”. Both look inconsequential and mean China, but Zhonghua refers to a general concept of a Chinese nation, while Zhongguo refers to the People’s Republic of China.

PM Modi is a brilliant student of politics and knows the ills of India as a Hindu Rashtra RSS Pracharak and a Hindutva believer who suffered the deprivation of RSS with its off shoots the VHP and Bajrang Dal for years as China gained. PM Modi has used the RSS and affiliates to power him to Prime Minister ship. He has worked hard, reduced corruption and data is being fed to media to inform Indians of ills, latest being Republic TV to help clean up India through social media. Indians have to support the drive to bring defaulters to book, who slowed India’s destiny to book. Has India’s time come ?

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