喜马拉雅河_地缘政治和战略视角

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时间:2023-04-09

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上传者:战必胜
INDIAN DEFENCE REVIEW 57
23.2-Apr/Jun 08
O
N OCTOBER 7, 1950 THE PLA’S SECOND FIELD
Army marched into Eastern Tibet to
‘liberate’ the Roof of the World. Several
factors can explain this move.
A few days after the beginning of the invasion,
the
Xinhua News Agency
issued a communiqué
that the PLA would soon achieve
“the task of
marching into Tibet to liberate the Tibetan people,
to complete the important mission of unifying the
motherland, to prevent imperialism from
encroaching on even one inch of our sovereign
territory and to protect and build the frontiers of
Motherland”.
1
This enumerates some of Mao’s
motivations.
The historian Warren Smith has quoted a
Scottish missionary called Beatty working in
eastern Tibet, who was told by a PLA officer that
“large numbers of yak, wild and domestic
animals would be needed to feed the PLA troops
[in Tibet]. The PLA officers and men talked of
going on to India once Tibet was in their
hands.”
2
Communist China had not only decided to
establish her
de facto
suzerainty over Tibet, (which
had never relay existed)
3
, but it was the first step
towards the South, the opening of the gateway to
India and to other countries that China claimed as
her own—Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim, etc. Mao had
termed Tibet as the palm of the hand with the five
fingers being Ladakh, Sikkim, Nepal, Bhutan and
NEFA.
Mao Zedong repeatedly stated his objective:
“There are two winds in the world, the east wind
and the west wind ... I think the characteristic of
the current situation is that the east wind prevails
over the west wind; that is, the strength of socialism
exceeds the strength of imperialism.”
4
These words were pronounced in 1957, but
even in 1950
“for China there was no question to
let the west wind prevail, it was the ‘sacred duty’
of the Chinese to look which side the wind blows.”
5
A ‘sacred duty’ to liberate Tibet, to make the East
wind prevail!
When I started getting acquainted with the
history of modern Tibet in the early seventies, I
came across a book,
Communist China and Tibet
by Gingsburg & Mathos. It was pointed out:
“He
who holds Tibet dominates the Himalayan
piedmont; he who dominates the Himalayan
piedmont, threatens the Indian subcontinent; and
he who threatens the Indian subcontinent may well
have all of South-East Asia within his reach, and
all of Asia.”
6
This sounded right and logical. Mao the
strategist knew this well, as did the British who had
always manoeuvred to keep Tibet as an
‘autonomous’ buffer zone between their Indian
colony and the Chinese and Russian empires. The
Government of independent India, upon inheriting
the past treaties signed by the British, should have
worn the British mantle with its advantages for
Indian security and its sense of responsibility vis-
à-vis Tibet. Unfortunately due to fear of appearing
to be a neo-colonialist state, they failed to do this,
without giving any thought to the consequences
which would follow.
The importance of the strategic position of
Tibet became even more obvious when China
joined the restricted circle of the nuclear nations.
Is there a better location than the Tibetan high
plateau to position Intercontinental Ballistic
Missiles (ICBMs) with nuclear warheads pointed
towards India or elsewhere? Strategically and
geographically, Tibet was the ideal place to locate
testing sites and for storing nuclear missiles.
7
The ‘coup’ of Tibetan ‘liberation’ was
therefore a master-stroke. It was a well-planned
affair. The Indian Intelligence Chief, B.N. Mullik,
a Nehru loyalist once wrote: “However, in
everything that Mao Zedong does there is a
purpose and a method, and, whilst keeping the
main aim always before him, he often makes
compromises in the details to prepare conditions
for the next step forward.”
8
By colonizing the Roof of the World, Mao
demonstrated to the world who the real leader of
Asia was, while showing simultaneously that India
HIMALAYAN RIVERS
Claude Arpi, an
author and a
journalist writes
regularly on Tibet,
China, India and Indo-
French relations in
The Pioneer
, the
New
Indian Express
,
Rediff.com
and other
Indian and French
publications. His new
books
Tibet: The Lost
Frontier
will be
launched in end May
2008.
claude@auroville.org.in
HIMALAYAN RIVERS
Claude Arpi
Geopolitics and Strategic Perspectives
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