Let them ChiPak

Should New Delhi be unduly worried about ChiPak? ChiPak is not a misspelling of Sunderlal Bahuguna's Chipko movement; ChiPak is the telescoped term to denote growing chumminess between China and Pakistan.

Teetering on the brink of being declared a failed state by an international community increasingly alarmed by its dangerous and growing instability, Pakistan desperately needs a friend who'll provide a strong and dependable shoulder to lean on. That friend used to be the US, which still remains Pakistan's closest ally and biggest donor of much-needed foreign aid to fill Islamabad's empty coffers (empty largely because of a ruinously high defence budget inflated by ingrained Indo-phobia).

However, after Operation Geronimo, and the elimination of Osama bin Laden on Pakistani soil by raiding US Seals, Washington-Islamabad relations have shown signs of strain. There is growing anger and dismay in Pakistan - not just among the army and the ISI but also in civilian circles - that a foreign power could with impunity carry out what in effect was a mini invasion of their country. Bad as this slap in the face to Pakistan's national sovereignty is, what's worse is that bin Laden's presence in the country buttresses the charge - long made by New Delhi, and now belatedly being echoed by Washington - that Islamabad is the world's biggest sponsor of global terrorism.

Islamabad's support - no matter how compromised and suspect - to Washington's efforts to neutralise the terrorist threat in the region remains crucial to US interests, ensuring that, despite occasional raps across the knuckles, Pakistan continues to be the beneficiary of Uncle Sam's largesse. But the growing groundswell of anti-Americanism at home makes it tactically necessary for Islamabad to flaunt another friend to counter the big, bad US bully. Inevitably, that friend has to be China, whose rivalry and unresolved border disputes with India make it Pakistan's natural ally.

An Islamabad-Beijing connect would not only keep Washington on its toes and make it mind its manners in its increasingly high-handed dealings with Pakistan, but would also act as a curb on New Delhi's ambitions of regional power status and its growing cosiness with the US. China has long helped Pakistan be as painful a thorn in India's side as possible; without Beijing's covert and overt help Islamabad would not have been New Delhi's nuclear nightmare as it is today.

Has talk of ChiPak made that nightmare worse? Not necessarily. An increasingly isolated and desperate Pakistan which feels impelled into a nuclear confrontation with India is a far worse threat than a Pakistan whose self-confidence and sense of security has been boosted by Beijing. On its part, China would certainly like Pakistan to remain a festering sore impeding India's progress. That said, Beijing has its eyes firmly set on its main goal, which self-professedly is to overtake the US and become the world's biggest economy in the next two decades. China is not going to let anything interfere with that single-minded objective. So a symbolic show of solidarity with Pakistan is fine. But any nuclear adventurism on Islamabad's part vis-a-vis India, which could lead to a much wider confrontation and threaten to derail Beijing's impetus to global economic hegemony, is in China's worst interests and is not an option that the Dragon would allow Pakistan to entertain.

For all its issues with New Delhi, Beijing is only too aware of India's growing economic importance not just as a huge potential market for Chinese goods but also as a stakeholder in common concerns in forums like the WTO where the long-established paramountcy of the western world is being challenged by the so-called BRICS countries: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

Chindia is, and will be, more important to Beijing than ChiPak can ever be. So what should New Delhi's reaction be? ChiPak? Chipakne doh!