Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Oct 10: Stressing the need for better co-operation between the four QUAD countries – India, the United States, Australia and Japan—to meet the growing threats from China, the US secretary of state Mike Pompeo has said, “They (India) absolutely need the US to be their ally and partner in this fight” being posed by the massive build-up of the Chinese troops on the northern border.
Pointing out that China had amassed 60,000 troops on India’s northern border, had started “bullying” Australia because the country threatened to investigate the origin of the COVID-19 virus in its Wuhan district, China’s aggressive behavior in the Indo-Pacific, and such other threatening moves by the Chinese Communist Party, Pompeo hit out at Beijing’s “bad behavior” that “everyone in the QUAD countries have seen” and claimed that stern stand adopted by the Donald Trump administration in the US against Chinese policies had started working to change the situation. “The world has awakened. The tide’s begun to turn,” he claimed.
Pompeo gave a series of interviews to various media orgaisations in the US after a meeting between the external affairs ministers of the Quad countries in Tokyo earlier this week. The meeting which was their first in-person talks since the coronavirus pandemic began took place in the backdrop of China’s aggressive military behaviour in the Indo-Pacific, South China Sea and along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh.
“I was with my foreign minister counterparts from India, Australia, and Japan – a format that we call the Quad, four big democracies, four powerful economies, four nations, each of whom has real risk associated with the threats imposed – attempting to be imposed by the Chinese Communist Party. And they see it in their home countries too,” he said.
On the sideline of the QUAD gathering, Pompeo also had a separate meeting with the external affairs minister S Jaishankar in Tokyo in which they underscored the need to work together to advance peace, prosperity and security in the Indo-Pacific and around the globe.
Describing his meeting with Jaishankar “productive,” Pompeo referred to the troops build up on the northern border and said, “The Indians are seeing 60,000 Chinese soldiers on their northern border. They see, the people of their (Quad) nations understanding that we all slept on this for too long. For decades, the West allowed the Chinese Communist Party to walk all over us.”
Pompeo also hit out at the previous Barrack Obama administration whose vice-president Joe Bidden is currently Trump’s rival in the presidential election. “The previous administration bent a knee, too often allowed China to steal our intellectual properties and the millions of jobs that came along with it. They see that in their country too,” Pompeo said.
The US secretary of state said in his meetings with his counterparts from Japan, India and Australia, they began to develop a set of understandings and policies that can jointly take these countries to work to present a true resistance to the threats that the Chinese Communist Party poses to each of these nations. Referring to his Quad ministerial meeting, Pompeo said the three other countries Japan, India, and Australia were building out a coalition, build partners and allies around the world who understand the threat from the Chinese Communist Party in the same way that “we do so that they can protect jobs here at home”.
“But they’ve all seen it, whether it’s the Indians, who are actually having a physical confrontation with the Chinese up in the Himalayas in the northeastern part of India, the Chinese have now begun to amass huge forces against India in the north,” he said.
“Whether it’s the Australians who did the simple thing of saying the Chinese screwed this deal up with the virus, and we’d like to understand what happened and said we ought to have a full investigation, and in exchange for that, the Chinese Communist Party began to extort, coerce, bully the Australians,” Pompeo said.
Every one of these countries has seen this, he said, adding that people in each of these countries now understand the Chinese Communist Party presents a threat to them.
“The world has awakened. The tide’s begun to turn. And the United States under President Trump’s leadership has now built out a coalition that will push back against the threat and maintain good order, the rule of law, and the basic civic decency that comes from democracies controlling the world and not authoritarian regimes,” Pompeo said.
“We aim to protect the American people from the threat that the Chinese Communist Party poses,” he said.
“We need partners and friends. They’ll certainly try to react. But what the Chinese Communist Party had become accustomed to, frankly, for an awfully long time was watching America bend a knee, watching us turn the other cheek and appease them,” he said.
“That only encouraged their bad behaviour, their malign activity. Our push back – they understand we’re serious about it. They’ve watched that we’re going to confront them and impose costs upon them. I am confident that this activity, over time, will change the nature of what the Chinese Communist Party tries to do to harm America,” Pompeo said.
India and China have been locked in a border standoff in eastern Ladakh for over five months. The two sides have been holding talks at different levels and at different times in order to de-escalate the situation but without any improvement. The experts, both in the country and abroad, believe that China was only adopting delaying tactics under the plea of talks but had no intention to pull back and both the sides have started to dig down deep to stay in the snowy Himalayas braving the coming winter.
