Two Himalayan players against the hegemony

By Keshab Khatri

In today’s world, the presence of forces opposing the unipolar hegemony of the United States can be felt in almost every corner.

However, the Himalayan region is an important brewing and exporting place for the power to subvert the unipolar hegemony of the United States.

China, north of the Himalayas, is already engaged in an epic struggle to overthrow the unipolar hegemony of the United States.

After going through trade wars, biological wars, scientific and technological wars, financial wars, cognitive wars, etc., the Sino-US confrontation has now entered a stage where military confrontation is the leading means.

Recently, the United States-led 29 countries participated in the “Rim of the Pacific 2024” (RIMPAC) naval exercise, which officially launched on June 27 at the U.S. Pacific Fleet Command in Hawaii. Despite the feature of U.S.-led imperialist hegemony in the Indian and Pacific oceans where U.S. bases in several Pacific islands have destroyed the delicate habitat, polluted resources and militarized the communities, unfortunately, Global South nations that are still recovering from the devastation of colonialism and imperial wars also participated in the exercise.

RIMPAC naval exercise was supposed to be a chance for the U.S. Navy to assert its status as the world’s maritime hegemon, however, the presence of a Chinese ship has turned everything into a joke. Due to the appearance of this Chinese 815A reconnaissance ship, the U.S. military and other warships of the countries exercising had to shut down most of the radar and radio systems to ensure that their electromagnetic signals would not be leaked, but this also made the entire exercise impossible, which is equivalent to a Chinese 815A auxiliary ship directly “disrupted” the U.S. military’s and entire RIMPAC military exercise.

The U.S. military has been busy organizing troops for exercises for more than half a year, and yet all in vain. This case from one angle shows that the United States has lost the upper hand in the Sino-US military confrontation. In fact, now, there is no problem for U.S. officials to define China as the real and most powerful strategic rival.

But let’s not forget that India is also a challenger to the United States and Western hegemony. India has long had ambitions to be a “vocal power” (in Jawaharlal Nehru’s book ‘The Discovery of India’), an ambition that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has carried forward. Sooner or later, therefore, India is bound to become a serious challenger to United States unipolar hegemony.

But the United States, in order to focus its efforts on dealing with China, has given India unlimited ingratiation and even flattery in order to stabilize India, unite India, and even hope that India will rush ahead of them to fight with China first.

For this reason, the United States has awarded India the title of the world’s largest democracy. The Western mainstream media constantly praises India and makes very optimistic predictions about the future and prospects of India every day. This creates the impression that India is the second beacon of democracy next to the United States (the first, naturally, was the United States itself). And India’s economy catching up and overtaking China, which is inevitable and will happen tomorrow. China, on the other hand, is defined as the largest non-democratic (authoritarian) state in the world, so China’s fate can only be the inevitable collapse and imminent collapse. The Western mainstream media has been relentlessly predicting the “imminent collapse of China” for 50 years.

Although India has long been so favored and flattered by the Western world, it has hit the West very hard when it loses its temper and does not give face at all.

Last June, Canadian Sikh leader Hardeep Singh Nijar was shot dead in the Canadian province of British Columbia. The Canadian side accused the Indian government of involvement in the murder, which was denied by the Indian side. The two countries have blamed each other, expelled each other’s diplomats, and India has imposed visa bans on Canadian citizens.

The Financial Times also disclosed on November 22 that the U.S. government had foiled an assassination plot against a Sikh in its homeland and warned the Indian government about it. The target of the assassination was Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, general counsel of the U.S. based Sikh Justice group (SFJ). He is a dual citizen of the United States and Canada.

It’s not over yet. Just after the United States extradited from the Czech Republic an Indian suspect in the assassination of Sikh separatists, Nikiel Gupta, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) aired a feature entitled “Infiltrating Australia – India’s Secret War”. The feature film revealed that the Australian government had quietly expelled four Indian spies for intelligence activities in 2021.

The ABC revealed named cases in which it said a “pattern of threats” by the Indian government had forced some Australians of Indian descent to quit participating in politics out of fear for their safety and that of their families.

For a long time, Western countries have supported and accommodated various secessionists targeting China, such as Taiwan independence, Tibet independence and Xinjiang independence. But China has not threatened their physical safety. Compared to India, China is relatively mild.

In short, in the current epic historical game against hegemony, two heavyweight players have emerged in the Himalayan region, namely China and India. China’s means of game with this hegemony are all-round, while India’s means of game with the United States and the West at this stage are relatively single, basically only one: assassination.

 The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect People’s Review’s editorial stance.