There is much, much more to the latest visa row with the Chinese than the simplistic explanation that the Northern Army Commander, Lt. Gen. B.S. Jaswal, was nominated for a military exchange, Beijing viewed his visit as undesirable, and New Delhi retaliated rather strongly by suspending all military contact with the Chinese, except routine border-personnel meetings.

Like many aspects of Sino-Indian relations, last week’s media frenzy over the Northern Army Commander’s non-visit can be traced to the shenanigans in Indo-US relations. The United States of America’s military industrial complex and the American lobby in New Delhi needed to whip up fears about Beijing in the run-up to the trip to Washington, in the last week of September, of the defence minister, A.K. Antony. And the rancour over Jaswal, which has been beneath the surface in India’s relations with China, came in handy. It was more than a month ago that the Chinese expressed their reservations about receiving Jaswal. Immediately, with a swiftness that took the Chinese by surprise, India suspended all military exchanges with Beijing. One of the more reassuring aspects of this episode was that, for over a month, the entire controversy remained under wraps.

The ministry of external affairs normally leaks like a sieve, but the discipline with which this extremely sensitive development in Sino-Indian relations was prevented from getting into the spotlight proved that the MEA’s east Asia division and the Indian embassy in Beijing are run as tight ships. This is the absolute need of the times, an imperative to meet the challenges in bilateral relations with Beijing. The news that eventually broke, last week, of an impasse in Sino-Indian military exchanges was a deliberate leak, which, of course, is not unusual in New Delhi. But if the discipline of the MEA’s east Asia division was reassuring, it was equally disconcerting that South Block has now traced the leak to those seeking to protect and promote US interests.

The American embassy in New Delhi has long boasted that it can do anything it wants with sections of the capital’s media. The mission’s officials have in the past narrated to this writer, off the record, instances where they have used their moles in the media to bring about policy changes within the Indian government. The manner of the spin of the army visa story is the latest example of the Americans doing it again. It is absolutely important for them that a paranoia should be whipped up in New Delhi over China’s ‘evil’ intentions against India in the days and weeks before the defence minister travels to Washington. When Pranab Mukherjee was shifted out of the ministry of defence in the last big cabinet reshuffle of the first United Progressive Alliance government, the Americans miscalculated that Mukherjee’s successor would be someone they could manipulate or push around. They found Mukherjee far too tough to crack, but they also mistook the soft-spoken Antony’s demeanour and brevity as shortcomings in a defence minister.

After several firm and clear-headed meetings between Antony and the US national security adviser, James Jones, in the last 19 months, the American military industrial complex is wiser. So is the Obama administration, which was clearly struck by the way Antony recently found a way out of an impasse over end-user arrangements for US weapons sold to India, an issue which had dogged Indo-US defence relations for several years. The conventional wisdom on Indo-US defence relations is that the Americans are single-mindedly pursuing a lucrative order for 126 multi-role combat planes for the Indian Air Force, potentially the biggest deal in the entire history of military aviation. But such a view paints a distorted picture of the current nature of military exchanges between New Delhi and Washington.

The Pentagon clearly has been unhappy that the overall momentum of Indo-US defence engagement has significantly slowed down from the days of the previous Bush administration, when this segment of the bilateral relationship showed greater promise. The US defence secretary, Robert Gates, would like to see India’s signature on three agreements related to bilateral military co-operation when Antony is in Washington in just under four weeks. All three agreements have been controversial: the communication inter-operability and security memorandum agreement, the logistics support agreement, and the basic exchange and co-operation agreement for geo-spatial co-operation. At the time of writing, the defence minister is disinclined to give his approval for any of these agreements although those in his ministry who wish to open India’s arms to the American military industrial complex are strongly in favour of putting India’s signature on these.

In this context, creating a scare about China helps Washington. Despite a change in administration and the bulk of political appointees in top positions, institutional memory at the US department of defence is good enough for those dealing with India now to recall the story of a sweeping turnaround in relations between India and the US on the one hand, and between India and China, on the other, under the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government. Then, George Fernandes, the National Democratic Alliance’s defence minister, had described China as India’s “Enemy Number One”. At the same time, the Vajpayee government blamed China for the compulsions behind India’s decision to exercise its nuclear option in 1998.

Naturally, Beijing was furious. But eventually, China’s anger gave way to its pragmatism. When the Chinese realized that the NDA government was moving closer to Washington in every sphere in a way that no previous Indian government had done, they feared that the US may well consider persuading India to be a counter-weight to China in Asia. They also anticipated that with ministers like Fernandes in the cabinet in senior positions, India may succumb to the temptation of being drawn into an alliance led by the US against China’s rise.

So, China’s then ambassador in New Delhi came down from his high horse and promptly called on Fernandes, quickly signalling that bygones should be bygones. The NDA’s defence minister was pleasantly surprised that despite the minister’s assertion of China being India’s Enemy Number One, the ambassador extended an invitation to Fernandes to visit China.

The American effort now is similarly to turn the tables on China. The spin-masters dealing with India in Washington are convinced that just as fears of an Indo-US joint front persuaded the Chinese, a decade ago, to reach out to the NDA government in general, and to Fernandes in particular, fear of China — real or imagined — could now be used to convince Antony that he must provide a shot in the arm at the political level to catalyse Indo-US defence engagement. Of course, the Chinese provided a handy tool to the Americans by doing what they did to Jaswal and by insisting that Chinese visas for Kashmiris would only be stapled to, not stamped on, their Indian passports.

But the MEA is unlikely to play ball in this scheme. It wanted to keep the Jaswal controversy under wraps because it had taken the effective action of freezing all military exchanges with China in retaliation for the discourtesy shown the Northern Military Commander. While the MEA was convinced that this firm retaliation had rattled the Chinese, it did not want the situation to escalate through any emotive debate in the media over a holy cow that the army continues to be for an influential section of Indian public opinion.

The UPA’s leadership believes that the issue has to be resolved at the political and diplomatic levels, and is looking at the military retaliation of freezing bilateral defence exchanges as merely a short-term tactic. There is a powerful school of thought in the UPA leadership which believes that the Jaswal episode may not have been a bad thing altogether and that its dramatic nature may help clear the air over where China actually stands on the status of Jammu and Kashmir.

Continuing the Washington- inspired spin designed to escalate the visa row, there were weekend reports that China’s ambassador to India, Zhang Yan, had been summoned to South Block last Friday to be administered a rebuke over the treatment of Jaswal. Zhang and South Block officials have been discussing the issue for weeks now. Friday’s meeting was to finalize the arrangements for travel to China by Gautam Bambawale, the MEA’s joint-secretary for east Asia, who will reach Beijing this weekend to work out political solutions to irritants in Sino-Indian relations, including the Jaswal case. Hopefully, if Bambawale’s mission, which is on schedule at the time of writing, is successful, Antony may not have to succumb to American tactics in Washington on September 27.