Iraq, China and Pakistan are three Asian countries that share at least one propensity: they all seek to forcibly alter the regional status quo by re-defining borders and laying claim to territory that is not theirs. All three nations seem to suffer from a notion of having been short changed by history and by departing colonial powers, who they claim did not define borders clearly. They all believe that it is their sacred duty to redress the wrongs of history by forcibly taking territory denied to them. They are all impelled by a sense of righteousness of their cause. It is this kind of pathological national obsession that is at the root of instability in Asia

Iraq, for instance, believes that Kuwait is another Iraqi province carved out into an independent nation by colonial powers. This was the real cause of the Gulf War and the subsequent tragedy that has struck that part of the world. China`s vision is even more awesome. It seeks territory in India, Vietnam, and Taiwan and in the seas around its long shores. In the late 1950s, China surreptitiously took control of several thousand square miles of territory in the Indian state of Jammu & Kashmir called Aksai Chin. This despite the fact that the area was clearly marked in all international maps as part of India. If there was a dispute, China chose not to discuss it with India, a country, which it claimed, was a friend at that time. It simply occupied the territory because there were no Indian soldiers guarding it. As recently as in January 1999, China claimed that India continues to occupy 90,000 square miles of its territory. This is frightening considering that China occupied a vast country adjoining India called Tibet in the early 1950s, proceeded to destroy the local culture of that land and settle ethnic Chinese to make the locals a minority. This kind of colonisation is rare in the 20^th century. But what is perhaps even more frightening is the fact that the Chinese are not content with taking just Tibet - they continue to lay claim to thousands of square kilometres of territory adjoining Tibet.

Pakistan`s drive for more territory began right from the moment of its birth in August 1947. It invaded the then independent state of Jammu & Kashmir and managed to capture about a third of that state. The Pakistani invasion led to the accession of the state of Jammu & Kashmir to India. Pakistan also claimed - and continues to claim - territory in the Indian state of Gujarat. In 1965, India conceded territory in Gujarat to Pakistan. The then Pakistani dictator, General Ayub Khan, who claimed that India had acted like "a friend", applauded this gesture, but then secretly formulated a plan to invade Kashmir. The aim was to force India to gift that State like it had gifted "disputed" land in the Gujarat borders. Operation Gibraltar, as that invasion plan was code named, failed and India launched a full-scale offensive in Pakistan. The war ground to a stalemate but the Pakistani strategic aim was lost. Even today Pakistan continues to claim Kashmir and parts of Gujarat.

The average citizen in the West would be aghast if his or her government were to make the annexation of bordering territory the central plank of its agenda. The average European today would never support the idea of going to war for territory. The idea of annexing territory through war has been denigrated and deliberately stamped upon by successive European governments and their people. Yet, even today in nations like China, Iraq and Pakistan - not to speak of others - governments have and continue to propound the idea of territorial annexation as part of their policy. In Pakistan, the annexation of the Indian states of Kashmir and parts of Gujarat is the most fundamental plank of state ideology and has been so for decades. So much so that no government in Pakistan today can even think about talking real peace with India.

The not so covert official Pakistani support for terrorism in the State of Jammu & Kashmir has impacted on the average Pakistani in several deleterious ways. The success of the Jihad in Afghanistan has radicalised a large percentage of the Pakistani population, encouraged fringe fundamentalist elements and drilled into the population that the fight against India has religious sanction. This dynamic has not spared the Pakistani military, which otherwise would have grown into a model secular institution as the one in Turkey. Thus India is confronted by a radicalised, territory hungry nation that is ready to fight to get what it believes is its right. An emboldened Pakistani leadership views its radicalised population as a military asset to be used in Afghanistan, Kashmir, Myanmar and wherever else necessary.

Confidence Building Measures (CBMs), in the circumstances, cannot but be futile. The US Department of State and its various affiliates have been funding organisations and individuals to step up the process of "confidence building" between India and Pakistan. At the official level, it has been pressuring the governments of India and Pakistan to initiate such measures, hold negotiations and do everything to resolve the deadlock in relations. This in itself is laudable and well intentioned. But it ignores the grim reality in the Subcontinent and its environs.

Both Pakistan and China feel it is legitimate to claim Indian territory and to do everything in their means to achieve that goal, including the development of weapons of mass destruction aimed at India. China went nuclear as early as in 1964 - just two years after the India-China war of 1962. India reacted to the Chinese nuclear tests by announcing that it too would develop nuclear weapons. This was, however, easier said then done. In 1967, India sent a high level emissary to the United States (this is recorded in the minutes of those meetings prepared by both sides) seeking a US nuclear umbrella against the Chinese similar to the one provided to Japan. When the US refused to do anything of the sort, India approached the UK, which also refused. India`s last request was to the Soviets, who also refused to oblige. India was out in the cold and surrounded by hostile, territory-hungry neighbours. The only solution was to begin a military and nuclear weapons drive, which culminated more than 30 years later in the series of nuclear tests in the deserts of Rajasthan in 1998.

It should be noted that the Pakistani nuclear weapons plan also preceded the first Indian nuclear explosion in 1974 and not followed it as it is sometimes made out by Western. In 1972, the then Pakistani Prime, Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, assembled his scientists and told them "we will eat grass if we have to but we will build the bomb". Pakistan`s first nukes were ready in the 1980s thanks to two factors - massive conventional military aid from the United States (which was then fighting a proxy war against the Soviets in Afghanistan) and covert nuclear weapons assistance from China in the form of bomb designs, ballistic missile technology etc. In early April 1998, Pakistan tested a Chinese built missile procured via North Korea, which it called Ghauri. This missile was clearly capable of carrying a nuclear payload and striking deep at major urban targets in the Indian heartland. The official US reaction to the Ghauri test was that Pakistan had every right to take steps in its own security interests.

If the Pakistanis and their friends in the West hoped that India would continue to disregard such major developments, they were wrong. The Ghauri launch was one of a series of developments that had been troubling India. The Indian government decided to carry out nuclear weapons tests within a week of the Ghauri test. Pressure had been building up within the India politico-military establishment for nuclear tests for some years. Previous governments had vetoed the idea primarily because of the expected international backlash. The BJP government felt that the sky would not fall down if a few countries, including the United States, imposed sanctions against India. This time the aim was to declare India as a nuclear weapons state. Logically, the US should have reacted by saying that India as an independent country, like Pakistan, had every right to take steps in its own security interests.

And Indian vital security interest is indeed the core issue. One of the main ideas behind the formation of the United Nations was to bring an end to the concept of territorial annexation as a legitimate part of any nation`s policy or ideology. National boundaries were sacrosanct, or so the world leaders said. For, an inordinately large number of countries are plagued by some territorial dispute or the other. A peaceful world order could not be ensured if any of these territorial disputes were legitimised. The UN has tried to play fair but the big powers have not. They have chosen to promote disputes where it has suited their national aims. Thus Croatia and Slovenia were egged on by a resurgent Germany to declare independence and the Western major powers all welcomed the emergence of these breakaway republics. The Kurds in Turkey, Iran and Syria have been denied similar recognition; numerous ethnic demands in Africa have consistently been ignored; so have separatist demands in Thailand, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. The relatively newer nation states, especially those in the so-called Third World, therefore view the Big Powers as potentially threatening. These states have either allied to the Big Powers or have sought to develop the means to keep their boundaries together by sheer force. This has invariably cut into their resources, and has contributed to keeping them poor.

India is a rare country in Asia that never had either a nuclear umbrella or a military alliance with any other nation. It ploughed a lonely furrow, as the phrase goes, and was forced to seek ways and means to protect its territorial integrity. This is the underlying dynamic of Indian grand strategy. But the enemies of India would like to interpret India`s deep-rooted insecurity and the resulting quest for military competence as manifestation of a desire to seek great power status. Such a view is uncharitable besides being patently false.

The US cry to put a halt on nuclear weapons production as a cure for the situation in the Subcontinent is, therefore, as unrealistic as a demented physician`s solution to cure AIDS through treatment for weight-loss. As long as the US State Department views the Subcontinent with extreme prejudice and subjectivity, it will not solve anything, and its policies for this part of the world will come unstuck. If the US has no means to put an end to territorial aggrandisement in this part of the world, it should leave the region to its own unholy devices and to whatever fate madmen here wish upon themselves.