Kashmir and The Powers That Be.

China's BRI-CPEC initiatives are well on their way to fruition. The CPEC that passes through Gilgit-Baltistan (GB), a region with Pakistan, is the flagship project of the BRI. Its success will signify a win-win model for all those who sign up to the BRI. CPEC's failure, on the other hand, will dent China's regional and global economic stature, credibility and stunt its ostensible challenge to the US' singular position as the dominant global economic power. Predictably, the BRI-CPEC have attracted the ire of the US, India etc, however, the Chinese economic juggernaut marches on relentlessly, regardless.

Three India-China issues merit attention here; Aksai Chin-Ladakh in the larger Kashmir region, Arunachal Pradesh in India's North East and India's frivolous objections to the CPEC passing through GB. India claims Aksai Chin as the eastern most part of Ladakh. China claims Aksai Chin as part of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Thus, two of these issues link China directly with the overall Kashmir imbroglio. This brings the national interests of three nuclear powers to clash ominously in the Kashmir region. India has recently 'annexed' the Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IOJ and K) region and Ladakh and appropriated them as Union Territories. China has summarily rubbished these theoretical absurdities, reiterated their disputed status and its own legitimate claim to Ladakh. Furthermore, the CPEC connects Xinjiang through GB to the Mekran Coast/Gwadar, a link that has enormous geopolitical, geostrategic and geo-economic connotations. The CPEC will dramatically alter the power matrix within Asia, giving a profound strategic advantage to China. With the CPEC in place, its massive roads, motorways and eventual rail networks will enable China to not only outflank India from the West but also the US and Allied forces in the Pacific. Chinese presence on the Mekran Coast will force the US and its allies' (including India) in the Pacific and Indian Oceans to look over their shoulders, dividing and dissipating their military efforts. Most importantly China, thus becomes a two-ocean nation and nullifies drastically the strategic advantage of the Malacca Straits chokepoint to the US and its allies. Therefore, the US' and India's unrelenting efforts to demonize, dismantle, denigrate, disrupt and destroy the CPEC as it passes through GB and moves southwards!

A conventional-nuclear war in Kashmir will inevitably suck in China and enhance the...