World War II and its expansive impact on the Subcontinent is largely forgotten by India’s strategic community. But its ghosts still shape Asia’s great-power politics. They surfaced last week when US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping met in Washington.

In India, there has been little attention to the affirmation of Trump and Xi that the US and China were victorious allies during World War II. References to history are rarely innocent. The past is interpreted and reinterpreted to serve the politics of the present.

Since returning to power, Trump has invoked America’s wartime cooperation with both Russia and China. His critics see these references as a way to justify his leader-level outreach to Vladimir Putin and Xi that is unsettling US allies in Europe and Asia. For Putin, the memory of victory supports Russia’s claim to a leading role in European security and the restoration of the “Yalta System” led by the US and the Soviet Union that shaped the European and global order. For Xi, it strengthens Beijing’s effort to present China as a victor of 1945 and undermine the “San Francisco System” of US alliances that defined the post-War Asian order.

The US-China wartime partnership is a historical fact, but it needs qualification. Washington’s ally in the war was the Republic of China (RoC) led by Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek) that now endures in Taiwan. The People’s Republic of China (PRC), led by Mao Zedong, emerged only in 1949. That distinction lies at the heart of Taipei’s response. Taiwanese officials have accused Beijing of using “narrative diplomacy” to undermine the historical identity of Taiwan.

Tokyo’s response reflected deep political unease. Imperial Japan was the wartime adversary against which America and China cooperated; it is now Washington’s principal Asian ally. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi spoke to Trump after his meeting with Xi. Japan’s foreign ministry said Trump explained the talks in detail, and the two reaffirmed their alliance and strategic coordination on China. Tokyo sought reassurance without making its concern an open quarrel with Washington. Recalling China and America as victorious partners, with Japan as the defeated aggressor, gives Beijing the political ammunition to challenge Tokyo’s present defence policies. The irony is difficult to miss. Japan is ramping up its defence spending to cope with the massive military imbalance with China and Beijing’s assertive policies on territorial disputes with Tokyo. In Beijing’s narrative, Japan is turning to militarism. For Beijing, a Japan that does not defer to China is a warmonger.

China also opposes Japan’s call to remove the obsolete “enemy state” clauses in the UN Charter directed at Japan, Germany and Italy after 1945. This is despite the UN’s earlier consensus to remove them. The stratagem is about pushing Japan onto the political defensive. The Trump-Xi........

© Indian Express