Detail analysis at LAC India China Tension
The current situation in south asia building up a mess which can suck in whole world if things not normalize.
Before the June 15 clash in Galwan in Ladakh, after several rounds of meetings between local commanders and at least two meetings at the level of major generals which didn’t resolve the issues, India and China held lieutenant-general-level talks on June 6. Reports suggested that the Chinese side, led by Major General Liu Lin, commander of South Xinjiang Military Region, refused to discuss Chinese positions in Galwan.
Map design by Samiah Bilal
Based on annotated map by Lt Gen H S Panag (originally carried by theprint.in) showing areas in and around Galwan Valley that have been secured by the PLA
Keeping Galwan off the table was not without operational sense. PLA troops have positioned themselves on high ground in the sector at the confluence of Galwan and Shyok Rivers. These positions give them the advantage of observing and, if required, interdicting India’s crucial line of communication, the Durbak-Shyok-Daulat Beg Oldie (DSDBO) Road. Galwan, thus, acquires a more than tactical advantage, as we shall shortly discuss.
In the theatre of operations, the other places where PLA troops have come up to their claim line include Hot Springs, south of Galwan, Pangong Tso, a high-altitude lake further south and Demchok, the southernmost point of forward PLA deployments. Each of these points gives PLA a tactical advantage and combined turn that into a theatre advantage (see accompanying map). Incidentally, Pangong Tso is the lake where a Bollywood film, 3 Idiots, filmed a song. The Line of Actual Control (LAC) slices through the lake with about one-third on the western Indian side and the rest on the Chinese side.
Therefore, any analysis of the situation and forward deployments have to be seen at the tactical, theatre and politico-strategic levels.
WHAT IS BEING SAID
Expectedly, the Indian media, including many defence analysts, blame China for ingressing into Indian territory, west of the LAC. This claim is false on two counts: one, as per the UN Resolutions on Jammu and Kashmir, India is in illegal occupation of territory, including Ladakh, where we are witnessing the current stand-off between India and China; two, as described by Indians themselves, the LAC is not demarcated and both sides have their claim lines — Indian patrols show their presence east of the LAC, while PLA patrols push west of it.
Ironically, China’s claim that its troops are present on Chinese territory is in line with the argument mounted by the Indian side, including by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who said in a televised statement that Chinese troops had not intruded across the country’s borders. Modi’s statement contradicted the position taken by his foreign minister.
While there are two sectors where India and China meet, the other being in the east where the boundaries of Nepal end, this article will primarily focus on the western sector, which is eastern Ladakh and currently the theatre of tensions.
PLA troops have positioned themselves on high ground in the sector at the confluence of Galwan and Shyok Rivers. These positions give them the advantage of observing and, if required, interdicting India’s crucial line of communication, the Durbak-Shyok-Daulat Beg Oldie (DSDBO) Road. Galwan, thus, acquires a more than tactical advantage.
Many Indian and foreign analysts have tried to figure out why the border has suddenly flared up. This question is important for many reasons:
• The June 15 clash in Galwan is the second, though more violent, such incident in more than 45 years. Before the Galwan incident, Indian and PLA troops clashed on May 5/6 and then 16/17 in the Pangong area. At least 72 troops on the Indian side sustained injuries and the commanding officer of the unit, 11 Mahar, sustained life-threatening injuries.
• On September 7, 1993, the two sides had entered into an agreement that binds them to resolve the boundary question through peaceful means, though it also states that “The two sides agree that references to the line of actual control in this Agreement do not prejudice their respective positions on the boundary question.”
• The 1993 agreement was bolstered by more specific provisions in a 1996 arrangement.
• The latest arrangement is the 2013 Border Defence Cooperation Agreement (BDCA). On October 23, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh met with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang to sign the BDCA in the wake of a stand-off in Depsang (Daulat Beg Oldie) area (northwest of Galwan).
• India and China trade, as of 2019, stood at 85 billion dollars, with both sides committed to enhancing the trade volume and China allowing India to reduce the latter’s 50 billion dollar trade deficit.
• Finally, overall, relations between the two have been improving since former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s path-breaking visit to China in 1988.
WHY NOW…
So, what happened?
Various reasons are being put forward for China’s assertive behaviour. The most favourite with analysts, in India and elsewhere, is the argument that China has responded to India’s improvement of its lines of communication infrastructure along the LAC. Most such analyses suggest that this is what China has been doing for long on its side and, now that India has taken a leaf out of China’s playbook, the latter has reacted.
Standalone, this argument is a lazy way out of a more complex situation. Its relevance, however, increases if you plug it into other developments that combine enhanced capabilities with intentions. Consider:
• India reopened the Daulat Beg Oldie (DBO) air base in 2008. It had abandoned it during the 1962 war with China, when troops stationed there just left helter-skelter, though the PLA never got to DBO and never occupied it. By 2013, the Indian Air Force had built the DBO advanced landing ground to the point that its transport aircraft C-130 and C-130J-30 could land there. While China was aware of this development, it didn’t protest.
• Ditto for the DSDBO all-weather road, that was commissioned to be built in 2000. However, in 2011 it was found that there was a problem with the alignment of the DSDBO Road and work had to be initiated to realign it. Most of it was completed in 2019. India has also constructed a Bailey bridge — the Col Chewang Rinchen Setu — on Shyok River, which was inaugurated in October 2019. Both the road and bridge cut down the time for reinforcements or forward deployments of troops and equipment from two days to just six hours. India is also building feeder communication lines to the east from the main DSDBO Road to supply its deployments.
It should be obvious that with other developments at the politico-strategic level, these tactical and theatre developments assume military-operational significance.
The other reason trotted out by various analysts, notably the Indian-American scholar Ashley Tellis, are about a China under pressure internally and from the world on the mishandling of the Covid-19 crisis, an economic downturn, troubles in Hong Kong etc. In other words, Xi Jinping is facing the heat at home and wants to be assertive abroad.
Buddhist monasteries are seen on the top of the hill in Leh, the joint capital of the union territory of Ladakh, on June 22, 2020 | AFP
Yet another argument pins these developments on India’s strategic partnership with the US, Washington’s Indo-Pacific strategy and India’s inclusion in the Quad (short for Quadrilateral Security Dialogue), which includes the US, India, Japan and, now, Australia. As a February 2019 report, carried online by research organisation RAND, notes, “For now, the US is probably content with simply using the Quad as a way to signal unified resolve against China’s growing assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific, without directly antagonising Beijing. That may change in the future if US–China relations deteriorate further, or Beijing’s behaviour towards regional neighbours becomes even more aggressive.”
Interestingly, all these arguments, while being pieces of the larger puzzle, miss out the elephant in the Buddhist tale about the blind men and the elephant. Each piece (the part of the elephant) is considered to be the whole. It is not. Let’s get to the elephant then.
PIECING TOGETHER THE PUZZLE
Military and strategic preparedness is a function not just of intentions, but also of current and evolving capabilities. Equally, when State X sees that State Y is not only developing its capabilities through alliances and bandwagoning, but is also giving expression to changing intentions, X would opt for its own action that best suits its security and other interests.
History, both general and military, shows that the best time to negotiate or change the ground situation is from a position of strength. Weakness begets a bad deal. It is in this context that all the pieces come together. DBO, DSDBO, the road’s off-ramps, bridges, infrastructure, Indo-US partnership etc become meaningful not singly, but in tandem, and with the expression of new intentions.
While the Indian media is flagging and flogging specific provisions from the 1993, 1996 and 2013 bilateral arrangements and accusing China of violating those agreements, they are forgetting two key developments since the current Indian government took power.
Police detains an Indian trader from an anti-China protest in New Delhi on June 22, 2020 | AP
This is where we come to the decision by New Delhi to illegally bifurcate and annex the occupied territory of Jammu and Kashmir, including Ladakh. Not only that, but the Indian government brought both Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh under direct rule from Delhi, by downgrading the status of Jammu and Kashmir — of which Ladakh was a part — into two separate Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh.
India’s argument is that it was an internal matter violates bilateral understandings with Pakistan (Simla/Lahore), China (1993, 1996, 2013) and UN Resolutions that have determined the State of Jammu and Kashmir as disputed territory. Additionally, New Delhi issued official maps that show the liberated areas of Azad Kashmir, Gilgit-Baltistan and Aksai Chin as part of India. The latter claim was not missed by Beijing.
For Beijing, this is intention and capabilities (alliances) trying to bridge the differential. From a military-operational perspective, laying claim to Aksai Chin translates into a strategic intent to sever Tibet’s link with Xinjiang. As a former Indian Army GOC-in-C Northern Command, Lt-Gen HS Panag wrote: “Much as I would like to speculate about China’s broader political aims, the direct political aim is simple — to maintain the ‘status quo’ along the LAC on its own terms, which is to forestall any threat, howsoever remote, to Aksai Chin and NH 219.” China’s response is perfectly in line with sensible operational strategy because today’s ‘remote’, if left unchecked, can be tomorrow’s ‘imminent’.
China’s pre-emption of the forward-leaning posture of the Indian Army (and state) has, therefore, to be seen and appreciated in terms both of capabilities and intentions. Luckily for China, India showed its hand (intentions and false bravado) before it had acquired matching capabilities. For China to have waited until the capabilities were aligned with intentions would have been operational and strategic folly.
The recent stand-off and analysis must, therefore, move from the tactical (Galwan or Pangong Tso encounters) to the theatre (multiple pressures on nodal points in eastern Ladakh) to the politico-strategic. But this is where one must revisit history and the 1962 War.
Comments
Post a Comment