Checkmate & Stalemate

It has been a year since 20 Indian soldiers made the ultimate sacrifice at Galwan, East Ladakh, to safeguard India’s territorial integrity from Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops who had massed in that geography since early May 2020. These past 365 days have allowed us in India to reflect on China’s moves and motivations, analyse Chinese actions and reactions, think through how India can rise to the challenge and recommend what we need to do in both the short term as well as the longer term. Only a clear-headed analysis of the goings-on in eastern Ladakh over the past year, and a direct and uncomplicated diagnosis for the road ahead that India must traverse to meet the challenge, will serve the memories of our slain soldiers and the interests of the nation.

China’s induction of a large numbers of troops, variously estimated at between 50,000 and 60,000, into the western sector of the India-China boundary in April and early May 2020, did catch India by surprise. Eventually, India made a matching troop build-up with soldiers from the two sides locked in eyeball-to-eyeball situations in several sub-sectors. The important question is why did China make these military moves that violated all the bilateral agreements aimed at maintaining peace and tranquility between the two countries. What were their objectives and were they met?

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It seems obvious that one of China’s objectives was to move their ground positions right up to what it considers to be the edges of its territory. Simultaneously, they would be denying Indian troops access to tracts of land where they used to patrol earlier. However, we in India must keep in mind that China has never clearly delineated what it claims as its territory in Ladakh. While the November 7, 1959, Line of Actual Control (LAC) is referred to continually, this line has never been drawn on a map and presented to India. In any case, India has never accepted the November 1959 Line as the LAC. Moreover, when India insisted that the LAC must be clarified and confirmed, negotiations broke down as soon as the alignment of the LAC in the western sector was taken up. Thereafter, China has refused to go ahead with the clarificatory process. Thus, China has kept its claims in Ladakh deliberately vague, enabling it to make new claims when required, and ratchet up military tensions with India at a time of its choosing.

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A second objective for China must surely have been to exhibit to India and the world the extent of its military strength after decades of rising military expenditures, years of military modernisation and reorganisation as well as the acquisition and production of new weapons systems, many of which are domestically manufactured. China’s advances in science and technology, together with the restructuring of its armed forces, now enable her to protect her frontiers, however she defines them. Military coercion was definitely a Chinese objective in eastern Ladakh.

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Another related goal would have been to emphasise and highlight the great asymmetry in economic, military, technological and comprehensive power between China, on the one hand, and India, on the other. Even a cursory comparison of the GDP of the two nations brings out this asymmetry in no uncertain terms, with China at US$14 trillion and India at US$3 trillion. Furthermore, China has traditionally believed in a hierarchical system of ranking of nations and Beijing believes India has to be made to understand that she is not in China’s league. India must accept its inferior position in the Asian hierarchy of nations, while acknowledging that China is the big boy of Asia. India’s denial of this hierarchy has always been a sore point with Beijing. There is also China’s grudging acceptance that India’s diametrically opposite, democratic political system will pose a challenge to China’s insistence of its authoritarian model being the one to emulate by the developing world, if India were to succeed in delivering steadily rising standards of living to its people while maintaining the ‘one person, one vote’ methodology.

Currently, the armed forces of the two sides are still in close confrontation along stretches of eastern Ladakh, apart from the Pangong Tso sector where a disengagement was negotiated and successfully implemented. Indications are that the PLA is unwilling to disengage and de-escalate, leave alone restore the status quo ante.

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India’s external affairs minister S. Jaishankar describes the current situation in India-China relations as being at a crossroads, implying that the future direction of ties could be downward. India argues that peace in the border areas was the prerequisite for the rest of the relationship moving forward, particularly in the economic areas of trade and investment. If there is no peace and tranquility in the India-China border areas, then the rest of the relationship will be adversely impacted. In line with this thinking, India has banned Chinese apps, added several more levels of scrutiny to Chinese investments in India and, most recently, ensured that Chinese firms do not participate in India’s 5G telecom trials. India’s bottom line must necessarily be restoration of the status quo ante in Ladakh as it existed prior to April 2020. There can be no resiling from this position.

Contrarily, China argues that border affairs have been delinked from the rest of the relationship and hence China’s aggression in Ladakh must not negatively impact the rest of the relationship. If India permits this to happen, then the situation will be a win-win for China, meaning that China will win twice. India just cannot let such a situation develop. There is a sharp deterioration in the bilateral relationship is occurring and a reset in India-China ties is developing. Clearly, China and its aggression in eastern Ladakh are responsible for this current downturn in ties. We, in India, must see this clearly despite Chinese propaganda to the contrary. China must be made to understand that its military action in Ladakh may have led to some tactical gains, but that she has lost India strategically.

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How does India protect its national interest and its territorial integrity? In the short term, there is little doubt that Chinese power far outweighs India’s. Hence, India must build balancing international coalitions with other countries aimed at keeping Chinese aggression at bay. Three groups of countries qualify for such coalition-building—the major democracies of the world like the US, Japan, France, UK and Australia; countries in China’s periphery such as Russia and Vietnam; and nations in India’s neighbourhood such as Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

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India needs to build deep partnerships with some or all of these nations that go beyond mere political visits so as to create reliable and resilient supply chains, encourage cross-investments, and strengthen people-to-people and inter-institutional contacts. With many of these countries, the building blocks are in place, but some give and take will be necessary to build a web of interlocking and mutually reinforcing interests. Indian diplomacy will have to play a new role in the construction of such coalitions, which it has been unaccustomed to doing in the past. It can and must rise to this challenge. Such strong partnerships will help India balance China as well as retain its own strategic autonomy from the political and military coercion China is bringing to bear at our borders.