Chandigarh: India’s options for dislodging the occupation of large portions of its territory by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) along the disputed Line of Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh range from “bad, worse and frankly ugly, “say two experts on issues.
According to a recent article prepared for the MIT Center for International Studies in Cambridge, Massachusetts, jointly by MIT assistant professors Vipin Narang and Christopher Clary of the University of Albany in New York State, this ominous triumvirate of options facing India to reverse the territorial situation. fait accompli submitted by China are “difficult to achieve in practice”.
His article warns that “the best time to resist a fait accompli (territorial) is before it is completely completed.” To support their thesis, they quote Dan Altman, from Georgia State University in the USA, who focuses on issues of international security and territorial conquest, that if a fait accompli like the one that China presented to India in Ladakh is not reverts or resists quickly, it becomes more difficult. do it over time.
This is mainly due to the aggressor consolidating and strengthening his position, establishing a “new normal”, which is exactly what the situation on the ground in Ladakh is being, with China “using talks to schedule more talks.” And in the meantime, it is buying time to consolidate its defenses at tactically important points, making it even more difficult to remove or reject, argues the analysis titled ‘India’s Pangong Brine: New Delhi’s Options After Its Clash With China’.
Of the 59 land grabs around the world where the aggressor had territory at the end of a militarized international dispute, for example, the MIT document states that Altman finds 47 where the attacker or antagonist has continued to control that territory for the next decade. “Those are enviable odds for China’s ability to retain its new real estate in the Himalayas,” the report states portentous, in what could be a prophetic new reality for India.
Stock photo of Indian and Chinese soldiers. Photo: PTI
The first alternative
Meanwhile, the first ‘bad’ alternative open to India, according to MIT analysis, is to try to expel the PLA directly from the territory it occupies. But this would mean amassing additional troops and materiel, which has built-in strategic and tactical drawbacks. After all, the newspaper says, time is on China’s side and the PLA is consolidating its new positions today. This, in turn, would make it more difficult for India to “undertake limited coordinated offensives at any point, let alone all,” despite the boasting and boastfulness of some of its military commanders.
Additionally, Ladakh’s fast-paced terrain benefits the defender. By Indian Army estimates, offensives on the plains impose a 1: 3 ratio of three attackers per defender. In the mountains, this ratio more than triples to 1:10 and, in some cases at higher altitudes, may even increase – a grim feature that the Indian military experienced horribly in the 1999 Kargil war with Pakistan at the forbidden heights. of the Himalayas.
The second “worst” possibility for India, according to the report, would be to generate external leverage by seizing Chinese territory elsewhere and using it as compensation to enforce an eventual PLA rollback in Ladakh. And although the Special Border Force (SFF) had seized the dominant heights on the southern shores of Pangong Tso or the lake in late August, senior Indian army officers believe it was on its own territory and would not be enough to ‘persuade’ the PLA to withdraw. and remove and restore the anti-military status quo that prevailed throughout LAC in April.
On the maritime front, however, while the Indian Navy coincides with the PLA Navy (PLAN) in the Indian Ocean Region, its punitive options in areas such as the South China Sea and the Western Pacific are ‘extremely limited’ , the MIT report warned. Furthermore, “the history of naval pressure achieving results on land is not inspiring,” he stated.
Economically, the bilateral trade balance also favors China, especially in the critical sector of pharmaceuticals and electronic microchips, which are not easily replaceable. And while India may attempt to reduce economic activity with China in the long run, its ability to do so in a time frame that forces it to withdraw from Ladakh is limited, if not there,, the report says. And while India may diplomatically also try to strengthen its alignments with the Quad – Australia, Japan and the US, such an alliance would not “adequately incentivize China to give up the valuable territory it now owns.”
The ‘ugliest’ option
The third option, the ‘ugliest’ according to the report, may leave India with no choice but to accept China’s fait accompli (of seized land) and anesthetize the domestic (political) consequences by exploiting the ambiguity around the definition and no delimitation of the LAC, claiming that it is not Indian territory. But the report warns that such a path may “further encourage China to be more aggressive toward India or seize additional territory.”
He goes on to add that “faced with few military, diplomatic or economic options to reverse Beijing’s fait accompli, Delhi may have no choice but to accept them quietly.” However, to prevent future land grabs by China, India will need to mobilize a much larger military force along the border, making it, as many Indian analysts have also foreshadowed, similar to the Line of Control with Pakistan in Kashmir. Furthermore, attempting such a deterrence would be challenging during good times, and virtually impossible amid the COVID-19 pandemic and the consequent ruinous economic crisis it has unleashed.
Indian Border Security Force (BSF) soldiers patrol along the fenced border with Pakistan in the Ranbir Singh Pura sector near Jammu on February 26, 2019. Photo: Reuters / Mukesh Gupta
The report also notes that at some point, India will have to “determine how it could have allowed China to surprise it and execute fait accompli in multiple places and what were the strategic and operational warning signs that it failed or failed to act.” But for now, India’s immediate task is to “stop the bleeding” which, in its execution, has the intrinsic potential of a protracted and escalating confrontation between nuclear-armed neighbors.
In international politics, possession (of territory) is not just nine-tenths of the law; that it is the law, the MIT report concludes.
Although this study presents three possible options that India can pursue to deal with the menacing threat from China in the north, and now increasingly in the northeast, the first two options, the bad and the worst, are somewhat incongruous. . But above all, India’s military planners and security czars must wake up and realize that strategy without tactics is the slowest path to victory; on the contrary, the tactic without strategy is noise before defeat.
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