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China has been pursuing a subtle yet lucid policy of keeping India pinned to the South Asian sub-continent—widely manifested in its activities in India’s neighbourhood. It is about time that New Delhi gets into a realist stock-taking mode. Though there seems to be section of analysts who feel that the economic facet in the bilateral ties would constitute the key to the success of the future relationship between India and China, we certainly cannot disregard the existential strategic divergences that could prove to be a spoiler in the relationship. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s recently concluded visit to India failed to provide any tangible breakthrough to a list of irritants in the India-China relationship However, it did manage to successfully achieve what China apparently had on its agenda—intentions to focus exclusively on the ‘economics’ of the bilateral relationship between Beijing and New Delhi and choosing to pay no heed to the other contentious aspects of the relationship.
Following are a few recommendations for further perusal by India’s policy makers as New Delhi gears itself to co-exist with the People’s Republic of China in the 21st century, often publicized as the “Asian Century.”
There needs to be a national consensus on issues pertaining to national security within India across party lines and the populace must be sensitized to these issues. India appears to lack a coherent China policy. Foreign policy orientations have to be a crucial mix of both diplomacy with economic, social, political and security aspects to it. However, as far as dealing with China is concerned, Indian foreign policy seems to play down the security and strategic content. Even if the need of the hour seems to be that of building a cooperative relationship with China, it certainly should be made sure that it is one, which is based on equal terms while ensuring a credible politico-military capability.
Given that the Chinese understand the tenets of power, their tactical aggressiveness must be met with resolute strength, both diplomatically and militarily. For this, there is a need to concentrate building India’s comprehensive national development especially in terms of military capability. Building viable deterrent capabilities against the Chinese deterrent; especially notching up an adequate nuclear deterrence is a very significant area that deserves special focus. Need to build sufficient capability to defend against a Chinese military threat while maintaining a dissuasive conventional posture. India must develop, test and operationally induct the Agni III IRBM and the Surya ICBM so as to be able to upgrade its present strategic posture of ‘dissuasion’ to one of credible ‘deterrence’ against China.
India needs to display greater verve as it projects political, economic and cultural interests in South Asian neighbourhood to check the Chinese inroads into the region. New Delhi must maintain a strong capability to defend island territories in the Bay of Bengal.
Against the back of China’s infrastructural blitzkrieg, India needs to improve its logistics and border infrastructure on a war footing, for the speedy induction of forces—most importantly, in a time bound manner. India must step up its diplomatic efforts to seek an early resolution to the territorial and boundary dispute, particularly the immediate delineation of the LAC physically on ground and map. Until that is achieved, India’s military posture in the border areas with China must be forceful and hands-on. The patrolling policy for achieving effective border management must be more vigorous and determined so as to deny the Chinese the ability to transgress the LAC at will, even while ensuring that no cause is given to provoke an unnecessary confrontation. Placing border guarding forces like the ITBP under the operational command of the Army could be a workable option. Attention should be turned on immediate development of road communications in the border areas to facilitate integration with the rest of the country and furthermore integrating the populace of these regions with the rest of India.
India needs a central cyber command to lead efforts within the military to safeguard computer networks from hackers and cyber attacks. Adopting an inter-ministerial, inter-departmental, inter-service, multi-agency approach to dealing with emerging cyber warfare threats could be an option. No single agency in India is charged with ensuring cyber and IT security. A nodal agency must be created to spearhead India’s cyber war efforts under a national cyber security advisor. Creating a security centre to monitor cyber operations to undertake active monitoring of cyber space, co-ordinate incident responses and enable better understanding of attacks against networks. All available national technical means should be used to supplement patrolling with electro-optical surveillance from the ground, the air and by using military satellites.
The overall national effort towards emerging tactics, techniques and procedures being incorporated into doctrine and training urgently calls for a synergized approach. The strategy must be defensive to guard India’s vulnerable assets, such as military command and control networks and civilian infrastructure dependent on the use of cyber space, as well as offensive to disrupt the adversary’s C4I2SR systems and develop leverages that can be exploited at the appropriate time. There should be more emphasis on use of technology for purposes including surveillance, access control and access denial; these in fact, are lacking and need to be spruced up.
In so far as its overall approach of dealing with China is concerned, India should not get lulled into a sense of complacency even as China’s shrill rhetoric of peace, harmony and tranquility echoes at every given platform. China’s aggressive tactical posturing witnessed in the recent past could be a sign of incipient intentions to use military force to settle the territorial and boundary dispute under the garb of what they term as China’s “peaceful rise” to co-exist.
Dr Monika Chansoria is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Land Warfare Studies (CLAWS)
(The views expressed in the article are that of the author and do not represent the views of the editorial committee or the Centre for Land Warfare Studies).
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