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February 04, 2012 |  | By Dr Monika Chansoria | ||
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The remnants of the India-China war, fought in October 1962, have left an indelible impression on the Indian psyche as we enter the 50th year of that war. Shattering a myriad of myths and leaving room for nothing but guarded suspicion for the People’s Republic of China, the war saw the Chinese troops launching a full-blown attack in sectors of India’s northwest and northeast — the Ladakh sector and the North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA), which is present-day Arunachal Pradesh. By means of launching calibrated punitive strikes in both these sectors, Beijing handed over to Delhi its worst defeat ever. China attacked India due to several unconcealed as well as covert reasons. Relations between Beijing and New Delhi had taken the downward spiral — set off by the Dalai Lama fleeing to India following a failed uprising in Tibet in March 1959. This, in fact, has been indicated in a document of China’s premier military research institute, Chinese Academy of Military Sciences, which states that Tibet was an important factor leading to the 1962 war. More importantly, the evolving regional geostrategic permutations, with Mao Tse-tung and Nikita Khrushchev going on a collision course by early 1959, need to be kept in mind. Transcripts of the Mao-Khrushchev summit illustrate sharp exchanges between the Soviets and the Chinese over the Sino-Indian border conflict. Beijing accused Khrushchev of siding with Delhi against a communist ally and tried to convince the Soviet leader that it was India which had initiated the attack first. Rebuffing the Chinese position, Khrushchev responded, “Do you really want us to approve of your conflict with India? It would be stupid on our part.” Khrushchev believed that by instigating a war against India, the Chinese had a larger game plan — to sabotage the Soviets’ détente with the United States. Beijing’s grievance against the Soviets in general, and Khrushchev in particular, became lucid when on November 7, 1962, at the sixth national foreign affairs working meet, Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister Zhang Hanfu alleged that the Soviet attitude on the Sino-Indian border dispute was pro-Delhi. It is essential to understand Mao’s foreign policy which allowed a pivotal place for “revolution”. He never really distinguished foreign policy from China’s internal political policy-making dynamic. His select writings mirror this statement as he constantly analysed the “current situation” so as to classify the tasks for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), both internally and externally. From Mao’s viewpoint, the 1962 war was proposed with a larger aim of preventing a Soviet-infused fundamental change in the global political agenda. As 1961 drew to an end, a meeting of China’s Central Military Commission (CMC) was convened in which Mao took charge of the “struggle with India” under his personal control. The objective was not a local victory, but to inflict a defeat so crushing that India might be “knocked back to the negotiating table”, as Mao asserted. Ancient Chinese military strategist and philosopher Sun Tzu advocated that all warfare is based on deception. This was demonstrated amply by Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai during his negotiations with India. The Indian political ruling elite was convinced during the decade preceding 1962 that having woven China into the 1954 Panchsheel Agreement, New Delhi had managed to craft a China policy which envisioned a simultaneous emergence for both. Conversely, the Chinese appeared to have had other plans. The debacle in the 1962 war was the result of a failure of India’s strategic vision and military capabilities. For that matter, the decision not to use combat air power proved to be a severe error of judgement, further adding to India’s woes. The events of 1962 led to an inquiry that ultimately came out in the form of the Henderson Brooks Report in 1963; this report has not been declassified till date. CONSTRAINED COOPERATION Today, as we enter the 50th year of the Sino-Indian war, which uncovered gaping lacunae in India’s defence preparedness and strategic priorities, the conditions are far-off from being congenial, with the arrangement being that of “constrained cooperation”. While on the face of it, India and China have in place a cordial bilateral relationship with burgeoning economic cooperation (which is heavily tilted in Beijing’s favour), deep down wide fissures threaten to upstage the relationship. Given that till date there is no mutually agreed upon Line of Actual Control (LAC) between the two countries, sporadic incidents of border transgressions appear to be a covert Chinese strategy of asserting its claims in the Western Sector, especially in north-eastern Ladakh. Similarly, in the Eastern Sector too, the LAC is not physically demarcated on the ground, including that on military maps. India is faced with a two-lane highway built by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to drive up to the border in this sector. The tiring 14 rounds of talks between Special Representatives of India and China to resolve the boundary dispute have failed to provide any tangible breakthrough. The Chinese reluctance, or for that matter refusal, to show its version of the LAC points towards a larger ploy of progressively building up a case of its claims over Aksai Chin and Arunachal Pradesh. India needs to maintain a vigilant posture in the backdrop of Beijing’s ongoing military modernisation campaign. Chinese claims of a ‘peaceful rise’ are only meant for public consumption. Its actions on ground, including the Chinese inroads in India’s immediate and extended neighbourhood, aim to counter Delhi and assert maritime dominance in the northern Indian Ocean, thus painting a contrary picture to those claims. Increased Chinese deployments in and around the Tibet Autonomous Region bordering India reportedly include placing of advanced Dong Feng-21 medium-range ballistic missiles, coupled with plans to shift airborne forces at short notice to the region. These developments echo China’s long-term military and strategic motives, in which Beijing is keeping a wide array of options available, including that of military coercion. The objective is to press for politico-diplomatic advantage as it stands to resolve impending disputes in its favour while bargaining from a position of strength. Chinese decision-making has always sought to retain the initiative, and the politico-military intensity displayed by China in the past few years through its decision-making elite and state-controlled media only seems to conform to the above intent. This brings to attention the definitive shift in Beijing’s Kashmir policy. The Middle Kingdom chooses to remain non-committal when it comes to explaining its position vis-à-vis the nuclear arming of Pakistan and the influx of Chinese soldiers in the disputed territory of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK). In an apparent bid to gain tacit control of the region — both militarily and diplomatically — Beijing has exponentially increased its investment and sponsorship of various ‘development projects’ in the Gilgit-Baltistan region of PoK. The projects involve several thousand Chinese troops belonging to the construction corps of the PLA, providing a whiff of an expansionist Chinese geostrategic agenda in the region. Besides, by issuing stapled visas to Indian passport holders from Jammu & Kashmir, Beijing aims at questioning the status of the State vis-à-vis the Indian Union, thereby providing diplomatic support to Pakistan’s position on the issue. Managing the LAC is an immediate requirement. After all, India’s land border with China stretches to 3,488 km, displaying complex topography, high-altitude climate and affiliated logistic difficulties. At this stage, China holds the benefit of heights, easier acclimatisation and capabilities for rapid build-up of forces along the border — thus ensuring a smooth chain of supply and supplementing its power projection capacity in the region. India needs to invest heavily in developing border infrastructure, especially roads of operational significance alongside the Sino-Indian border. With as many as 73 all-weather roads identified for construction along the LAC with China, only 15 (covering approximately 600 km) have been completed so far. Effective border management is the instant prerequisite to prevent/counter Chinese intrusions. For this, the country needs to put in place synergised border management operations that include intelligence-sharing, patrolling, joint-operational training and alert. In the long-term, if it is prudence that drives India’s current policy of accentuating economic engagement and collaboration with China, would it not be equally circumspect for our decision-making elite to accord highest priority to political realism in so far as dealing with Beijing is concerned? After all, economic convergence cannot take the liberty of putting at risk issues pertaining to national interest and security. The 21st century is likely to witness China as a primary variable that would determine trends in international politics. With an ever-growing appetite for a major chunk of the regional geostrategic pie, changing trends in Beijing’s politico-diplomatic and military strategy merit close scrutiny and apposite responses. The writer is a presently a Visiting Senior Fellow at the Slavic Research Center, Hokkaido University, Japan and Senior Fellow at CLAWS Courtesy: The Pioneer, 1 January 2012 | ||||||||
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