India-China Military Balance

General

The Centre for Land Warfare Studies (CLAWS) organised a round-table discussion on “India-China Military Balance” on 12 January 2010  at the CLAWS campus. The speakers included Prof Stephen Rosen, Harvard University and Dr Jacqueline Newmyer, Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, Philadelphia. The round-table was attended by a select gathering of members from the strategic community and the CLAWS faculty.

Opening Remarks

Brig Gurmeet Kanwal (Retd), Director CLAWS, stated in his opening remarks that at the strategic level China wants to maintain stability with India, reflected by growing economic and trade linkages, cooperation in the WTO and collaboration in the ongoing climate change debate. However, at the tactical level, China is keeping India aggressively engaged. Beijing intends to ratchet up tensions at a time of their choosing. China’s strategy is to prevent, delay and disrupt India’s rise. India should work towards eventually preparing for a two-front war against China and Pakistan.

Dr Jacqueline Newmyer

China’s strategic traditions and domestic influences have contributed immensely to their military thinking and policies. Owing to domestic compulsions, it is highly likely that China would focus on centrally deployable and controlled systems in the event of war. The Chinese strongly believe in inflicting surprise and controlling as well as managing escalation. China does not want to engage in a sustained conflict spread over a long period of time. In order to avoid this, the Chinese have carefully orchestrated the strategy of ‘constraining’ so as to tie down any potential regional challenge. The Sino-Pak axis is a clear manifestation of this.

China’s strategic culture involves use and manipulation of information and its consequent domination to inflict surprise over the adversary. This in turn, would help in avoiding a protracted conflict, according to Chinese thinking. For instance in 1969, during the confrontation with the Soviet Union, from a realist point of view, a weaker China was willing to take on a nuclear USSR, even at the risk of a nuclear conflict. All the above-mentioned facets give a clear understanding of the Chinese concept of limited war in today’s day and age.

Prof Stephen Rosen

The PRC is likely to prepare for months or even years in order to condition the international political and military environment in its favour before it sets foot into a military conflict. This is highly likely in case of an India-China conflict as Beijing is likely to mould international opinion in its favour and minimise support for India, by convincing the world that China has acted in ‘self-defence’ and that India is the ‘offender.’ The Chinese strongly believe in psychological dislocation of the adversary. Paralysing the enemy psychologically ensures in getting an initial edge, according to China. It is strategically engrained in the mind of the Chinese that they do not want to get involved in prolonged wars. The Chinese are likely to place a high level political strategy of prevention so as to convince India that going to war would be risky and involve high costs. In case India still persists, then the PRC is likely to launch a heavy ballistic and cruise missile attack against India at the very beginning of the conflict in order to neutralise airfields, roads and destroy other logistics infrastructure.

In its surprise blow attacks, a very crucial component includes a highly capable cyber attack. Chinese current military mechanisms include cyber (the Chinese are rapidly creating denser cyber networks) and irregular warfare that go a long way in the ability to manage conflict according to the Chinese approaches to warfare. The next dimension following a surprise blow, is managing the flow of information to the extent that if the adversary would still want to persist continuing with the conflict, then it would be inviting a risk of war, potentially involving the nuclear element as well. India has significant vulnerabilities in the north-east region by virtue of poor logistics infrastructure crucially involving roads. Knowing the opacity of the PLA, the political commissars and the Central Military Commission (CMC) is bound to play a vital role in the event of a conflict as well as while formulating the nature of operations. As it is, there is scant information regarding training, operational structure, command, operations of their tactics especially against India. The Chinese are likely to limit, mislead and control India both through the military and political realm, for which India needs to watch out.

Conclusion

The biggest Chinese vulnerability in the political sphere is present in the form of Tibet, with a possibility of serious domestic fallout for the Chinese. In addition to this, the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) is another vulnerability for the Chinese as nearly 60 percent of their oil passes through the Indian Ocean. China will create a military balance in such a manner that it wins the war without actually fighting it. However, there is a strong possibility that the dialectics may not go as planned by the Chinese. Deception has always been a part of Chinese thinking and India should be prepared for that. India should focus on developing its naval capability with a power projectionist role giving greater emphasis on the ‘anti-access’ strategy. This primarily means preventing China from forcing a ‘southern’ push in the IOR. Chinese strategy in the IOR has been a three-fold one; expanding soft power, forward naval bases in the region and lastly, power projection capabilities. India need to develop deterrence at every level since it needs to be comprehended that China has resolved its boundary disputes with the Central Asian Republics, Russia and Vietnam, but still needs to resolve it with India. China thinks ‘strategically’ and acts ‘decisively’ and the Chinese military modernisation programme is the biggest manifestation of this since it is the largest in the history of the world. According to the Chinese, the Indians are preparing to fight a ‘limited conventional war under nuclear conditions.’ The Indian Army lately has been paying a great deal of attention to the eastern sector. Given that the foremost trigger in the Indo-China dimension could well be Tibet, the Indian surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities in the Tibetan region are excellent.

(Report prepared by Dr. Monika Chansoria, Research Fellow, CLAWS)