By Brahma Chellaney
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In a classic replay of its old game,
China intruded stealthily into a strategic border area in Ladakh and
then disingenuously played conciliator by counselling "patience",
"wisdom" and "negotiations". The incursion bore all the hallmarks of
Chinese brinkmanship, including taking an adversary by surprise, seizing
an opportunistic timing, masking offence as defence, and discounting
risks of wider escalation. Occurring at a time when India has never been
so politically weak, the intrusion was shrewdly timed to exploit its
political paralysis and leadership drift.
What China did was to impudently violate
border-peace agreements with India by employing coercive power on the
ground. Then armed with the leverage from its encroachment into the
Debsang plateau it embarked on coercive diplomacy by setting out
military demands for India to meet.
In doing so, it presented India with a
Hobson's choice: either endure the Chinese ingress into a region
controlling key access routes or meet China's demands at the cost of
irremediably weakening Indian military interest in a wider strategic
belt extending up to the Karakoram Pass and the Siachen Glacier. After a
three-week standoff, China withdrew from the occupied spot but only
after India blinked by ceding some ground an action it has tried to
rationalise as granting China a "necessary face saver".
The plain fact is that India made a
concession to end the stand-off, while China in a triumph for its
coercive diplomacy conceded nothing. In fact, placing the aggressor and
the victim on the same pedestal, India announced both sides would pull
back troops to end the stand-off.
Two Steps Back
India, oddly, wilted just when China was
coming under adverse international spotlight for intruding into
Indian-controlled territory after expanding its "core interests" and
provoking territorial spats with Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines.
Instead of raising China's diplomatic costs for the encroachment so as
to deter it from staging another intrusion at a time and place of its
choosing, India rewarded the aggression by dismantling its defensive
structures at Chumar. It took China just one platoon of up to 50 troops
to bring India to heel.
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The intruding troops could not have
survived the icy wintertime conditions in the temporary shelters they
erected. But had the intrusion continued for several more weeks, it
would have shone an unlikeable international light on China's
territorial revanchism and imperial resurgence.
All that India needed to do was to
reinforce its military positions without encircling the intruders, yet
standing firm on the demand it initially made while summoning the
Chinese ambassador an unconditional return to the status quo ante. Yet
India gratuitously brought itself under pressure over Chinese premier,
Li Keqiang's impending visit, instead of feeling insulted that Li was
stopping over in New Delhi on his way to Pakistan to bless the newly
elected government there.
Making the most of India's apparent lack
of self-respect, Beijing insisted that India degrade its border
defences by dismantling a key forward observation post, destroying
defensive fortifications such as live-in bunkers for its troops, and
suspending infrastructure development near the line of actual control
(LAC). For its part, China, seeking to bolster its larger game-plan in
eastern Ladakh to encroach on Indian land bit by bit, continues to
rapidly build up an offensive capability.
n forcing Indian troops to start
demolishing bunkers before officially terminating the stand-off and
softening up India for further bargaining, China has vindicated its
coercive diplomacy while rendering India more vulnerable to Chinese
military maneuvers and raids. The razing of bunkers has already forced
Indian troops to suspend patrolling up to the LAC in the Chumar area, a
development that threatens to whittle down Indian salience in a critical
border region while opening space for China to expand its sovereignty
claims.
Having overtly challenged India's
belated, bumbling moves to fortify frontier defences against a rising
pattern of Chinese border provocations, China will now hold the threat
of unleashing its coercive power again. In fact, with boundary tensions
still lingering, Beijing has made it clear that it has "terminated" the
stand-off, not settled the dispute, with the two sides, according to it,
reaching "an agreement on resolving the incident in the western section
of the border". An actual resolution, Beijing has indicated, hinges on
India making more border-related concessions, which is why it is pushing
a new Chinese-drafted frontier deal a clear attempt to rub salt into
Indian wounds.
Source : The Economic Times
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