BRICS Declaration: China Seeks Peaceful Af-Pak Region for OBOR

Despite its recent defence of Pakistan against the United States on the issue of terrorism, China seems to have taken a surprising new turn on the issue. On Monday, the declaration adopted by the BRICS at their summit in Xiamen has not only condemned terrorism, but also named three key Pakistan-based terrorist groups – the Haqqani network, Lashkar-e-Taiba,  Jaish-e-Muhammad –  in a larger list of terrorist groups responsible for violence and insecurity.
Beginning with a condemnation of violence against “innocent Afghan nationals”, the declaration went on to firmly back the Afghan National government, as well as the Afghan National Defense and Security forces. Along with the Pakistani groups, the declaration listed Taliban, Islamic State, the Al Qaeda and its affiliates like the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan and the Hizb-ut-Tahrir.

China’s Stand Will Affect Afghan Equation

Just two weeks ago, when the US gave a stern warning to Pakistan for providing safe havens to terrorists, China came to its defence noting that “Pakistan is at the frontline of fighting terrorism, has made sacrifices in fighting terrorism”.
There is a message for Pakistan and it should not miss it. Equally, there is a message for India. It is foolish for sections of the Indian media to see this as a victory over China.

Such declarations are consensus documents and Chinese being the hosts steer their drafting. Had the Chinese not wanted it, the language on the Pakistan-based groups would have been kept out. The Chinese may well show this as a concession to India, but, it is in fact a well-considered shift in Chinese policy with larger aims which will become clearer over the year.

The decision by hosts China to categorically name groups has major implications. First, the prominent reference to Afghanistan and the actions of the Taliban and the Haqqani group appear to be a riposte to the recently announced US policy on Afghanistan.In naming the Haqqani group and coming out in strong support of the ANDSF, the Chinese are putting the squeeze on Islamabad and creating space for inserting themselves into the Afghan equation.

Seriousness of Purpose

At the same time, the Chinese may be seeking to remove what has become a recent thorn in the side of Sino-Indian relations – Beijing’s technical hold on preventing the UN’s Al Qaeda Committee from including the name of the Masood Azhar, the chief of the Jaish-e-Muhammad, in its list of banned terrorists. The JeM itself had been listed by the Committee earlier in 2001 and China went along with it. But when it comes to Azhar, China has claimed that India had not provided enough evidence against him and so even now we should not assume that the hold will be lifted.

Of course, signing declarations and implementing them are two different things. Realpolitik considerations are always there and, even if there is seriousness of purpose, it is not easy to implement cooperation in the area of security and counter-terrorism.Even so, by specifically naming groups like the Haqqanis, Jaish and the LeT, China has taken a significant step that could not have been taken without some forethought, and it could mark a policy shift on the part of Beijing.

It is not that China is cutting Pakistan loose. Indeed, the opposite could be the case. Beijing could well be drawing Islamabad into a closer embrace. After putting down money through the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), China is seeking to promote peace and stability in the AfPak region both as a means of getting a return on its investment, as well as displacing the US as the principal actor in a region China considers its periphery and a strategic one because of Xinjiang and its Belt Road plans.

Period of Chinese Activism

China could actually be thinking of an even larger role here. It is significant that in his remarks at the BRICS Business Forum on Sunday, Chinese President Xi Jinping got a round of applause when he declared that “terrorists will have no place to hide” if the world community took “a holistic approach to fighting terrorism in all its forms and address  both its symptoms and root causes.”
What Xi meant was also explicated in the speech when he spoke of the need for dialogue and consultation for the political settlement of issues behind the Syrian, Palestinian and Libyan issues. In that sense, the new Chinese shift could well presage a period of Chinese activism on global issues ranging from Afghanistan to Syria and the Israel-Palestine dispute.

Impact on India-Pakistan Bilateral Relationship

There is an obvious and unstated corollary here – the need to settle the India-Pakistan issue. In recent times we have seen both the US and China offer to mediate on the issue. India has snubbed both proposals because it believes that bilateral talks is the only way of dealing with the issue.There is also a larger message in the more forthright approach to terrorism visible in the Xiamen Declaration: The original imperative of BRICS – promoting economic growth. This requires peace and stability, especially in the neighbourhood.

The threat of terrorism, especially from the collapsing Islamic State, is actually growing, and China also has to deal with the Korean nuclear tensions and a possible trade war with the US, so this could be a good time to take a step to promote better ties with India.
The Quint September 4, 2017

Post Doklam, Army Needs Reforms That Have Been Stalled For Decades

The Indian Army has come out well in the Doklam crisis. But we should not exaggerate its actions. The big achievement was in the Modi government’s political and diplomatic handling of the issue. All the Army personnel had to do was to walk down 100 metres or so from their dominant position in Doka La and confront a PLA road construction
crew. Caught well ahead of their main base, the PLA had few options in an area which has a heavy Indian military presence.
This pithy version of events is being deliberately exaggerated to make the point that we did not triumph in any  military confrontation and that we should not draw the wrong lessons from it.
The Indian military has in the past decade strengthened its deterrent posture vis-à-vis
China, but it needs to do even more to confront the Chinese challenge which will only grow in the coming decade.

 The deep restructuring and reform of the Chinese military that began in 2013 will complete its first phase in 2022 by when the PLA would have shed considerable flab, rebalanced its personnel in favour of its technology-rich forces, reorganised itself into joint theatre commands for efficacious battlefield management, and proceeded further in its acquisition of cutting edge military equipment.
 Indian efforts in the direction of similar reforms have been underwhelming, to use a polite word. On Wednesday, the government announced with great fanfare that it was implementing 65 recommendations of the Shekatkar Committee. But one look at the
proposed reforms indicates that all of them are minor and are unlikely to enhance the combat capabilities of the Indian military.
Eliminating military farms, liquidating obsolete mule-supply units, downsizing the
signals arm and the army postal and ammunition handling establishments are needed. But to claim that these are the biggest reforms ever, as one of the country’s leading newspapers has done, is to betray ignorance of a very high level.

 he ministry has conveniently declared that this is just the first phase of reforms, but this does not tell the whole story. While 65 of the 99 recommendations have been approved, the ones that really matter have not, and if the past is any guide, they will be simply shelved, as has been done in the case of recommendations of two previous
commissions.
These relate to the appointment of a Chief of Defence Staff, a four-star commander for the three services who would coordinate the tough task of promoting integration in the working of the Indian military. Foremost amongst his tasks would have been to give shape to joint theatre commands which would have a single commander for the air force, navy and army units in a particular geographical area.For example, currently, the Army’s Eastern Command is headquartered in Kolkata, the Air Force’s command in Shillong and that of the Navy in distant Vishakapatnam.

Joint commands are considered vital for fighting a modern war which emphasises mobility and the fusion of different elements of military power for the concentrated application of force.
Warfare in the cyber and space domains affect all the arms and the fast moving pace of the digital battlefield require flatter decision-making structures as compared to the multiple verticals we have today.

Reforms Stalled by Bureaucracy

Ironically, India began its reform process well before the Chinese. The idea of a tri-service chief was first mooted by the Arun Singh Committee in 1990. It was repeated by the Group of Ministers in 2001 and the Naresh Chandra Committee in 2012. All of them were successfully subverted by the IAS-dominated Ministry of Defence
bureaucracy.

The Arun Singh Committee report has simply vanished into the maw of the MoD which commissioned it.

The GoM was the most powerful of the commissions, comprising as it did of the ministers who also constitute the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS). Yet, following the defeat of the Vajpayee government, its recommendations were watered down and the key issues of appointing a CDS and integrating the civilian and military streams of the MoD subverted.The Naresh Chandra Committee, appointed by the CCS, saw its minor recommendations being implemented, and the major ones shelved and, again, a change in government helped the bureaucracy in its task of killing its main proposals.

Like the GoM, the Naresh Chandra Committee reforms were not limited just to the military, but looked at the issue of boosting national security by reforms across the entire spectrum of the system – internal security, intelligence, border management, higher management of the MoD and so on.
So when a new government came, the MoD skilfully pre-empted calls for reform by persuading the new minister to appoint a committee not under the government auspices, but those of the MoD. So, its recommendations were not system-wide incorporating all aspects of national security, but only limited to the Army, Navy and the Air Force.

 If you read carefully between the lines of the Shekatkar Committee recommendations you will see that contrary to the manner in which it has been presented, the Army will not shed 57,000 personnel, but redeploy them. As it is, the MoD-sponsored committee does not have Cabinet sanction.
Not that this matters, the GoM had the sanction of the highest level of government, and yet its recommendations were subverted. The Naresh Chandra Committee’s proposals – some 400 significant recommendations broken down into 2,500 actionable points to reform the national security system – reached the CCS but the decision on it was deferred repeatedly till the UPA government demitted power. The UPA’s own craven minister of defence played a role in undermining the Committee recommendations.
So, the alleged savings from the recommendations are likely to be illusory. And this confronts the Indian Army with its major problem – too much of its budget (72 per cent) is taken up by the costs of its personnel, and taking into account another 17 per cent for maintaining existing equipment, just 11 per cent is left for capital
outlays for new equipment.

Indian Military is Still Where it was 30-40 Years Ago

Instead of restructuring its existing combat forces, the Army is merely tinkering around with the problem by shaving off marginal costs associated with military farms and redundant technical and supply personnel. But this requires a greater vision which also incorporates the fact that as a country armed with nuclear weapons, India does not
face an existential threat from another country’s military. What it needs is a high-tech and mobile force which can be rapidly built up to counter local challenges along its borders and deal with contingencies beyond our borders.
Unfortunately, the Indian military remains structured in the same way that it was thirty or even forty years ago. The addition of nuclear weapons have made little or no difference to its force structure and planning.

The Air Force and Navy modernisation plans are limping along for the want of resources and the Army has not been able to reverse the drift towards internal security duties that came up in the 1980s and 1990s.

So, it has simply added numbers, two divisions in 2009 and further two divisions which are being raised for the so-called Mountain Strike Corps. It would have made much more sense to contain and indeed reduce the growth of personnel and, instead, begin raising the combat capability of the existing mountain divisions by adding attack and heavy-lift helicopters and enhancing their mobile artillery capabilities.
Ironically, this point was made by Prime Minister Modi himself in early 2016 when he told the Combined Commanders Conference on board the INS Vikramaditya that:

At a time when the major powers are reducing their forces and relying more on technology, we are still constantly seeking to expand the size of our forces.

 The Quint September 1, 2017

Doklam ‘Dis-Engagement’ May Have Been Mutual, but It Is India That Has Come out on Top

Short of a military showdown, the only outcome to the Doklam crisis was the restoration of the status quo as of June 16. And that is what appears to have happened. The best outcome of diplomacy – to resolve a crisis that could have led to an armed clash – is one where both sides can declare victory. That is exactly what we are seeing in this case, with spin and selective briefings in both countries targeting domestic audiences.
 

Even so, by all measure, it is India that has come out on top in the current situation. It wanted a halt on the construction of the Chinese road from the Doka La area to the Jampheri ridge, and it has succeeded. For how long is another matter.
Just what has been the impact of its action on China and Bhutan is difficult to assess from public statements. Suffice it to say, there will be longer term consequences, which could either be benign or malign.
Though the contest at Doklam at 16,000 ft over a few square kilometres of land – the Chinese had complained of an encroachment of just about 180 metres – had strategic implications, its outcome may have owed itself to the enormous tactical advantage India had in the region.
The Chinese had a single road coming to the Doklam bowl zig-zagging from their major base in Yatung. It was dominated for a significant part by Indian positions on the watershed between the Amo Chu and the Teesta rivers. The point from where the Chinese wanted to build the road was actually overlooked by the strong Indian positions in Doka La. For them to start a confrontation there did not make sense anyway.
But perhaps the most important reason may have been the fact that for the Indian side, the Jampheri ridge is considered a vital operational requirement for the defence of Sikkim and the Siliguri Corridor, while China has no important stakes there. It would certainly have an advantage in surveilling the Siliguri Corridor by occupying the ridge, but its forces in the Doklam bowl are vulnerable at all times to Indian interdiction. In essence, India’s security concerns outweighed the Chinese concerns over its sovereignty, which, in any case, was legally contested by Bhutan.

What has come about as a result of de-escalation Four things have happened, all signaling that the can has been kicked down the road.
First, there has been no solution to the underlying issue, which remains as tangled as ever. The Chinese have vigorously asserted their claim, and the Bhutanese, by calling for a restoration of the status quo, have obliquely affirmed theirs.
The second is that India and China have probably agreed that the status of Doklam will be akin to that of the disputed parts of the Sino-Indian border, which is marked by a Line of Actual Control and is not delimited in any map. Both sides have their own notion as to where it runs and therefore patrol to the extent of their claims. They are also bound by agreements to not undertake any civil construction – bunkers or roads – in these contentious areas. However, in this case, the weak link is the Royal Bhutan Army (RBA), which does not have the capacity to match the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA), which has, after all, been patrolling the area for some years now.
Third, the issue may have ensured that the Sino-Bhutan border negotiation must now be embedded in the Sino-Indian process.
Fourth, India has subtly side-stepped from accepting the validity of the Anglo-Chinese Convention of 1890. All it says it accepts is that there is an agreement on the “basis of alignment” of the Sikkim-Tibet border, something that needs more work to be finalised into an accepted international border.
The loss of the Doklam area to China would not be a catastrophic loss for the Indian side, which occupies strongly grounded positions around the area. As it is, contrary to the impression that is often made, the Chinese deployment in Tibet is quite minimal and nowhere near the numbers India has on hand – ten Mountain divisions and a Strike Corps being raised. Many of the forces are located at high altitude and are acclimatised, whereas the bulk of the Chinese forces committed for Tibet are in lower lying regions east of Tibet. China is supposed to have designated some airborne forces for rapid deployment in the Tibet region, but anyone with experience with those altitude knows that most of the forces would come down with mountain sickness if they were not systematically acclimatised.
Even though India has signaled just how important the Jampheri ridge is to its operational posture in the region, a lot hinges on the Sino-Bhutan border negotiations, should Bhutan concede the area to China, there is little that India can do. There is the matter of the tri-junction that needs to be determined, which India, citing the minutes of the 2012 Special Representatives understanding, says must be done with the concurrence of all three parties.
Here too Bhutan’s outlook is crucial. If it concedes the Doklam area, by definition, the tri-junction, as accepted by India and Bhutan till now, will move southwards from its present position near Batang La, possibly conceding the Jampheri ridge to China.

Bhutan itself also presents a vulnerability to Indian defences because, were the Chinese to move through Bhutan, there is little that India could do since the RBA is a token force and is not geared to dealing with military threats of the kind the PLA presents.
For the present, China will not find it easy to wind back the rhetoric that threatened war repeatedly in the last couple of months. It will certainly be smarting at the surprise Indian action that compelled it to compromise. The Doklam stand-off and its resolution could be an inflection point where China decides that it needs to focus on economic restructuring and quickly settle the border issues with India and Bhutan, which are born more out of prestige than any strategic consideration. Or, it could bide its time to follow through in its project of cutting India to size, as a pre-condition for emerging as the undisputed hegemony in the South Asian-Indian Ocean Region (SA-IOR).

Impact on Bhutan
Bhutan’s predicament is more palpable. Doklam does not really affect Bhutanese security. But it does have implications to that of a country that is vital for its well being. There have always been voices in Bhutan calling for a quick settlement of the border issue so as not to lose more territory through China’s incremental nibbling strategy. These could be strengthened by the recent events.
So, in the coming period, it means that India needs to adopt a strategy of holding its friend Bhutan close. Certainly South Block needs to learn some lessons from its poor handling of its neighbours. Having witnessed the emergence of significant Chinese equities in Nepal, India cannot afford to allow a repetition of the process in Bhutan. As for the Indian military, it needs to urgently follow through on structural reforms to be able to effectively deter the PLA’s increasingly assertive posture in the SA-IOR. The PLA, which enjoys considerable autonomy in the Chinese system, cannot possibly be pleased with the current outcome and there will be some hard thinking on ways to get back at India.
The Wire August 31, 2017

Honour Above All: A Lesson for the Indian Army in the US Military Response to Trump’s Bigotry

One of the more edifying aspects of the otherwise depressing picture emerging from the Charlottesville incident has been the quick and uniform condemnation of the happenings by the top brass of the US armed forces. This is in sharp contrast to the waffling and subsequently condemnable conduct of their commander-in-chief, Donald J. Trump and significant sections of the civilian elite.
 


On August 13 itself, John Richardson, the US chief of naval operations tweeted:

"Events in Charlottesville unacceptable & musnt be tolerated @USNavy forever stands against intolerance & hatred..."
 Two days later, the commandant of the US Marine Corps, Robert B. Neller tweeted: "No place for racial hatred or extremism in @USMC. Our core values of Honor, Courage, and Commitment frame the way Marines live and act."

The following day, the army chief Mark Milley declared: “The army doesn’t tolerate racism, extremism, or hatred in our ranks. It’s against our values and everything we’ve stood for since 1775.” He was followed by his air force counterpart David Goldfein and the chief of the National Guard Bureau Joseph Lengyel.

Their strong stand speaks a great deal of the current intellectual make up of the US military leadership, something that has been forged in the fires of the various wars the US has fought, and the many mistakes and transgressions its military has made.
There is, of course, something about the quality of the US military’s higher leadership. Take Richardson, for example, he is not only an experienced submariner, but he is also an MA from MIT and has done an attachment with the prestigious Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Or the army chief Milley, a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, who is a BA from Princeton, an MA from Columbia and a graduate of a prestigious MIT National Security programme.

Importance of upholding the military morality 
Wars and the military are not normally supposed to be associated with moral issues or ethical conduct. But any smart general knows that upholding a just cause can be a war-winning factor. This, more than anything else, is the lesson of the Second World War. If his forces are seen to be on the side of a good cause, half the battle is already won.
This is especially true in our contemporary conflicts, which do not have the goal or the option of obliterating the adversary as the Mongols had in the 13th century or the Chinese with the Xiongnu people but instead prevailing over adversary forces who function among a sea of non-combatants.
Military morality and ethics have been written down in the Hague and Geneva Conventions to avoid unnecessary suffering and safeguarding human rights with the view of restoring peace. The Second World War gave us the Nuremberg tribunal whose central message was that merely following orders, even of a duly constituted authority, was not an excuse for committing war crimes and human rights violations. Militaries talk a great deal about honour, and rightly so. For example, no honourable military man would shoot a surrendered enemy. Likewise, modern militaries look down on rape and ill-treatment of civilians. But politicians’ sense of morality is sometimes flexible.
There is no doubt that following Clausewitz, politics must always be in command in war. But there are also important points where the politician must be challenged. There is the well-known incident when General Eisenhower rejected Churchill’s suggestion to use poison gas against the German sites firing V-2 rockets on London. Honour was in upholding the law, and in this case, the international law laid down by the Hague and Geneva Conventions. But honour is also linked to the sense of self-worth of a military, how its leaders view themselves and the forces under their command. This is what has driven the American generals to categorically oppose the stand of their commander-in-chief.
People will argue that most wars have seen flagrant breaches of Hague and Geneva codes, and they are not wrong. Even so, most armies strive to show themselves to be morally and ethically superior, especially in the information technology era where victory is often about dominating the narrative in cyberspace and elsewhere.
Modern war, as our experience with Iraq and Afghanistan reveals, is about winning hearts and minds. No one will argue that the Americans have done a good job in either. The former was a war of choice, built on a patently false premises and many war crimes were committed. The latter was seen as a war of necessity arising out of the al Qaida’s attack in the US. Yet somehow the US has not been able to get the upper hand, perhaps because they are too disconnected to the people they are fighting amidst.
Our experience in Sri Lanka was an object lesson. Though we were on the morally right side, we were unable to capture the narrative because we were fighting among a people who were not ours and our army was simply not trained or oriented for that kind of a war.

The Indian context
The Indian experience has been different in Jammu and Kashmir since, unlike the US in Iraq or India in Sri Lanka, there is no option of walking away. Nevertheless, all commanders there know that at the end of the day, winning hearts and minds is the key to prevailing in an insurgency-like conflict. Neutralising individual jihadi leaders like Burhan Wani, Mehmood Ghaznavi or Yasin Itoo does not happen purely through army action, but good intelligence obtained, probably through the auspices of the J&K police which in turn has come from the fact that there are people in the Valley who support the counter-insurgency efforts.
It is in this shadow battle that Indian forces must appear superior, not just in weapons and men, but their cause and conduct. And this is why the recent Armed Forces Tribunal (AFT) judgment on Machil is a body blow to the effort. The case was fairly open and shut and as much was determined by a court martial and confirmed by senior officers upto the army commander of the northern command. Yet, from the outset there were efforts to delay and subvert the course of  justice in the case.
The army had convicted five personnel including a colonel and a captain by a court martial in 2015 for the staged killing in 2010 of three Kashmiri civilians and branding them as militants. They had been given a life sentence. The tribunal’s reported judgement makes for shoddy reading citing issues like their attire and proximity to the Line of Control to cast doubt over the prosecution’s case.
In many ways the court martial system is an anachronism, but the services feel it is important for maintaining the discipline and morale of the forces. There is, however, a lesser justification for taking up criminal cases such as those of rape and murder through the system.
However, because of the presence of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Acts (AFSPA), things are complicated because in many instances of killings of civilians, the AFSPA is invoked, and often rightly. In the Machil case, the ideal would have been to hand it over to the civilian authorities, but the army chose the courts martial route wherein it tries its own personnel. And the personnel were duly convicted.
The AFTs were originally set up to ease the burden on civilian courts of a rash of cases relating to promotion issues. However, they did have the power to look at other disputes, including court materials. The experience of the AFTs has not been an entirely good one. The government is not particularly happy with the proceedings of the AFTs, while their judges are usually sound in their legal background, the military officers there lack any kind of judicial experience or knowledge when they are appointed. As a result, the government has tightened the authority of the defence secretary over the appointments of the tribunals and inquiries against its members.
In other words, they have underscored the fact that the tribunals function under the Ministry of Defence and not the regular courts system. Now the higher courts of the land must lay out clear guidelines of conduct. Justice on issues of murder and other such issues is simply too important to be left to such tribunals.
Meanwhile the Indian army’s higher leadership needs to reflect on its role as the sword arm of the republic. Being involved in counter-insurgency roles makes its tasks difficult. But it needs to have a clear cut vision of itself as the upholder of law, a force that privileges honour above everything regardless of the politicians in power.
The Wire  August 18, 2017

Dateline Xinadu

The Sino-Indian border crisis is framed amidst colonial treaties, old nationalisms, new entitlements. The economic-military edge is with China, yet a conflict would hurt its ‘dream’ as much as ours. India is holding on, but the brink is a dangerous place to hold on to.


War arrives unexpectedly. Sometimes a simmering crisis erupts, at other times an unscrupulous leader seeks gain by surprise attack, at other times events simply drift out of control. The biggest problem for those who initiate war is to figure out its scope and when and how it will end, simply because there are too many variables at play. As the saying goes, no war plan survives contact with the enemy. If war between two nucl­ear-armed states is itself self-destructive, limited war is a chimera best avoided.
Anyway, if there was war over Doklam, it would probably be the strangest war ever. It would be over the ‘invasion’—of the extent of 180 metres—of a huge, nuclear-armed country, with the biggest army in the world, by a large but significantly weaker adversary.
 
Yes, that’s the distance the “invading force” of 40-400 Indian soldiers have travelled into territory China claims as its own, according to a detailed document issued by the Chinese foreign office on August 2, but which is contested by India and Bhutan.
This was reconfirmed last week at a briefing to visiting Indian journalists by Senior Colonel Ren Guoqing, the spokesman of the Chinese Ministry of Defence. The Indian action, the Senior Colonel declared, had violated the territorial integrity of China, the 1890 Anglo-Chinese Convention setting the Sikkim-Tibet border and the UN Charter, adding that “the prerequisite and basis of resolution is Indian withdrawal”.
Other military voices were even shriller and uniform. Speaking at a seminar organised by the All China Journalists Association on August 10, ostensibly for a discussion, but in reality, to ‘educate’ the Indian journalists, Senior Colonel Zhao Xiaozhuo at the Research Centre for China-US Defence Relations at the Academy of Military Science waxed indignant over the Indian “invasion”. Zhao, a familiar figure in international events as an ardent defender of the Chinese case in controversial areas like the South China Sea, spelled out the case that India had violated an international border, settled by the Anglo-Chinese Convention of 1890.
 
Another familiar figure at international meetings, Senior Colonel Zhou Bo, reportedly educated in the UK, said that the Indian statement of June 30 was ambiguous. For, it sought to hide the fact that there was no Bhutanese invitation to intervene by claiming that they, the Indians, acted “in coordination with the RGOB (Royal Government of Bhutan)”.

Both officers claimed they had served on the Sino-Indian border and were familiar with South Asian issues. Indeed, Senior Colonel Zhao said he had served in the Sikkim area. More significant were his concluding words: “If you want a peaceful resolution, please pull back, else it will be resolved by force.”
A similar message came from a field commander, Senior Colonel Li Li of the 3rd Garrison Division responsible for the protection of Beijing. At location in the Huairou area of Beijing, in the midst of a demonstration showcasing the PLA’s tactical prowess, he said in response to a question on Doklam, “I am a soldier and will do my best to protect the territorial integrity with resolve and determination.”

There was a time when war was fought at three levels—the strategic, the operational and the tactical. In the era of inst­ant media, all three get compressed and a tactical move by Indian forces to block a PLA road-building party in disputed land has become a full-blown international crisis.
For once, the normally shrill TV warriors of India are quiet, even while their counterparts in Beijing spew fire and brimstone. The media commentary and the meetings with the PLA scholars and officers indicate that domestic sentiment is an important issue here. The question to ask is why the Chinese have raised the pitch so high, and why the Indians are playing it cool. But there are no easy answers.
Ostensibly, the crisis is about a road which the Chinese sought to construct on the disputed Sino-Bhutanese border. In doing so, the Bhutanese say, the Chinese violated written agreements of 1988 and 1998 not to disturb the status quo, pending a border settlement. India says they are there because “such construction would represent a significant change of status with serious security implications for India”.

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The Chinese dismiss these claims and say there is a ‘consensus’ between Thimphu and Beijing that the area belongs to China, and India is the villain of the piece. A top boundary affairs official of the Chinese foreign ministry, Wang Wenlin, claimed that the Bhutanese had told them that they had not invited the Indians and the area where they intervened “was not Bhutanese territory”.

Modi and Xi Jinping at the BRICS leaders’ meeting in Goa. Their possible interaction in Beijing will be crucial.

Photograph by AP

 

For years, China has sought to railroad Thimphu into agreeing that the territory is Chinese, but Bhutan has resisted. And it is not just because of the alleged Indian hand. In debate after debate of its National Assembly, there are complaints from the representatives of the Haa province about Tibetan incursions or of forced taxation. There has been opposition to giving over what are valuable pastures to the Chinese.
China claims the area belongs to it on the terms of the Anglo-Chinese Convention of 1890. But Bhutan was not a signatory to the treaty, nor was it consulted when it was signed. It has its claims, and they cannot be wished away by fudging the record or making unsubstantiated claims that the Bhutanese have surrendered their claims.

What the present crisis has done is to probably torpedo the work done by the Special Representatives in resolving the Sino-Indian border. We do not have the full picture, but it is clear that in the 18-point consensus drawn up by Shivshankar Menon and his Chinese counterpart Dai Bingguo, on the eve of the latter’s retirement in 2012, there was agreement that a) trijunctions involving India and China will be decided upon in consultation with the third country; b) both sides agreed on the “basis of alignment” of the Sikkim-Tibet border, presumably the watershed; and c) the two sides would verify and determine the specific alignment of the Sikkim sector and produce a common record, namely, there would be a new boundary pact to replace the Anglo-Chinese Convention of 1890.
The hawkish stand being taken by China rejects the nuances reflected here for a one-dimensional view that all that matters is the Anglo-Chinese Convention of 1890, which has been violated. There were expectations that the important consensus arrived at by the two SRs could form the basis for a resolution of the entire Sino-Indian border issue. But now that prospect looks bleak.

Clearly, if there is war, it would not be a war for the trijunction, or over Bhutan’s claim on Doklam. The border issue would only be the occasion for a conflict that has been building up for a while, not its cause. India and China have many unresolved issues between them. First and foremost is their entire border, which China somewhat disingenuously claims is 2,000 km in length and India says is 4,057 km. This led to the first Sino-Indian war of 1962. Of all the parts of the border, perhaps none is more sensitive than the one in Sikkim, because it sits atop the narrow Siliguri Corridor.
India has built strong defences in Sikkim, but the military assessment is that access to the Jampheri ridge that runs east-west, south of the road construction point, would enable China to bypass or ‘turn’ their defences. So, the Indians decided through some sleight of hand that the trijunction was actually near Batang La, not Mount Gipmochi, as the 1890 treaty suggested. It was intriguing to hear Senior Colonel Zhou Bo’s comment that India was over-estimating the military significance of Batang La as the trijunction.
Perhaps the greater reason for the outbreak of a Sino-Ind­ian war, if indeed that occurs, will be their differing perceptions of themselves and their place in the world. In the 1950s, India was pitched as the Great Democratic Hope of the “free world” against “Communist China”. Today, the rise of both countries, with India a decade-and-a-half behind, has given this conflict a new twist.

China, seeking regional pre-eminence, increasingly challenges India in the South Asia and Indian Ocean Region (SA-IOR). This is not something that happened suddenly. It has come with the steady growth of Chinese economic muscle across the world and in the SA-IOR. The Chinese find that their economic clout far exceeds their military one; nevertheless, they believe that at some point it must catch up, but to reach the state of a true global power, they must have a neighbourhood that is benign.
So far in South Asia, they have followed a convenient model of offsetting India’s advantages by backing Pakistan to the hilt. Given their enhanced clout in South Asia, and the fact that their economy is five times that of India and its military considerably stronger, they seek a situation where India quietly accepts Chinese primacy, or is subdued through the Chinese politico-military policy in the SA-IOR.
However, India has a sense of its own self-worth and place in the global scheme of things and accepting Chinese primacy in its own neighbourhood is not part of it. And so it is seeking to offset Chinese power through growing proximity to the US and Japan, who have their own reason to keep China in check. Ever since Modi came to power, India has taken significant steps to get closer to both countries. This is obviously a dangerous game, because it feeds into Beijing’s belief that all three countries are conspiring to stifle its rise and the China Dream.
Notwithstanding a somewhat inflated opinion of its place in the world, India cannot escape the fact that its military modernisation remains stuck and its economy is yet to get on to the promised high growth path. The Modi government has the political support to make reforms that could change things, or if that fails, take the decisive leap to abandon non-alignment and become a formal military ally of the US. So, as John Garver has pointed out recently, “it might make sense for China to teach India a lesson before China’s advantage is eroded”.
What needs to be done stares us in the face. First, carry out deep and systematic reform of the armed forces on the lines suggested by the Group of Ministers in 2002 and the Naresh Chandra Committee in 2012. This will provide the country with the wherewithal to deter China, which has successfully bitten the bullet on military reforms, and whose military capabilities are growing exponentially. Second, India needs a genuine “good neighbour” policy, one that will capitalise on its natural and civilisational advantages in the SA-IOR and minimise its tendency to overly securitise its relationships.
Doklam may or may not trigger a larger conflict. But the trend line is not heartening and seems to suggest that we may end up just kicking the can down the road. A powerful China may best India in a military contest, but both will have to forgo their respective dreams. All talk of there being sufficient room for India and China to grow simultaneously has palled and the old CBMs that maintained stability in their relationship become infructuous. If this is not a wake-up call for both countries to pull back from the brink, nothing is.
Outlook August 28, 2017

'China's decision to disturb status quo at Doklam was done with an end goal'

In past visits to China going back to the early 1990s, India was mostly a peripheral issue, unless, the stay was part of a prime ministerial or presidential visit. 

But this time around, things are different. For four consecutive days last week, China Daily, the country's only English-speaking broadsheet, carried articles on the Doklam issue, with two lead editorials, one of which carried the title 'New Delhi should come to its senses while it has time'.

As for the Global Times, its commentaries are too well known in India.

On Friday, the state-owned tabloid headlined 'Bhutan under India pressure'. The border dispute, the strap said, was 'proof of New Delhi's hegemony in South Asia.' 

The ongoing stand-off between India and China at the Doklam plateau was triggered by a Chinese manoeuvre on the night of June 8 

Nervousness showing 

The journalistic tour, organised after the crisis had erupted was expected to have subtle messaging aimed at pushing China's point of view. But there was nothing subtle about the briefings from top foreign ministry and Ministry of Defence officials.

The briefings were harsh, and uncompromising, as the new chief spokesman Senior Colonel Ren Guoqing declared, that China had legal proof of its territory and to resolve the crisis, India needed 'to withdraw immediately and unconditionally'. 

Perhaps there was a message hidden in the visit organised to the 3rd Garrison Force in the Huairou district of Beiing, where the crack division displayed its tactical skills with small arms in a range which was clearly aimed at impressing foreign audience. 

It has been decades since China last fought a war and the country insists it has no hostile intent, and simply needs to defend itself

The message from a visit to the CNS Yulin, a 054 frigate at the headquarters of the South Sea Fleet at Zhangjiang, 2,500 miles to the south Beijing was vintage Chinese as Capt Liang Tiajun, an officer at the fleet headquarters blandly remarked that India and China could cooperate in Indian Ocean security. 

It is no secret that the PLA (People's Liberation Army) Navy lacks the ability to take on the Indian Navy in the Indian Ocean Region.

More dramatic was a 'seminar' in which two top officers known to represent the PLA's point of view in international gatherings participated. 

India has turned down China's demand that the Indian Army should immediately withdraw soldiers from Doklam near the Sikkim-China-Bhutan trijunction

The meeting was moderated by Senior Colonel Zhou Bo. The British-educated officer is well known to those who attend the Shangrila Dialogue. 

The director of the Centre for Security Cooperation professed to be 'pained' by the developments since he had served in the border regions with India. He set the tone of the meeting by waxing indignant about India's allegedly changing stance, and attacked this writer for changing his positions 'perhaps under pressure'. 

It was difficult to assure the Senior Colonel that positions evolve more and more as privileged information is divulged. For example, it was only on June 30, when the Indian press release came out that it was known that there was, to use a word often used by the Chinese, 'consensus' that the trijunctions be worked out in conjunction with all three countries. 

No clear border 

Another Senior Colonel, Zhao Xiaozhuo, also a well-known face of the PLA, said he had served in the area and had no doubt that India had 'invaded' Chinese territory. 

Zhao, who is at the Research Centre for China-US Defence Relations said the border was set by the Anglo-Chinese Convention of 1890 and claimed there was no dispute between China and Bhutan over Doklam. 

There was little answer from the Chinese side that there had been no map attached to the 1890 Convention and hence the border was not even properly delimited, let alone demarcated. 

The Chinese official position is that the border has been delimited, whereas India has maintained that as of now, there is only agreement on the 'basis of alignment' of the border, viz the watershed, and that further work is needed to translate it into a full fledged border. 

Impressing the media 

It was clear, however, that the discussion was aimed at the Chinese media, which was also present. Indeed, it is difficult to escape the feeling that the high-pitched campaign and the torrent of words are aimed at the Chinese audience primarily. 

So, there is no hesitation in blandly asserting palpably false things, as China's top border official Wang Wenli did, that India was twice notified about the road construction, or that Bhutan had agreed that the Doklam region belongs to China. 

Or, for that matter, the insistent claim that India had 'invaded' Chinese territory. 

There are too many variables in play to predict how the Doklam issue will turn out. Clearly, it not about some piece of land 7x5 sq km. For years the Chinese have patrolled the area, after parking their trucks in plain sight of the Indian positions in Doka La. 

The decision to disturb the status quo, in violation of their solemn commitments to Bhutan, was done with particular end in view which has probably come unstuck by the Indian action. 

Mail Today August 15, 2017