Security Challenges at LAC – India and China

The ultimate security is your understanding of reality.

A good national security strategy depends on not only knowing the enemy’s nature but also in having an efficient intelligence and counter intelligence system, a powerful and competent military armed with latest defence equipment; air, sea and land connectivity; competent defence research; development and production facilities sans bureaucratic procedures, which is the real malefactor causing unproductive delays.

However simple as it may appear and however achievable it may seem many scholars and analysts of both Indian and foreign origin, and high ranking civil and military personnel in various discourses on India’s National security in last few decades have agreed and asserted that India does not have a defence policy.!!

It’s no secret that we do not have a history of strategic thinking. We react to the actions and initiatives of other countries in an ad hoc manner. In fact our ad hockery is evident from the way we have been arming ourselves since 1950 without any aim or purpose. We are in fact driven by our inability and lack of will to assign any purpose or priorities to our national defence policies! We have no document called “India’s National Defence Policy”

Mine is not the first drumbeat of criticism! But what a shame that in such an age and time we do not to have a Defence Policy! I can’t figure this out! We have only guidelines in the name of Defence Policy! Appalling! Our successive governments since Independence have not paid any serious attention to matters concerning our national security and protecting the nation’s sovereignty? This is a matter of grave concern and introspection.

It pains to note why we lost Aksai Chin in the 1962 war with China. The 1962 war is an exemplar of our Military unpreparedness and our ostrich approach. The then Lieutenant General SSP Thorat showed a set of plans about requirements on the border to our then defence minister Mr Krishna Menon, who dismissed them as alarmist and never showed them to Nehru, our then PM. Nehru is known to have, in the aftermath of the war, taken a look at the plans when he called Thorat to meet him, but it was obviously too late. Aksai Chin was compromised!

Mistakes made in the past should make us better than what we were before. However, sadly that doesn’t seem to happen and an apt aphorism that comes to my mind is that “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it!”

Then came the bloody skirmish at the Galwan River Valley in Ladakh on 15th Jun 2020 between India and China at the Line of Actual Control (LAC), where we lost 20 of our unarmed soldiers on a steep ridge in a close combat with the Chinese troops. The PLA (People’s Liberation Army) soldiers were in large numbers and were armed with clubs studded with nails and barbed wires! The country was surprised when the news surfaced about the bloody engagement at the border which filled us with loathing and contempt for the Chinese for flouting all the rules of engagement – it was agreed that the two countries will not use fire arms within 2 kms of the LAC and ensure no escalation.

Has China not given us enough evidence of its objectives through its behaviour? If we do not know by now then we never will! There was ample evidence of the Chinese build up since May 2020 but as always we were sadly deceived by our own inertia.

Between 1967 and 2020, China changed its tactics but not its goals. In the past four decades they have resorted to area expansion and domination tactics by using numerical superiority and military aggression and have been nibbling away our territories through frequent border violations. In the last ten years more than a thousand such border violations have been recorded.

The present disquisition is a transcription of a sort, a composition of reports, a critique of our defence preparedness and the insouciance of our leadership with respect to the matters concerning our border security, and above all the anxiety of a frustrooted fool!

The monologue is not intended to be a jeremiad but if it does unfold as one then I would unapologetically hold forth to that for a while.

Irrespective of China’s long-term objective and the telling signs on the LAC for the last few years, it’s enhanced military presence in south China Sea lately, its growing economic partnership with Pakistan, especially the flagship project CPEC under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) of President Xi Jinping which passes through the Gilgit-Baltistan region in Pakistan which India claims to be its territory, China’s growing ambitions to become the world’s next super power ... should we still continue to be only reactive? Come on we cannot be unprepared like this waiting for some brick to hit our head before we wake up from our slumber. The global equation is changing and the situation all around is worrisome. We need to be fully equipped.

Nobody wants a war. This age is, as rightfully put across by our PM, the age of development and not expansionism.

Well said but when the question is of the security of our borders with our two neighbours, Pakistan and China, then it’s about time that we shed our defensive foreign policy thinking that evolved about 70 years ago. It’s time to introspect and understand that our defence forces are modernisation-starved and at the same time constrained by rigid protocols. We need to be more assertive in dealing with the Chinese, who recognise only strength and not diplomatic niceties.

China has, through its actions over the past 70 years, indicated its ‘strategic reluctance’ to settle the boundary dispute with India, keeping it ‘off-balance’ by refusing to agree on and demarcate the LAC. Chinese behaviour is predictable as observed over time where they keep coming up with new territorial claims, which have never been put on the table before. A leopard will not change its spots therefore what they do and why they do it should not surprise us anymore. Our borders with China have remained contested since 1950 and will remain contested in future despite an assumption of ‘peace’. The constant ‘nibbling away’ of Indian Territory by the Chinese will continue if we continue to let it happen.

What happened in Galwan was very similar to what happened in Nathu La in 1967. The build-up in the area was known, the Chinese were aggressively patrolling, hectoring and trying to cow down Indian soldiers unabatedly. What was however different at Nathu La was that the Indian Army there was not crippled by rigid protocols, neither was it merely reactive, and had freedom to fight to retain territory.

At Galwan even though our soldiers asserted themselves, despite being handicapped by restrictive protocols, unfortunately theirs was more of a pavlovian response as if they have been rudely awoken from somnambulism for supper. Have we not learnt our lesson from the multiple incursions by the Chinese across the entire length of LAC measuring 3448 Kms starting from the north in Ladakh all the way to the east in Arunachal Pradesh?

We also have Pakistan getting in our hair every now and then - our other adversary whom we love to hate and with whom we share a 3323 kms border starting from J&K till Gujarat.

The Chinese build up on their side of LAC at Galwan river valley was noticed since May this year and should have been the tornado siren, a clarion warning of approaching danger to the Indian forces. Why was it ignored?

Are we as a nation morally and intellectually unprepared for a war of any kind?

You wouldn’t agree less with me that what happened on that fateful night was the complete unpreparedness of our military at LAC. What is even more distasteful is that our forces knew about the substantial build up of Chinese troops across the LAC way back in May this year and yet it did not ring any alarm bells.

The Covid 19 Pandemic no doubt diverted attention, but that is not a good reason to be off guard and that too at the volatile border with China. Reminds me of a Kargil 2.0 like situation! It seems we have not learnt our lesson! I can’t contain my frustrootion at this point. It’s kind of boiling the blood in my veins.

The enemy is in my house now, sitting having tea and snacks and watching us with amusement; a ‘haha look we are invincible’ and I feel that I am not doing anything substantial to be in a negotiating position. In fact I allowed this to happen! Our men were sitting on their haunches waiting and watching for the cat to come and take away a piece of salami from us. Nibbling and waiting for the next move when the guard is down again

In addition to all the foregoing, the third dimension is Nepal which is located towards the north of our territory.

Now what irked Nepal?

It was the May 8 announcement by India of the opening of the new Dharchula-Lipu Lekh road — originating from Ghatiabagarh and terminating at the gateway to Kailash-Mansarovar in Tibet which enraged Nepal. Here is why:

The constructed road cuts through Kalapani where we have unresolved border issue with Nepal. In response to the announcement of the opening of the road the Nepalese government took escalatory steps in moving a constitutional amendment to claim 400 sq. km of Indian Territory comprising Kalapani, Lipu Lekh and Limpiyadhura as its “own”.

This move astonished our leadership. The Nepalese claim of its sovereignty over Kalapani has been at the centre of Nepal’s electoral politics since the advent of democracy in the 1990s!

Now that indeed is a lot of trouble at hand!

We need to put our house in order and we cannot afford to be lackadaisical in matters concerning our border security.

Importantly through the revocation of Article 370 and Article 35A from the state of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) on August 5, 2019, ending the special status followed by the institution of two Union Territories - Jammu-Kashmir and Ladakh - and vehemently asserting that Aksai Chin and Pakistan-controlled-Kashmir are integral and inseparable part of Jammu and Kashmir, we have virtually put China and Pakistan on Notice! China was irked more than ever.

We need to understand that the Chinese do not believe in issuing empty threats or indulging in rhetoric. They either speak in parables or diplomatese, failing which they resort to symbolic actions to express their displeasure or future intent. However, post August 5, they spoke directly and India chose to ignore it. Thereafter they started sending messages across through calibrated actions on the LAC. According to media reports, Chinese transgressions increased exponentially after August 5.

However, India ignored these clear signals, determined as it was to delink Article 370 from China’s increasing aggression on the LAC. China then made the next overture. Even more direct this time. During the Chennai Connect informal summit of October 2019, Chinese President Xi Jinping suggested to Indian Prime Minister an India-China-Pakistan trilateral “free from the influence of third parties” partnership. Third party was a veiled reference to the US. This suggestion was ignored by our PM

This proposal by China was not sudden and shouldn’t have surprised us. The idea was first floated during the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit held in June 2018 in New Delhi where the Chinese ambassador to India suggested that India should join a trilateral mechanism with China and Pakistan.

However, since the Chinese received no response from India, the Chinese approach changed. September 10 onwards the PLA troops vehemently started blocking Indian patrols from proceeding towards Finger 8. This was barely a month after the Bill for abrogation of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir and creation of Ladakh as a separate Union Territory was passed in Parliament on August 5.

Further there is the ill-considered announcement of change in the rules of engagement for the Indian Army after having lost 20 soldiers in action in Galwan river valley. The government’s altering the ‘no use of weapons’ system of managing encounters at LAC, which has been in place for past 27 years, has actually placed the PLA at an advantage.

As soon as this announcement was made by India, the PLA, as a defensive counter measure, reportedly moved additional forces - including tanks and artillery - forward to the LAC, laid claim to the entire Galwan valley and made a deep and brazen ingress into the Depsang plains.

So the new rules of engagement can have unintended consequences.

Assertions by the premier that nobody had intruded into our border, and that neither is anybody there now, nor have any of our posts had been captured, led to unintended consequences that India had silently accepted PLA’s grab of its territory.

Soon after the swashbuckling by the Chinese, we have our defence minister in Moscow seeking fast-tracking of spares for tanks, aircraft, guns and platform for delivery to the Indian armed forces.

We know that without war material and realistic combat training, in intended war theatre our army is at disadvantage vis-a-vis the PLA. Our army also lacks the habitat and ecosystem for operational logistics for large reinforcements at higher altitudes.

The PLA has all that the Indian army lacks. It has been doing combat training since early 2018 after the 2017 Doklam crisis; the PLA has amassed nearly 200,000 combatants in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) facing India at 16,000 feet, complete with habitat and storage of war material.

Since India has no idea of how to deal with an escalation, the field is now wide open for more PLA incursions easily blameable on India. Worse, a continued impasse, which looks likely, would work to China’s military and strategic advantage.