You, sir, are a nuclear sub on this forum. This is your third post since 2006!
Ladakh Flash Point
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You, sir, are a nuclear sub on this forum. This is your third post since 2006!
Ambassador M. K. Bhadrakumar is of minority opinion in India. Nevertheless I've found his strategic and historical insights are striking and rare among Indian elites. Modi's government is not going to follow his advice, as Modi's rule is largely based on Hindu nationalism and much of Indian establishments are enamored by the trapping and luster of Uncle Sam's embracing. Their lack of long-term strategic vision is only matched by their ignorance of China.
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Indian Army convoy ferrying supplies to troops in Ladakh
The by External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar in New Delhi on October 15 on the negotiations to resolve the military standoff in eastern Ladakh signal a cautiously optimistic estimation that there are serious proposals on the table and a breakthrough cannot be ruled out.
Jaishankar would have spoken only with a great sense of authority since every word he speaks on the matter carries resonance not only within India but regionally and internationally.
The chances of the 6-month old standoff ending appear good.
The pathway of constructive engagement that Jaishankar opened in September at his with his Chinese Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Moscow is advancing to its home stretch.
The first signs of the logical progression of the “Jaishankar line” appeared when a senior Indian diplomat joined the army commanders’ meeting .
This brilliantly-conceived move not only continued into the last round of negotiations (7th round) in Chushul on October 13, but the Chinese Foreign Ministry followed the Indian footfall to depute a senior diplomat from Beijing to join the talks on Tuesday.
Equally, for the second time, the army commanders’ meeting issued a .
Of course, some megaphone diplomacy has continued, for sure, but then, public perceptions are important.
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh’s loud speculation regarding the probability of a pre-conceived Sino-Pakistani “mission” to create tensions on India’s northern borders led the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman to respond that Beijing does not recognise Ladakh or Arunachal Pradesh as part of India, which in turn inspired the Indian spokesman to set the record straight that, no, Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh are indeed integral parts of India.
Indeed, managing public perceptions will remain a serious problem, since a curious gang-up of interest groups is bent upon spoiling the broth that Jaishankar is cooking — Sinophobic ideologues in the media, a clutch of ex-faujis and ex-diplomats and the ubiquitous “Friends of Quad”. (Jaishankar’s remarks followed some alarmist media reports announcing with that border negotiations with China have broken down.)
Meanwhile, Washington is watching with an eagle’s eye on the long-awaited Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement (BECA), which would be a rare foreign-policy trophy for President Trump’s campaign.
The BECA is a geospatial agreement that virtually ties the Indian armed forces to the American apron string — tantamount to the permanent stationing of an Edward Snowden in the sanctum sanctorum of Indian defence’s operational planning.
The US assumes that BECA could be the stepping stone to a de facto US-Indian military alliance.
A senior Chinese expert last week that even if India were to sign BECA, it may not be on the dotted line and there could be “follow-up negotiations”.
No doubt, India’s China strategies are at a crossroads.
A breakthrough in eastern Ladakh leading to disengagement and creation of a buffer zone, will obviate the need of military deployment through the winter months ahead.
That would save a heavy drain on scarce resources at a time when Indian economy has shrunk by over 10 percent (according to IMF estimates) and the “first wave” of the coronavirus pandemic is yet to sweep through the country.
Clearly, in immediate terms, the national priority lies in ending the tensions in eastern Ladakh.
However, this momentum also can serve a larger purpose.
We must use any breakthrough for entering into a profound strategic communication with the Chinese leadership in search of a permanent boundary settlement.
Prime Minister Modi has three full years ahead before the general elections in 2024 to set his compass on the Sino-Indian boundary settlement and choreograph a new type of relationship with China.
So far, the apocalyptic predictions of the Sinophobes in India have gone haywire:
Our Sinophobes are whistling in the dark in their estimation that China is simply not interested in a boundary settlement with India but would prefer to leverage the border tensions to create pressure points for Delhi.
- No, China is not on an expansionist drive to grab Indian territory;
- No, China is not seeking a limited war with India;
- No, China is not seeking to broaden the scope of the limited standoff in Ladakh;
- No, China is not colluding Pakistan; and,
- No, China is in hopeless internal disarray due to Covid-19.
We need to stop believing in such soothsayers and instead test the Chinese intentions at the highest level of leadership.
In a historical perspective, the tragedy is that we didn’t do what successive leaderships in Moscow did — Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin — in pressing ahead with a turbo-charged political thrust to settle the border problem with China and erect a new architecture on that foundation, attuned to what Germans call the zeitgeist (spirit of the times.)
The Sino-Soviet border dispute was far more intractable than India’s dispute with China, as it involved Czarist Russia’s annexation of vast swathes of Chinese territories as late as the 19th century, which form part of Siberia and the Russian Far East.
But China took a pragmatic approach, prioritising the country’s economic growth and development.
The Russian prognosis of Chinese intentions turned out to be accurate.
And once the boundary settlement was reached, the Sino-Russian normalisation gathered pace and it has since proved to be of immense benefit to both sides, creating space for both countries to navigate the highly volatile contemporary world situation and to optimally leverage each side’s factors of advantage.
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The fundamental problem with Bhadrakumar is Indian haughtiness and arrogance. The Indians are betting the farm that China will collapse, because they see their civilization as intrinsically superior because of Vedic traditions. And it's perfectly possible that China will meet with severe strategic setbacks. But let's say it doesn't. Where does that get India? It gets India up a creek without a paddle because it's deliberately antagonized a power that's 3.5-4.5 times its size economically and is more modern to boot. Even in a best-case scenario along median projections, India will be around 133% times the size of China, with a less developed society and technological base.
From the Indian strategic classic the Arthashastra, what India is doing is completely bonkers and completely contrary to its advice. In the present moment, its choices are either to submit or move onto the American camp. In the long-term, the Indian choice with a near-peer power on its periphery is to move to neutral or friendly relations because it does not have the ability to defeat it without substantial cost.
The full clip
It seems beard are a bit more common in the PLA than usually assumed.
It seems beard are a bit more common in the PLA than usually assumed.
Hope is dimming for India to develop, especially without help from China, let alone antagonizing China. With each passing day, progress with automation, now with the aid of AI, will render unskilled labor, the only advantage from India, increasingly irrelevant. The development of Vietnam will hit barriers. The Vietnamese economy is very dependent on South Korea and China. Without the help from China, even the type of development like in Vietnam will not happen with India. The U.S. cannot direct these industries away from China to India against economic incentives. Obviously, high end industries like Boeing will not be shared with India. Economically, there is little the U.S. can offer India.
If you want to bet that the Chinese will collapse, at the very least you should learn to read the number to confirm your assertions. Size of the population means very little if no development happened. Part of the job of the ruling is the ability to understand the evolving world power structure and not blindly follow some dogma.
What Indians apparently fail to grasp is that even if Western powers want to build a separate supply chain outside China, the process has to be gradual. Until it's complete, which will take at least a decade, free exchanges of goods with China remain crucial. With its harassment of Chinese imports during the current border crisis and its refusal to join RECP, India is a much worse location than ASEAN countries. What if there is another border conflict and factories in India cant source parts from China because the Indian government decides to temporarily ban Chinese imports? What if there's a WAR between India and China so that supply chains in both countries are disrupted? Having an alternative supply chain in India makes no risk management sense unless Sino-Indian relationship is stable. ASEAN is very smart in maintaining good ties with both U.S. and China.
When you are stationed at a place where water turns into ice overnight you can’t really afford to shave every day.
I certainly agree with your diagnosis and prescription. I'm a bit lost by your assumption though that India will be around 133% times the size of China in the best-case scenario or the assertion that India will be a near-peer power of China. I simply don't see this is happening even under the wildest optimistic scenario in the foreseeable future (within 50 years). In really long term, anything can happen, but then again in the long term, we're all dead.
The reasons are structural, both domestic and global. And India's performance track records have also not been encouraging.
The fundamental problem with India is that their higher ups think Western powers will back them up unconditionally. They thought so during Doklam and they still think so now despite evidence to the contrary.
SteelBird
Colonel
in cold weather, I think beard helps keep warm too.
Hi weig2000,
You forget its much acclaim population dividend, a large illiterate young populace, its a ticking time bomb, all their economic and social woes derived from this one particular problem. My opinion is that they want to export this problem asap to the west, rather than solving it.
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