Ladakh Flash Point

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Nobonita Barua

Senior Member
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the thing is india is one of the larger growing market in the world. with ongoing tension between China-US, its gonna hurt company if they can't access both of these country. it also mean more US company will take advantage of this.
"A Market" means where a seller can sell & a buyer has capacity to buy.
India, with it's economy, i don't think going to be a "big market" anytime soon except cheap iphone brand, apps or cosmetics. And for apps they were already screaming to boycott china before this.
 

Phoenix_Rising

Junior Member
From the information so far I come to a conclusion: the mortal melee conflicts in last 2 months were typical performance of “獨走”, a Japanese term commonly used in Chinese, means "military stationed at field goes wild".

The reason of such violation was simple and passes through entire human history:
1, the capital and the frontline percieve the situation differently;
2, the civil government and the military not share same interest.

The history of "獨走" is long enough that Sun Tzu specifically instructed about it, 将在外君命有所不受, a general at field should selectively refuse order from the mornach.
Imperial Japan was the apex of such behavior, that's why the word was fixed in Japanese. The 1931 Mudken Incident was masterminded by several division-level staff officers of Kwantong Army, the troops were decieved into the fight. So was the 1932 Shanghai Incident, the motivation was simply some IJN officers could not tolerate IJA win over them.

"Field force goes wild" is easy to happen on countries with such factors:
weak central government,
long and constant conflict far from heartland,
low legitimacy state bragging ultra-nationalism & militarism to keep unity.

It is often triggered by 2 contrast motivation from the military:
an unscheduled victory to force the government make some change,
or a planned defeat to refute the attempt of change by the government.

The later one has an extremely noxious example in China's history:
In 1630-40s, the northerneast defender of Ming Empire, the Guan-Ning (Shan Hai Guan gate and Ningyuan fortress) Legions, became totally warlord-lized. Their typical trick to blackmail the court was to:
1, send an "outsider" commander to have a suicidal operation;
2, trigger the retaliate reaction from Qing army;
3, warn the court that without more money, power and asset, they may not be able to fulfill their duty

The whole thing happened in last to months just smells exactly like Guan-Ning for me.;)

When we talk about revoking Article 370 of Indian Constitution, we usually foucs on its hurt to kashmir people and provocation to China and Pakistan. But, a big BUT, most people seems ingored the recoil from domestic of India.

Yes, I'm talking about the North Command of Indian Army.

Being the de facto praetor of a colony is simply way way way more powerful and profitable than just another commander under supervison of civil government.
New Dehli's plan to set up a pradesh/state in Kashmir will surely reduce the power and resource of the army.
The North Command want to keep everything unchanged.
That is why I think Indian forces in Ladakh suddenly became aggressive, but clumsy.

The action was so poorly organized,
several high rank officers involved, but somehow such a difficult action of night-raid was led by a newcomer,
there was no coordination from friendlies,
the Indian command didn't know what their subordinate had done, BBC reported it earlier than Indian army made a brief to press,
the leadership had and still has no idea on how to react.

Only if it is a 獨走/front-goes-wild action, then the pattern was no longer abnormal.

What for? You may ask.

My explaination is:
by provoking Chinese, the North Command could get a predicted defeat. It would be miserable but unharmful, serves perfectly to refute the realization of Jammu and Kashmir Pradesh.

China's reaction is predictable as clockwire, so the North Command knew their sudden move would not end in missiles hit Leh. They knew they were actually not risking at all.
However, by creating conflict, the establish of civil government in J&K would be haunted. The military gave a payback to New Dehli for undermining their dominance in Kashmir.

The action was so poorly coordinated because it was meant to.
Modi and BJP have don't know how to react because that action was not taken under their instruction.

This is only my guess bases on info we have.
We can judge how accurate it is by the progress of article 370 in coming years.
If the military rule stays, that means this old trick of military vs civil works again.
 

Waqar Khan

Junior Member
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Indian Surgical strike of banning 50 plus Chinese Digital applications is not only absurd but hilarious.If this is the response to #LadakhShame than India needs to stop spending 62 billion dollars on the Military and hand over the command of Military to Key Board warriors
 

Jiang ZeminFanboy

Senior Member
Registered Member
I think there is no point of retaliation in broad range. China can ban Indian movies, there were popular in Chinese market. That's enough.
 

AndrewS

Brigadier
Registered Member
No it can't. It can project power else where because the other countries are concerned about their own problem rather than hitting them back. Of course hitting them back would require economy & military capability too.

For a century, the USA has been the largest (and most advanced) economy in the world.
At times, it was far larger than any competitor or group of competitors.

The USA is separated by the vast distance of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.
It's so difficult to project military power across these distances, unless you have local bases and ports you can use.

The USA has 2 land neighbours which are small.
The US also typically had an economy that was 2x larger than everyone else in the Americas combined
So the USA did have enough economic and military influence to ensure no one establishes a hostile military alliance against the USA.
Which frees up the US military for expeditionary missions in distant lands.

NB. The modern exception is island-state Cuba, but what other country in the Americas wants to end up like Cuba?
 

AndrewS

Brigadier
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Also, it seems that all the Apps still work, just can't download if you don't have.

This will be easy to circumvent though.

Australia supporting India in the Himalayas is a disaster in the waiting for both Australia and India.

What happens if China-India actually get in a conflict over Lakakh?

If the Chinese military moves to liberate the "oppressed peoples of occupied Kashmir and Ladakh" - is Australia really going support the Indian Army?
 

plawolf

Lieutenant General
Remember that the US and Europe also have vaccines in development, which would only be a few months behind China at most.
And the US has already decided to go with herd immunity anyway,

Given the absolutely colossal cost in lives and economic damage, would you take a working vaccine now, or wait months for one that might also work?

You also need to factor in that developing the vaccine is only half the equation. Just how much longer would it take to manufacture the hundreds of millions of doses of it needed to effectively inoculate western populations without China’s manufacturing and support infrastructure networks (if it is even possible)?

So even in the scenario you posit, I don't see a Chinese move on Taiwan happening, because the odds are against a successful Taiwan invasion.

And just how did you calculate such odds? Because the only way Taiwan can fend off a full force invasion from China is with massive and immediate direct foreign military involvement. Even then it’s at best a close run thing, and most likely will only serve to increase the time and cost for China to take Taiwan.

So why take the risk of failure now, when Chinese military spending will be a lot higher in 10 years time.

Because COVID19 is a once in multiple-generations freak event; and I am not naive enough to think of Chinese National policy as purely reactionary and so principled that China is not able to take a hard nosed approach to evaluating the impact of such events to not consider all possible opportunities it presents.

As mentioned above, the lion share of the cost and risk of a military solution to the Taiwan issue would be from direct foreign military intervention and potentially from economic damage from sanctions and boycotts afterwards.

The PLA will be stronger in absolute and relative terms to better dissuade and even fight off foreign military involvement in the future yes, but the costs to China of fighting off the US in 10 years time is still going be to orders of magnitudes more than just fighting Taiwan tomorrow. In addition to the significantly less likelihood of direct US military involvement in a Taiwan takeover under the scenario described, there will almost certainly be far less economic fallout as neither the US or EU could afford to impose economic sanctions on China if they are relying on the good graces of Beijing to supply them with COVID19 vaccines.

There are always at least two sides to each calculation when it comes to game theory - your own strengths and motivations, and your opponents. The best outcome you can reach is usually achieved when making your move when the relative difference between the two sides is most in your favour, so you cannot simply only look at how your own power and motivational curves develops, but also need to be mindful of how your opponent’s change as well.

Going by current trends, it seems likely American hostility towards China will be far more entrenched and deep rooted at all levels of government and society in 10 years’ time give the great power competition at play and how China is increasingly catching up and exceeding America. As such, even though both the absolute power of the PLA will be much stronger, and the relative power different between the PLA and the US military will be much smaller in 10 years time, the likelihood that America will commit to direct military action may actually also be higher given that will probably be their last and only chance to decisively change the course China is on to comprehensively overtake America.

Far more concerning for China is that as things stand, China is the reactionary side. America and trigger war any time it wants by merely giving Taiwan a secret node that it would support its declaring of independence. That means China needs to be constantly ready to fight for Taiwan and not have any moments of weakness.

Imagine what could have happened had China not been as effect at dealing with COVID19 as it was. If China was hobbled by COVID19 and it was America that managed to decisively contain the outbreak, there would be a huge likelihood that America would choose and capitalise on that sudden shift in power by pushing Taiwan to formal independence.

Can you guarantee that it will always been success and smooth sailing for China for the next 10, 20 or 30 years until China is so far ahead of America that even during a moment of national weakness and calamity that China would still be able to fight off the fully might of the US military who can pick and choose when to fight to best suit their timetable?

Yes, the youth in Taiwan will continue to drift away from China, but I think this should be manageable.

And at the end of the day, the legitimacy of the Chinese government still depends on delivering economic progress for the 40% of people who are still struggling.

As decided by who? If given the choice of some personal economic hardship and Taiwan, I doubt many ordinary people in China will choose money.

This focus on economic delivery is just more western prejudices and wishful thinking being projected on China.

The obsession on money is a western semi-racist charcuterie of Chinese much like the same anti-Semitic stereotyping against Jews.

The focus on economic performance is just western wishful thinking that the year China has a bad economy is the year the people will all rise up and do a colour revolution for them.
 
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