Ladakh Flash Point

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escobar

Brigadier
Not really. The Devil is in the details. America hates China because it fears Chinese growth; China hardly does anything to inflame America but just sits there and develops while Americans look on in horror getting ever more apprehensive about their future in comparison. China, on other other hand, really doesn't want to do anything to India. India's not a challenge; it's not growing fast and its tech is not catching up. China wants to ignore India and do its own thing but India keeps inflaming tensions poking China with a stick asking for a beatdown. Basically, Americans who want to see China destroyed want to do so like a CEO who wants to destroy a rival company that is rising fast to overtake his own. Chinese who want to destroy India want to do so like a man who wants to finally rid his backyard of a nest of rats; he wouldn't mind if they were quiet and kept to themselves in their burrows but they are unpleasantly loud and aggressive.

Essentially you are just saying China is good/right and US/India is bad/wrong. Exactly like US/India/Australia are saying they are good/right and China is bad/wrong. Are your arguments correct? Maybe or maybe not. But it doesn't matter in IR. What matters is whether China is achieving its strategic objectives? A nuclear India destroyed and dismembered will help China achieve its objectives?
 

Bright Sword

Junior Member
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A nuclear India destroyed and dismembered will help China achieve its objectives?
It's a New Cold War. China's strategy seems to be to lock India into an arms race that will break its economy just as the Soviet Union collapsed trying to keep up with the USA and the West. Like the Soviet Union India has different linguistic, religious and ethnic regions with little similarities. So an economic crisis or a disastrous military defeat is likely to fracture the union. India has already fractured into three entities since the British abandoned their colony. With so much variations in language, culture and beliefs India for much of its history has always been kept unified by an external power.
 

reservior dogs

Junior Member
Registered Member
Essentially you are just saying China is good/right and US/India is bad/wrong. Exactly like US/India/Australia are saying they are good/right and China is bad/wrong. Are your arguments correct? Maybe or maybe not. But it doesn't matter in IR. What matters is whether China is achieving its strategic objectives? A nuclear India destroyed and dismembered will help China achieve its objectives?
There is no good guy or bad guy on a country level. Every country tries to get the best deal for itself. The currency is your hard power. India, along with every other country, have done its fair share of picking on smaller nations. Sikkim ring a bell? When you go against a much bigger power and you have no way to win with hard power, you try to negotiate a deal with the power to the best you can. The first thing is to preserve your national integrity and allow you to develop. China does not care that much about getting a few extra square km of land. They have settled their border with all nations that share land border except two, India and Bhutan. Many of these nations are much weaker then they are and they got more than what their power would have gotten them. They got a very good deal on the land border. China is open to settle the border issue with India and Bhutan. It would be along the line of actual control. For a nation with significantly weaker hand, this is a good deal. It frees up India to focus its energy on its own development. The fact that India alone failed to settle their border with China says a lot about their failures as a nation.
 

Bright Sword

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China does not care that much about getting a few extra square km of land. They have settled their border with all nations that share land border except two, India and Bhutan.... China is open to settle the border issue with India and Bhutan. It would be along the line of actual control ....The fact that India alone failed to settle their border with China says a lot about their failures as a nation.
As correctly said ; China doesn't care so much about a few extra sq.km of land.
There is a border dispute between China and India but that is peripheral now with much larger issues.
The situation has drastically changed since 1962. India's simultaneous hostility to Pakistan and CPEC and it's attempt to play a regional super-power role is serious obstacle to any resolution of the problem. Worst of all is India's alliance with other powers that have only long term strategic interests which is to involve India and China in a prolonged armed conflict. The ultimate objective is to weaken China with India as sacrificial pawn.
 

manqiangrexue

Brigadier
Essentially you are just saying China is good/right and US/India is bad/wrong. Exactly like US/India/Australia are saying they are good/right and China is bad/wrong.
Essentially what I'm saying is that the China has different reasons for acting against India/USA than India/USA has against China while you said it's all the same. I said the devil is in the details and explained why. Instead of discussing the details, you went into an even further oversimplification "A says B is wrong; B says A is wrong so they are the same." If you sue a person who burglarized your house and he countersues you for not having enough valuables for him to steal, is it all the same because you're suing each other? Your response nonsense, incorrect, and pointless.
Are your arguments correct? Maybe or maybe not. But it doesn't matter in IR. What matters is whether China is achieving its strategic objectives? A nuclear India destroyed and dismembered will help China achieve its objectives?
It's true that moral arguments don't matter in the world; only your ability to achieve your objectives matter. China is achieving its strategic objectives independently of this mess and of external forces because it is developing its own military, technology, and economy to be the strongest in the world.

And even though my analogy of destroying a rival company or getting rid of a nest of rodents may have sounded like I believe in the destruction/dismemberment of India, I don't, and it's just an analogy. We were talking about people who might have such desires and why they might have these desires, NOT the actual actionability of them. I don't believe in such a drastic outcome as national destruction over a border skirmish in the modern world; it's not realistic so your question is moot. If they were to cause a nuclear conflict with China, I can see it happening but as of now, it's not possible to escalate that far in my opinion. I think the route for Sino-Indian relations is for China to grow so powerful that India eventually lets the hostilities die down because it realizes that it's damaging itself over a rivalry that isn't there because it's leagues too far beneath China to rival or challenge it.
 

Bright Sword

Junior Member
Registered Member
Are Indians the 21st Century Mongols?
There is a sinister mindset prevailing in India under a "Bharat Expansion" movement, fueled by media and influential think tanks including the chief ideologue directing the regime in power .
This might have long term implications for China and other countries in the region.
The argument is that India is too overpopulated and resources strapped to exist within its geographical boundaries.The population simply cannot be sustained. Apart from depopulating its 11% minority India has two solutions to the problem.
1.A partial solution is manipulated immigration to North America and Australia, which will partially relieve the pressure of highly vocal unemployed youth. Which is why any changes to the US H1B visa system draws intense criticism in the Indian media. The assertion is that Indians have a right to immigrate all over the world particularly to the USA so that a lobby can be built up to control the governments.The intention for the USA is that sufficient persons of Indian origin will settle and rise to prominent political office which has already happened in Canada and UK and of course in smaller countries such as Trinidad, Fiji, Mauritius,Guyana etc. The Mongols in the 12th century followed a roughly similar pattern prepping countries targeted for invasion using their trading establishments infiltrated via the Silk Route.
2. The other solution is outright conquest using overwhelming military power. The doctrine being proposed is the occupation of countries with rich natural resources and with a large sparsely populated land mass that are diplomatically isolated and militarily weak. The occupation could be accomplished with the help of regional allies and superpower approval. There is much talk in the influential Indian think tanks of taking over the Iranian gas and oil fields since the population of Iran is only 83 million population ( as. compared to 200 million people in single province of India's Uttar Pradesh). Azarbaijan, Baluchistan, are also in India's cross hairs because of rich natural resources, low population density. India has also targeted Uzbekistan. India has a general approval from the "Powers that be" for its population creep.
There are two obvious major obstacles to India's north and western expansion which are China and Pakistan. Obviously the costs of facing these countries by open warfare is unacceptable. Keeping a low grade tension constant based on "territorial disputes" is an alternative with the expectation that the "Powers that be" will exert sufficient diplomatic and economic costs to weaken these adversaries for India to tackle later.
A flawed plan but this is what is hoped.
Will population pressures and economic strain, poverty and hunger ultimately propel India into open expansionism, whatever the costs?
As their population grew the Mongols were unable to sustain their nomadic lifestyle as they ran out of grazing land for their cattle. They then turned on China and the rest of the world for resources.
As Chengiz Khan famously said :
"We don't fight for any nation or land.
We fight because we are hungry ".
 
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