10 April 2023

China is looking to stir up border tensions again; India must be on highest alert, intensify military engagement with US

Sreemoy Talukdar

The signs are ominous. A close reading of tea leaves suggests that the inhospitable regions of high Himalayas, through which runs thousands of kilometres of undemarcated border between India and China, may again witness Beijing’s renewed attempts at incursion or other forms of mischief.

The joining of seemingly disparate yet coordinated dots leads to an unsavoury conclusion — that India must be on highest alert for yet another Chinese misadventure along the LAC. PLA’s western theatre command may probe and test Indian preparedness in more than one place.

The geopolitical moment is opportune. Russia, an important cog in India’s China strategy, is getting increasingly beholden to Beijing. The United States, meanwhile, is distracted by the war in Ukraine and the need to punish and degrade Russia. Washington is simultaneously casting a wary eye out for Taiwan.

This leaves China with the chance to resume its ‘grey zone’ tactics against India and focus towards achieving its strategic goals just under the conflict radar.

Top-ranking US military officials are hinting at increased Chinese activity along the LAC.

Worth noting that India had anticipated and repelled a Chinese offensive on 9 December last year in the Tawang sector of Arunachal Pradesh when PLA troops armed with spiked clubs and tasers sought to overrun an Indian outpost at Yanki in the Yangtse area of Tawang sector and “sought to unilaterally change the status quo”, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh had told the Parliament. There were multiple injuries from both sides in the ensuing fisticuff, but no one died.

American media has claimed that India was able to force Chinese troops to retreat on that occasion due to “real-time” and “actionable intelligence” about China’s force position and strength provided by the US military to counterparts in New Delhi. The “unprecedented intelligence sharing” had caught PLA troops “off guard”, according to a report by Paul Shinkman for US News in March this year.

The same outlet is again reporting of renewed Chinese activities along the LAC and quoting General Charles Flynn, commander of US Army Pacific Command, US military’s top officer in the Indo-Pacific region, to report of “potential for new Chinese offensives” due to “the activities [of] Western Theater Army in and along that area” that have been “concerning for a number of months.”

The Indian establishment prefers to remain tightlipped about its assessments and threat perception in the border regions from China, but if we string together recent comments made by India’s politicians and armed forces, the discomfort is evident, and the worry is floating to the surface.

In March, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said at a conclave that the situation between India and China in Ladakh is “fragile and dangerous.”

Last Monday, at a strategic dialogue held in Pune on China’s rise and implications, India’s chief of army staff General Manoj Pande warned that China’s LAC transgressions could be a “potential trigger for escalation” and said that Indian army is ready for “any eventuality” and is ready to deal with the PLA “in a firm, resolute and measured manner while ensuring the sanctity of our claims.”

General Pande also said that “China has over the years accrued significant capacities for force mobilisation, application and sustenance of military operations. Consequent to the development of infrastructure of military significance- be it roads, airfields, helipads and or belating structures.”

Last Saturday (1 April), Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while addressing top military commanders in Bhopal, asked the three service chiefs to be “ready to tackle new and emerging threats”, and said the government is taking “all steps to equip the Armed Forces with necessary weapons and technologies.”

The substance and timing of these comments could either be coincidental, or more likely, an indication that India anticipates some more probing manoeuvres from China.

There’s more. On Sunday, in a fresh provocation, the Chinese Communist Party announced that it is “renaming” 11 places that lie within India’s Arunachal Pradesh and claimed that it is “standardizing some geographical names” in what it referred to as “southern Tibet.” This is the third time since 2017 that the CCP has done so.

While New Delhi gave a testy response, reiterating that “Arunachal Pradesh is, has been, and will always be an integral and inalienable part of India. Attempts to assign invented names will not alter this reality,” the Chinese foreign ministry on Tuesday claimed the name changes were “completely within the scope of China’s sovereignty”.

“Renaming” is a low-cost, grey zone tactic frequently adopted by China in contested zones on its periphery like the LAC or South China Sea. It is a probing tool to create false legal claims and “facts on the ground” to contest domains belonging to its adversaries. These incremental steps are often accompanied by the salami-slicing of territories by the PLA. These coercive mechanisms right below the threshold of kinetic action or conflict make it difficult for the affected nation to counter these tactics.

Worth noting that China in its official communication has given no indication of its intent. After the failed 9 December offensive by the PLA in Tawang, Arunachal Pradesh, the Chinese foreign ministry refused to answer questions on the issue and a spokesperson, days later, said the situation was “generally stable”.

Right now the Chinese official discourse on India is conciliatory to the point of delusion. A Chinese diplomat last Friday in Kolkata said that “emergency control at the India-China border is a matter of the past”, and the border situation is “overall stable at the moment” despite the deployment of thousands of troops from both sides, armed to the teeth, facing each other at several locations still.

On Tuesday, Mao Ning, the Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said India and Russia are “major powers” and China is “ready to boost ties with both Moscow and New Delhi” to “send a positive signal to the world about defending true multilateralism.”

Chinese words and actions, as we have seen in the past, are unrelated and quite often the former is used as a subterfuge mechanism to mislead the adversary. China’s “increased activities” along the LAC, provocative renaming of India’s sovereign territories along with conciliatory official discourse should therefore be treated with alarm.

This sense of alarm is intensified if we see what is happening at the Myanmar-administered Coco Islands which lie 55 kilometres to the north of India’s Andaman and Nicobar Islands, a strategic naval base.

A report in Chatham House, based on satellite imagery, reveals that the islands are getting undergoing a thorough military makeover and could become a staging ground for a new intelligence facility and an airbase that poses a grave a security challenge to India. Authors Damien Symon and John Pollock write, “If China were to further apply pressure to the Tatmadaw, leveraging naval intelligence acquired from surveillance flights from Great Coco for desperately needed economic investment, it would give Beijing a key regional advantage over New Delhi.”

Under these circumstances, India’s best bet could be a more intensified external balancing strategy by coordinating with like-minded partners to nullify the Chinese threat, as well as strengthening border deployment. China believes that its expanding power gap with India and superior military strength should be enough to draw deference from India on contested issues such as the border dispute and it is apprehensive about India’s growing strategic closeness with the US and its allies.

As ORF scholar Antara Ghosal Singh, who keeps a keen eye on Chinese strategic community, points out that according to Chinese assessment, New Delhi “is using the power of the international community to deal with China. Instead of relying solely on its own strength to negotiate with China on the border issue, it hopes to internationalise the matter, allow multiple forces to participate in it, and increase its own bargaining chip vis-a-vis China.”

India should take part in more joint military exercises with the US in locations such as the Himalayas without worrying about China trying to veto the move. The US has expressed it keenness to do bilateral military exercises, especially in the Himalayas, more frequently. India is also taking part in a bilateral air combat games with the US at the Kalaikunda airbase in West Bengal this month, with Japan as the observer, according to a Times of India report.

The April COPE India exercise, as Brookings scholar Tanvi Madan has pointed out, is one among many as “there has been an uptick in the Indian Air Force’s engagements with the US in recent years.”

Washington has recently reiterated that partnership with India would be America’s “most important bilateral relationship in the 21st century.” India should make the most of this partnership.

No comments: