P. K. Balachandran
In his yet unpublished book entitled Four Stars of Destiny, India’s former army chief, Gen. M.M.Naravane blames the highest echelons of the country’s political leadership for the setbacks suffered by the Indian army in the Ladakh sector of the Sino-Indian border in 2020-21. Naravane was army chief between December 2019 and April 2022, a period that was one of the most consequential in recent military history, after the 1962 border war.
A point which emerges from Naravane’s account is that unlike the People’ Liberation Army (PLA) of China, the leadership of the Indian army is not an integrated military-political institution. China’s political leadership is represented at the very top of the PLA, providing the strategic thinking. China’s top leadership is part of the over-arching Central Military Commission, the head of which is none other than President Xi Jinping. But in India, the military and political leaderships are not intertwined in the same way. The two are distinct entities with the political leadership having the final say in matters of war and peace. Therefore, the PLA in Ladakh, as elsewhere, was better equipped to quickly tackle tactical and strategic challenges, as compared to the Indian army which lacked such a well-integrated back up.
No comments:
Post a Comment