ThE BrOkEn HeArT
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India need to wait till October. Later if Chinese doesn't retreat, need a minor skirmish in Ladakh and push them back.Pre-emption has been done with. They have played a neat game.
By encouraging/facilitating 'leaks' into Indian Mainstream Media, they have put the GoI under lot of pressure. The present dispensation projected itself as being 'strong' on the 'national security'.
Yet, in all honesty, all that has changed on the ground are the optics & enabled certain 'options', if one was to dispassionately observe the changeover.
In reality, conduct of cross border 'surgical strikes' is something that had been happening away from public glare. The difference came in the political 'ownership' of the act, which was new and which changed the balance for GoP and PA, which, hitherto, were having a rather "free run" as political and diplomatic costs were relatively low. This overt ownership also allowed GoI to get 'options' in the form of a more 'aware' public/citizen which/who can be mobilized in case of a need to employ escalatory measures.
This, like all advantages, had a drawback. The public assumed a rather more 'machoistic' approach of the present dispensation, something that is agreeable to the masses, who need something visible to believe in. But it also placed the GoI in the difficult position with respect to China, which has done exactly what it was always expected to do - creep in to areas of mutual demilitarization, as agreed in various rounds of JWG.
I have oft said, and this is for those who do read what I post, that for China any treaty is merely a document outlining an understanding that is valid only for the period/time till when those conditions which were prevalent when they entered in to it, prevail. Once those conditions change, and here the Chinese have a very unilateral approach of deciding the 'changeover', the treaties by themselves need either be re-negotiated or made redundant.
I digress. Apologies.
With the publicizing of this creeping in, the GoI is in a spot. If it allows the PLA to remain, it loses political capital (not even considering the national costs) and if it decides to use force to evict PLA, it risks a war that shall have mixed results with quite a few risks that may cost them severely.
So, being the politicians that they are, they have decided to use the opportunity to delay and buy time, by making military commanders spend time discussing something that can ever be decided by the military commanders of the either side, hoping to work through the back channels to reach some kind of face saving exit for both sides.
Unfortunately, for GoI today, the options are very limted. PRC needs to settle Indian border issue without loss of face or withdrawing from its original claim lines of 1962, in order to address multiple challenges it is now facing, to reduce one, rather powerful adversary. To do this, it is willing to risk a war, perhaps basing its premise of GoI not willing for a military confrontation, on the reasons mentioned above by me.
They are, in all probability, calculating a worst case scenario wherein IA may be ordered to evict them from the zones and they have prepared accordingly, to beat back Indian offenses and hold territory already held and if given an opportunity, make further ingress on precisely the same logic as we have based our Cold Start on, that of holding small pockets of land all along the boundary in order to reach a political settlement.
As long as the present stand off continues and PLA continues to occupy areas traditionally demilitarized, they remain the victorious. So, in my personal view, it is not PRC which is in a tough place right now, but GoI.
so who is gaining , whose terms will the stand off end on ?
