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The Galwan incident marked the new low in the India-China relations. Following it, there have been talks of a closer alliance with the U.S. This article analyses the utility, potential and the limitations of this approach.

Exploring the strategic options

• As the border stand-off with China deepens, India will have to think of all possible strategic options that gives it leverage.
• One of the options is new arrangements with other powers.
• This is the right moment to mobilise international opinion on China.
• But can this be translated into concerted global action to exert real pressure on China?

Things India should consider while forming alliance with the US

• International relations are formed in the context of a country’s development paradigm.
• India’s primary aim should be to preserve the maximum space for its development model, if it can actually formulate one.
• India is not unique in this respect.
•  The question for India is not just whether the US has a stake in India’s development, which it might.
• But it is, rather, to ask whether India’s development needs will fit into the emerging US development paradigm.
• Will the very same political economy forces that create a disengagement with China also come in the way of a closer relationship with India?
• Some sections of American big business might favour India.
• But the underlying political economy dynamics in the US are less favourable.
• Will the US give India the room it needs on trade, intellectual property, regulation, agriculture, labour mobility, the very areas where freedom is vital for India’s economy?
• Will a US hell-bent on bringing manufacturing jobs back to the US, easily gel with an “atma nirbhar” Bharat?
• To see what is at stake, we just need to look how the development paradigm is driving tensions on trade, taxation and regulatory issues between the US and EU.

Why India avoided alignment with the US in the past

•  But the drivers of this have often been legitimate differences over development, including climate change.
• It has also been that, at various points, that alignment was against India’s other strategic commitments.
• India was wise to stay out of the war in Iraq, it was wise not to upset Russia.
• It is wise not to throw its weight behind the US’s Iran policy.
• There is more maturity in the US to understand India’s position.

Global reluctance in collective action against China

• It is an odd moment in global affairs, where there is recognition of a common challenge emanating from China.
• But there is no global appetite to take concerted action.
• An interesting example might be the global response to the BRI.
• Many countries are struggling to meet their BRI debt obligations.
• But it is difficult to see the rest of the international community helping all these countries to wean their regimes away from dependence on Chinese finance.
• Similarly, there are now great concerns over frontier areas of conflict like cyber security and space.
• It is difficult to imagine concerted global action to create rules in these area, partly because Great Powers like the US and Russia will always want to maintain their exceptionalism.

Limitations of global alliance and public opinion in solving local conflicts

• 1) The international community has not been very effective in neutralising
•  exercised by some powers.
• This is the tactic Pakistan has used.
• 2) Don’t count on the fact that the world will support an Indian escalation beyond a point.
• The efforts of the international community, in the final analysis, will be to try and throw cold water on the conflict.
• No one has a serious stake in the fate of the terrain India and China are disputing.
• At the end of the day, India has to manage China and Pakistan largely on its own.

Conclusion

Even as we deal with the military situation on the border, the test of India’s resolve will be its ability to return to some first principle thinking about its own power.

The LAC has been exploited by China as leverage against India. And failure on our part to understand long-term strategic aims and objective of China makes the problem hard to solve. This article suggests a three-pronged approach to deal with China.

Incomprehension of aims and objectives

•  There is incomprehension among our decision-makers of the long-term strategic aims and objectives that underpin China’s belligerent conduct.
• We have not devoted adequate intellectual capital, intelligence resources and political attention to acquisition of a clear insight into China and its motivations.
• Even when intelligence is available, analysis and dissemination have fallen short.

What China’s Defence White Papers suggest

• These thematic public documents articulate China’s national security aims, objectives and vital interests and also address the “ends-ways-means” issues related to its armed forces.
• The 11 DWPs issued so far are a model of clarity and vision, and provide many clues to current developments.
• No Indian government since Independence has deemed it necessary to issue a defence white paper, order a defence review or publish a national security strategy.
• Had we done so, it may have prepared us for the unexpected and brought order and alacrity to our crisis-response.

China uses LAC as strategic leverage

• In order to show India its place, China had administered it a “lesson” in 1962.
• And it may, perhaps, be contemplating another one in 2020, with the objective of preventing the rise of a peer competitor.
• For China, the line of actual control or LAC, representing an unsettled border, provides strategic leverage.
• Leverage it can use to keep India on tenterhooks about its next move while repeatedly exposing the latter’s vulnerabilities.

1993 Agreement didn’t benefit India

• Our diplomats derive considerable satisfaction from the 1993 Border Peace & Tranquility Agreement.
• This agreement, according to former foreign secretary, Shivshankar Menon, “…effectively delinked settlement of the boundary from the rest of the relationship”.
• But by failing to use available leverage for 27 years, and not insisting on bilateral exchange of LAC maps, we have created a ticking time-bomb, with the trigger in China’s hands.
• While “disengagement” may soon take place between troops in contact, it is most unlikely that the PLA will pull back or vacate any occupied position in Ladakh or elsewhere.
• In which case, India needs to consider a three-pronged strategy.

What should be India’s three-pronged strategy?

1. Reinforce at ground level

• At the ground-level, we need to visibly reinforce our positions, and move forward to the LAC all along.
• We should enhance the operational-tempo of the three services as a measure of deterrence.
• Indian warships should show heightened presence at the Indian Ocean choke-points.
• Cyber emergency response teams country-wide should remain on high alert.
• We should build-up stocks of weapons, ammunition and spares.
• The Ministry of Defence should seize this opportunity to urgently launch some long-term “atma-nirbharta” schemes in defence-production.

2. At strategic level: Modus vivendi

• At the strategic level, the government should consider sustained process of engagement with China at the highest politico-diplomatic echelons.
• The negotiations should seek multi-dimensional Sino-Indian modus-vivendi; encompassing the full gamut of bilateral issues like trade, territorial disputes, border-management and security.
• Simultaneously, at the grand-strategic level, India should initiate a dialogue for the formation of an “Indo-Pacific Concord for Peace and Tranquility”.
• This Concord should involve inviting four members of the Quad as well as Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines and Malaysia.

3. Political pragmatism

• As a nation, we need to be pragmatic enough to realise that neither conquest nor re-conquest of territory is possible in the 21st century.
• Parliament should, now, resolve to ask the government, “to establish stable, viable and peaceful national boundaries”.

Consider the question “With changing relations with China, India needs to overhaul its strategy on the ground, strategic and political levels in dealing with China”

Conclusion

This three-pronged approach while comprehending the Chines objectives and goals can help India in dealing successfully with the challenge posed by China.