Prolonged talks allow Beijing to cement a new normal in Ladakh
Following the sixth round of India-China area commanders’ meeting on Monday (21 September), a joint statement was released on Tuesday (22 September) that announced that the two sides have agreed to stabilise the situation and to stop sending more troops to the frontlines. There was, however, no immediate breakthrough and the logjam continues.
The statement read: “They agreed to earnestly implement the important consensus reached by the leaders of the two countries, strengthen communication on the ground, avoid misunderstandings and misjudgments, stop sending more troops to the frontline, refrain from unilaterally changing the situation on the ground, and avoid taking any actions that may complicate the situation.”
The two sides also agreed to hold the seventh round of commanders’ talks to take the dialogue forward, added the statement.
The statement followed another joint statement that was released following the India-China foreign ministers’ meeting earlier this month, as per which the two sides reached a five-point consensus, the gist of which was that differences should not become disputes.
While some quarters seek solace in the fact that the two sides are still talking, there is a line of thought that the prolonged dialogue without any breakthrough is beneficial to the Chinese and not the Indians, as the more the talks go on for, the more the Chinese cement their presence in the India-claimed territory that they have occupied.
The Chinese have occupied up to 50 square kilometres of India-claimed “fingers area” on the northern bank of Pangong Tso, a lake in eastern Ladakh, and hundreds of square kilometres in Depsang Plains where the Indians have been pushed at least 17 kilometres westward of the Indian perception of the Line of Actual Control by Chinese advances. The Chinese have so far stonewalled meaningful discussions on these two points of friction — deemed most serious by the Indians.
Shiv Aroor writes, “There is a growing view, even within senior sections of the Indian Army, that the current situation is solidifying into a new normal. In other words, the wet cement of China’s move to alter the status quo at the Line of Actual Control is setting into the concrete.”
The longer a position exists on the ground, the harder it becomes to dislodge or persuade to move, argues Shiv, writing that the Chinese have openly demonstrated that they have no intention to withdraw. They have instead used the time spent in talks to beef up their logistics and infrastructure in the occupied territory, improving roads, supply lines, and laying optic fibre cables.
Despite the recent Indian aggressive posturing with which the Indians occupied a number of dominating heights on the southern bank of Pangong Tso and on Finger 4 on the lake’s northern bank, the fact remains that the Chinese occupation continues unabated and the Indian advances have so far not been able to persuade the Chinese to bargain a quid pro quo.
Moreover, even with these advances, the Indians are very much on their side of L.A.C. and that may not be a very substantial bargaining chip.
Arzan Tarapore, a research scholar at Stanford University, says, “Indian Army occupies high-ground features, reportedly as bargaining leverage against China. Except, these features are on its own side of L.A.C.. That’s not an especially strong bargaining position when your offer is to retreat from your own territory.”
Additionally, contrary to some initial reports, it has now been reliably reported that two of the most dominating heights south of Pangong Tso, Black Top and Helmet Top, continue to be occupied by the Chinese. Lieutenant General H.S. Panag, a former northern army commander, bluntly says, “Without Black Top, the operation means nothing!”
Even as the government believes the ongoing episode can take any trajectory, and even as the top military official has gone on record to say military options are on the table, and even as these statements have been accompanied by an unprecedented military build-up in Ladakh, the government seems to be reluctant regarding a military offensive, and the Indian strategic community is increasingly developing a line of thought as per which the Indian options have narrowed extremely.
Sreemoy Talukdar writes, “The joint statement issued after Monday’s marathon meeting suggests that India really has only two options — accept China’s fait accompli and territorial loss or launch a military offensive to evict the PLA squatting on India’s territory.”
The Indians have so far failed to build a leverage that can compel the Chinese to withdraw from the occupied territory.
Geopolitical analyst Brahma Chellaney says, “Imposing substantive economic and diplomatic costs, coupled with the application of coercive military pressure, holds the key. The costs India has sought to impose thus far seem woefully inadequate to make Beijing rethink its aggression.”
There is not a single red line that has not been crossed in the ongoing episode — blood has been shed, bullets have been fired, and all measures put in place over the years about troops’ and aircraft’s activity at the border are now in dust. Both sides now have multiple war-waging formations eye-to-eye, backed by air assets. There are frequent Indian fighter aircraft sorties in Ladakh and the Chinese have also reportedly raised their battle preparedness to the highest in decades. Since late August, at least 100–200 rounds of gunfire have so far been exchanged between the two sides at multiple locations. Yet the Chinese show no signs to budge.
It has been learnt that the two sides are now working on a patrolling mechanism as per which they could patrol the forward areas in Ladakh on alternate weeks, as is the norm in the Northeast. Government officials, however, have highlighted that such “alternate patrolling” would only come into effect once there has been disengagement in Ladakh. That, it needs no mention, is up to the Chinese entirely.
Also, one may note that it’s “disengagement” that’s mentioned by Indian officials and not “deescalation”. The two words are not synonymous. As a former three-star general explained to this writer earlier in the episode, “disengagement” means that the two sides get out of physical contact at a certain location whereas “deescalation” is the larger process in which the two sides extract their war-waging formations that are presently locked eye-to-eye and get down the escalation ladder.
Presently, there are no signs of either disengagement or deescalation.
Antara Ghosal Singh, a researcher at the Delhi Policy Group, writes that a number of members of the Chinese strategic community have come to believe that the Indian actions since late-August are not aimed at seizing China-occupied territory or at mounting an offensive but at getting a leverage to bargain in negotiations with China.
This would be in line with the Indian Army’s “orthodox offensive” doctrine that Arzan Tarapore wrote about in a recent Carnegie paper as making the Indian defence posturing irrelevant in modern times. In short, the Indians occupying dominating heights that are well within their perception of the L.A.C. is not a strong enough bargaining chip.
In the absence of any substantial leverage with the Indians, the Chinese don’t have a cause to budge from their hardened positions. There is a line of thought that the Chinese, who are said by some sections as not being as accustomed to winter deployment as the Indians, may not want to sit through the winters in Ladakh. But then the infrastructure, which is the ultimate indicator of one’s intention, suggests otherwise.
Everything boils down to three scenarios, writes Shiv Aroor:
“One, a meandering status quo that continues to harden with each passing day, with the permanence of the change in lines getting darker by the day until they pass into fact.
“Two, a high-level intervention between Prime Minister Modi and President Xi Jinping, invoking whatever substance there was to their personal summits, to draw the two countries back from the disturbing equilibrium that has settled between two sides on the brink of war.
“The final and third option needs no mention.”
Madhur Sharma is a post-graduate in journalism from the Indian Institute of Mass Communication, Delhi, and a graduate in history from the Delhi University. This is his personal newsblog. He tweets at @madhur_mrt.
