Dragon dramatics baffle India

A RISKY enterprise is justified so long as it turns out to be successful in the end. For the astute strategic experts of the Chinese foreign and military establishment, it is indeed “all is well that ends well.” Having successfully camouflaged a flurry of clandestine events, going on in its backyard, by way of offensive military posturing, Beijing can undoubtedly have the last laugh.
While the Indian administration and the overzealous media remain diverted due to the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) tactical ploy of pushing in a platoon strength team deep inside India controlled territory in a high altitude zone of disputed Kashmir, the contours of a future West Asia initiative was being drawn out quietly in Beijing.
Israeli Military Intelligence Chief, Major General Aviv Kochavi’s secret visit to the Chinese capital sometime during the fag end of April ensured that his country could safely carry out targeted air raids and rocket attacks on Syria’s military facilities and Iranian missiles bound for Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
It is not difficult to predict that initiating unrestrained assault on Syria is an improbable proposition without the tacit approval of either the Chinese or Russian leadership, or both. Moreover, Israel is keen on engaging China’s new leadership on the possibility of Iran crossing the nuclear threshold anytime soon especially when the People’s Republic happens to be Tehran’s top oil customer.
Most importantly, Beijing has facilitated an informal engagement between the Israeli and Palestinian leadership, that too on its own soil, in order to shore up its diplomatic influence in the Middle East. Was the Indian strategic establishment aware of all these developments taking place in the neighborhood or not is a big question. All this while, the Indian media was abuzz with various theories about the timing of the Chinese incursion as politicians of all hue did not hesitate to score brownie points over the issue without even realizing its ramifications.
In a nutshell, India appeared to be a nation busy magnifying minor issues and politicizing it unnecessarily to extract mileage even as its neighbor China goes the whole hog to discreetly offer necessary assistance in resolving critical international disputes. It is intriguing that India behaved so amateurishly despite the fact that the weekly diplomatic pouch from Beijing did contain the ambassador and the external intelligence’s station chief’s professional assessment of the emerging scenario. So, was the Indian security establishment trying to accentuate the situation arising from the PLA encampment for prickling Beijing prior to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s simultaneous state visit to the dragon land?
In fact the strategists in India differ substantially about the real intent of this latest Chinese aggression. Some analysts believe that Beijing intended to signal a warning to India against expressing any support for Japan over the Senkaku (Diaoyu) islands dispute in the East China Sea prior to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s Tokyo trip. On the other hand a section of military experts feel that this has something to do with India’s decision to operationalize the forward airstrip in the Daulat Beg Oldi (DBO) area along the Line of Actual Control (LAC). The DBO overlooks the all-weather highway linking Xinjiang with Tibet, some 150 km from the LAC. But then it would be rather naive to imagine that the Chinese security establishment would consciously put a spanner in Premier Le Keqiang’s impending visit to India or wake up late in the day to counter the use of a strategically located airfield — that reopened way back in 2008 — for reconnaissance. Instead, in trying to ascertain the real motive of China, one must also give due importance to the fact that the PLA detachment sat through the medium magnitude earthquake that struck the region and whose tremors were felt as far away as New Delhi.
Now that the fortnight long tense face-off between the border troops of Chinese and Indian armed forces has ended without any major escalation, the Indian government needs to wake up to a new reality as early as possible. Significantly, Beijing is showing visible sign of moving away from a time tested diplomatic policy based on Deng Xiaoping’s “Tao Guang Yang Hui” principle, that emphasizes on a low key approach on global issues.
Political opponents of the present Manmohan Singh government may accuse the leadership to be weak and bereft of Machiavellian instinct. But is there any guarantee that displaying narcissist type cunningness will help India regain the territories that she lost to China over the years? Inciting patriotic fervor among the electorate to extract political mileage in pre-election season is one thing, but retrieving even an inch of those territories is no child’s game.
Even former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and his adviser, the late Brajesh Mishra, with his vast experience of quarrelling with foreign interlocutors over commas and full stops, have failed to dislodge the Chinese establishment from their maximalist position on territorial issues. As the Xi Jinping administration renews its effort to mediate in Israel-Palestinian crisis, there is every possibility of the Americans giving a subtle behind the scene push to this process given US Secretary of State John Kerry’s determination to revive the stalled peace talks. Beijing’s growing clout in conflict resolution will surely affect adversely India’s chances of settling the vexed dispute over the 4057 km long “yet to be defined” Sino-Indian border on her own term. Instead of adopting the silly tit-for-tat diplomacy, New Delhi should therefore try to convince the Chinese leadership that the unresolved boundary issue and the resultant acrimony will suck the two nations further down into dark abyss.