India’s relations with China: Proceed with cautious optimism
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. The four-year-long Galwan phase of India-China relations has come to an end. The two countries struck an agreement last week to disengage militarily and resolve “the issues in these areas." If the deal is implemented seriously, it could be the first step of a slow and wary movement towards better ties in the next phase of the relationship.
India’s best approach is to be cautiously optimistic without letting heady optimism overpower its caution, especially in the short term. There are many lessons to learn from the Galwan phase. The two most important are the following.
First, Beijing can achieve small boundary-related objectives by conducting aggressive military operations short of war. Second, that the asymmetric emotional significance of the border conflict is disadvantageous to India’s interests. Let me explain.
Why did Beijing raise the heat at Galwan in May 2020? The proximate answer is to prevent India from building road infrastructure in areas near the Line of Actual Control (LAC). Those roads would have subtly changed the military balance in India’s favour. My China specialist colleagues feel that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) leadership did not expect the Indian Army to respond as forcefully as it did.
The PLA’s bosses in Beijing also underestimated New Delhi’s political response, and did not foresee a roll-out of hardline political and economic measures in the middle of the covid pandemic. Beijing paid a tremendous geopolitical cost for its miscalculation: the Indian establishment acquired “strategic clarity" with respect to China and drew even closer to the United States. The price was much higher than Beijing may have estimated, but to the extent that it managed to
. Read more on livemint.com
