Book Excerpts

Take a Look Across the Full Spectrum of India’s Wars | EXTRACT

In his first book, India’s Wars: A Military History, 1947-1971, Arjun Subramaniam attempted to set this right by taking readers on a journey until the liberation of Bangladesh in 1971.

Full Spectrum: India’s Wars, 1972-2020 takes the story forward, including insurgencies in the north-east, terrorism and proxy wars in Jammu and Kashmir, separatist violence in Punjab, the IPKF intervention in Sri Lanka, and the continued stress along the LoC and LAC. Read this extract to find out more:

THE GAP CRISIS

As the winter season approaches, dilemmas abound for India’s strategic establishment. The Indian military continues to demonstrate its capability to reassure its citizens that it is ready to meet any contingency posed by the Chinese. This, however, is not likely to result in a return to the pre-May 2020 status quo until this capability is exercised in a show of coercive intent. What this means in real terms is quite simply that a weaker India must consider harder options, including a threat of the use of force to the Chinese, to return to the pre-May disposition. Options to launch combined assaults on selected positions that seriously threaten Indian sovereignty to cause attrition with surprise and firepower must also be considered even though such actions run the risk of escalation. How this will happen is a topic for much speculation and debate as it is unlikely that India will initiate a conflict unless the Chinese push further. For hawks, it means reversing the diffidence and reactiveness that India has been comfortable with for decades except on three occasions: the Nathu La skirmish, the occupation of the Saltoro Ridge and the envelopment of the PLA positions in the Sumdorong Chu Valley. Notwithstanding all talks of economic posturing, India does not have the economic muscle or diplomatic heft to reverse the negative fall-out of the GAP crisis. War is always the last option and a series of localized skirmishes along the LAC could be costly for both nations. However, the language of power and coercive posturing is the only strategic language that the current Chinese dispensation would take seriously.10 Two concurrent intellectual articulations in the media necessitate some deep introspection within India’s strategic community, particularly the politicodiplomatic-military-intelligence structures. The first is a recent piece by Chris Buckley in the New York Times titled ‘Clean Up this Mess: The Chinese Thinkers Behind Xi’s Hard Line’. Quoting a frontline Chinese scholar, Tian Feilong, who primarily addressed Western liberal constituencies, the article quotes him as arguing: ‘Back when I was weak, I had to totally play by your rules. Now I am strong and I have the confidence, so why can’t I lay down my own rules and values and ideas?’ Several such views have emerged over the past few years from a group of uncompromisingly anti-liberal and pro-authoritarian Chinese intellectuals who have been termed as ‘Statists’. Essentially, Tiang is only invoking an old Thucydidian principle called the Melian Dialogue that emerged during the Peloponnesian War prior to the siege of the island of Melios by Athens that says: ‘The strong will do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.’ The second articulation is by none other than India’s foreign minister,

Dr S. Jaishankar. In a recent statement made during an interview with the Times of India, he has argued, ‘Reaching an equilibrium with China is not going to be easy. We will be tested and we must stand our ground.’ He also asserts that the state of the border and the future of bilateral ties cannot be separated. India at last may be slowly realizing at its own elephantine pace the suboptimal outcomes accrued so far from its existing China policy. Coming as it does when the current crisis in Ladakh enters its fourth month offers some pointers that India may be finally coming to grips with a possible fait accompli and a new status quo that the Chinese are likely to offer it. Will it be a case of the Melian Dialogue playing all over again, or is it time for India to emerge out of the cocoon of a post-Independence strategic culture and DNA?

 

For more from Arjun Subramaniam’s latest book, order your copy of India’s War’s: A Military History, 1947-1971.

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