China-India: coercion easily trumps diffidence : Japanese Media

[thestringshredder]

In a classic replay of its old game, China intruded stealthily across the disputed, forbidding Himalayan frontier with India recently and then disingenuously played conciliator by counseling “patience” and “negotiations.” The incursion bore all the hallmarks of Chinese brinkmanship, including taking an adversary by surprise, seizing an opportunistic timing, masking offense as defense and discounting risks of wider escalation. Occurring at a time when India has never been so politically weak, the intrusion was shrewdly timed to exploit its political paralysis and leadership drift.

What China did was to audaciously violate border-peace agreements with India by employing coercive power on the ground. Then, armed with leverage from its encroachment onto the icy heights of the Debsang plateau — which overlooks the Chinese highway linking the restive regions of Tibet and Xinjiang — it embarked on coercive diplomacy by setting out military demands for Indians to meet.

In doing so, it presented India with two equally objectionable alternatives: Either endure the Chinese ingress into a strategic border region controlling key access routes or meet China’s demands at the cost of irremediably weakening Indian military interest in a wider strategic belt extending up to the disputed Siachin Glacier and the Karakoram Pass, which links China to Pakistan. After a three-week standoff, China withdrew from the occupied spot but only after India blinked by making concessions that it has since tried to rationalize as granting China a “necessary face saver.”

The plain fact is that India conceded something to help end the standoff, while China — in a triumph for its coercive diplomacy — conceded nothing. By merely positioning a single army platoon of up to 50 soldiers on the mountain-ringed Debsang plateau, it got India — without having to fire a single shot — to agree to do what its earlier efforts had failed to accomplish, including a significant attenuation of Indian defenses in that border area (the scene of recurrent Chinese military forays in recent years) and a commitment to formally discuss other Chinese concerns.

India wilted just when China was coming under adverse international spotlight for intruding into Indian-controlled territory after expanding its “core interests” and provoking territorial spats with Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines. Instead of raising China’s diplomatic costs for aggression, India rewarded the aggressor with concessions.

It brought itself under pressure to clinch a deal so that its foreign minister could go ahead with a scheduled trip to Beijing to lay the ground for Chinese Premier Li Keqiang’s New Delhi visit nexd Monday. Li’s stopover in New Delhi on his way to his country’s “all-weather ally” Pakistan, however, is unlikely to produce a breakthrough on any of the issues that divide China and India.

To bolster its larger game-plan and to aid its strategy of encroaching on Himalayan land bit by bit, Beijing insisted India degrade its defenses by dismantling a key forward observation post, destroying bunkers and other defensive fortifications, and halting infrastructure development near their de facto border known as the line of actual control (LAC). China, meanwhile, builds up an offensive capability to strike without warning.

In forcing India to start demolishing bunkers before officially terminating the standoff and softening it for further bargaining, China has vindicated its coercive diplomacy. And having openly challenged India’s belated, fumbling moves to fortify frontier defences against a rising pattern of Chinese border provocations, it will now hold the threat of unleashing its coercive power again.

More fundamentally, China’s incursion has wreaked lasting damage on the dual Sino-Indian border accords of 2005, a development scarcely conducive to ensuring Himalayan peace and tranquility. One pact relates to military confidence building and the other defines political parameters for border peace and an eventual frontier settlement.

While the political accord enjoins the two parties to “strictly respect and observe the LAC and work together to maintain peace and tranquility in the border areas” (Article IX), the military agreement mandates that “if the border personnel of the two sides come to a face-to-face situation due to differences on the alignment of the Line of Actual Control or any other reason,” they “shall cease their activities in the area, not advance any further, and simultaneously return to their bases,” without putting up “marks or signs on the spots” (Article IV).

China openly violated these accords by pitching tents in Indian-held territory, provoking an extended face-off, and publicly justifying its actions. Notwithstanding the “face-to-face situation,” its troops refused to retreat and raised provocative banners such as, “This is Chinese Land” and “Go Back.” If one side violates agreements with impunity, how can their sanctity or value be preserved?

Even so, the incursion has shown in poor light India’s leadership, which mysteriously replaced army troops with border police to patrol the frontier and kept mum for a week on the intrusion. The corruption-tainted government’s political siege at home has left it little space to consider how its capitulation — pathetically disguised as a win for quiet diplomacy — could embolden the adversary.

It is as if history is repeating itself. Just as a 1954 pact on peaceful coexistence paved the way for China’s nibbling at Indian territory, culminating in the 1962 full-scale Chinese military attack, India lulled itself into complacency by signing the 2005 accords, which have yielded a sharp escalation in cross-frontier Chinese forays and border incidents, including the PLA’s 2007 destruction of Indian army bunkers at the Sikkim-Tibet-Bhutan trijunction.

For China, agreements are just a tool of deception to lull the enemy. As Sun Tzu famously said, “All warfare is based on deception.” If the past is any guide, the latest intrusion will not be the last. Rather, it is the first major shot China has fired across India’s bows to alter the Himalayan status quo in its favor by employing coercive power short of war.

Link - China-India: coercion easily trumps diffidence : Japanese Media | idrw.org

 

[Nisha]

Check it out. Looks like our govt is fuking stupid and so corrupt it stops us from performing at peak optimum levels.

 

[Alfa-Fighter]

yes right , India need Military leaders and not MMS like leader which is like to collect money and send their kids to US for study and open company.

India need Military gen you can go to bed of Nehru said if you don't order i will though you out from Home to roads now. after that Nehru order military strike.

Our Political class espically Congrass run buy cowards.

 

[bornmoron]

China ll play all its card ,,as it knws they can get all they want till this government is there,,,,& they also knw they dont have much time ,as things gonna change soon after thie elections..

 

[Guynextdoor2]

when did IDRW become japanese media?

 

[Hellraiser007]

The Article mentioned

The plain fact is that India conceded something to help end the standoff, while China — in a triumph for its coercive diplomacy.

Which is purely speculative , enough of this B.S.

Only Tin Sheds are dismantled no permanent structures were brought down.

 

[senkakudefender]

Sigh.... to all fukheads who will descend on this thread....

 

[Alfa-Fighter]

The Article mentioned



Which is purely speculative , enough of this B.S.

Only Tin Sheds are dismantled no permanent structures were brought down.

and you believed, Did you checked it was tin shed or not? Do you believe govt will tell you truth? when the govt minister eager to have foreign journey along it is family and dont want to miss free plane ride.

 

[Hellraiser007]

and you believed, Did you checked it was tin shed or not? Do you believe govt will tell you truth? when the govt minister eager to have foreign journey along it is family and dont want to miss free plane ride.

I believe in GOI since Chinese never mentioned that India did gave any concessions. India Govt played well in this incident. What made you to believe that India did gave any concessions with out any valid data.

It is official that India did removed tin sheds in Chumar sector as per GOI statement, Chinese never contradicted that.

And those tin sheds were built during the row.

http://www.pressdisplay.com/pressdisplay/viewer.aspx

Understand this Chinese cannot afford an enemy like India when they have plans to capture Islands in SCS and East Sea.

 

[Enemy]

There can be two sorts of replies to Chellany's article:

If I support Chellany, then I must say Indian leadership and military proved to be coward by not firing a single bullet at the Chinese. They are coward because they are scared of the consequences one single bullet could have caused. There is well circulated photo showing two Chinese security guards holding a banner which says "you have crossed....". Indian soldiers could have used a sniper and taken them down but in retaliation all the nearby Indian military posts might have been bombed instantly as the Chinese were confident that they would never be fired upon from the opposite direction and were also prepared. Indian forces could still open fire so that people like Brahma Chellany would become happy.

If I oppose Chellany, then I must say, Chellany is a cunning trouble maker. His problem is that, frankly saying, this bald headed person is not happy with how he looks like. Somewhere I said beautiful people are beautiful in mindset and so ugly people are ugly in mindset. This person should see the mirror and decide how much his face is acceptable. He is not even a fully evolved modern homo sapiens going by his facial structure, so he spews his venom out of frustration. He is ugly in appearance and in mentality.

 

[Kaniska]

In a classic replay of its old game, China intruded stealthily across the disputed, forbidding Himalayan frontier with India recently and then disingenuously played conciliator by counseling “patience” and “negotiations.” The incursion bore all the hallmarks of Chinese brinkmanship, including taking an adversary by surprise, seizing an opportunistic timing, masking offense as defense and discounting risks of wider escalation. Occurring at a time when India has never been so politically weak, the intrusion was shrewdly timed to exploit its political paralysis and leadership drift.

What China did was to audaciously violate border-peace agreements with India by employing coercive power on the ground. Then, armed with leverage from its encroachment onto the icy heights of the Debsang plateau — which overlooks the Chinese highway linking the restive regions of Tibet and Xinjiang — it embarked on coercive diplomacy by setting out military demands for Indians to meet.

In doing so, it presented India with two equally objectionable alternatives: Either endure the Chinese ingress into a strategic border region controlling key access routes or meet China’s demands at the cost of irremediably weakening Indian military interest in a wider strategic belt extending up to the disputed Siachin Glacier and the Karakoram Pass, which links China to Pakistan. After a three-week standoff, China withdrew from the occupied spot but only after India blinked by making concessions that it has since tried to rationalize as granting China a “necessary face saver.”

The plain fact is that India conceded something to help end the standoff, while China — in a triumph for its coercive diplomacy — conceded nothing. By merely positioning a single army platoon of up to 50 soldiers on the mountain-ringed Debsang plateau, it got India — without having to fire a single shot — to agree to do what its earlier efforts had failed to accomplish, including a significant attenuation of Indian defenses in that border area (the scene of recurrent Chinese military forays in recent years) and a commitment to formally discuss other Chinese concerns.

India wilted just when China was coming under adverse international spotlight for intruding into Indian-controlled territory after expanding its “core interests” and provoking territorial spats with Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines. Instead of raising China’s diplomatic costs for aggression, India rewarded the aggressor with concessions.

It brought itself under pressure to clinch a deal so that its foreign minister could go ahead with a scheduled trip to Beijing to lay the ground for Chinese Premier Li Keqiang’s New Delhi visit nexd Monday. Li’s stopover in New Delhi on his way to his country’s “all-weather ally” Pakistan, however, is unlikely to produce a breakthrough on any of the issues that divide China and India.

To bolster its larger game-plan and to aid its strategy of encroaching on Himalayan land bit by bit, Beijing insisted India degrade its defenses by dismantling a key forward observation post, destroying bunkers and other defensive fortifications, and halting infrastructure development near their de facto border known as the line of actual control (LAC). China, meanwhile, builds up an offensive capability to strike without warning.

In forcing India to start demolishing bunkers before officially terminating the standoff and softening it for further bargaining, China has vindicated its coercive diplomacy. And having openly challenged India’s belated, fumbling moves to fortify frontier defences against a rising pattern of Chinese border provocations, it will now hold the threat of unleashing its coercive power again.

More fundamentally, China’s incursion has wreaked lasting damage on the dual Sino-Indian border accords of 2005, a development scarcely conducive to ensuring Himalayan peace and tranquility. One pact relates to military confidence building and the other defines political parameters for border peace and an eventual frontier settlement.

While the political accord enjoins the two parties to “strictly respect and observe the LAC and work together to maintain peace and tranquility in the border areas” (Article IX), the military agreement mandates that “if the border personnel of the two sides come to a face-to-face situation due to differences on the alignment of the Line of Actual Control or any other reason,” they “shall cease their activities in the area, not advance any further, and simultaneously return to their bases,” without putting up “marks or signs on the spots” (Article IV).

China openly violated these accords by pitching tents in Indian-held territory, provoking an extended face-off, and publicly justifying its actions. Notwithstanding the “face-to-face situation,” its troops refused to retreat and raised provocative banners such as, “This is Chinese Land” and “Go Back.” If one side violates agreements with impunity, how can their sanctity or value be preserved?

Even so, the incursion has shown in poor light India’s leadership, which mysteriously replaced army troops with border police to patrol the frontier and kept mum for a week on the intrusion. The corruption-tainted government’s political siege at home has left it little space to consider how its capitulation — pathetically disguised as a win for quiet diplomacy — could embolden the adversary.

It is as if history is repeating itself. Just as a 1954 pact on peaceful coexistence paved the way for China’s nibbling at Indian territory, culminating in the 1962 full-scale Chinese military attack, India lulled itself into complacency by signing the 2005 accords, which have yielded a sharp escalation in cross-frontier Chinese forays and border incidents, including the PLA’s 2007 destruction of Indian army bunkers at the Sikkim-Tibet-Bhutan trijunction.

For China, agreements are just a tool of deception to lull the enemy. As Sun Tzu famously said, “All warfare is based on deception.” If the past is any guide, the latest intrusion will not be the last. Rather, it is the first major shot China has fired across India’s bows to alter the Himalayan status quo in its favor by employing coercive power short of war.

Link - China-India: coercion easily trumps diffidence : Japanese Media | idrw.org

To be very blunt, militarily we are weak nation lead by weak and political establishment..And the top of all our timid people still vote for the same political establishment again and again....

Beleive me this is not the only time that has happened, it will happen again and India will not have any choice rather than to concede to demands from China are our political leadership is too scared to fight for protecting our nation.

 

[PANTHERA TIGRIS]

I believe in GOI since Chinese never mentioned that India did gave any concessions. India Govt played well in this incident. What made you to believe that India did gave any concessions with out any valid data.

It is official that India did removed tin sheds in Chumar sector as per GOI statement, Chinese never contradicted that.

And those tin sheds were built during the row.

man, not even GOI will believe GOI AT present ! cong is the most corrupt govt ever ! lucky us cong does not control all the media in country !

 

[Hellraiser007]

man, not even GOI will believe GOI AT present ! cong is the most corrupt govt ever ! lucky us cong does not control all the media in country !

Leave about party politics and view the real scenario.