Maybe because Vajpayee chose this step knowing the global standing that India had. The sad part, IMHO, is that this decision to take the high moral ground made us lose a lot of soldiers - something that the any developed self-respecting country would not have done. It just shows the scant regard we pay to the lives of our soldiers and even the paramilitary forces. Given the regular articles coming out from various sources (including military officers, do some of them have OLQ?) praising the grit of our soldiers, one wonders what to make of it at times. Are we really so sure that had we crossed the LoC then things would've gotten bad? Or maybe given the military balance at that time, the more prudent thing was actually done.
Very fairly said. I agree that this apparent taking of the 'high moral ground' cost us thousands of lives. Was it then moral after all, or merely grandstanding by a discredited administration that had just found out that its flashy gesture of travelling to Lahore in a bus had been matched by a clandestine venture against the country?
The grit of our soldiers does not need to be proven; at the same time, they are human beings, and, like human beings, prone at times to failure in battle. Accounts of 1965, and 1962 earlier, are replete with incidents of this battalion or that having lost its will to fight in the face of terrible shelling, or in the face of armoured advances while having no anti-tank weapons with which to fight back. Even of crack troops that had just won battles being sent into even more bloody battles, in order to win a victory on the anniversary of an even more famous victory hallowed the world over in military annals. So the grit is there, when led properly, when motivated, when not in the face of a meaningless and inevitable death against impossible odds. That is the kind of death they were condemned to, because Vajpayee and Fernandes wanted to keep face.
There was nothing to say that militarily we would have been worse off for going around to the reverse slopes, cutting off supply lines and starving out the mountain-top bases, or even attacking them outright but with cover.
We also have evidence now that the opposing air force was not active because it had not been allowed any notice to prepare, and was short of spares and supplies, not to mention fuel.
There is no way to justify the pious stances taken by our government of the time. Did Shastri hesitate when confronted with evidence of open aggression after a period of covert operations?
I still don't know what to make of the Balakot attack and the aerial skirmish that followed. Did we gain anything militarily in terms of only what happened on 27th Feb? I think that
@Hellfire says we gained while in at least one of your posts you took a more neutral stand (or maybe worse...?). Again what would a self-respecting country have done?
First, by trying to limit ourselves to a single incident, we made a cardinal error. It was never going to stop at that. Either Dhanoa and his people should have been charged with an all-out attempt to win control of the skies, or we should have waited for an opportune moment.
In the event, we lost the publicity battle by leaving ourselves unable either to show aerial proof of what we said had been done, and allowing the terrestrial proof to be manipulated and for apparently pristine pure sites to be shown to the national and the international press.
We also lost the aerial battle by not being able to prevent the clustering of Pakistani resources, given that it was an assembling in their own air-space, and attacking that assembly would have been equivalent to pronouncing that there was a no-fly zone above the entire nation of Pakistan. We lost more by demonstrating clearly that there was nobody effective in charge on the ground, either in the AOC-in-C in charge, or his subordinates at Air Marshal and Air Commodore levels; we lost by allowing a rash pilot to disobey instructions, put himself into harm's way, and lose a battle he should never have fought. Then we compounded our errors by decorating that pilot. This was a very bad way to deliver a surgical strike; not the strike itself, but the before and after of it.
In 1971, Mrs. Gandhi was cursed by every man, woman and child in West Bengal for allowing 10 million refugees to go unheeded, and for failing to take strong action, meaning military intervention. She had the courage to face this bitter internal criticism, knowing all the time that plans were being made for an intervention several weeks later.
There was nothing preventing the present government from acting the same way, and resisting domestic pressure, and taking the time to build up the air force to peak strength, with current air to air missiles with sufficient range not to make our pilots vulnerable to longer range missiles on the other side, with spares to fight a sustained war of more than a few days, and with a plan of action to deal with a very good, world renowned air force - all the while remembering that there was an even more numerous air force threatening us on the other front.
They should not have done that. But i sometimes wonder - the US invades and destroys countries. And yet the Chinese are blamed so much. Xi must be thinking about how to change the narrative, or maybe he's just to self-absorbed. And of course we have our own history and continued destruction of the living spaces of our own people.
Again, very well put. I cannot add to your arguments.
I do not know whether this occupation by the PLA is of any value other than successfully changing our perception of the LAC. This
https://theprint.in/defence/china-i...against-building-road-in-pangong-area/450723/ says that it isq not of strategic importance though you may disagree with the author.
I have not read it - there are major tasks to which I am committed, and which are awaited by others - but in short, from my own earlier reading of the situation and of reports and of official communiques, this amounts to the following:
- China was, and is, displeased with India, Indian leaders, Indian policies and Indian cooperation with China.
- The Chinese leadership wanted to demonstrate that they have effective ways of showing their displeasure in physical terms.
- The Chinese leadership also seems to want to quell the Amit Shah type of bumptious talk threatening everybody with everything. In spite of his continuing bluster, he is now seen as impotent.
The bigger issues you have raised are difficult to deal with in terms of comparing some of the Chinese actions with American actions.
- Was there anything in American actions equivalent to the annexation of Tibet and the forcible destruction of the Tibetan minority? No.
- Was there anything the Americans did that matched the double genocide of the Chinese in Xinjiang? No.
- Is there anything like the nibbling away of neighbours' borders that China is doing now? No.
It is difficult to equate. IMO, it is best to deal with the two as distinct and separate and not comparable. One policy was British, the other was Roman; even among empires, there exist models of imperium.
What you have said will take time in terms of capability and mindset.
Did the Chinese preempt something in case Modi wanted a war over Kashmir in 3-4 years?
This demands a serious and considered reply. It is best if I attempt it tomorrow.
Actually I wrote a lengthy partial answer and then realised that it would take even more time than I had spent, and I was compromising other tasks in doing so.
Bear with me please.
