Pravin Sawhney

Several senior retired military officers believe that the Ladakh military impasse, if not ended soon, could lead to an escalation and a possible limited conventional war which neither side wants. This assumption is as unfounded as the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA’s) multi-prong attacks in May being a consequence of India’s intelligence failure. This betrays a continued misreading of the 2017 Doklam crisis; and consequently, the war that each side seems to be bracing itself for.

Following its 2015 military reforms, the PLA created the Western Theatre Command (WTC)—its geographically largest war theatre—with defined enemy: the Indian military. Its challenge then was how to bring the WTC allocated two group armies (76 and 77) and associated paraphernalia with nearly 200,000 troops in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), without being viewed as aggressors since that would impact its drumbeating of peaceful rise essential for its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and China Dream.

An added problem was the bilateral 1993 and 1996 agreements between India and China which had committed both sides to keep minimal troops on the Line of Actual Control (LAC). Not only were numbers of forces, equipment and munitions that each could bring forward defined, the level of military exercises that each could do without mutual consent was spelt out. China has made these commitments in 1993 when its military purpose was limited to good border management, and its ambitious geo-strategic outreach under Xi Jinping was decades away.

Once pressure to inhabit the WTC with allocated troops and war material grew, China came up with the brilliant Doklam plan. Why not start a military crisis at a place where the Indian Army, at a hugely advantageous tactical position, would feel compelled to come to Bhutan’s defence with which it had a special relationship? China unleashed its wolf warriors, and its state-controlled media went unusually ballistic threatening India with