Change or Perish

The immediate need for infrastructure and a credible military ecosystem is all very well. But the PLA’s ability to fight a transformational, algorithm war—non-kinetic and non-contact—is the danger in the future.

- Pravin Sawhney

NEVER short of dramatic threats and flamboyant rhetoric, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s statement on the brutal killing of Indian soldiers on the night of June 15 by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in the Galwan valley of Ladakh, was subdued and passive. “India wants peace,” he said. “But when provoked, it is capable of giving a fitting reply.” He didn’t explain what would qualify as a provocation.

The PLA had, in a premeditated assault, lynched unarmed Indian soldiers with iron rods, rocks, and nail-studded clubs. Unopposed, it changed facts on the ground by building permanent defenses deep inside India’s perception of the 1993 Line of Actual Control (LAC), reportedly capturing 60 sq km of Indian territory. It occupied all-dominating heights in hitherto undisputed Galwan valley, overlooking the 225 km-long and operationally critical Darbuk-Shyok Daulat Beg Oldi (DSDBO) road, India’s sole round-the-year road lifeline meant to rush reinforcements to militarily vulnerable north Ladakh, where the possibility of a two-front war (with Pakistan in Siachen glacier and PLA in sub-sector north) stares in the face. It unilaterally rubbished all five mutually agreed on peace agreements of 1993, 1996, 2005, 2012, and 2013 since the 1962 war by asserting its November 7, 1959 claim line made by Premier Zhou Enlai to PM Nehru. It demanded India stop feeder road construction leading to DSDBO forthwith. The Western Theatre Command (WTC), responsible for war with India, issued belligerent statements, warning Indian troops to stop provoking the PLA. It did all this because it knows what Indians don’t: Indian military is completely unprepared for an escalation whose ascendant ladder, the PLA, being the militarily stronger side, would control.