NUCLEAR ‘CHINDIA' RISING OR UNBOUND?

The sub-text is crystal clear…India and its armed forces; its warfighting support system and strategic infrastructure must be ready for the worst even as we insist on status quo pre-May 2020 as non-negotiable. This is because agreeing to “adjustment/acceptance” of current Chinese positions on ground “as is where is” will hand over critical strategic and geo-political space to China. It will make Sino-Pak collusion in Eastern Ladakh a nightmarish reality; make Leh, Siachen/Saltoro/DBO/Chushul and our communications/command and control set up fraught with risk of sudden attack and loss. GEN RAJ MEHTA examines the issue and takes a macro view above the cacophony of satellite driven nit-picking about weapons, bunkers, tents, vehicles and such wearisome detailing

- GEN RAJ MEHTA

The India Today issue datelined June 8, 2020, carries more than a delicious oxymoron: what was considered Nuclear-armed China-India (Chindia) rising falling down to “clashing with clubs and stones” across portions of the 3488 km long LAC that separates the two countries; thus darkly echoing a quote often attributed to physicist Albert Einstein about how a future war would be fought. That the two nations which did $90 billion of bilateral trade, of course, added a key strand to the irony. So did the expected outcome of the General Officer level border talks between the two warring nations at the Chushul/Moldo border meeting point on June 6, 2020 whereby among chants of both sides “seeking a peaceful way out” the MEA indicated that both countries were in for a long haul before a tenuous peace can be restored across the alpine Himalayan wastes. This, even as Lt Gen SL Narsimhan (Retired), a member of the National Security Advisory Board (NSAB) remarked that “reading into the happenings of the past few days, there is a possible solution”.

Readers will of course wonder how Chindia; the clever marketing buzzword of 2008 vintage has come down to streetfighters like slugfests and stone-throwing with both sides soldiers carrying weapons sheathed and with barrels pointing downward; having last fired weapons in anger 45 years ago at Tulung La in October, 1975. Both sides are reflecting a refrain which amounts to neither breakthrough or breakdown… Just “stasis in glacial progress” as it has been since November, 1962 as veteran defence analyst C Uday Bhasker put it succinctly in an article datelined June 8, 2020.