India-China: Doklam Crisis

Not so “Peaceful Rise” of China

Rise of China as an Asian giant has never been a peaceful process, but a threat to all its neighbours. China has been continuously entangled in border disputes with almost all its neighbours and has been claiming territories from almost every neighbouring country. President Xi Jinping has already cleared his intentions to restore China to its “Imperial Glory”. By this he means to roll back time to 15^th century and build China that had many modern nations as its vassals. This view-point is very far from being termed as “Peaceful Economic Rise”, but can rightly be seen as militaristic expansion in 21^st century.  A gradual pattern or Chinese tactic being firstly to begin with claiming a part of territory, secondly to deploy armed forces (incase of territories claimed from Indonesia and Senkaku islands from Japan & now Doklam from Bhutan) to create a disputed territory, thirdly being to recreate (false) historic evidences that has no relevance in modern world to justify its claim. Fourth and the last being to take the territory by military action and disregarding all international conventions, agreements and institutions, specially United Nations. China has created tensions in South China Sea and has been in territorial disputes with Japan, India, Vietnam, Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, Indonesia, and South Korea. China has been advertising it’s image in domestic media as a “Victim showing great restraint”, than as a serial aggressor and imperialist.

Historical Perspective

India and China had full-fledged war in 1962, in which China defeated India and inflicted massive damage. As a result, China forcefully occupied Tibet Autonomous Region, which was to be the buffer zone between India and China. After this in 1965, taking the advantage of Indo-China war, Pakistan assumed that Indians must be demoralized and sensed an opportunity to win territories. Pakistan then launched “Operation Gibraltar” and invaded India. As a result of 1965 Indo-Pak war, Pakistan ended up defending its own capital (Lahore) and India won a decisive victory.  On 11 September 1967, People's Liberation Army (PLA) i.e. Chinese army again attacked India and there were Nathu La and Cho La clashes along the border of Sikkim to gain control of Chumbi Valley (which is adjacent to Doklam Plateau). Indian forces achieved "decisive tactical advantage" and defeated the Chinese forces in these clashes. Many PLA fortifications at Nathu La were said to be destroyed, where the Indian troops drove back the attacking Chinese forces. This event of 1967, proved to be the turning point of India’s resilience and resolve against land grabbing China. It also proved the ability of Indian armed forces to recover and bounce back after two full-fledged of wars and successfully containing the Chinese aggression. The first of China's nuclear weapons tests took place in 1964, and its first hydrogen bomb test occurred in 1967. Despite such a powerful adversary, India not just contained the Chinese army but also destroyed its positions. In 1974, India tested its first nuclear weapon in an operation codenamed as “Smiling Buddha”. This test was done in Pokhran in Rajasthan.  Since then India and China relations has been on a back-burner often disturbed by short border skirmishes and obscure Chinese claims on Indian territories.  So far India has maintained a tolerant, non-provocative and accommodative stance for China, but recent Dokalam stand-off is seen as the resolve by India, to refuse to be pushed by the bullish and imperialist China. Unlike Southeast Asian countries, India has never succumbed to China’s ‘carrot and stick’ strategies.  Indian posturing seems to be telling to China, “Enough is Enough”.  

Doklam Tri-boundary Region

Starting in June 2017, a tiny piece of strategically important and until-now obscure Himalayan territory sitting at the intersection of India, China, and Bhutan became the site of the one of the most serious border standoffs between New Delhi and Beijing in three decades. Scores — potentially hundreds — of Indian Army and Chinese People’s Liberation Army troops remain at an impasse near the Doka La pass in Doklam.

First of all, the area in question — shown shaded in the map above — is not what most maps will label as the Doklam plateau, a better-known piece of disputed territory between Bhutan, a tiny Himalayan kingdom of less than a million people, and China. Instead, the area is perhaps best disambiguated from the plateau by referring to it as the Doklam triboundary or Doklam triborder area (also sometimes known as the Dolam Plateau). At the core of the dispute is the question of where the final triboundary point — the point at which India, China, and Bhutan meet — lies.

What’s critical in this scenario is the recognition that the India-China border in this area, where Sikkim meets the Chumbi valley, a dagger-like protrusion from southern Tibet, is settled and undisputed between the two countries. Both India and China agree that while they have disputed borders in Arunachal Pradesh and in Kashmir, the Sikkim sector border has long been a settled matter. Thus, this standoff is not and never was about a disputed border between India and China.

Despite the tense situation between India and China, the border dispute in question that complicates the triboundary question is between Bhutan and China. The two countries, who do not have official diplomatic ties, have held 24 rounds of diplomatic talks over their various border disputes. (Bhutan has the distinction of being the sole country to neighbor China that doesn’t have normal diplomatic ties with Beijing.) Despite these long-running talks, the Doklam triboundary area dispute had been one of the lower-profile boundary disputes between Thimphu and Beijing. Both countries have given relative priority to other disputed sectors in their talks, including the Doklam Plateau, which sits farther north, sandwiched between the Chumbi Valley and the rest of Bhutan.

The Bhutan-China border, once settled in this sector, would meet the Indian border at a perpendicular angle, east-to-west, and finalize the triboundary point between the three countries. Bhutan claims that the triboundary point lies at a location known as Batang-la, some four kilometers north of the Doka La pass where the standoff between Indian and Chinese troops is ongoing. China, meanwhile, claims the triboundary point at Mount Gipmochi or Gyemochen, a point some two-and-a-half kilometers south of the Doka La pass. Mount Gipmochi marks the terminus at the Indian border of what New Delhi regards as a strategic redline: the Jampheri ridge, which marks start of the descent into the foothills of southwestern Bhutan that then lead into the strategically vital Siliguri Corridor. Despite India’s fortification of this area over the years, the Corridor is perceived as an immense strategic vulnerability.

India has long supported Bhutan’s claim and, according to a release by the Indian Ministry of External Affairs on the ongoing standoff, reached an agreement in 2012 with China that existing “tri-junction boundary points” between the two countries and any third party would be “finalized in consultation with the concerned countries.”

High Stakes for India

In 1967 stand-off, India forced the Chinese army to retreat and secured the strategic view over “Chumbi Valley”.   The tri-junction of India, Bhutan and China is like a Chinese dagger held at India’s throat. At this point the Chumbi valley which is part of southern reaches of the Tibetan Autonomous Region along the Line of Actual Control is like a pointed dagger thrust between Sikkim and Bhutan, giving access to China directly into West Bengal. China has been trying to maximize this geographical advantage because it is aware that it is through Sikkim and the Gaygong-Geegong gap that India can pose a threat by a lateral manoeuvre that will cut off the Chumbi valley from the rest of China. This can give India respite from threats that Beijing would use a route different from what it used in 1962 to cut Sikkim and the whole of the north east by sitting on the narrow Siliguri corridor in West Bengal.

It needs to ensure that the Chinese geographical advantage is not converted into a debacle worse than in 1962. It needs to be remembered that unlike as in Kargil in 1999 when Pakistani troops were shelled to submission, this portion of India is densely populated and the use of bombardment both aerial and ground-based would be fratricide against one’s own population.

Therefore, the very first signs of a Chinese misadventure here and a beginning of even a few feet of intrusion must be taken as a declaration of war and trigger a massive artillery response that will destroy all Chinese troop concentrations from its very forward most echelons and all logistical supply lines traversing the Chumbi Valley so that all forward movement is made impossible.

For the Chinese, being acutely aware of the military potential of the Gaygong-Geegonj gap which is an undulating flatland and good terrain for tank warfare, it would not want India to exploit this potential to the full.

It would try and disrupt it by cutting Sikkim off from India by striking at its base in the territory that lies just south of the India-Bhutan-China tri-junction. For India this should be a zero-tolerance zone where any attempt at infiltration must be viewed with utter seriousness and dealt with accordingly in quick time.

It is very likely that there will be swift escalation of Chinese military activity all along the Line of Actual Control but India cannot afford to allow the Chinese to come down through the Chumbi Valley into West Bengal.

A Chinese thrust into West Bengal has many advantages for the People’s Liberation Army. The main would be the instantaneous fall of Arunachal Pradesh into its lap along with the Assam, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, and Tripura. Plus, Indian troops in Sikkim, Arunachal and other north eastern states will be cut-off from all the reinforcements (without active assistance from Bangladesh which may or may not come) and will be massacred without even a fighting chance.

As part of its strategy of territorial aggrandizement it will hold on to Arunachal Pradesh and return the other north eastern States if India agrees to accept the current Line of Actual Control as per Chinese perception as the final border. 

It will be a terrible blow for India not just in the present but also the consequences could be the Balkanisation of the north-east with Chinese supported insurgencies gaining the upper hand because of the decimation of the Indian Army.

The very fact that the Chinese have objected to the Indian military build up and the creation of new infrastructure all along the Himalayas is proof that Beijing harbours nefarious designs in the region and is very far from being a peaceful neighbour.

India-Bhutan Perspective

India and Bhutan have a special relationship, with New Delhi exercising considerable influence over the country’s foreign and defense policy historically and to this day; the two countries’ 1949 Treaty of Friendship was updated in 2007 by the two sides to give Thimphu additional autonomy in its foreign and security policy. The updated treaty, nevertheless, notes the following: “Neither government shall allow the use of its territory for activities harmful to the national security and interest of the other.”

Given India’s relationship with Bhutan, the Indian Army regularly patrols with and trains the Royal Bhutanese Army. This is no different in the Doklam area, where India and Bhutan possess multiple outposts to the south of the long-standing Chinese road.

The Indian government has primarily framed its decision to intervene across the international boundary in terms of its obligations to Bhutan. “In coordination with the RGOB, Indian personnel, who were present at general area Doka La, approached the Chinese construction party and urged them to desist from changing the status quo. These efforts continue,” the June 30 statement by the Ministry of External Affairs noted. However, that same statement, further down, notes that the planned “construction would represent a significant change of status quo” in Doklam, which would have “serious security implications for India.”

Therein lies the best proximal explanation of why the Indian Army undertook unprecedented action to preempt and deny the PLA space to construct a road heading southward toward Jampheri ridge. Jampheri marks the point at which the mountain range’s altitude breaks from the 10,000-plus feet on the Doklam plateau to the foothills of southern Bhutan, eventually giving way to the Bhutan-India border near the Siliguri Corridor, where India, at its narrowest point, measures just 23 kilometers wide between Bangladesh and Nepal. For Indian strategists, the Siliguri chokepoint is seen as a core vulnerability; its capture is regarded as unacceptable given that losing Siliguri would sever the states of Northeast India from the rest of the country.

Even if the vulnerability of Siliguri might be overstated given the Indian armed forces’ quantitative military advantage against the PLA in the Sikkim-Siliguri area, where multiple mountain divisions sit ready, the sensitivity over Jampheri ridge cannot be overstated.  China’s claimed triboundary point — the point where the settled borders of India, China, and Bhutan should meet — is Mount Gipmochi or Gyemochen, which sits at the easternmost node that ridge. Though PLA patrols are reported to have scouted as far south as Jampheri on a regular basis, the activity in question that precipitated this standoff — the construction of a road extension — is new.

For Bhutan, the desired end-state is a return to the status quo before June 16, as its foreign ministry noted, but it would ideally like to do so quietly. This puts India in a difficult position, given that New Delhi, per its June 30 statement, predicated much of its decision to intervene on its coordination with the Royal Government of Bhutan and a 2012 agreement with China that triboundary disputes would be resolved in consultation with third parties. Notably, while Delhi has sought to frame its decision to intervene in terms of its obligations to Bhutan, Thimphu did not mention India once in its sole public statement on the Doklam standoff. For China, this subtle gap between the Indian and Bhutanese positions — at least publicly — is enough to sustain its ultimatum while gradually signaling that escalation may be possible. For Beijing, the “win” state now is less about having a road that terminates at Jampheri ridge and more about seeing the Indians blink first.

For India and China, this standoff has released long pent-up frustrations that highlight their divergent paths and aspirations in Asia and the world. For China, the standoff serves as an opportunity to put an increasingly assertive and confident India back in its place as Asia’s permanent second-class great power. For India, despite some de-escalatory messaging, memories of defeat at the hands of the PLA in 1962 continue to sting and so showing resolve at all costs remains the overriding task. It is the time now that India should stand up to the Asian bully i.e. and refuse to be pushed by China's hegemonic and expansionist expansion.  For now, India has no plans of complying with China’s ultimatum and pulling its troops past the international boundary. That’s precisely why the scope for a peaceful walk-back from the brink appears to be shrinking with every passing day and why this standoff matters.