Singha wrote:what is all this complex social engineering and chankianess going to achieve. let the chinese society live as they wish and get the govt they want. sounds like a long set of excuses of why not use the size12 boot at the right place.
we should focus on taking away parts of tibet permanently from under their boots and making it impossible to sustain their policy of nibbling on the front.
^^^^Not for nothing, but I think it behooves Rakshaks to consider the lessons of history. Take for example the Viet Nam war (or rather, what the Vietnamese call 'The American War'). The much bigger and more powerful USA dropped more bombs on tiny Vietnam, than all sides did during the entirety of WWII. Yet, America lost that war and the Vietnamese resisted, persisted and won that war.
Singha, would you say the NVA was stupid to let Jane Fonda pose for pictures on AAA guarding their dikes? (Dikes, in a rice-eating country, are critical infrastructure for rice cultivation. Bombing dikes is akin to bombing food stores: Total war. With B52s and everything, including cluster bombs like nobody's business on top of napalm and agent orange -- a genocidal level of warfare -- and I truly shudder at the thought. While facing all this, the NVA found time to let Jane Fonda tour around the place with a coterie of camera-wielding journalists. What was the "effect on target" of that effort during the war? Ask yourself, how that war turned-out, and which country was more changed by it.
Understand my point here: Chinese society isn't living as they wish, because it's not like they vote for it. Until now, they've been largely complacent enough so long as economic growth continues on a certain upward pace. Of course, this is maintained by a brutal regime of state repression and secret prisons, sham courts, etc., but this can be totally upset by a shooting war with India especially if India and Rakshaks everywhere undertake a 'full spectrum approach' and simultaneously fight for hearts and minds, even while blasting their helmets either clear-off or through-and-through.
So therefore: When some talking head from China is remarking on China's GDP being X-times bigger than India's and so this represents
un fait accompli, the immediate response should be that "Yes, China is a 'target-rich environment'. How many weeks of fighting will it take to send China back 20 years?"
Let them ponder that. Ask questions they don't have answers for.
As for size 12 boots: Remember that after the initial confrontation, the PLA showed-up with hundreds of men, only to find themselves outnumbered by thousands of Indians and Bhutanese. This has so far worked well, for India, given the situation, only because the PLA didn't hear Indian boots coming, and they certainly didn't read about them on BRF.
For best effect, a size 12 boot is better felt before it is seen or heard. Whether that's a stern kick in the behind, or a crushing force on the neck, depends entirely on how high up the escalation ladder the PLA wants to take things.
My point is, India should plan all the way to the end, given the wide array of options at any given juncture all to proceed towards a well-defined war aim (and I mean that in the full-spectrum, wide theater sense). TO WIT: Are there Indian journalists with satellite hookups "forward deployed" in anticipation of hostilities? If there isn't, there should be. It should be considered a strategic imperative to rush captured PLA soldiers onto TV screens around the world. For that matter, pictures and videos of PLA soldiers dead or alive, should be brought out of theater and onto global newspages and TV screens on a priority basis.
Is this "social engineering" or "chankiness" or whatever?
Call it what you will, but understand this is yet another step up the escalation ladder that China is not only loath to see taken, but cannot itself take against India. Were China to attempt the same sort of thing; they wouldn't get hardly the same PR value or international response as would India.
There should be news reports filed from inside Indian PoW camps filled with captured PLA soldiers. Of course, they should be well-treated, and organized Yoga and Tai Chi lessons going back and forth in equal measure. News like that would *CRUSH* the CCCPC's war narrative, and they would literally be forced to back down.
Sadly, if the IA can't capture them alive, they'll have to be killed -- that should go without saying. But it should also go without saying that India should actively seek to gain maximum advantage from any situation vis a vis China that presents itself, going forward (whether or not things escalate to a hot war).