RaviB,RaviB wrote:Rs_singh wrote:
This thing was definitely operationalised by Nov 2019. Even if the CCP knew about CV, nobody else did, so there was no reason to do it as a distraction domestically or to ward off international pressure. The military operation must have been planned in 2018 and approved following the success of earlier exercises in Tibet. (very big) maybe, Ladakh UT was the trigger for final political approval. But I think it had received political approval well before that.
I do think option 3 is most likely as well. What’s interesting and, I completely agree with your assessment, this was planned pre covid. Covid kinda cut both ways for them and made them react sooner than they would have liked. I think they had to move up the schedule by 6 months or so with the advantage that India was caught up in a pandemic as was the rest of the world. October would have been perfect. 1 month before the winter sets in, so limited options to escalate and right smack bang at the height of the elections in the US. This might also explain why they are using talks and loooong talks at that. The delay suits them, not us. What’s more is as long as there are visible casualties on the IA, they can go home. They hide their casualty count so it wouldn’t matter anyway. A withdrawal to pre April 2020 will be politically acceptable to India and GOI can claim X times casualties on PLAGF . Both sides can claim military victory and both sides survive politically. This will be desired end state. I do not see this conflict escalating into the IOR. Neither side has the will nor the resources to fight an all out war this at the moment. I guess, what remains to be seen is when the shit finally hits the fan.
This will finally end all the nonsense talk of so called strategic autonomy, which always implied “not US”. If we play this right, just right, and a lot of balls have To fall into place for this to happen, this will the Soviet Union 1989. I have a few ideas. I’ll elaborate later.
Ks_sachin,
Indian tactical options? There are plenty of tactical options available to IA TacCom at all levels. I neither have knowledge of that terrain nor of IA doctrine or equipment, so I can’t be specific. Similar but not the same by a long shot. And if I did, I would not disclose it here in any case. As for tactical considerations feeding back into the operational level, that will hold true for both sides and it’s gamble to say how things play out before the first shot is fired. We can guess at broad strategy but it would unwise to guess specific tactical options. If I misunderstood you, feel free to correct me for I didn’t understand you completely.