KLNMurthy wrote:Less elegantly, what kind of dragon-poop suntzu-brain causes a country’s leadership to run a huge risk—making blood enemies of 1.3 B mostly-youthful red-blooded Indians—based on the most optimistic best-case scenario?
As others have observed, are these the grand-Civilizational intellectual giants that we are supposed to fear?
In their position, I would quite likely have made the same mistake. For 60 years they've been able to maintain the assertive military doctrine at the LAC, all thanks to a defensive posture we took after a long ago war. Even though there have been subsequent resolute responses (1967, late 1970s, 1986...), by and large our strategy was dictated by trying to defend territorial positions with a military doctrine unsuited to the capabilities of the army or the realities of the opponent. Once in a while we grew a backbone, but that is all.
The Chinese aren't interested in anything called status quo. Territory is to be grabbed opportunistically and used for negotiation. The other side's diffidence is to be exploited at every turn. And we were diffident. I think Modi's Ladakh visit of July 2020 will be written in future as one of his many pathbreaking initiatives. He basically told the army directly to ditch static defence. He told them the weak cannot negotiate peace and that for peace it is a prerequisite to first have strength, in so many words. No prior Indian leader has ever explicitly stated a Peace Through Strength doctrine in the LAC or LOC context before. Until now it was all Michelle Obamaeque 'when they go low, we go high' drivel. It took IA about 1.5 months to build up necessary force levels, and since late August, it has been a series of exhibitions of this doctrine at work.
The Chinese are set up at LAC to conduct a 6 decades long nibbling strategy. Our past defensive doctrine enabled them and made them a more threatening entity than they actually are. That's not to say they're not a major military threat, but they're more prepared to face IA pursuing its former doctrine, but not so well prepared to continuously maintain their positions against the new doctrine. They have to quickly revise for a much more costlier involved border long term engagement they may have no ability to pursue.
Their situation is classic bully-facing-reversal situation. Bullies pretty much never contemplate their opponent building resolve and suddenly responding strongly. It almost always shows up the bully as in fact not mentally ready for a fight, having assumed the other party will cow down as before, and a bully's immediate response is almost always to roar louder to try and force the other party to cower again. HQ6 bombers. 7 trillion new troops shipped over. Probably busy having the Liaoning carried over on the Tibet Railway now to drop in Pangong Tso. All stuff to get us to back down. If it doesn't work, Eleven has a problem. Are CMC and PLA
really still on his side after this loss of face ? Are the ground level troops actually competent enough to fight 1:1 against an IA under current doctrine ?