Galwan- The year after!

16 June 2021

We can see how Indian strategic community, now appearing largely of military veterans and a few familiar names from civilian backgrounds chose to look back. You can discern three themes here-

1. Galwan was a departure from hitherto fore, where Indian soldiers stood their ground to Chinese bullying tactics and forced heavy casualties on them. Over time, this will concretise to show how India is not a push over.
2. Galwan was a military farce, in how despite there being no curbs under the then extant rules of engagement along the PLA-IA plus SSB & ITBP manned LAC, there was no requirement for the slain Commanding Officer Colonel Santhosh Babu and his troops to have accosted the PLA elements there without their personal weapons. Even artillery support should have been called for to evict the PLA from the ground contested by the IA.
3. India’s failed strategic review after Modi government took office, which led to a visible engagement with the CCP regime, increased trade surplus and commissions to Chinese, despite there being no improved understanding on the LAC management by the PLA on ground and the mandarins of both South Block and Beijing.

Without belittling the sacrifice of Indian soldiers who have offered India repeatedly professional mettle, even in spheres far unrelated to military matters, I would like to term all these responses as those stemming from an emotional background, without conceding much to the changing realities of economic and technological matters from 2013, when the PLA withdrew on its own from Depsang and Hotsprings, after IA mobilised and diplomatic pressure was brought upon Beijing. The way the calculus for comprehensive national power (CNP) works, we need to acknowledge without getting emotional, that India was on a better wicket in 2013-14, than 2020. To borrow an American statement which is a recurring theme with her pollsters  “ It’s the Economy, stupid!”

Since 2012 when the global economy was decelerating, and when both China and India revised their GDP growth rates, India’s growth strategy had run out of options. Like how the MMRCA and the MSC as modernisation of infrastructure were left for implementation to the incoming government, the outgoing Dr Manmohan Singh government did not even offer an outline of how it planned to carry the growth momentum forward- a reboot the economy needed after 3 decades of growth from the 1991 liberalisation that Dr Singh had triggered as Finance Minister! The promised transition from potato chips to semiconductor chips needed a plan! So if you see how the Modi government took over, you could as a cynic say, of what use would that have been, for the incoming government clearly had a different plan- a muscular diplomacy projecting India far beyond her grounded realities which allowed her the elbow room to cut on defence spending and prioritise infrastructure spending.

So when by turns the ministers who helmed the Defence Ministry squared off the budgetary constraints between 2014 to 2019, the military brass was unable to compete with that vision, the way it finally did in the aftermath of the military face off in Ladakh in 2020-21. So in a sense, partially, yet substantially, the analysts like Lt Gen Panag, Col Shukla and Commodore Uday Bhaskar have got it right, through out those five years, as they criticised various aspects of how the Modi government handled defence affairs, starting from it not having a full time Defence Minister, since late Mr Jaitley was Finance, and late Mr Parikker was Goa’s CM, a post upon which he breathed his last. While both Hon’ble Ministers were exceptional leaders, defence matters commanded a more hands on approach, which is why, now in 2021, when analysts raise the calls for MMRCA and MSC with renewed vigour, it shows up this vacuum of ministerial leadership. It does not mean that India’s fabled military leadership should be let off the hook either, however considering the churn in leadership in the Army with the appointment of current CDS Gen Bipin Rawat over two seniors as Chief, the revision from seniority to panel for apex military appointments, it was clear that this brass was facing unexpected churn, unsettling it to a large extent.

When Col Babu and his troops were tasked to get the PLA to vacate their positions in Galwan Valley, the USA was under the Trump Administration, one whose sense of foreign affairs was as an extension of domestic rabble rousing and jockeying, to say the least. For while India’s economic performance was underwhelming since 2014 and the trade gap between China and India was burgeoning, the erection of a Chinese built Statue of Unity was the first clear indication of an India willing for compromise with the CCP. The window to press advantage was clearly available, for the CCP had several skirmishes of stone pelting, jousting and jostling as bodies of troops through out 2014 to 2016, but it was after the arrival of Trump Presidency, that the PLA started to robustly upgrade its border infrastructure and activate larger engagements that culminated first in to forays along Nepal’s border areas, then Bhutan and now finally in Ladakh. Not only was the PLA testing the American presence in South Asia, but also Indian resolve, including in Doklam after which it has gone ahead with its plans in 2020. So, in a strategic sense, India’s military was frozen in 2012, whereas PLA was in 2020. In 2012, the Indian military brass knew that by 2018 they would have MMRCA and MSC. Infrastructure augmentation was a sanctioned goal then. And it appears, they acted as if all these had gone through.

It could be hubris, it could be how we acted with Pakistan since 2014, when after Pathankot, we had the ISI forced to join investigations into the attack on the IAF base in a first! Then Uri happened and was first publicly celebrated cross borders operation christened as a ‘surgical strike’. Finally Balakot happened, despite ‘Swift Retort’ and Wing Commander Abhinandan, IAF had caught the public imagination by doing some thing which only Israelis had done against Palestinian camps in Lebanon, Syria and West Bank. ( Some Indians went to the extreme of comparing Balakot with the Israeli strike on Osirak reactor) The possibility of IA’s platoons that made this ungainly move to evict the PLA positions in Galwan being charged by such precedents thus, cannot be ruled out.

What forced India’s current stalemate with China is the reaction of the troops after their leader had fallen so brutally to the enemy in front of their very eyes. Recent photographs showing Indian border troops donning police riot gear of sorts reveals that IA does not rule out the possibility of future such ‘unarmed combat situations’ along the LAC. The ‘Galwan Gallant’ forced the military brass to relook the deployments, to ‘escalate with troop levels’, to make New Delhi officially declare that investments by Chinese companies were no longer viewed as welcome. This sentiment is clearly demonstrated in the removal of Chinese apparel firm’s sponsorship logo on the Tokyo Olympic Contingent’s outfits! Army Chief Gen Naravane’s decision to deploy troops of a contingency force against the western borders to the northern borders, is one decision which the military veterans applauded as execution of posture that was long overdue.

Now that Biden Administration has within six months reported itself to the global community, and ‘America is back’ was accepted by not just European leaders, but even President Xi. As he ordered a review of Chinese diplomatic posture, seeking a more ‘lovable image for China’,( indirectly about perceptions of his leadership abroad) his visit to tribal regions of China’s West, which one supposes would culminate with visits to both Xinjiang Uighur and Tibet, which are most restive in this area, along with the change of WTC leadership of the PLA, indicates a clear loss of initiative. Thus geopolitics wise, India is offered a renewed window to retrieve the situation. What India must avoid is the 1961 blunder of ‘forward posture’ by pitching more troops forward along the contested LAC, without being backed by a clear economic and diplomatic posture, infrastructural improvements that would convey better force levels to the PLA and clarity in tactical as well as strategic terms. That Secretary Blinken has been able to get the Turks to offer military presence in Kabul, even as Pentagon swings on GHQ Rawalpindi to coax them to open a couple of bases for stationing CIA and Special Forces contingents to continue to operate in AfPak region, shows that this administration is more than a match for President Xi’s calculus. Yesterday a 28 aircraft formation flew violating the mid straits line and into Taiwanese Air Defence Space, in the latest of such aerial violations since 2020. Yet it created no anxious speculation in China Watchers that it did six months back! Already, we have seen reactivation of Quad, special attention being focused by the Western Alliance toward India during the second wave of this pandemic, with nearly every NATO and Western ally sending oxygen related equipment including shipments by military aircraft to India. So if C17 Globe Masters landing with aid and US officials /diplomats to Taiwan was a clear signal to China, imagine what sort of a signal all that heavy lift to New Delhi is likewise! At the very least, it means that unlike 2017 or 2020, India will not be ‘abandoned’ in any situation by the Western Alliance. The G7 Cornwall Summit that ended yesterday, had very much the focus of a concerned West toward India’s pandemic situation, vaccination strategy and accommodation for her concerns regarding use of internet for propaganda and terror activities.

So if powers that be underplayed the significance of the first anniversary of the Galwan incident, if China’s CGTN show of solidarity with PLA Fallen by citizens and netizens of China did not have an Indian parallel, it is because, perhaps, India now has decided discretion as the better part of valour. To bide its time. Even if force level augmentation finds financial support now, if Indian Navy 220 platforms plan is going to find clear lines of credit after struggling these last seven years, India’s soft power needs to recover. Her economy, her diaspora and her netizens influencer quotient all must recover, must become models of aspiration to the rest of the developing world. The time right now is to cut our losses, not be forced into a military face off unprepared or at time and place not of our choosing! It may sound like a dampener to the general narrative of ultranationalism and jingoism being peddled by India’s mainstream TV studios, but clearly, China is not Pakistan. That doesn’t mean Indians must give up. Au contraire, they must up to this challenge of competing with the Chinese. We have several advantages including that of primarily being a Constitutional Democracy, a young demography, and whose youth with scientific education and talent is sought after by the Western Alliance. India needs a new plan to be unveiled that will show us how the government plans to harness these tangibles and intangibles to revive the economy, reintegrate our communities and society and bring about transformational growth. As a civilisation that has a elaborate understanding of Time, as nearly timeless, stretching from Samvatsara to Yuga to Kalpa and beyond, which has an innate understanding of dissolution, evolution and immanence, we are game for such a challenge! What is a year, what is a decade, India can afford a life time to revisit a knot and resolve to solve it…