India Must Exercise Hard Power in Response to Chinese Hostility

Context: India’s ambivalent attitude towards the pursuit of hard power—military, economic and political—has made it difficult for us to tackle the current 3Cs challenge we face: on COVID, China and the (Great Economic) Contraction.

Necessity of using hard power against china

• China tried to change the status quo on the southern bank of Pangong Tso lake in Ladakh
• China’s willingness to risk a war to achieve its strategic goals: This may be due to:
• An appetite to ever-expanding Chinese ambitions necessitated by COVID and economic exigencies. – Remember Mao’s dictum, that power flows from the barrel of a gun.
• Divert attention from internal dissent of the Communist Party in handling of economic and COVID crisis through a nationalistic resurgence.

Challenges to India’s Acceptance of Hard Power.

• Knee Jerk Reactions: Diverting resources to other areas that are deemed politically more rewarding:
  • We only think about hard power only when a crisis situation occurs, For E.g., buying more arms and ammunition immediately after confrontation with china.
• Hard to balance the classic guns-versus-butter challenge: with its huge backlog on social sector investments, India was not keen to invest in hard power, both militarily and economically. 
• Negative Civilisational attitudes towards the acquisition of power:
  • Gandhian values like ahimsa, or non-violence
  • Ingrained attitudes that hamper our drive to acquire hard military power.
    • For E.g. The yogi seeks the power change from within; the commissar seeks change by wielding power over the masses.
  • Assuming that our enemies and rivals are “people like us”. E.g. our assumptions about China and Nepal have turned out to be wrong in recent times.

Way Forward:

• Diversions of resources to defence and border infrastructure.
• Augment Soft power with hard power: Soft power is useful only when you have the hard power needed to push it.
• Harder Restrictions on China: We cannot afford to gift China an annual $50-odd billion in US dollars through trade deficits while it is trying to capture Indian Territory.