Evaluate The Ladakh Crisis, Keep China At Bay

Context: A critical assessment of stand-off at Ladakh offers India key lessons in managing strategic competition with China.

Background on recent India-China relations

• Continuing stand-off: After over a year, stand-off between Indian and Chinese troops in eastern Ladakh shows no signs of resolution, disengagement has stalled and talks been fruitless.
• Rupture bilateral relationship: Political relations are marked by hostility and distrust. The relationship has been described as conditional on the quietude on the border by Indian External Affairs minister.

Strategic lessons for India: In a recent study published by the Lowy Institute ‘The crisis after the crisis: how Ladakh will shape, offers India three key lessons in managing the intensifying strategic competition with China.

1. Military strategies based on denial are more useful than strategies based on punishment.
   • India’s doctrine of deterring adversaries with the threat of massive punitive retaliation did not deter China from the launch of incursions.
   • In contrast, Indian military’s act of denial (its occupation of the Kailash Range on its side of LAC) served to provide a stronger defensive position to the Indian Army.
   • Thus, a doctrinal focus on denial will give more capacity to Indian military to thwart future land grabs.
2. China more likely to be deterred with threat of political costs rather than material costs:
   • Material deterrence will not work since China’s defence budget is three to four times larger than India’s, and its Western Theatre Command boasts over 200,000 soldiers.
   • In contrast, a permanently hostile India or an accidental escalation to conflict were risks that China, assessed were an unnecessary additional burden
   • A corollary to this is that individual powers will struggle to shift Chinese calculus alone. Thus, Against the rising behemoth, only coordinated or collective action is likely to be effective.
3. Indian Ocean Region (IOR) is the key, rather than LAC: From the perspective of long­term strategic competition, the IOR is more consequential and uncertain than the Himalayan frontier.
   • Land border being the difficult terrain will be inconsequential with modest gains at best.
   • In contrast, India has traditionally been the dominant power in the Indian Ocean Region and stands to cede significant political influence and security
   • Thus, India will have to make tough­minded strategic trade­-offs, deliberately prioritising military modernisation and joint force projection over the ground­-centric combat arms formations.

Conclusion: Rebalancing India’s strategic priorities will require the central government, through the Chief of Defence Staff, to issue firm strategic guidance to the military services. This will define the ability of the national security apparatus to overcome entrenched bureaucratic and organisational­cultural biases.