For a Stable Peace

Context: India cannot continue to remain in a reactive mode to Chinese provocations and intrusions and it is time to respond in kind by building a power balancing alliance. 

Sino India Conflict and historical issues

• Debate over provocation for the Sino-Indian border-conflict of 1962: China’s National Highway 219 cutting across Aksai Chin or India’s misguided “forward policy”
• Line of actual control (LAC): China conformed to the British-negotiated McMahon Line and retained the physical control of Aksai Chin.

• Unclear and undefined: both sides visualised their version of the LAC, but neither marked it on the ground nor were maps exchanged.

• Sino-Indian Border Peace and Tranquility Agreement (BPTA) in 1993: failed to negotiate a boundary settlement.
• China’s post-civil war leadership: visualised China attaining great-power status, with neutralising India as a priority (Pakistan played an invaluable role in anti-India strategy).
• Political pressure-point for India: pre-meditated land-grabs and messages of intimidation and dominance

Way Forward

• India’s response: cannot continue to remain in a “reactive mode” to Chinese provocations.

• Realpolitik resort: Seek security in one of three options: 

1. Increase our strength, 
2. Ally with others to restore power-balance (offering to protect American strategic foothold in Diego Garcia as a friend/partener/ally)
3. Jump on the hegemon’s bandwagon (Finding a modus vivendi for the Sino-Indian border dispute as proposed by Zhou Enlai in 1960 and repeated by Deng Xiaoping in 1982).