The violent skirmishes between India and China in eastern Ladakh have been disturbing. Some of the reactions from Indian leaders have also been disturbing. In a civilian democracy, where the armed forces operate under the direction of the political leadership, to announce as the prime minister and defence minister have done, that “the forces have been given complete freedom to take necessary action” is an abdication of political responsibility and opens the door to future crises in the India-China relations and in other possible conflict situations.

It is also not fair to thrust this responsibility on to the armed forces. Matters relating to war and peace are for the political leadership to decide on. Yes, once the leadership has decided that a military riposte is called for to counter a serious threat to the nation’s security, the armed forces must be given discretion in operational matters. They must act to defend our borders, but while actions at the local level and of limited scale and duration may be handled and resolved by them, any incident that goes beyond a certain threshold, with larger political and security implications, must be subject to careful assessment within the national security system and the political leadership before a military response is considered.

The possibility of escalation is not just a military matter. It could have much wider ramifications, particularly if the adversary is a nuclear weapon-state just as India is. Such serious incidents cannot just be handled at the local, on-the-spot military level. The diplomatic machinery must be activated without delay and in serious instances, such as the Doklam face-off in 2017, a summit-level intervention, even, may be necessary.

We have as many as four bilateral agreements with China on maintaining peace and tranquillity at the India-China border. These were concluded in 1993, 1996, 2005 and 2013, over a period of 20 years. These are valuable agreements with important provisions to ensure peace and tranquillity, and should not be unilaterally jettisoned or altered in an angry reaction to what happened in the Galwan Valley. They have, by and large, kept the peace at India’s borders for the past several decades. That is an important achievement which should not be minimised.

The use of arms by Indian forces when engaging with Chinese counterparts will inevitably lead to similar action by the latter. If we give the country’s security forces the discretion to use firearms in an angry encounter, a bloodbath much worse than that which took place at Galwan could ensue. The consequences of such an incident would not just be military. It would reverberate right up the domestic political and diplomatic space. India’s effort should be to ensure that China remains committed to these important agreements and see how they can be strengthened.

Even in the present case, it is not clear why the skirmishes which took place at various points were not raised to the diplomatic and higher political level. The series of incidents at multiple points and the earlier violence witnessed at the Pangong Lake area should have been a warning enough that the country was dealing with a new situation on the border. As a result of the violence in some of these encounters, we should have been aware of heightened emotions and anger among the Indian forces as also among the Chinese. The possibility of such anger leading to more violent clashes should have been anticipated and diplomatic engagement should have been intensified. It should have been raised to the level of the national security adviser and the external affairs minister. This would have also been helpful in reading Chinese calculations. If this was done, then it has not been put out in the public domain.

The agreements arrived at in 1996 and 2005 committed the two sides to engage in a clarification of the Line of Actual Control (LAC). We know where LAC lies and India’s activities are confined to the area within LAC. China contests this alignment at some locations but we do not know how China perceives LAC in its entire length. Both sides have agreed that clarifying LAC is essential to assuring peace and tranquillity at the border, pending the settlement of the border question. The Galwan incident offers an opportunity for us to engage China on this agreed exercise and implement it expeditiously. China’s reaction will also demonstrate whether it is really interested in maintaining peace on the border or whether it prefers to keep it ambiguous so that it can unilaterally advance its territorial claims at points and time of its choosing. This will enable us to draw the necessary conclusions and respond accordingly.

There is no doubt that India’s relations with China have become more adversarial. The string of incidents at the border is a symptom of that, as is the mounting evidence of Chinese activism in India’s subcontinental neighbourhood. The Indian government’s response has to be a careful mix of political, diplomatic, economic and military measures. Engagement with China must continue but its terms must reflect the changed context. Now, more than ever, we need to step back and reconsider our national strategy in all its dimensions. India has left that on the shelf for far too long.

The recent border clashes between India and China have led analysts, habituated to conventional warfare, to compare the relative strengths of the two adversaries in terms of the number of tanks, aircraft and other military paraphernalia.

It appears that Indian strategic discourse has yet again discounted cyber operations as an instrument of power projection, which could have offered a degree of flexibility when it comes to coercing, compelling and imposing costs on the contentious neighbour. This is unfortunate considering how much Indian think-tanks have glamourised the cyber domain.

Unlike conventional means, cyber power projection exploits the delicate interfaces between society and technology. Such operations are best suited to create a mix of effect and perception.

The Australian prime minister’s dramatic public disclosure of an ongoing State-sponsored cyber-attack highlights accurately the perception factor. And, as was evident during the hostilities between Russia and Ukraine, switching off a power grid may lead to more panic than an actual loss of productivity, thus demoralising the adversary.

Cyber operations broadly fit into the template of a hybrid, multi-dimensional offensive waged by militaries wary of breaching acknowledged redlines. This is exactly the case with India and China.

From influencing narratives, disrupting missile launches to breaking nuclear deterrence, the malleability of the cyber option makes it very potent. It relieves the defending military of the burden of maintaining a comparable capability that is driven by a strict numbers-based assessment.

The cyber vulnerabilities of each nation are unique, asymmetrical and closely tied to its body politic. The rigid socio-political hierarchies of the Chinese State make it increasingly susceptible to information warfare.

After the damning hack of a sensitive database storing the background checks of government employees, the United States (US) had plans of temporarily disrupting Chinese Internet censors such as the “Great Firewall” as a mode of retaliation. The totalitarian regime of the Communist Party of China would have considered such a manoeuvre as a severely existential threat.

The simple act of making hitherto forbidden information available to the masses, already unsettled by the coronavirus pandemic, would have struck at the heart of the adversary. Yet, it would have carefully skirted the quantifiable, time-tested thresholds of war.

The stark absence of the cyber option in the Indian discourse does not come as a surprise. Even during the Balakot escalation, this was an element which was conspicuously ignored.

On the other hand, China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has employed cutting edge cyber operations, endorsing these as the strategic pivot of an “informationalised” battle space.

The last two decades have witnessed the breathtaking formalisation of how power is accumulated and projected in cyberspace. The Indian cyber apparatus seemed to have squandered that opportunity, thanks to inertia and a lack of organisation.

Contrary to popular belief, the cyber option cannot be exercised as an afterthought. You cannot whip up a team of hackers to respond in kind. Subversive or punitive actions require years of covert pre-positioning into adversarial networks and societal structures.

That is exactly why a substantive element of cyber power is still driven by access. It is for not for nothing that the Huaweis of the world are risking life and limb to consolidate access to the nodal constructs of digital infrastructure such as 5G, in the process sparking the most bitter global trade war.

There is only one parameter of effectiveness for cyber operations — cohesiveness, or jointness in military terms. The cyber option requires a sharp convergence of awareness around the political, diplomatic and military organs, more so than the conventional ones whose effects are qualified and known.

The US Naval War College made a crucial observation on “the importance of Presidential personalities in determining cyber operations in crises”, following wargames conducted over a period of seven years. Cyber operations require a seamless, fluid command structure right from the head of state.

It is fine to struggle with the technical intricacies of the domain, but its potential and expendability must be carefully drawn up as a doctrine. The Indian cyber doctrine, which was slated to be released early this year, has still not seen the light of day.

While China may profess hegemony in access-based operations with its broad commercial reach, India can still muster up formidable capability with expeditionary cyber manoeuvring.

However, expeditionary cyber operations are volatile and intense, requiring a degree of risk appetite, rigour and hardiness. And most important, a slight misstep or an overreaction could lead to a spiralling escalation, which may result in a ruthless cyber retaliation by China.

As such, the Indian doctrine must spell out its escalatory and declaratory thresholds very clearly so as to moderate the reactions of the adversary, which could be tempted to behave irrationally. Unlike nuclear deterrence, there is no science available to deduce such thresholds. They need to be calibrated with experience.

India’s institutional memory of cyber operations is literally non-existent. And institutional memory is institutional capability in this knowledge-driven domain. General James Cartwright, the earliest cyber commander, had bet that cyber operations could “reset diplomacy”. It is time that India puts that option on the negotiating table.

Chinese strategist Sun Tzu’s most famous aphorism goes something like this. He said, “If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles”

Strategists learn about adversaries by observing their actions and statements, interpreting their behaviour, and studying their leaders. But the more astute understand the enemies’ mindset by studying their culture.

Leaders and tactics may change, but strategies and doctrines are embedded in the culture and mindset of a nation and are, therefore, far better predictors of their actions. Both China and India have a rich culture and several texts that explain respective mindsets but an easier way to explain the difference is to study the strategy games of the two nations.

Chess originated in India. The game is played by two players on a board of 64 squares with 16 white and black pieces each. The opponents start the game with all their pieces arraigned against each other and each player moves alternatively. The pieces have powers in hierarchical order with the queen being most powerful. All pieces change their positions continuously during the game.

As those familiar with chess know, it is a game of manoeuvre that has one centre of gravity — the king; and the objective is to capture or “kill” the opponent’s king. The loss of rest of the pieces or their positions at the end of the game is immaterial.

The Chinese strategy game, however, is “igo” — commonly known as “Go”. It is played on a much larger board that has 19×19 sides resulting in 361 points compared to the 64 squares in Chess. In Go, the stones are positioned on the “intersections” of the squares to deny “liberty” to the opponent’s stones. Go also has white and black pieces called stones, but that is where the similarity with chess ends. The objective of Go is not to capture any single piece; instead, it is to surround a larger total area of the board with one’s stones before the opponent. As the game progresses, the players position stones on the board to map out formations and potential territories. Contests between opposing formations result in the expansion, reduction, or capture and loss of stones. The winner is decided by counting each player’s surrounded territory along with captured stones.

China has been playing Go, not chess with India. It has been playing the game on a multi-dimensional canvas much larger than the Indian landmass and across several spectrums, ranging from the military to the economic “intersections” blocking India’s “liberty” or manoeuvrability over a long period. It has inveigled every neighbour of India by coaxing, cajoling, or enticing them into its camp. It has infiltrated into India’s economic, infrastructure, health care, communication and technological value chain so inextricably that, contrary to silly calls for boycotting Chinese goods, India cannot meaningfully disengage its dependence on China.

While there is no doubting the valour of our army, the cost of militarily confronting an adversary whose economy is over five times as large as ours and whose defence budget is four times ours would be horrendous in human and economic terms for decades to come. This is particularly so because China has turned India’s northern and western neighbours into its surrogate pincers tying down a large part of our military assets and strategic mindshare. If India does consider the military option, it will have to factor in China’s overwhelming superiority in the Ladakh region specifically, and in electronic warfare, cyberwar, drones, missiles and the nuclear arsenal of the People’s Liberation Army generally.

The word “igo” in Mandarin literally means to encircle, and that is China’s strategy with a combination of the “String of Pearls” (which refers to the sea line communications from China to the Horn of Africa through strategic choke points and maritime centres in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Maldives and Somalia) along India’s coastline and the Belt and Road initiative in the North. Nepal, Bhutan and now Ladakh are additional “stones” being placed to constrict India’s manoeuvrability from every direction.

Instead of treating these episodes as singular events, India must join the dots to appreciate the Chinese game plan and design a counter-strategy along three thrust lines.

First, an encirclement cannot be broken only from inside. Instead, India must expand the ‘board” by cooperating with countries such as Japan, Australia, Taiwan, Malaysia, South Korea, Singapore and Vietnam which are increasingly threatened by China’s hegemonistic moves. Simultaneously, it must build pressure from within the encirclement by rapprochement with immediate neighbours such as Nepal, Bhutan and Sri Lanka. This requires us to think like a Go player and appreciate that unlike chess, the stones in Go don’t have relative power. India has far greater historical synergies with every one of our neighbours including Pakistan, than China does. Each stone, or in this case, country, is important, regardless of its physical or economic size. We need to value them as equal partners in the struggle against Chinese hegemony. Second, India must recast its national security strategy horizons to decades instead of election cycles. If a government’s image is interlocked with tactical timelines, then, by definition, strategy will suffer because tactical and strategic goals are usually at cross purposes. Divorcing national security from politics will enable long-term indigenous capacity-building and strengthening external alliances.

Last, and most important, India needs to consolidate its internal critical mass. The country is facing multiple challenges on several fronts, most seriously the economy. Political power, as Mao said, may grow from a barrel of a gun, but national power emanates from a strong and vibrant economy, which, in turn, requires internal peace, cooperation, and harmony to inspire customer and investor confidence. Unless those conditions are achieved, no country can aspire to be a regional power or thwart attacks on its sovereignty.

The June 15 clashes between India and China have finally broken the four-decade record of relative peace on the Himalayan frontier. Reactions have been sharp, ranging from calls to evict the Chinese from their entrenched positions to others calling for a Cold War.

The debate over China’s rise has been raging for the past two decades, if not since 1950, when the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) swept into Tibet. India-China relations have seen it all — from engagement to a dramatic collapse in 1959, a brief-but-traumatic war in 1962, a hiatus of no- war, no-peace in the decades that followed. And, finally a diplomatic breakthrough with the 1988 modus vivendi that paved the way for India and China to build a relationship without settling the border dispute. The core premise was that the stable development of relations is predicated on a peaceful periphery. It reflected pragmatism and broader shifts in Chinese and Indian priorities in favour of economic transformation at home and a peaceful neighbourhood. The June 15 clashes have dented that agreed-upon edifice.

It is clear that the next phase of the relationship depends on a peaceful frontier. But this should not mean merely a restoration of the status quo ante. If, by the status quo, we mean two large nuclear-armed countries resuming their aggressive jostling and humiliating each other, that is unsustainable. To anyone who has viewed leaked videos of the border face-offs in recent years, the Line of Actual Control (LAC) grey zones have been transformed into a nasty tit-for-tat game, waiting to explode.

For the past decade, both sides have adopted forward policies matched by new connectivity links to the frontier. A belief that an array of confidence-building measures (CBMs) would cushion this changing balance of power in the forward areas has been misplaced. It is time now for stock-taking and re-envisioning a new conflict-management framework. There were two main reasons to engage in proactive probing in the grey zones — as a symbolic ritual of showing the flag to demonstrate consistency over claim lines, and, keeping an eye on each other so that nobody changes the status quo on the ground. But there was a complementary political element too. High-level talks between the special representatives were intended to lay out a framework within which each side would bring forward their claims for serious bargaining to commence. But with that political process stalling in recent years, tactical forward probing along LAC has assumed a life of its own, disproportionate to the envisaged goals.

Why can’t Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping settle the dispute? Chinese scholar Yun Sun summarises the key problem obstructing a settlement — “Key concessions India demands from China on the border settlement are hard commitments that cannot be reversed. By contrast, what China seeks from India, such as its neutrality in the US-Chinese strategic competition, is ephemeral and easily adjustable.” This problem of uncertainty and fluidity in strategic intentions has no apparent solution for the foreseeable future. However, stabilising the frontier through new norms is possible and in the interests of both states. Creative approaches such as agreed buffer zones in the most contentious pockets and coordinated or restricted patrolling regimes to avoid violent scuffles must be integral to the new status quo.

In their excitement or jingoism, many have declared a breaking point in the India-China relations. This is precisely the time to avoid such hyperbole.

The relationship has not suddenly gone south. The warning signs have been apparent for some time. It has been falsely claimed that Delhi has been oblivious to China’s rise. In fact, Modi’s China policy has been uncompromising across the board. From the Belt Road Initiative (BRI) to maritime security to emerging high technologies such as 5G, Delhi has been bold in its rhetoric and actions. Even in the geopolitical arena, India has been unabashed and dogged in engaging the United States (US), despite an unenthused president in the White House. Across Asia too, Delhi has been proactively tapping China’s neighbours as a future countervailing hedge. With traditional ally Russia too, Modi’s renewed outreach in recent years is reminiscent of the old geostrategy — promoting a balance of power in Eurasia.

If anything, India’s policymakers could be critiqued for getting ahead of themselves and precipitating counter-balancing moves from China without having a credible strategy in place. But Delhi’s real failure has been to not match its realpolitik words and deeds with a broader foreign policy framework where sustained engagement with China was also part of a grand strategy to emerge as a “leading power” in a multipolar world. Instead, Delhi has found itself leaning against China with an empty treasury and unpredictable partners.

History shows that when India possessed strong and positive ties with the great powers, it was taken seriously by China. Yet, history also shows the clear limits of what leveraging that balance of power can do for India. The India-US and India-Soviet (Russia) ties worked to stabilise the India-China relationship when India remained firmly grounded in recognising and pursuing its own interests rather than becoming an object in a great game. So only when two conditions simultaneously held was India able to shape a mutually beneficial relationship with China — shrewdly leveraging the international environment and maintaining a sophisticated China policy.

Zorawar Daulet Singh is an adjunct fellow, Institute of Chinese Studies, Delhi, and author of Power and Diplomacy: India’s Foreign Policies During the Cold War

China has not halted — and instead has ramped up — its military activity along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh’s Galwan Valley, with a concentration of soldiers, military vehicles, earth-moving machinery, and erection of structures, including near the same point where Indian and Chinese troops clashed on the night of June 15, according to two senior officials and satellite imagery of the area on June 22.

The Indian army has observed a new structure, suspected to be an observation post, come up near Patrol Point (PP) 14, the site of the clash which left 20 personnel of the Indian army and an unconfirmed number of Chinese troops dead, said one of the officials cited above.

There was no official word from the army on either of the developments. India and China agreed to pull back from friction areas on Monday.

New satellite imagery, released by US firm Maxar Technologies, supports the claim that not only is the PLA holding ground in Galwan Valley but has also shored up its military positions in the area. One of the Maxar images too possibly points out a new and bigger observation post near PP-14. An Indian squad, led by the slain Colonel Santosh Babu of the 16 Bihar Regiment, had flattened some structures in this area including an observation post, on June 15.

The satellite images are from June 22 — the day senior Indian and Chinese military commanders reached a “mutual consensus to disengage” from all friction areas during an 11-hour meeting at Moldo on the Chinese side of the LAC.

Officials and China watchers, who reviewed the images for Hindustan Times, said the visuals clearly indicated a Chinese buildup and also a new outpost for carrying out surveillance on Indian areas. But they also added that it was important to give the armies time to disengage and pointed to the complexities of satellite imagery.

“A large number of tented camps, military vehicles, heavy trucks and bulldozers are clearly visible on the riverbed. Road construction is also taking place. The Chinese positions are bang on the LAC,” said former Northern Army commander Lieutenant General DS Hooda (retd), one of the experts who reviewed the satellite imagery for HT. Hooda said the observation post appeared to have come up again near PP-14.

The Chinese buildup in other areas along the LAC including Depsang, Gogra Post-Hot Springs and Pangong Tso, hasn’t thinned either. The PLA’s armoured vehicles and artillery units remain deployed in Chinese areas facing Depsang and Gogra Post-Hot Springs sectors.

The army is keeping a strict vigil along the LAC and is fully prepared to respond to any provocation or adventurism by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA), said the second officer cited above. Given the observed build-up, the army is also prepared to keep its guards up till disengagement takes place on the ground on a verifiable basis.

But experts also said that it was important to be cautious.

The process of disengagement is likely to be arduous and challenging, and will require moving ahead cautiously in phases, as reported by HT on Wednesday.

“Disengagement can’t happen overnight. While the images are a cause for concern and somewhat reveal China’s intentions to hold ground near LAC in Galwan Valley, the result of the talks between senior commanders will not reflect on the ground in just two days,” Hooda said.

The interpretation of satellite imagery is also tricky and can result in reaching incorrect conclusions, said Lieutenant General Vinod Bhatia (retd), a former director general of military operations.

“It’s about how you superimpose the LAC on satellite images. It allows you to reach your conclusions. However, some of the interpretation may be correct,” said Bhatia who heads the Centre for Joint Warfare Studies, a defence ministry think tank.

China has deployed more than 10,000 troops in its ‘depth areas’ across the LAC in eastern Ladakh and the military buildup consists of fighter jets, helicopters, tanks, artillery guns, missile systems and air defence radars. India has matched the neighbour’s military moves.

While disengagement in some friction areas is believed to be a “low-hanging fruit” and can be achieved in a reasonable time-frame, the “real test” would lie in the restoration of status quo ante in the Finger Area in Pangong-Tso, where the PLA has set up permanent bunkers, pillboxes and observation posts, officials said. China watchers believe that the disengagement process is likely to be less complicated in the Gogra Post-Hot Springs and the Galwan Valley sectors, where there are no real issues about the alignment of the LAC, if Beijing abides by the understanding.