India-China rivalry: Towards a two-front war in the Himalayas?
India-China rivalry: Towards a two front war in the Himalayas?
WRITTEN BY SREEJITH SASIDHARAN
27 August 2020
China’s defence white paper released in July 2019, titled ‘National Defense in the New Era’ throws light on Beijing’s recent escalation on the India-China border in Ladakh. The white paper observes that China’s armed forces have carried out extensive mission-oriented training to meet the needs of different ‘strategic directions’.
Interestingly, the term ‘strategic directions’, was previously absent in the defence white papers of 2008 or 2010 and only made an appearance for the first time in April 2013. It is in line with this change, that the Line of Actual Control (LAC) has seen increasing numbers of confrontations in the last 7 years. This pattern of escalation starting with the Raki Nala incident and the publication of Beijing’s 2013 defence white paper, came exactly one month after Xi Jinping formally took office as the President of China in March 2013.
The violence in Ladakh, also allowed Beijing to examine the degree of coordination that exists within the Indo-US strategic partnership. As Indian and Chinese soldiers clashed with medieval-style weapons in the Galwan Valley, Beijing paid close attention to how the United States reacted.
The Chief Editor of South Asia Studies, at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), Ye Hailin, notes that China considers India as the main challenger in the ‘secondary strategic direction’, whereas the United States is the focus of China’s ‘primary strategic direction’ — the Western Pacific.
In other words, when China allocates military resources and deploys armed forces, Beijing’s main objective is to maximize the resources towards what it considers to be its primary strategic direction, the United States and its system of alliances. This can be achieved only by allocating the minimum possible resources in a secondary strategic direction towards New Delhi and the Himalayas. Given the calculations within the Central Military Commission in Beijing, in allocating resources between India and the United States, there are multiple implications for the timing and the manner of China’s designs in Ladakh.
Beijing’s strategic calculations
First, in line with Beijing’s calculations of the secondary strategic direction, China’s aggression has a co-relation with deep-seated insecurities of a two-front war. The Global Times tweeted on 28 June 2020, at the height of the Ladakh standoff, that the People’s Liberation Army was fully prepared and capable of a multi-front war in the Himalayas, the Taiwan Strait, and the South China Sea.
These signals underscore China’s anxiety about India opening up a front in the Himalayas in the future, while China’s armed forces are engaged in a conflict with the United States in one or all of the Indo-Pacific’s four potential flashpoints, the Taiwan Strait, the East China Sea, the Yellow Sea or the South China Sea. Therefore, China is actively trying to offset in Ladakh, what it perceives as India’s attempt to create advantageous tactile positions, such as building a feeder road to the Daulat Beg Oldie airfield, which may be leveraged in the future for logistics to open a second front.
Second, the violence in Ladakh has also allowed Beijing to examine the degree of coordination that exists within the Indo-US strategic partnership. As Indian and Chinese soldiers clashed with medieval-style weapons in the Galwan Valley, Beijing paid close attention to how the United States reacted.
In the days that followed, to what extent did the United States share intelligence with India? Did the United States offer diplomatic support and public statements? Was there a readiness on the part of the United States to move aircraft carriers to the South China Sea as a means of coercive diplomacy? These questions, along with the violation of Taiwan’s airspace, and coercion in the South China Sea allows Beijing to probe the limits and red lines of both the United States and India without risking a larger conflagration.
Finally, by giving the illusion of opening simultaneous fronts without firing a shot and yet indulging in violence, China is trying to signal the world, that Beijing has ‘arrived’ as a major power whose interests it will address and defend.
Hooked on lessons from the past
Although the United States is still the predominant military power in the Indo-Pacific, China is moving quickly to redraw the strategic balance of power in the region. With international opinion distracted by the COVID-19 pandemic, the resultant economic disruption caused by the pandemic has provided an opportunity for a re-arrangement of polarity in the international order.
These developments raise a bigger question. How is China’s insecurity about a two-front war, related to China’s own need for strategic depth from potential adversaries? Beijing, after all, sees territories such as Ladakh, Arunachal Pradesh, Taiwan and the South China Sea’s island chains as natural barriers from which to defend mainland China.
Since Xi Jinping’s revisionist foreign policy is convinced that its primary mission must be to displace the United States from Indo-Pacific, as explained by Realist scholar John Mearsheimer, Beijing is eager to learn from the mistake of another revisionist power of the 20th century — Germany — in its campaigns across Europe (1914-1945). Berlin’s primary mistake was the repeated opening of second fronts, by invading both France and Russia its two regional adversaries. According to Mao Zedong’s own analysis, Germany’s defeat in the eastern front at Stalingrad and later Kursk were the critical moments that enabled the allies to defeat Europe’s hegemonic power.
It is in this context that China’s insecurities arise from its view of India as the potential second front akin to that played by the Soviet Union or Western allies. Chinese academics and foreign policy experts have been studying the reasons for the failure of Germany with extensive academic literature, written in Mandarin, debating Mao Zedong’s analysis of the role Stalingrad played in the defeat of Germany after 1941.
In conclusion
The preoccupation within Chinese literature with rising powers challenging the status quo is so profound that during Hu Jintao’s presidency, the slogan ‘China’s peaceful rise’ was coined, aimed at assuring status quo powers such as the United States, Japan and the European Union, that Beijing will not replicate the actions of revisionist powers in history such as Germany. Realist scholars however such as Barry Buzan and John Mearsheimer have always questioned the viability of Beijing’s claims.
The events in the Summer of 2020 in Ladakh, with the killing of 20 Indian soldiers by China’s PLA, serve as evidence that the era of China’s peaceful rise is over and that India faces a new reality in its relations with Beijing. Going by the perpetration of violence in Ladakh, alongside its wider actions across the region, China seems to be in a self-fulfilling prophecy to open a second front in the Himalayas.
DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.
Author biography
Sreejith Sasidharan, holds a Masters in Diplomacy and is affiliated to the Institute of International Relations, Warsaw. He was previously a Research Intern at the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, New Delhi. Image credit: US Defence Intelligence Agency.