OUR POTENTIAL FRIENDS, EX-FRIEND WHO SIDED ENEMY, TESTING NEIGHBOURS AND OUR FOREIGN POLICY

The night of June 15 will be the darkest movement in relations with China for several decades to come; it is believed Democratic countries generally don’t go to war so the new wars are fought only at the local level or at the new dimensions like cyber or space one such small incident was at Galwan valley. Bad scenarios are those situations that reveal our true friends, the character of whom we believe as a best friend, and opens new windows of friendship.

In this article, we shall analyze what went wrong? Why China Did this? what’s our current status? Who could be our friends and way forward to deal with Chinese.

 What went wrong?

In the mid-February where the government was hosting Donald Trump and the immediate broke out of the Delhi riots, there was an Intelligence alert cautioning the army that the movements in the Pangong Tso lake were suspicious and patrol has to be done in this area, Pangong lake is  where the army does the patrol very rarely because of the terrain and lack of possibility of the vehicular movement for Indian Army between Finger 4 and Finger 8 ( look at  bottom circle Pangong Tso 

where finger 4 and 8 were located.) So there was no intelligence failure this time

To the surprise that many news channels which did not report was the immediate intervention of the Russians who conveyed a message to India that China is doing some military exercise over there since its summer and will vacate the place very soon after April which sounded rational and Indian military also believed because nobody imagined that china would build permanent structures when everyone is criticizing China and are eager to know the origin of Corona and in the mid of pandemic none could anticipate the evil intentions of Chinese. If you recollect, it is on May 5-6 the soldiers of the Indian Army(IA) and people’s liberation army (PLA) clashed each other with stones causing injury to few. The question arises why did Russians mislead us??  There could be two probabilities 1) China could have misled the Russians and Russians just passed on the misleading information which Indians subsequently believed it or   2) Russians Deliberately did this. Whichever it is Indians were the ones who have to face the tough times ahead and it led to the talks of commander-general level for the first time. This is the origin of the problem which escalated on June 15 Night. So what happened on June 15th is, at 02:30pm there was a meeting between the Indian Army and the Chinese Army at the local level and it was decided that each side will move 3km back. So the Indian army started removing the temporary structures as shown in Image 1 below.

This fig is the original position before meeting at 02:30pm at Galwan, let us see the build-up at each side by zooming Indian side of LAC and the Chinese Side of LAC ( left side of the image is Indian side and the right side is the Chinese side) red line is Line of Actual control / Borderline

This is the Indian side of LAC by zooming the left side of the above image.

This is the Chinese side obtained by zooming the right side of the above image, you can see a lot of trucks lined up there.

By 07:30pm Commanding officer Santhosh Babu started patrol with his 5 soldiers to verify whether the Chinese implemented the afternoon agreement. He did find that Chinese moved back but the temporary structures were not removed by them, to find out the reason why they did not remove the temporary structures they started moving inside their territory ( pls refer image of the original position, you will find a right-angle curve there which leads to no line of sight for the Indian Army). As the Chinese saw the 6 Indian soldiers they started attacking which was premeditated and preplanned leading to the death of  Commanding officer Santhosh Babu, (the patrol generally takes place in two groups the smaller group leading the front and larger group at the back few meters away )  sensing the danger the larger group of Bihar regiment came to the rescue of the Commanding officer and the 5 of his soldiers  simultaneously informing the Ghatak regiment which is placed a few meters away, upon receiving the information Ghatak regiment soldiers rushed in a large number ( approx 250) and it's free for all at the Chinese side of the LAC they continued fighting till 12:30 am which lead to the death of 20 Indian soldiers and more than 40soldiers on chines side ( next day morning Chinese took India permission to ferry helicopters to airlift bodies which were counted by Indian soldiers who informed that there were 43 people who were airlifted) the American intelligence reported 35 PLA soldiers died in the fight.

Please see the circle on the right side of the image which indicates the debris of the mountain which fell due to the overcrowding of the soldiers. It was reported by Gen V.K Singh 600 soldiers fought that night.

Out of the 20 soldiers, 4-5 soldiers died due to falling in the Galwan river where the temperature is subzero. The Chinese blocked the river entering into India in mid-may. This answers the biggest question that fight took place in the Chinese Side of LAC and since water is not on the Indian side, our soldiers fell in the water on the Chinese side leading to a delay in rescue.

It is true that on June 15^th night 10 soldiers were captured and were released on 18th evening, by the time speculations grew and the question was raised to Army on 19^th they replied “All the men are accounted for” which is technically correct since last night everyone returned, but the fact is for two and half days they were in the custody of Chinese army.

The current situation was solved at Galwan and focus shifted to Pangong Tso Lake. That was lost to china partially in 1999 and completely in 2004 but still, we could do patrol till Finger 8 inFeb2020 is no more possible in the near future.

Why did China do this?

If we go into history 1962 the china war could give us some clues, one of the reasons Chinese attacked us was they want to teach Jawaharlal Nehru a lesson so the current incident could be same as Nirupama Rao (EX IFS, MEA Secretary) it could be very well a lesson to Narendra Modi who has won an election with National security as one of the key campaign agenda and the Chinese thought of experimenting to know how Modi would react to such a problem when the Indian economy is facing such a low growth and Country is facing a pandemic, The other probability could be as many experts suggest that there is an internal problem within the Chinese communist party (CCP) and somebody is challenging the authority of Xi Jinping. 

What’s Current Status?

What is extremely worrying is the support Indians Got from the USA whom the Chinese see as their number 1 enemy. Why did not Trump support us??

Because the USA had a lot of expectations from us that Indians would help them in Afghanistan, Which we did not because we learned a wrong lesson from the Srilanka IPKF. The Americans were give and take. So, we didn’t help them so they don’t help us. (Showing sympathy is different from helping in times of difficulty) well it's arguable to interfere in Afghanistan is good or bad but one big mistake that Indian committed was purchasing S400 triumph which frustrated Americans a lot. Please recollect that in last year Turkey purchased the S400 and the Americans were extremely furious and they kicked out Turkey from their F35 program. Don’t be surprised that Americans may Sanction India. The only country which showed little support was Australia which faced massive Cyber-attack on June 18^th, Japan did not even open the mouth which speaks volumes about the Hyped QUAD.

 

What’s Wrong with Nepal and Pakistan

KP Oli Sharma the PM of Nepal passed an amendment to their constitution Claiming the Kalapani and lipulekh as their territory. Why did the situation go the other extreme??

 

Because he was promised by the Indian government a lot of hydroelectric projects, Listening to these promises KP Oli was extremely happy and announced to the public of Nepal that all hydroelectric projects would be completed soon then came a worst implemented Demonetization and GST which reduced the growth and tax collections. The finance ministry started cutting the budget of External affairs ministry ultimately the promise to KP Oli was forgotten. With elections around the corner, the Nepal people started asking the progress of hydroelectric projects. This opportunity was enchased by china and they stated funding the projects and in return, Nepal stated turning anti-India to satisfy China.

But the RAW is very powerful in Nepal and southern Nepal was full of support to India, the typical technique India uses to change/defeat anti-Indian PM of Nepal in the past and the future would be to suddenly withdraw the subsidy to petrol that India provides to Nepal (Nepal 95% of oil is met through import from India) the sudden spike of petrol price just before election results will result in the loss of current PM of Nepal and the new PM would provide an opportunity to rebuild relations with Nepal.

Coming to Pakistan, many of its generals were present in Chengdu (city of China) during China’s fight with India on June 15 hoping to start a new front war with India at a time when China attacks India on the western side. Bad Indo Nepal relations also comes to the handy of Pakistan because the border with Nepal is an open border and they can infiltrate to India via Nepal

How to deal with chines in their own style of Sun Tzu

Balance of power is one option by joining the American Camp, to which we have to cancel the S400, stop the Huawei from entering India. cancel the SSBN 2^nd Nuclear attack submarine with Russia this is the step forward in the current scenario, the Nonalignment is Nonsense we must be in the Camp of USA Because Current Russia our old friend was now in deep strategic partnership with China, leaving us with no option but to join The USA.

The defense budget is very very less to just give a brief we use 1980 designed INSAS Gun the replacement to it was Russian Ak203which was finalized after 5 years(2019) but was not materialized due to cost negotiations and Indigenous component differences. The Bofors ammunition was low, the most hand Artillery in these terrains was M777 which India recently purchased from the USA has almost zero ammunition, we still use M999 carbine which was used in World war2. Regarding the IAF the current scenario demands Dog fight capabilities aircraft, in the airforce inventory we can pick only MIG 21 aircraft to meet the scenario which is not only outdated but of vintage status, their production stopped in Russia in 1980 ( since 1970 more than 170 Indian pilots died due to crash of MIG 21) SU 30MKI cannot be used at these locations except at the Indian ocean to stop the Chinese Navy. India have 13 submarines except 2 remaining 11 are imported from Russia and Germany in Rajiv Gandhi time Most importantly I wish to restrain from talking about the Cybersecurity, The less talked about it the better it is. To those who think of war they should say with what are we going to fight with China. Which leads to the conclusion of sacrificing Strategic autonomy and joining the USA as a defense partner

Israel could help us in cybersecurity and the USA could help us in arms and India had the manpower which is a deadly combination of Innovations of the USA, Intelligence of Mossad, and Indians

 

Non Alignment is a disease, Strategic autonomy is a joke, We have to make alliances.  In the Saptanga theory of Kautilya 326BC, he mentions very clearly that all your neighbors are your enemies or will be enemies of you in the future, which turned out to be true. India suddenly had China and Nepal as Enemies with Pakistan as a perennial problem.

 

 

 

 Courtesy to Abhijit Iyer Mitra for Pictures