Next year is the centenary of the founding of 🇨🇳 CPC, & the leadership needs a military triumph to cover up the problems being faced on the economic side. The possible locations for an effort to generate such a victory would be the Himalayas, South China Sea or the Taiwan Strait.
Should the Indian economy continue on a downward trajectory and a new Biden administration backpedal on the Obama-Trump offer of a military partnership with India, the PLA may judge that their time to move forward in Kashmir, Bhutan and Arunachal Pradesh has arrived.
What the elders who chose Xi over Li in 2012 failed to factor in was the fact that in common with Mao Zedong, Xi has a ruthless drive to promote the Han nationalist concept of where the PRC should be, and what needs to be done to get it there.
At a time when General Secretary Xi had fashioned the Belt & Road Initiative to ensure that Eurasian supply chains located their centre of gravity in China, any displacement of industrial assets to a potential competitor of the size and potential of India was unwelcome.
A decision appears to have been taken around 2016 by the PRC leadership core that GHQ Rawalpindi should be given a boost in military assistance, not only to hold its own against India but also to serve as a more effective brake on rapid development of capabilities by India.
More than generating international opinion, the calculation in Beijing (nurtured by Islamabad) was that heightened activity at the UN Security Council would motivate more Kashmiris to destroy their own futures by taking to violence against their own country.
The UNSC was proving to be ineffective as a motivator for unrest and violence. Perhaps a reversal of fortune by India on the Sino-Indian frontier would cause the sparks of ISI-funded unrest in Kashmir to once again convert to flames.
GHQ Rawalpindi seems to have convinced the Central Military Commission that a show of force and resolve against troops in Ladakh will cause elements nurtured by it to launch a conflagration in Kashmir.
Thus far, a mutual security pact with the US has yet to take place, to the relief of Islamabad, Beijing and Moscow.
The Chinese side adopts the tactics of the gecko, which is to wait patiently till its prey comes close, and then swoop on it.
During this time of waiting for the next chance to strike, talks that in the matter of outcomes go nowhere are welcomed as distractions from the reality of the ongoing plan to resume overt operations. Covert operations, of course, would never have stopped.
The PLA has already ensured that the degree of control it exercises over the South China Sea is much higher than what was the case five years ago. Only a kinetic shock that severely unsettles the PLA would reverse such a progression towards PRC primacy in the Indo-Pacific.
The PRC for its part needs a neutral India to ensure its own progression to that role, and this it hopes to achieve by showcasing that the costs of abandoning neutrality (which by definition includes continued reliance on Russia for defence needs) would be severe.
The problem for the planners in the CMC as they parley with GHQ Rawalpindi is simple. Their strategy of diplomatic & military pressure has failed in Kashmir & will fail across the rest of India. What is needed for this is Smart Policy, & soon.
Read more @ i.mdnalapat.com/tsg30082020
Read more @ i.mdnalapat.com/tsg30082020
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