DNA Edit: China’s warmongery

The dogs of war are growling and if the India-China-Bhutan standoff in the Doklam plateau escalates, they would soon be upon us. However, even before things come to such a pass, the Chinese media, it seems, is egging on its government to flex its military muscles against India and teach New Delhi “a bitter lesson”. It isn’t only the Chinese media that is so eagerly, and so brusquely, baiting war.

Even the Chinese ambassador to India Luo Zhaohui has jumped into the fray saying that there is no possibility of a compromise and that the Indian government must unconditionally step back to the Indian side of the border. This is a specious statement from the Chinese ambassador and is largely in line with China’s stratagem of playing the victim. By his statements, the ambassador seeks to present the picture that Chinese territorial sovereignty has been violated when the actual case is anything but that.

China’s unwarranted aggrandisation under the garb of road construction has put paid to the bilateral talks between Bhutan and China over the control of the disputed 89 sq km region. India has little option but to stymie China’s road construction as its communist government intends to connect the road all the way to Yadong, situated right in the heart of the strategically important Chumbi Valley. Control over the Doklam plateau is key to exercising influence in the entire region, and in times of war, the plateau will serve as an important station from which to deploy soldiers and capture ‘chicken’s neck’ — a military sobriquet for a caved-in strip of land that connects the Indian mainland to its northeastern regions.

Meanwhile, the Chinese media is stepping up the rhetoric and how. Retorting to Jaitley’s comment that the India today is not the India of 1962, one establishment has said that Jaitley is right, in so far as India will suffer greater losses now compared to what it suffered in 1962 if it opts for a war. An aggressive projection of its strength is a small but essential element of Chinese psy-ops. One can safely rely upon the Chinese media and its government functionaries to dredge up memories of 1962, time and again.

However, this is no time to allow patriotic sentimentality to prevail over cold, hard calculations. Indian mandarins must pursue a two-fold policy. One the one hand, there must be strong, effective diplomatic steps that de-escalate tension between the two nations, while on the other hand, armed forces must be mobilised on a massive scale to strengthen our presence in Doklam plateau. This requires a steely diplomatic prowess that is also able to capture the world’s attention and bring pressure to bear on China from the global community.