India has redirected at least 50,000 additional troops to its border with China in a historic shift toward an offensive military posture against the world’s second-biggest economy.
Although the two countries battled in the Himalayas in 1962, India’s strategic focus has primarily been Pakistan since the British left the subcontinent, with the long-time rivals fighting three wars over the disputed region of Kashmir.
Yet since the deadliest India-China fighting in decades last year, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration has sought to ease tensions with Islamabad and concentrate primarily on countering Beijing.
Photo: AP
Over the past few months, India has moved troops and fighter jet squadrons to three distinct areas along its border with China, four people familiar with the matter said.
All in all, India has about 200,000 troops focused on the border, two of them said, which is an increase of more than 40 percent from last year.
The Indian Army and a spokesman for the Prime Minister’s Office in New Delhi did not respond to requests for comment.
Whereas previously India’s military presence was aimed at blocking Chinese moves, the redeployment would allow Indian commanders more options to attack and seize territory in China if necessary in a strategy known as “offensive defense,” one of the people said.
That includes a lighter footprint involving more helicopters to airlift soldiers from valley to valley along with artillery pieces like the M777 howitzer built by BAE Systems.
While it is unclear how many troops China has on the border, India detected that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army has moved additional forces from Tibet to the Xinjiang Military Command, which is responsible for patrolling disputed areas along the Himalayas.
RUNWAYS, BUNKERS
China is adding fresh runway buildings, bomb-proof bunkers to house fighter jets and new airfields along the disputed border in Tibet, two of the people said.
Beijing has also been adding long-range artillery, tanks, rocket regiments and twin-engine fighters in the past few months, they said.
The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs “will not comment on unsubstantiated information,” a spokesperson said in response to questions.
The fear now is that a miscalculation could lead to an even deadlier conflict. Several rounds of military-diplomatic talks with China have made minimal progress toward a return to the quiet “status quo” that had prevailed along the border for decades.
“Having so many soldiers on either side is risky when border management protocols have broken down,” said D. S. Hooda, a lieutenant general and former Northern Army commander in India. “Both sides are likely to patrol the disputed border aggressively. A small local incident could spiral out of control with unintended consequences.”
The northern region of Ladakh — where India and China clashed several times last year — has seen the largest increase in troop levels, three of the people said, with an estimated 20,000 soldiers, including those once engaged in anti-terrorism operations against Pakistan, deployed in the area.
The reorientation means India at all times will have more troops acclimatized to fight in the high-altitude Himalayas, while the number of troops solely earmarked for the western border with Pakistan will be reduced.
Indian Minister of Defense Rajnath Singh, accompanied by senior military officials including the Indian Army Chief General M. M. Naravane, were in Ladakh to review military preparedness, a press statement said on Sunday.
It was Singh’s first visit to the area since the February disengagement of Indian and Chinese troops from the banks of Pangong Tso, a glacial lake about 4,260m above sea level.
India has also obtained an offensive capability along the southern Tibetan plateau near the center of the border.
In that more populated area, regular soldiers outfitted with machine guns have joined lightly armed paramilitary officers, the people said.
In the far eastern Arunachal Pradesh, where most of India’s border forces had been located and where much of the 1962 India-China war played out, newly acquired French-made Rafale fighter jets armed with long-range missiles are being deployed to support the boots on the ground, the people said.
NAVAL ACTION
The Indian Navy is also taking action, putting more warships along key sea lanes for longer durations.
Its efforts include studying energy and trade flows in and out of China, said an Indian Navy official who asked not to be identified, citing rules for speaking to the media.
The maneuvering follows a period of relative calm after a summer of fighting last year that saw India lose control over about 300km2 of land along the disputed mountainous terrain, Bloomberg reported.
The worst clash in June left 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers dead.
For Modi, the shift comes as the COVID-19 pandemic ravages India’s hinterland and the economy contracts by the worst in four decades, leaving less money for defense.
At the same time, India is stepping up security cooperation with fellow Quadrilateral Security Dialogue partners — the US, Japan and Australia — to gain leverage against China.
“The crisis over the last year has brought home the reality to India’s decisionmakers that China presents the biggest strategic challenge in the future, and it has led to shifting the attention away from Pakistan,” said Sushant Singh, a senior fellow at the New Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research and visiting lecturer at Yale University. “As this plays out fully, it will alter the geopolitics of the region significantly.”
Still, despite India’s strategic shift and the troop movements, China retains an advantage along the border, said Sana Hashmi, a visiting fellow at the Taipei-based Taiwan-Asia Exchange Foundation.
“The economic and military asymmetry will remain in place,” she said. “And there is a long way to go for India to bridge this asymmetry.”
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