No Exit: The Ladakh Crisis Deepens

More than eight months on, the China-India crisis in Ladakh continues unabated. But as both sides jostle for a tactical advantage that could come in handy in future rounds of negotiations – not just in Ladakh but across the entire 3,488-kilometer Line of Actual Control (LAC) – the chances of inadvertent escalation are increasing with each passing month. On January 20, Chinese and Indian troops clashed in the Sikkim sector – a part of the LAC previously thought to be settled as an international border. Both sides have been quick to downplay the gravity of the incident. 

However, according to reporting in the Indian media, New Delhi continues to be apprehensive of the possibility that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might open a new front in the eastern sector of the LAC. In turn, China is likely to also be aware of the possibility that with improving weather, India could try to end the Ladakh stalemate by occupying territory China considers its own in the east and agree to restore status quo there only if the PLA retreats in Ladakh. 

Meanwhile, according to the Indian media, China has violated a crucial September 2020 agreement in which both sides had promised to reduce force levels along points of contest in eastern Ladakh as a first step toward military disengagement. The recent reports suggest that contra the agreement, China has continued to reinforce troops along the disputed frontage, forcing India to also do so, thus rendering the intended confidence-building measure meaningless.

The Ladakh standoff is proving to be expensive for India – in terms of both the burden it places on the country’s defense spending and stretching its armed forces thin, between the Line of Control with Pakistan and the LAC with China. In a significant strategic shift in January, India refocused one of its four strike corps – land forces for offensive operations -- away from Pakistan and toward China. It also tasked its sole mountain strike corps with maintaining an exclusive focus on China. However, this is not to say that a Pakistan contingency has receded from the Indian strategic imagination. 

As the Indian army chief, General M. M. Naravane, recently put it, a collusive military threat from China and Pakistan is something that “cannot be wished away.” One also needs to keep in mind that this year may be the first summer when restrictions on movement in the Kashmir Valley are likely to be relaxed, relatively speaking, since the August 2019 decision to revoke India-administered Kashmir’s autonomous status, raising the specter of an uptick in separatist violence as well as terrorist attacks in the region. As long as the standoff in Ladakh continues, the Indian armed forces will find themselves under persistent strain from multiple demands; it is, therefore, quite likely that New Delhi will seek to find a solution to the crisis over the course of the next six months. 

With multiple rounds of talks at political and military levels failing to break the deadlock in Ladakh, it is not unlikely that New Delhi would now contemplate a military solution. Recall that late last August, India’s Special Frontier Force – a secretive special operations group staffed with ethnic Tibetans – seized key unoccupied mountaintops in Ladakh to neutralize the PLA’s military advantage arising out of the shifted LAC there, and force restoration of the LAC status quo as it existed in April of last year, before the Chinese thrust. That gambit proved to be ineffective.

What has been exceedingly interesting to close followers of the Ladakh crisis is how Indian diplomacy has been completely ineffectual in dealing with it, a double irony given that India’s foreign ministry in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s second term is being headed by an ex-diplomat widely praised at home and abroad for his skills. 

Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, a former Indian foreign secretary as well as ambassador to China, had in the past spoken of his long familiarity with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, in the context of a much-anticipated meeting between the two in September – and how he imagined diplomacy as holding the key to the Ladakh crisis’ resolution. However, as it became apparent to many immediately afterward, in the September meeting Jaishankar not only failed to extract any meaningful concessions from China but also – judging by a careful parsing of the ensuing joint statement – ended up looking like he had played the weaker hand. Instead of diplomats in the driving seat in New Delhi when it comes to steering the crisis, the onus increasingly has fallen on the military to, simultaneously, engage the Chinese in dialogue (which remains inconclusive even after nine rounds of military commanders’ meetings) as well as create conditions on the ground that could persuade the PLA to withdraw. 

At this juncture, barring a direct and honest conversation between Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping, it looks like as far as India is concerned, the solution to the Ladakh crisis lies in the application of sustained military pressure on China – an expensive proposition in any case, not to mention one fraught with considerable risks. But even in the unlikely event that Beijing folds on its own, India’s much-vaunted diplomatic corps and its China specialists have their tasks cut out for them in terms of re-imagining China-India relations, even as the Indian military belatedly wakes up to the China challenge.