China marginalised India in the region

Experts say New Delhi miscalculated actions in Ladakh

ISLAMABAD:

An Indian defence analyst has shared the belief that a military confrontation with China could have serious ramifications for it, including increased strategic cooperation between Beijing and Islamabad.

This was stated by the Indian military and strategic expert Pravin Sawhney while speaking at a webinar on the conflict between Indian and Chinese troops on the Line of Actual Control in Ladakh in May and June. The webinar had been hosted by the think-tank Centre for International Strategic Studies (CISS) on Wednesday.

Sawhney said that the clash in June, in which nearly 20 soldiers were killed, were the first fatalities in a military conflict between the two countries in nearly 45 years.

The defence analyst added that due to the incident, it was now facing problems in its external relations with all its neighbours.

He noted that India has been marginalised by China in its neighbourhood owing to a “lack of principled engagement with its neighbourhood”.

The analyst further said that one of the outcomes of the event will be the speeding up of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which is the flagship project of the Chinese ‘Belt and Road Initiative’ (BRI). He feared that this could have serious repercussions for India.

The Indian expert urged his country’s leadership to engage with China in a principled manner to move beyond the incident.

CISS Executive Director Ambassador Ali Sarwar Naqvi said that the China-India dispute is rooted in the divergence of perspectives of the two countries on the border separating them.

The escalation of their long-running dispute to the latest clash, he observed, could have been influenced by strategic developments such as the burgeoning US-India partnership, the Quad, and rivalry in the Indian Ocean Region.

Former defence secretary Lt Gen (retired) Naeem Lodhi suggested that the Narendra Modi government’s August 5 move to annex Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) could be the real trigger behind the latest face-off, although road development by India in the Ladakh region and construction of other infrastructure projects had set things in motion earlier this summer.

Expecting China to retain the high areas it had claimed, Lt Gen Lodhi said that strategically it provides a relief to Pakistan as it will be difficult for India to make any further ingress into the Kargil and Siachen areas in this situation.

Further, he said that Pakistan will be in a good position to respond to any Indian attack in Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK).

Published in The Express Tribune, August 27^th, 2020.