Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri announced on October 21 that India and China had reached “an agreement… on patrolling arrangements along the Line of Actual Control… leading to disengagement and a resolution of the issues that had arisen” following Chinese transgressions “in these areas in 2020”. The question that remains to be clarified is whether “disengagement” will cover all extant areas of dispute where patrolling has been blocked on both sides, including the so-called “legacy disputes” in eastern Ladakh at Demchok and Depsang or only those areas that came into contention in 2020.
In a breakthrough this can potentially end the over four-year-long military standoff, the two neighbours have reached an agreement on patrolling along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh “leading to disengagement.”
The agreement to resume patrolling along the earlier perceived Line of Actual Control between India and China in 2020 is a welcome step. This means that the Indian troops will be able to patrol up to places they used to before the 2020 stand-off.
The agreement reportedly talks about a move towards disengagement in two major remaining friction points of Depsang Plains and Demchok, which the Chinese side had even refused to discuss. However, it is difficult to judge the full significance of the agreements in the absence of more detail.
While the militaries of the two nations had already pulled back from four of six friction points in eastern Ladakh, including the Galwan Valley, the site of a violent clash in June 2020, the latest pact pertains to patrolling in Depsang and Demchok areas. With this, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar confirmed that the agreement on border patrols signalled that “the disengagement process with China has been completed”.
The two formidable military forces have been locked in an eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation since May 2020, with New Delhi making it clear that there cannot be any normalcy in the bilateral relationship till the situation is not restored to pre-2020 status at the Line of Actual Control (LAC). The Galwan incident of June 15, 2020, which was the most serious military conflict between the two sides in decades and the deadliest since the 1962 war, resulted in India losing 20 soldiers and the PLA losing as many as 40 personnel, even though China has acknowledged only four casualties.
This has been a major inflexion point in Indian policy towards China as well as the wider geopolitical churn shaping the Indo-Pacific. New Delhi dramatically recalibrated its ties with Beijing across a full range of sectors and mobilised at a national level to take the China challenge head-on. From foreign policy to economy, from infrastructure to people-to-people engagement, a re-appraisal was undertaken and a recalibration was the result. China’s belligerence was met with an unprecedented Indian resoluteness as a whole-of-government approach exemplified a newfound willingness in New Delhi to not shy away from taking difficult decisions.
The patrolling agreement is certainly an achievement of Indian diplomacy, but it is also a limited one, for India has achieved no forward movement over the past four years — it has been devoted to the task only of reversing Chinese transgressions, not punishing them, let alone resolving the boundary dispute itself. The idea for now seems to ensure the impression of progress and the optics necessary for a “successful” BRICS sojourn by the Prime Minister. This, then, highlights other issues and implications.
One, that India’s BRICS engagement is a sensitive matter at this point in geopolitical time — Russia’s Ukraine invasion and China’s “no-limits partnership” with the former has drawn such Western opposition that it cannot fail to singe India, too. New Delhi needs more than “strategic autonomy” as an argument to explain a head-of-government engagement and that is something the patrolling agreement delivers, essentially drawing attention away from the BRICS summit itself.
Two, there are now concerns within the Indian government about the feasibility of keeping up restrictions on Chinese investments, particularly when India remains dependent on manufacturing supply chains and technology transfers from that country. Even a limited agreement on the LAC offers a face-saving way to move forward on trade and investment from China.
Meanwhile, it is worth noting that the Army was missing from the scene when the announcement of the patrolling agreement was made. Arguments could be made that the final mile had to be covered by diplomats, but for a military aiming at theaterisation, with the attendant requirement of global-level strategic and diplomatic engagements, it is rather odd that senior military officials were missing from the dais.
This is also particularly ironic for if there is one stand-out feature of India’s response to the Chinese transgressions of 2020, it is that the Army was not allowed to respond in kind — with the exception of the capture and brief occupation of the Kailash Range in August 2020. That, even as it built up along the LAC, the Army’s primary role of responding to aggression was curtailed by diplomatic tasks.
Perhaps, the Army or the government or both decided that a like-for-like response was escalatory, which begs the question why concerns about escalation must matter only to India. Or, that despite claims of multiple plans to counter Chinese moves, the Army was simply not equipped to execute them with the political leadership, preferring to focus on incremental measures, such as shoring up border infrastructure instead. This, then, raises the question of why such gaps exist or why it takes a crisis to get critical physical infrastructure development moving. Either way, the debate has not been joined in public.
If there has been “forward movement” in India in the wake of 2020, it has been in the sense that like in 1962, the events in eastern Ladakh awakened a generation or two of Indians to the long-term challenge that China will likely pose to Indian interests.
The new agreement suggests that the PLA will not block Indian troops from the bottleneck and they can now patrol up to PPs 10 to 13, which is quite unlikely given the PLA, in the last four years, has built a huge infrastructure in the Depsang plains. Recent high-resolution satellite imagery shows a colossal amount of new settlements in the Pangong area. It is unlikely that the Chinese will dismantle their defensive/offensive positions set up after 2020.
In Demchok, the PLA has been violating LAC at the Charding-Nilung Nalla (CNN) junction, where it has pitched two tents since 2018, obstructing Indian patrolling to that point. The dispute is stalemated. It is difficult to figure out what kind of caveats have been added in the new patrolling agreement and whether Indian troops will now patrol Charding La Pass as was done before 2020. It must be about setting some symbolic adjustment in patrolling or an understanding that both sides will not patrol the CNN points.
Importantly, in the absence of proper disengagement, any form of patrolling will be difficult. Patrolling is aggressive in its form. It’s about gaining area dominance and unless complete disengagement and de-escalations take place, peace and tranquillity along the LAC will remain tentative.
Given the kind of intensive militarisation and infrastructure built up on both sides over the last four years, a complete military rollback in Ladakh will remain elusive. India, too, has shored up its defences in forward areas.
These cannot be demobilised without a clear strategic understanding. The 260 km long Shayok-DBO road has given Indian troops a major advantage in terms of domination of Depsang Plains, and distant areas, boosting their morale to operate in this extremely difficult area. Our aviation infrastructure has also been equally upgraded in the DBO and Nyoma sectors. This is one of the key reasons that may have forced China now to react differently.
In all, one cannot deny that the Indian military responses have denied China a strategic victory since 2020. Beijing has been made to realise the cost of engaging in misadventures. It is, however, difficult to term it as a breakthrough. The Chinese claims in this area are strategic as they would continue to move incrementally and tactically on the ground. They are unlikely to roll back their land grab so easily.
We do not know what is in store. Patrolling without disengagement is a difficult proposition. Details can be expected only after the potential Modi-Xi bilateral meeting in Russia. Essentially, it is about creating the basis for returning to peace and tranquillity along the border that existed before 2020.
A move towards de-escalation and de-militarisation will be contingent on the overall improvement in bilateral relations. In 2017, the Doklam standoff was resolved ahead of the BRICS summit. The Galwan standoff was resolved during the SCO summit in 2022. The announcement this time, too, appeared more of an optics ahead of the BRICS Summit to prepare the ground for a meeting between Prime Minister Modi and President Xi Jinping in Kazan.
There is no question about achieving a breakthrough or trust between India and China. The issue is about each other’s interests. The Chinese may have achieved some strategic and military successes through the boundary standoffs in Ladakh but New Delhi has shown it can deal with the situation through its diplomatic fortitude and maturity. Given that each country has other geopolitical and economic issues to deal with, India and China have tried to find an honourable exit and reset ties.
The new agreement on patrolling rights appears to be about modifying the norms and orders, adding some new protocols, scheduling, patrolling troop strength, frequency, and coordination between military commanders.
In any case, patrolling along the LAC will come to a halt once winter sets in. The deployment of troops will also be thinned down. Hopefully, there will be a better chance to work on complete disengagement during this period.
Both sides should grasp fresh opportunities to revive the stalled process of strategic dialogue at the Summit level. Until then, the areas along the LAC will remain tense.
Comments