Integrity Score 390
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Dragon’s Mind: The Chinese
Strategic View continues....
The advent of Communism, and even its present capitalist version,
should not obscure the fact that China is still China, and that its central
leadership will prepare, manoeuvre militarily and diplomatically, and
fight, as per its ancient time-tested teachings. They are ‘inscrutable’ only
to the western mind. They can predictably be expected to behave
according to their own dictums of military strategy and tactics.
The next question Indian strategists will have to ask is that if in case
China feels it is left with no alternative but to fight, what course(s) of action would China be likely to adopt.
Any conflict situation between India and China which reaches, or is likely to reach, a shooting stage, is highly unlikely to be about a mere few
square kilometers of disputed border territory; it has to be much more serious, and thus based on a matter of principle, just as China viewed the
pre-October 1962 dispute in Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh.
CHINA’S USE OF NUCLEAR MISSILES
In spite of China’s having joined the nuclear and missile club much before
India, and positioned nuclear-armed missiles on the Tibetan plateau that completely dominate India at a strategic level, it should be remembered that China did not establish these military capabilities with India in
mind. It was initially worried more about the USA than anyone else when
it planned these. By the time the capability was established, China was
most worried about military pressure being exerted by its former mentor
and ally, the fellow-Communist Soviet Union with whom it had parted
company. Secondly, China’s use of nuclear weapons is most likely to be a
very deliberate affair, to be actually used only as a weapon of last resort, if
other military and diplomatic means which may have been adopted are
being seen to fail.
To be continued....