First, India’s strategic thinking is suffering from inertia.

India considers itself a natural inheritor of the British Empire’s colonial heritage. One legacy the British passed on to India’s ruling elites is the Buffer Zone theory, which was developed during 200 years of colonial dominance that started with the Battle of Plassey in 1757 and ended with the British evacuation from the Indian subcontinent in 1947. According to the theory, Tibet should be the buffer zone between China and India; and the Himalayas, the natural barrier. Therefore, the Nehru administration (1947-64) strongly opposed the Chinese Central Government’s peaceful liberation of Tibet. Indian elites would have preferred that Tibet kept its half-independent status forever. India signed friendship treaties with Nepal, Bhutan and Sikkim soon after it won independence to manipulate the security and diplomatic policies of those small states along the Himalayas. Consequently, New Delhi doesn’t want to see the construction and operation of the China-Nepal Railway and the establishment of normal diplomatic ties between China and Bhutan.

In the Donglang standoff, India wants to make Donglang a small buffer zone by preventing China from constructing any frontier facilities there, so that India has absolute unilateral defense advantages for the long term. However, poor and backward Bhutan, Nepal and even the northern and northeastern parts of India are the biggest victims of the Buffer Zone theory and practices, which are supported