India’s military not as strong as officers claim: expert

India’s military was merely bluffing and not as strong as it claims, expert said, after senior Indian military officers made harsh remarks toward China.

The Indian Army has been “very well prepared” and China is unlikely to try any “misadventures anymore,” Abhay Krishna, Indian General Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Eastern Army Command of the Indian Army, said on India’s Army Day on Monday, India’s Economic Times reported.

The statement was made in response to a question on the preparedness of the Indian Army after the Doklam standoff in June 2017.

It was made only two days after Indian Army Chief Bipin Rawat told a press conference on Friday that China was exerting pressure on India along the border, but claimed that the Indian Army was fully capable of dealing with any security challenge on the northern frontier.

“Apparently India was grandstanding to make it appear powerful to neighboring countries in South Asia. However, their military is not as strong as stated,” said Hu Zhiyong, a research fellow at the Institute of International Relations of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.

“The military officials’ remarks do not represent the Indian government’s attitude, while the Indian government’s response, which has yet to be heard, is a litmus test of India’s sincerity to improve bilateral relations with China,” Qian Feng, a researcher at the Chinese Association for South Asian Studies, told the Global Times.

Qian said more border disputes are highly possible, and both sides should deal with such crises through the border management mechanism to avoid incidents like the Doklam standoff.

Sino-Indian relations have reached a turning point that either the two countries find an acceptable position for their ties and a mechanism to coordinate, or their relations will be a burden to the two rising powers, Zhang Jiadong, a professor at Fudan University’s Center for American Studies, wrote in an article published on news site thepaper.cn on Tuesday.

Indian soldiers trespassed into Chinese territory in Doklam and stayed for more than 70 days in June last year, sending Sino-Indian ties to a historic low.

Since the beginning of 2018, the Indian army has made harsh comments on China from time to time. Indian Army chief General Bipin Rawat said last week that India needs to shift focus to the border with China. India’s Eastern Command chief Lieutenant General Abhay Krishna said its army is very well prepared everywhere and gave a nationalistic description of an ordinary incident that happened recently on the border with China.

After the Doklam standoff, the Indian army has been active in border areas. It decided to enhance infrastructure along the border and will deploy helicopters in disputed border regions. In doing so, India has shown a keen interest in blocking China’s infrastructure construction in the border area.

Meanwhile the Indian media has been magnifying everything obtained from the military, applauding hawkish army remarks and fabricating scenes of China infringing upon and provoking India. Yet all these reports are incongruent with the Indian external affairs ministry’s judgment that the status quo prevailed on the border.

Coordinated interactions between the Indian army and media have fed many Indians’ negative impressions of China. This deviates far from the consensus reached by Chinese and Indian leaders that the two countries will properly manage their disputes and put bilateral ties back on the track of healthy and stable development.

In learning about China, Indian society has been misled by the military’s selfish desire to enlarge its budget and gain bigger clout in the country’s foreign relations, and its media’s market orientation toward eye-catching reports. As a result, a hard-line approach to China is political correctness in India and the country is pushed to side with the US, Japan and Australia.

Rawat said last week that India can’t allow its neighbors to drift away to China. This mentality that sees neighbors as an Indian domain is widely adopted in New Delhi. India is diplomatically immature, with a self-centered approach and preference for impulsive nationalism. Dealing with this country requires more than one set of rules.

On India, China needs to adhere to its principles and refrain from wrangling. It should handle border disputes in accordance with laws to maintain border peace, and meanwhile firmly hit back at Indian army provocations.

India and China share neighbors, and surely their influence will overlap in some areas. Beijing needs to communicate more with New Delhi to make the latter less anxious strategically. The two countries should make it their common goal to avoid strategic conflicts in the neighboring region.

India should realize that it can’t build its exclusive domain or apply the Monroe Doctrine in South Asia. China should act to assuage India’s vigilance against Beijing developing relations with South Asian nations. But India is in no position to ask China to stay away from South Asia.

The Indian army seems to have failed to learn its lesson from the Doklam standoff. If India continues making provocations, it should expect harsh punishment from the Chinese army. Confronting China entails an unbearably high strategic cost for India. New Delhi should cherish the amicable policy adopted by Beijing.