DOKLAM SPURS A RELOOK AT STRATEGY

NEWDELHI:After weeks of winding negotiations and Beijing’s brinkmanship, India and China resolved the longest border standoff in over two decades at Doklam, the India-Bhutan-Tibet tri-junction, on Monday.

The way the standoff began, grew and subsequently ended tested the strength of existing mechanism on managing border disputes between the two Asian powers. With much tact, the two sides managed to defuse the situation that had the potential to trigger a military flare-up. And it brings to the fore the need to reinvent the mechanism to manage border tussles and take a look at the way boundary issues would play out in future.

Doklam is a disputed territory between China and Bhutan. But it being close to the Siliguri corridor, the narrow strip of land that connects mainland India with its north eastern states, adds to its strategic significance for India.

In line with an understanding with Bhutan, the Indian Army went into Bhutanese territory to stop a road construction, which New Delhi said would have changed the status quo of the trijunction. India also said changing the status quo of the trijunction was against an understanding between the two sides in 2012 that any such move needed the consent of third country, which in this case is Bhutan. This for India was also against the 1993 pact on maintaining border peace and tranquility.

But during the course of the arguments put out by both the sides, two things stood out. China was unwilling to go by the 2012 understanding and instead depended on a 1890 treaty authored by the British India. The People’s Republic of China, when it launched a series of border negotiations, had maintained its distaste for colonial era boundry-making. So far, the tri-junctions were not actual flash points but this time they were.

The two countries are also expanding their sphere of influence in the region. China is flexing its expansionist muscles on the strength of its economic growth. Though India has boycotted One Belt, One Road (OBOR) , President Xi Jinping’s vanity project, two of its South Asian neighbours Nepal and Sri Lanka are part of the project and two of its allies, the USA and Japan, had sent significant representations to the conference. The two neighbours with considerable economic growth and eyeing greater clout as emerging powers would create more friction. And, it will test the decade-old “building on the covergences while narrowing the differences” approach more frequently in future, which calls for a relook at the mechanisms that are available to manage the border disputes.

“Doklam sets a new normal to the uneasy and troubled IndiaChina bilateral ties. It is a standalone case since it has also involved a third country, Bhutan,” explains strategic affairs expert Uday Bhaskar.

In other words, he argues, the upshot is this “the 3,800-km long border remains as unresolved as it was in Ocober 2016.”

“Delhi and Beijing will have to begin the Sisyphean climb again — with Doklam as the benchmark,” he added. He said the proposals for a hotline between the two Prime Ministers could be dusted off and the hotline between the two countries should be speeded up. The improved economic ties would bring down the frequency of territorial disputes. They both would run parallel, but will not necessarily compliment each other. But there are a section of the strategic community who believes China would remain more aggressive on territorial disputes as its foreign policy turns expansionist. The two countries have sufficient border mechanisms already in place. The problem is that one side is seeking to quietly and repeatedly change the territorial status quo through encroachments. No mechanism can prove adequate in this situation.

Doklam sets a new normal to the uneasy and troubled IndiaChina bilateral ties. It is a standalone case since it has also involved a third country, Bhutan UDAY BHASKAR, strategic affairs expert