New Delhi, Aug.30 (ANI): Calling on the Indian Government to develop greater familiarity with China’s strategic culture to avoid a conflict in the future similar to the Sino-Indian War of 1962, former foreign Secretary Shyam Saran said New Delhi needed to send a message across to Beijing that aggressive moves by it, could invite counter moves.
Delivering the prestigious K. Subrahmanyam Memorial Lecture here on Wednesday, Saran said: “The lesson to be drawn is not that we should be militarily provocative, but that we should have enough capabilities deployed to convince the other side that aggressive moves would invite counter-moves.”
Saran said avoiding a conflict with China would require the development of a “greater familiarity with China’s strategic culture.”
Warning that what happens at the government level in China impinges most directly on India’s geopolitical space,” Saran maintained that the relationship between New Delhi and Beijing is still adversarial in nature, and could generate tensions, or even a worse case scenario, and therefore, it should b imperative on New Delhi’s part “to fashion a strategy which is based on a constant familiarity with the Chinese strategic calculus.”
He noted that in 2005, China had concluded a significant agreement of principles to settle its border disputes with India, acutely aware at that time about India’s deepening relationship with the United States and Europe, but later, when doubts arose on the durability of India’s “projected” rise, China held back.
Saran claimed that in recent months, China again appeared to be changing course on India, in the face of a backlash against its posture in the South China Sea, and given the United States’ decision to enhance its military assets in the Pacific, and the domestic unrest in Xinjiang and Tibet, he said New Delhi should have leveraged the opportunity to actively engage in imaginative diplomacy to secure enduring advantage.
Referring to the Wangdung Incident in 1985, Saran recalled that at that time, Beijing was unwilling to legitimise the ceasefire line arrived at after the 1962 war as a border.
“It was also conveyed to us that at a minimum, Tawang would have to be transferred to the Chinese side,” Saran said.
He said New Delhi had then pointed out that in 1982, then Premier Deng Xiaoping had himself spelt out the package proposal as we had hitherto understood it, but in 1985, Beijing said that New Delhi had read too much into Deng’s words.
To beef up his premise about the need to remain skeptical about China on the trust front, Saran recalled that in 1986, Indian troops discovered that Chinese troops had crossed the Thagla Ridge, and built permanent barracks as well as a helipad on a key feature.
“I recall accompanying Ambassador K.P.S. Menon to lodge a protest with the then Chinese Assistant Foreign Minister,” Saran said, “and being witness to a most undiplomatic, offensive and vituperative harangue by the latter.”
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