by Ravi Rikhye
The crisis resolved, the Indian Foreign Minister went off to Beijing to help arrange the Indian Prime Minister’s visit to President Xi. To make it clear to India that nothing was resolved, two days before the Chinese premier’s arrival, China staged another incident.
This time an Indian patrol heading toward Sirijap was turned back by the Chinese,[12] and we revealed that the Chinese had built a metalled road five kilometers west of the LAC, again intruding into territory they have never previously claimed. In September, the media reported that the Chinese had dug in at Sirijap. So, this is not a question of not letting Indian troops patrol, it is a case of openly seizing territory never claimed before.
(This map shows 3rd Divisions AOR, with its brigades at Darbok, Chushul, and Dungti. What was truly crazy about 1962 is the map represents only the southern sector of 114th Brigade’s AOR in that year. Two battalions were north of the Changchemo River, three in the Chushul sector, and one at Dungti-Demchok. Now there are three brigades south of the Changchemo, one north of the river, one at Thoise, an armored brigade with XIV Corps, plus there should be an infantry brigade in corps reserve. 39th Division is assigned to southern Ladakh in the event of war, but in a 2-front situation it is needed as reserve for XVI and XVI Corps.
Sirijap is on the northern shore of Pangong Lake, and an outpost essential for the defense of Chushul airstrip. It lies well to the west of Khurnak, which was taken from India by the Chinese during the first Sino-Indian war. It is known to Indian military history as the place where Major Dhan Singh Thapa, leading a platoon of 1/8 Gorkha Rifles, was told to hold to the last man when attacked by the Chinese in October 1962. He was presumed killed when, out of ammunition, he led his men in a last charge against the attackers. This won him a posthumous Param Vir Chakra, India’s highest battle honor. In a fortuitous turn of events, after China repatriated Indian prisoners after the war, he arrived alive and India learned he had been wounded and captured.
The Government of India managed to suppress the Sirijap news until after the Chinese premier’s visit. The army was told to deny that any intrusion had taken place, or any road built in Indian territory. Our official explanation is these misunderstanding happen all the time because the LAC is undemarcated. But why is it China alone that creates the misunderstandings?
Chushul
The Indian media reporting on the 2013 Ladakh crisis was so bad that it becomes near impossible to get a coherent narrative. Not being in India, I was unable to make my own investigation. Nonetheless, while the media can be held responsible for failing to get the story right, I am impelled to give a part defense of the media. The GOI can be harsh on reporters sticking their noses where the government does not want them. Though this has suddenly changed, with the military itself willing to informally brief the press and GOI taking a more relaxed view of crisis reporting; crossing the government remains risky.
2.2 Interlude: A note on fixed defenses
To those who still take their lessons from France 1940, fixed fortifications do not work because the enemy can outflank them. Alas, the wrong lessons are drawn from the French Maginot Line. The line worked so well that the Germans could not attack in the south, they had to move through in the north via Luxembourg, Netherlands, and Belgium. The French were quite aware this would happen, which is why they planned to extend the Line all the way to the Belgian border and then turning left to the Channel, all designed to thwart exactly the outflanking move the Germans used. But they ran out of money, and wishfully assumed Belgium would take care of protecting its border with northern France. The Belgians, who had just 16 active and six reserve divisions, mistakenly opted out of the Western Alliance in favor of neutrality. Four British and a handful of French divisions entered Belgium after the Germans invaded. The situation might have been different if they had arrived earlier and fortified their positions properly. In any case, the Belgians had only 110 operational combat aircraft and 250 tanks, tank destroyers, and tracked armored cars. Still, thanks to the brave defense thee Belgians put up, the Allies held on for 18-days before Belgium surrendered, leaving France’s northern flank exposed.
Take the Israeli Bar Lev line built parallel to the Suez Canal.[13] The 150-km line was protected by (a) steeply angled walls backed by concrete, 20-25 meters in height; (b) 22 forts with 35 strongpoints; (c) Eleven more strong points behind. Each of the strongpoints consisted of bunkers built deep into the sand, trenches, concentric circles of wire, minefields. Artillery, mortar, and tank firing positions were also constructed. They were to hold for 24-48 hours until mobilized reserves arrived. The Egyptians breached the sand-wall in several places in 2-hours. What went wrong? First, the Israeli Air Force, which had the task of providing firepower, was neutralized for 72-hours by the dense Egyptian SAM network of unprecedented strength. Second, the Egyptians used high-pressure water hoses to wash away sand quickly. They had 70 engineer teams, presumably of company strength, to make a breach each, and neutralize the wire, minefields, and blockhouses. Third, Israel’s entire 150-km front was protected by the reinforced active 252nd Armored Division with 291 tanks and 48 guns, one brigade up and two back (p. 17). But the division deployed at H+2, instead of the required H-2. Since it was meant to defend only up to 72-hours, this was adequate – but not against nine Egyptian divisions with 2000 artillery pieces. The strong points were manned by only 460 reservists from the Jerusalem Brigade, instead of the required four battalions. An armored brigade behind that was available for an immediate counterattack. Nonetheless, with an attacking division bearing down your front protected by – say – two companies with 20 tanks and an artillery battery, you are not going to last long. The irony of the Bar Lev line was, in my opinion, that it was unnecessary. The Israelis had a desert buffer 200-km deep between the Canal and Israel proper, plenty of space to give up before mobilized divisions reached. Given their skill at mobile warfare, the Israeli Army could have caught almost the entire Egyptian Army well to the east of Suez, defeated it, and advanced unopposed into Egypt proper. Incidentally, the Israeli armored division lost upward of 80% of its tanks in two days, something to keep in mind when we discuss why the Indian and Pakistani armies never seem to make any progress during wars.
What about Dien Bien Phu? The French chain of forts was overrun after a long siege by North Vietnamese troops. (a) Earlier, at Na Sang, the French used the fort strategy to defeat a major 3-division offensive by North Vietnamese troops. (b) But: in that battle, the French held the high ground and were located on the top of several hills which overlooked a two-square-kilometer valley. At DBP, the North Vietnamese held the high ground, had 4-1 artillery superiority, and 3-1 manpower superiority. Even then, at one point disheartened by their losses Communist troops mutinied and were forced to fight under the threat of execution. (c) The French lost their airstrip at the start of the four-month siege, reinforcements and supplies became limited. Wounded could not be evacuated.
At Khesan 1968, for 5 ½ months, a single Marine brigade held off four PAVN divisions, an independent regiment, five artillery, three flak regiments, four tank companies, 1 1/3rd engineer regiments, a signal battalion, and local troops.[14] The US had the 26th Marine Regiment reinforced to five battalions, requiring 185-tons of resupply each day at the height of the fighting, and about an average of ~135 air sorties of all types a day. Later General Giap claimed he created a diversion at Khesan to tie up 30,000 US troops from intervening in the Tet Offensive, which is incorrect. He certainly tied up five Marine battalions, 8,000 troops, but at the cost of taking four of his divisions out of the fight. The US could have claimed it tied up 30,000 troops of his at the cost of 8,000 of theirs. Incidentally, no one to this day really knows what Giap’s intentions at Khesan were. Unless he wanted the position to stop the US from invading the North through the DMZ, he seems to have committed a blunder. General Westmoreland held Khesan because he feared Giap wanted it as a base to invade northern South Vietnam. The US commander’s orders to the Marines as opposed to how they thought the war
should be fought also created problems. It seems unbelievable that both sides sacrificed so many men without any clear idea of what they were doing, but that’s war. We, of course, have the advantage of hindsight. The generals on both sides acted with incomplete information as is usually the case.
My point here is that boxes are not intended to hold out for months. Their role is to economize on troops protecting the border, freeing forces to fight in concentrated fashion at places and times of their own choosing. Unless a functioning airstrip can be indefinitely maintained, counteroffensives must relieve boxes.
2.3 Does appeasement work?
The Ministry of External Affair’s China policy from the start has been appeasement. So, it is useful to return to Chamberlin. Despite his prompt raising of the white flag, war came to Great Britain anyway, in 1939. The conception that Chamberlin + Munich = Appeasement is generally true. Yet, Chamberlin understood the people did not want war. More important, Britain could not afford war. Yet he hoped Hitler might be satisfied, and much of the British elite joined him in this hope. Possibly Hitler, and even some Britons, blamed Great Britain for the turn of events in Poland. After all, where was the necessity of coming to Poland’s defense? If the British had simply taken the position that they were unable to defend Poland – which was the case as it had no land, sea, or air access – then war would have been avoided. But would not war have come anyway in 1940, when Hitler invaded France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, and Norway? Not necessarily. If Britain and France acknowledged Germany as Europe’s Number One, war in the west might have been avoided. Germany waged offensive war against Poland, but Great Britain and France declared war on Hitler. He sought his living space for the Germans in the east. That meant bringing the rest of Central Europe including Poland, Romania, Hungary, and Austria under his control. Here was the problem: Britain and later France’s carved-in-stone policy was that no one nation should dominate Europe. That is why for over four centuries Britain fought the French, Spanish, and Dutch. With the rise of Germany, Britain and France entered a coalition against Germany and went into the First World War. This was the reason Britain backed Poland in the interwar years. This was, from the realpolitik view, unmitigated folly, because Britain had no means to protect Poland against Germany. Nonetheless, courageously but perhaps foolishly, it rejected Hitler’s offer for peace. Britain would have lost its empire in time, but the cost of refusing to compromise with Hitler was astoundingly high because it accelerated Britain’s decline into insignificance and irrelevance.
All Hitler asked was that Britain stay out of the continental war, allowing him to turn against the Soviet Union, an enemy of both Germany and Britain. He argued the British and the Germans were kin. After the decline of the Roman Empire and its withdrawal from England in the 5th Century, German tribes including Angles, Saxons, and Jutes (from Jutland) began invading and settling England. The term “Anglo-Saxon” acknowledges the German part of English ancestry. “Saxon” comes from Germany, and the “Anglo” comes from “Angle”, a German tribe. The British monarch then as now belongs to the House of Windsor. Except the House of Windsor was – and still is – German. The first four King Georges, William IV, Victoria, and George V all belonged to the House of Hanover. It was only in 1917, when Britain was at war with Germany, that the royal family decided to change its house name to Windsor. Today this would be called rebranding. Yet it is worth noting that when Diana Spencer, female scion of one of England’s most aristocratic families, was proposed as a bride to the Hanoverian Charles, son of Elizabeth II, many English were disdainful that she was marrying a barbarian German. Of course, the even more aristocratic Howards call the Spencers sheepherders, but it is these things that make unscrambling the British aristocracy such a gossipy delight.
Hiter maintained Germany and Great Britain were the only pure Aryans. Americans were mongrels, the Slavs were barbarians, the rest of the world consisted of colored people and therefore subhuman. The French were – well, the French. Not vandals, but decidedly improper, as it were. As it happens, the Romans considered the Germans to be barbarians. But that is the way of the world. If only those without guilt were permitted to throw stones, no stones would be thrown. An internecine war between the two standard bearers of western civilization was not Hitler’s intention; it is often surmised he never prepared for an invasion of Britain because he was sure the British would see things his way.[15] While Hitler’s wish for peace with Britain is not in doubt, a 2013 book by a British historian says Hitler even offered to vacate Western Europe.[16]
Why Britain gave a guarantee to Poland when it had zero ability to enforce it is another mystery. Absent the guarantee, the course of World War II might have been very different. Hitler wanted to move east against Russia, and but for the British declaring war when Germany attacked Poland, this might have been only a central European war. Another mystery is why Hitler declared war on the US after Pearl Harbor. It is said he was convinced Roosevelt was eager to join the war and decided to preempt a declaration of war. Roosevelt was indeed eager to find some casus belli, but the US was isolationist and had Germany not declared war, the US could well have left Europe to its own affairs. Britain spoke about its honor to justify backing Poland, but neither did Warsaw ask for the guarantee, nor can principles be meaningful without power to enforce them, as the British found on September 1, 1939, and Prime Minister Nehru found in 1962.
Readers can say that the Sino-Indian situation is different. The ratio of British to German GDP was 0.75 in 1939. [17] To the British figure must be added the might of its empire, France, and the US to help if things became desperate. But China has 4-5 times India’s GDP, so taking on China is quite a different proposition from Britain taking on Germany. Moreover, India cannot expect anything except nominal help from friends; and it has no allies, even though the US is pretending it is our ally.
Fair enough. But then what of Ho Chi Minh, who to unify and defend his country fought bitter wars with the Japanese, the French, the Americans, and the Chinese? Each of the four had GDPs vastly exceeding Vietnam’s, a very poor Asian country. He not just defeated three armies, he fought the last, the PLA, to a standstill – using just his territorial troops while leaving his regulars in reserve. And until 1980, at least, India and China had a similar GDP. That the government and elite of India are owed a rapid GDP increase is something obvious to anyone – except the government and elite. And with a strong GDP, we cannot have a strong defense. According to our rulers, they are India, and service to the country means service to them. The rest of the country can have the crumbs – if any.
The point here is that if a nation is strong, it can negotiate on its terms. Else it must make compromises. If Britain and France had been strong, Hitler would not have started World War II. We say we are strong in the face of China; the reality is we cannot prevent their non-stop nibbling and intimidation. More on this later.
Chinese incursions
At first sight, the timing of the DBO incursion was curious. India’s foreign and defense ministers were scheduled to make visits to China in May and June. More importantly, the new Chinese premier was to visit India in May. What could the Chinese have been thinking? Surely Beijing had blundered? Perhaps the DBO incursion was an initiative by ignorant local commanders, unaware of the larger framework?
Then China announced it had not intruded into India, it was on its own territory. There was no problem. Why was India making this a problem, China darkly asked, implying India had ulterior motives? The Government of India rushed to assure there was no problem.
In the matter of national security, the realities are, alas, harsh. If flouted, usually it is to our cost. If the adversary is even more incompetent than we are, we can still win despite our incompetence. Indeed, the study of war reveals the winner usually the side that commits the fewest errors! It is like the card game Hearts: you win not by getting all the hearts in the deck, but by forcing other persons to take your hearts while taking none yourself. Of course, should yo
u take all 13 hearts, you win big time. This is a metaphor for winning big by taking very big risks. Hitler did that in 1935-1941 and put all Europe under his jackboot. But just as you must get all 13 hearts to win big, winning just 12 leads you to lose big. Because of overconfidence, Hitler started making mistakes that cost him the war, and his life. Aiming to win all 13 hearts is not a recommended strategy in national security, at least.
The Minister of External Affairs, a typical deluded Indian intellectual, fancied himself a brilliant diplomat who would lead India to foreign policy dominance, and restore the MEA’s former glory during Nehru’s and Mrs. Indira Gandhi’s time. That glory consisted of MEA officials dashing madly around the world in setting up and participating conferences to discuss non-alignment, nuclear disarmament, and the evilness of the of the United States. After the Depsang Plains episode, he made ready for Beijing, to discuss the modalities of the Prime Minister’s visit. First, he declined to call the confrontation a face-off, passing it off as just an incident involving 20 soldiers on each side; insisting it was only a local affair.[18] Before departing, he gave Chinese journalists an interview criticizing the Indian press for its aggressive reporting of the incident. He asked the Chinese journalists if they had journalists as abysmally ignorant as ours. Now, even school children know China lacks a free press. Moreover, there is nothing amusing about the Foreign Minister seeking to ingratiate himself with the enemy press. In effect, he is saying “you and I are sophisticated people who understand the marvelously nuanced layers of the Indo-China relationship. The Indian press, and by extension the Indian people, are just too stupid to understand what we understand.”
The then Indian Minister of Defense, derided by the Indian military as “Saint Anthony”, had a three-word vocabulary: “No-No-No”. He wanted Indians to acknowledge that he was scrupulously honest and could never be bribed by foreign and Indian arms agents. The obvious way to keep his name clear was not to sign any defense deals. While upholding his own virtue, he crippled the military’s modernization program, doing more damage to Indian security that a raft of enemies combined. He had his moments that reveal ignorance of his job and his responsibilities. With reference to the Sirijap incident, he said: "Army is updated about latest position there. Whenever these kinds of incidents happen in the local areas, they are handling it.”[19] Mr. Antony added: “India can protect its national interests. India is not the India of the past.” Indeed, it is not. However foolishly Nehru confronted the Chinese, at least he stood up for India. The rulers of oresent-day India just give up.
