Explain the defence and foreign policy options of India to address the challenges emerging out of the current India-China standoff at the Line of Actual Control (LAC). (2020, 20 Marks)
From April 2020 the PLA moved simultaneously at Pangong Tso, Galwan, Gogra–Hot Springs, Depsang and Demchok, and on 15 June 2020 twenty Indian soldiers died at Galwan. This planned, multi-axis change of the status quo broke the CBM regime of 1993–2013 and the 1988 bargain that kept the boundary apart from the wider relationship. India’s options fall into two baskets.
The challenges
- Military: China’s infrastructure lets it concentrate faster, raising the threat of salami-slicing; disengagement buffer zones still keep Indian patrols short of pre-2020 points in places.
- Strategic: the two-front problem. China supplied 80% of Pakistan’s arms imports in 2021–25 (SIPRI), and Operation Sindoor (May 2025) showed the collusion in real time.
- Economic: India must deter China while depending on it for electronics, APIs, solar inputs and rare earths.
Defence options
- Deterrence by denial: in Glenn H. Snyder’s terms (Deterrence and Defense, 1961), India must be able to stop a grab, not merely punish it later. It mirror-deployed tens of thousands of troops and in August 2020 occupied the Kailash Range heights south of Pangong, the leverage behind the February 2021 disengagement there.
- Infrastructure: the Sela Tunnel (March 2024), the Arunachal Frontier Highway, the Nyoma airfield and a larger Border Roads budget. The Vibrant Villages Programme treats border depopulation as a security problem.
- Force restructuring and ISR: formations reoriented north, new ITBP battalions, drones and space-based surveillance.
- Horizontal options: naval presence astride Malacca, where China is the more exposed party. C. Raja Mohan (Samudra Manthan, 2012) traced the rivalry’s spread to the sea.
- The risk: holding troops at altitude drains money and readiness, so India needs de-escalation more than China does.
Foreign policy options
- Layered negotiation: corps commander talks (21 rounds by early 2024), the WMCC and the Special Representatives produced the patrolling understanding of 21 October 2024 and the Narendra Modi–Xi Jinping meeting at Kazan two days later.
- Linkage: S. Jaishankar’s insistence that the state of the border shapes the state of the relationship reverses the 1988 formula. At the Modi–Xi meeting of 12 September 2026 in New Delhi, India called border peace “an essential basis” for ties; Beijing sought “parallel” progress.
- External balancing: Australia’s return to Malabar (November 2020), a Quad at leaders’ level (2021), American intelligence and winter gear, and the 2021 Supply Chain Resilience Initiative with Japan and Australia. Partners aggregate capability without making India an ally.
- Economic statecraft: Press Note 3 (April 2020) screened land-border capital; Chinese apps were banned, Huawei kept out of 5G trials, and PLI schemes targeted electronics, solar and pharma. Yet the deficit reached $112.16 billion in FY2025–26 and India eased Press Note 3 in March 2026: restricting Chinese capital proved easier than replacing Chinese goods.
- Multilateral and normative: staying in BRICS and the SCO keeps channels open; signalling on Tibet stays calibrated.
Evaluation
Shivshankar Menon (India and Asian Geopolitics, 2021) argues for close work with the US short of alliance against a China seeking primacy. The record supports the mix: disengagement is complete, but de-escalation and de-induction are not. The 25th SR round (25 August 2026) set expert groups an “early and substantial harvest” on delimitation and added two military hotlines, but fixed no de-escalation timetable. Policy must rest on neighbourhood realities, not domestic point-scoring.
Conclusion
India’s best option is a combination, not a choice: denial capability that makes salami-slicing costly, negotiation from the leverage it creates, and partnerships and economic resilience that narrow the asymmetry. Dialogue without capability invites another 2020; capability without dialogue invites an arms race India cannot yet afford.