India and China should completely reset ties, states previous National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon, warning that any transfer to enable buffer zones, mutual pullouts and suspending patrols at the Line of Actual Control sends out the wrong message that both sides are equally responsible for the aggressiveness.
What do you believe will be the lasting impact of the stand-off at the LAC with China?
Well, I believe there’s no question that, after this, India-China relations will be reset. I think there’s no going back to the situation before[Ladakh stand-off] I do believe this has actually been building up for some time, that India-China relations have actually been getting a growing number of adversarial for some years before this. But certainly what China did this time: pressing forward on numerous points along the LAC, then altering the meaning of what she declares to be the LAC, the deaths for the first time because 1975[in June 15 Galwan clash] All this, I think, represents a substantial change in Chinese behaviour and in fact calls into question the whole structure of contracts and confidence-building measures that were put in location considering that 1988 and with the 1993 contract, which had actually kept the peace on the border for a long time.
It’s been very hard to be too specific due to the fact that, frankly, both federal governments’ strategic interaction has been abysmal. There’s a great deal of spin, a lot of leaks, a great deal of determined posts in journalism. There’s extremely little authoritative commentary by the government and even what they state, they then backtrack, clarify and so on. So, it is hard at this phase to discuss the particular information of what is taking place and what has taken place in the last few months. However this is still a crisis. I don’t see this as having been resolved yet or being behind us. And I am sure that India-China relations will have to be reset after this.
Let’s take a look at some of the details of disengagement we are hearing about. There is the concept of pullback on both sides, production of buffer zones, suspending patrols to points on the LAC that we utilized to generally patrol … what do you make from some of these terms?
Well, I believe it’s really hazardous, to speak of disengagement pullback, withdrawal, buffer zones. These recommend that we are withdrawing from territory which we have controlled consistently, and that we became part of the problem to begin with. China stopped us from doing our typical patrols in these locations, which we’ve done for years. The Chinese have stopped us from doing so at numerous points because April. And I don’t hear any person saying that we are going back to those points. So, honestly, if we are withdrawing from area that we have actually controlled, I do not comprehend what is occurring here. As I said, we discuss the fog of war; this is the fog of peace. And there isn’t sufficient info coming out plainly. However it appears to me that we are setting a harmful pattern.
In fact, we are in fact teaching the Chinese the incorrect lesson. And this begun with Doklam, where we negotiated withdrawals by both sides from the face-off point in2017 The Chinese then continued to develop a very strong, long-term existence on the plateau, leaving the face-off point itself complimentary. Prior to that, they utilized to visit once or twice a year, patrol and go back, just to indicate the claim, and now they’re in fact sitting on the plateau. I don’t believe this is a military failure. Th