It is unlikely that anyone in the Indian government seriously considers the terms of the India-China military disengagement in the Ladakh sector of the Line of Actual Control to be anything but a temporary truce. While agreeing to halt its creeping aggression in the short run, China has also made it clear that it neither acknowledges the sanctity of the LAC nor is it willing to abandon its claims of sovereignty over Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh — regions it claims as historically parts of Tibet and, by implication, China.
For the past two decades at least, there has been a debate in India over how to view China: as a competitor or an adversary. If nothing, the deaths of 20 Indian soldiers in the Galwan Valley, coming barely three years after the prolonged face-off in the India-Bhutan-China border at Doklam, has settled this question quite conclusively. The near-national consensus over its designs on the borders hasn’t, however, extended to strategies to deal with the Chi