LADAKH REGION

INDIA, CHINA STAND-OFF IN LADAKH ENDS BUT AT WHAT COST TO INDIA?

Venky Vembu

Firstpost, May 6, 2013

At first blush, the news of an end to the 20-day-long border stand-off between Indian and Chinese troops in the Ladakh region will be welcomed to the extent that it has averted the very real possibility of a skirmish in the high Himalayas. When troops of the two countries, with an enormous trust deficit to bridge, stand eyeball-to-eyeball in confrontation, as they have been since the 15 April incursion by Chinese troops into notionally Indian territory, the scope for things getting out of hand gets dramatically heightened. Neither India nor China would have been well-served by a border skirmish - or even just a protracted stand-off - which is perhaps why they cranked the levers of military diplomacy to de-escalate the tension.

The precise details of the terms of agreement under which both Chinese and Indian troops pulled back from the brink aren't known yet. Nor is it immediately clear what caused the Chinese to yield ground when for much of these past 20 days, they had remained unyielding in their claim that they had not ingressed into Indian territory, and therefore saw no compelling reason to retreat.

It's entirely possible that the signals that India sent in the past couple of days - suggesting that External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid's upcoming visit to China might be deferred because the Chinese response to Indian objections on the incursion had been less than satisfactory - have yielded dividends. As analysts have consistently argued, and as Firstpost too has noted earlier, India was not without diplomatic options in facing up to the Chinese challenge. It didn't need India to ratchet up the military rhetoric, which is the false framework set up by some analysts who favoured a softly-softly approach to China.

(...) [article here]