China’s Ladakh incursion gives a taste of the new Cold War

The era of China’s “peaceful rise” is rapidly giving way to a newfound aggression, at least in China’s own backyard, from the Himalayas to the South and East China Seas. At the start of last week a violent confrontation between Chinese and Indian forces in Ladakh resulted in the death of 20 Indian soldiers and an unknown number of Chinese troops. It is a significant loss of life and marks an important escalation in a rapidly emerging second Cold War, this time with China. China’s apparent response to the strengthening of US-Indian relations looks set to backfire, pushing India further into the US camp while re-opening a combustible flashpoint.

The details of the clash along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) which serves as an international frontier between the two countries, appears almost medieval with the use of clubs, rocks and other improvised weapons rather than guns. Both countries have avoided the use of firearms for fear of this being perceived as an actual declaration of war.

Reporting of the event has been equally strange, suggesting that the incident was unexpected. Yet there is a definite pattern to these events. There have actually been relatively frequent border incursions and scuffles since mid-May and Chinse military build-up began even earlier in April. There is little doubt that this is a pre-meditated pattern of Chinse action that culminated in 12,000 PLA soldiers occupying around sixty square kilometres of Indian territory, with border crossings of the LAC on May 5 and 6 at four locations.

The day after the most recent Sino-Indian confrontation, news broke about a Chinese J-10 fighter entering Tawain’s air defence zone, prompting the island to scramble its own aircraft. This was China’s third incursion into Taiwanese airspace within a week. The month before, Chinese Coast Guard vessels pursued Japanese fishing boats in waters claimed by both countries. And the month before that, Chinese boats entered the waters of Malaysia and Vietnam.

In one sense the Ladakh skirmish follows a new pattern of low intensity conflict visible since Russia’s Ukraine invasion in 2014. Such moves are intended for maximum strategic gain while falling below the threshold of a declaration of war. The scale and nature of these encounters in Ladakh or in Ukraine has become a poor guide to their strategic and political significance.

Tensions along the LAC are not new. The 4,000 km long border, which is not clearly demarcated, has seen occasional flare ups. In 2017 there was a two month stand-off. What differentiates the incidents in Ladakh, Taiwan and territorial claims in the South China sea or indeed the imposition of new draconian laws in Hong Kong, is China’s willingness to use force to impose her will. This is the first time in the 45-year dispute with India that lives have been lost. It is no coincidence that last month China dropped the word “peaceful” from a policy document while referring to its desire to “reunify” with Taiwan, ending a 30-year-old formulation of language.

This shift in approach is a significant policy change by China in the wake of Covid-19. Sino-US relations have hit a new nadir, with Trump openly lashing out at China over its handling of the pandemic and a fractious debate in most of the West over Huawei’s involvement in 5G networks. When Australia, a geographic step too close, joined the chorus of condemnation by calling for an investigation into the pandemic, China responded with punitive trade curbs.

China’s confrontation with India can be seen as her expression of displeasure at the increasing assertiveness of a neighbouring, strategic competitor. This month India signed a major defence agreement with Australia, allowing both countries to use each other’s bases. India will almost certainly invite Australia to join naval exercises conducted with Japan and the US, a move intended to strengthen the so-called Quad (Australia, Japan, the US and India) to counter Chinese regional, naval power.

Beijing has painfully reminded New Delhi that their shared border is contingent on Chinese strategic priorities, not Indian military power. The effect has been predictably combustible in India’s nationalist press. Ever since India’s humiliating defeat at the hands of the PLA in 1962, China’s military presence has been a concern for successive Indian leaders. Rajiv Gandhi managed to achieve relative normalisation of relations in 1988, but in the subsequent three decades China has eclipsed India even further, both militarily and economically. This humiliation is acutely felt by Narendra Modi’s nationalist BJP. Modi has repeatedly promised to abandon Indian military restraint in the face of border violations, a threat that was mainly intended for Pakistan and that looks hollow when directed at China.

Modi’s response to the skirmish had initially been to deny the conflict had happened. He followed this by making a televised address which failed to mention China directly. He is seemingly caught between not wanting to escalate tensions with a militarily superior rival and the overwhelming domestic pressure for retaliation, pushing the possibility of negotiation further out of reach. The most likely outcome seems to be India explicitly committing to an American-led alliance, intended to contain China.

If Modi does chose this path, China will almost certainly continue to use the border dispute to keep India destabilised and has already expanded the dispute with a crude lobbying campaign to stop Russia supplying India with fighter jets. Yet the real danger is that, for all Trump’s rhetoric directed at China, the US under his leadership remains an inconsistent ally. With a formalised US-Indian relationship the Line of Actual Control might well become a new front in what has become a Cold War with China. Without such a commitment by the US, the de-facto border could well become a much more dangerous open sore between two nuclear armed powers.