About That Land War in Asia

An Indian think tank examines scenarios of potential Indian-Chinese conflict.

There are two interesting things to note. One, I think I did as extensive a job of setting forth the high end conflict potential (but without foot notes, of course) two years ago.

And two, it is amazingly land power-centric. I think of myself has pretty biased toward land power. But my conclusion was that air and sea power had to be given priority given the limitations on decisive land power options by either side. The think tank report barely addresses these angles. Perhaps being a citizen of America, a power projection country, just naturally inclines me to look at naval and air aspects along with ground forces. Perhaps my confessed bias isn't nearly as bad as I thought. Really, warnings about a land war in Asia can't really apply to Asian nations, right?

Oh, and one more thing. in discussing war against Pakistan and India, the emphasis appears to be that the Indians would attempt to decisively beat Pakistan first while holding in the north against China. This makes sense in a conventional world. But in India's new nuclear world, this is backward. Decisively defeating Pakistan simply risks Pakistan hitting India with nuclear weapons to prevent decisive defeat if India does rip apart Pakistan's army. China wouldn't mind that exchange.

Further, China's much greater nuclear arsenal (compared to both Pakistan and India) means that any gains that China makes along the land border while India is busy crushing Pakistan are less likely to be reversed at the peace table. And those nukes mean that it is less likely that India gets the time to shift victorious assets to the northeast to counter-attack before a nervous world pressures both into a ceasefire in place.

Face it, China is the main threat. India needs to act that way rather than say the words that China is the bigger threat but continue with decades old military focus on Pakistan in practice.

In case of a two-front war, India needs to hold Pakistan in an economy of force operation, confident that over time Indian weight of power can reverse any local gains that Pakistan might make. Meanwhile, the main effort of India must be on dominating the India-China border conflict so that India holds as much as they can and grabs bargaining chips on the other side of the dividing line in order to restore the status quo ante at the negotiating table.