The immediate crisis is over:
India and China simultaneously withdrew troops from camps a few meters apart in a Himalayan desert on Sunday, apparently ending a three-week standoff on a freezing plateau where the border is disputed and the Asian giants fought a war 50 years ago.
The two sides stood down after reaching an agreement during a meeting between border commanders, an Indian army official told Reuters, after the tension threatened to overshadow a planned visit by India's foreign minister to Beijing on Thursday.
All that is clear is that the two sides moved back. Whether China pulled out of the Indian zone as India defines it is less clear. I rather doubt it.
More importantly, after 400 incursions last year and 100 so far this year, China this time decided to stay inside India and start a confrontation. What changed?
It is a strange time for China to pick this fight. With potential instability on the Korean Peninsula and sovereignty disputes in the East and South China Seas, it belies strategic logic for Beijing to open a new front of territorial revisionism. And it seems India agrees: One Indian general called the move "an inexplicable provocation."
Perhaps it was a case of a PLA officer going rogue. Perhaps China wanted to send a message of strength in advance of high-level visits in May, when foreign minister Khurshid goes to Beijing and Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang visits Delhi on his first official trip abroad since taking office in March. Or perhaps, as many in the Indian media are speculating, Beijing is signaling it will no longer tolerate India's stepped-up patrols and infrastructure development along the border.
I've noted the possibility that a local officer without orders provoked this. But that isn't comforting. You can talk reassuringly all you want about how it wouldn't be "rational" for China to risk a war, but if any captain in the PLA stationed on the border can start a crisis that Peking is unwilling to retract, how worthwhile is all that rationality analysis?
Just who gets to order the PLA to war, anyway?
And if a crisis begins and we think we know enough to signal our resolve or read Chinese signals, that capability rather relies on China acting as a single unitary actor rather than decisions coming from multiple poles, doesn't it?
If China was willing to risk an armed clash to send a message prior to high-level talks, what does that tell us about what Peking thinks their relationship with India should be? Some parties in India had best get over their Cold War-era reluctance to work with us pretty darned quickly. China sees India as a threat simply from India's position astride China's sea lines of communication. India can't be subservient enough from Peking's point of view.
And if China signaled that they believe they have a veto over Indian decisions on defense and internal transportation infrastructure, is that a comforting explanation? Is India really willing to welcome their new Chinese overlords?
Further, if this crisis had been provoked by India, and China was merely reacting to some Indian action, why didn't China mention that as a reason for their camp site? That would be important to note, wouldn't it?
More broadly, it would surely help us contain Chinese naval ambitions if India drew off more Chinese spending away from sea power to spend on land power in China's interior. But it would also help India. If India is worried about China pushing their power into the Indian Ocean, India should welcome an increased competition along the northern border where India's land power is better able to take on China's land power despite China's greater overall power.
The mountain terrain is too bad to allow China a decisive strategic win over India. India's naval power would then be better able to repel forays by China's navy west of Singapore if China can't focus on their own naval power. And India could contemplate their own naval advance into the South China Sea.
One caveat is that India really needs to repair their deteriorating air force.
Look, the simple explanation is that China's growing power and memories of a time when China was the Middle Kingdom between Heaven and Earth which less powerful nearby powers had to orbit as a matter of the natural order of things are combining to make China more willing to demand that which they believe is their due. It doesn't even matter that much if the Chinese are camped in disputed areas where each believe they possess the line of actual control (rather than having uncontested legal control). The fact is that China is willing to confront India in a delicate time over who should control it.
There simply aren't limits to what China will consider a core interest if they have the power to claim it. Why did China start a crisis in the north with India? Because somebody in China thinks they should--and thinks they can win. Welcome to the wonderful world of a rising China. The crisis may have been defused. But there were 100 already this year and 300 more to go just if China maintains last year's pace. Will they all be defused?
