Hard Diplomacy

WHEN CONFLICTS ARE raging in West Asia and Europe, and nuclear weapons are being bandied about casually, developments related to the winding down of tensions between India and China seem to be a blip on the world’s collective cognisance. Theodore Roosevelt once said that while dealing with adversaries one needed to speak softly yet carry a big stick. While the focus has been on New Delhi’s public diplomacy to resolve the crisis, the question must be asked as to whether its ‘big-stick’ approach led to Beijing’s climbdown.

The last months of 2024 have seen the process of both powers trying to normalise their relationship, which has been ruptured by Chinese President Xi Jinping’s misplaced belief that a reinvigorated People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could alter the status quo along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh. Following China’s adventurism in April-May 2020, its troops dug in their heels along the border, which saw a befitting military build-up by India, despite the Covid-19 pandemic.

Finally, in the four-year standoff, Beijing blinked first. In October 2024, China, which had been blocking India’s access in Depsang and Demchok, agreed to a pact which would lead to both sides patrolling to their respective perceptions of the border. This would pave the way for a meeting between Xi and Prime Minister Narendra Modi— after a span of five years—on the sidelines of the BRICS conclave in Russia. Both leaders now endeavour to reconstitute the relationship. Recently, the 23rd meeting of the Special Representatives (SRs) of both nations—India’s National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval and Politburo member and China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi—after a hiatus of nearly five years is significant. The SRs mechanism was constituted in an agreement in 2003 to resolve the boundary question from a political perspective.

In the Indian readout, both Doval and Wang Yi underscored the overall India-China bilateral relationship hinged on the maintenance of peace and tranquillity in border regions. Decks are being cleared for the Kailash Mansarovar pilgrimage in Tibet, trade in border areas, and data-sharing on trans-border rivers.

While there is a tendency to move on from here, it would be worth our while to try and understand how Delhi’s tough stance made Beijing relent. Political dialogue completely broke down at the top level. The government’s stance through this crisis was to steadfastly maintain that the health of India-China bilateral relations hinged on there being peace and tranquillity on the LAC. Though Modi and Xi did exchange pleasantaries at multilateral fora, there was no face-to-face meeting between the two. Yet, there was engagement at various other levels that continued.

First, multilateral platforms like BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) offered India the chance to deploy nimble diplomacy. Indian foreign and defence ministers were able to engage their counterparts to this end, and some friction points saw resolution with the creation of buffer zones. Second, institutional frameworks like the Working Mechanism for Cooperation and Coordination were pressed into action; as a result, diplomatic corps met on 17 occasions since the start of the crisis. Third, while troops on both sides of the border were engaged in an eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation, military commanders did not take their eyes off the ball to meet for talks in 21 rounds.

Persuasive diplomacy, however, has also been accompanied by a big stick. Thus, projecting strength and resolve have gone a long way in conveying to China that India means business. While mobilising troops along the LAC to match the Chinese build-up, India steadily began improving the infrastructure through a network of roads, bridges and tunnels in border regions. For example, the Umling La Pass road in southern Ladakh, the Atal Tunnel to Lahaul and Spiti, the Nechiphu and Sela tunnels to Tawang. In the 2024 Union Budget, a sum of `6,500 crore was pledged to the Border Roads Organisation (BRO), a 30 per cent increase from the previous year’s allocation.

Beijing had been also ramping up psychological pressure on Delhi by renaming places in Arunachal, and releasing official maps that subsume areas within India. The government rolled out the Vibrant Villages Programme, under which hamlets along the Indian border would be earmarked for better infrastructure facilities like motorways, power projects, and improved mobile connectivity. Since its launch in 2023, 136 border villages have been connected through more than 100 all-weather roads built at a cost of `2,420 crore. The last Union Budget set aside a tranche of `1,050 crore for the initiative. The focus has also been to create job opportunities through promotion of agriculture, horticulture, cultural tourism, skill development, and entrepreneurship. The objective is to enhance the quality of life in the borderlands, incentivising locals to stay and curb the migration of youth to urban centres in search of livelihood opportunities, thereby enhancing India’s border security.

India also decided to upgrade military infrastructure facilities in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, where the tri-services command is located, to counter China’s growing influence in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR). Plans are afoot to construct facilities that will help in deployment of additional military forces, and resources for bigger and more warships, aircraft, missile batteries and troops. Steps have been taken to enhance surveillance, reconnaissance and remote-sensing capabilities, communication facilities, in addition to building a container transhipment terminal along with related infrastructure to sustain traffic and operations.

India did not shy away from demonstrating hard power. In August 2020, the Indian Army occupied the Kailash Range—a key feature in eastern Ladakh—with an aim of dominating over PLA deployment. This development was later described as a “turning point in disengagement talks” by General YK Joshi, then General Officer Commanding-in-Chief of Northern Command. Significantly, the Special Frontier Force (SFF), a clandestine unit comprising predominantly of Tibetans, was involved in this operation. In 2022, despite negotiations underway to resolve the military logjam along the LAC, the Army carried out covert operations against the PLA as evidenced from the disclosure of gallantry citations awarded in January 2024. Offence is also the best form of defence. China has termed Taiwan, Tibet, and the South China Sea as its core interests, and yet India is treading close to its red lines.

India has come a long way from the time its political elite sought to play down Chinese incursions as an “acne on the face”. It has managed to diffuse the LAC standoff through a judicious mix of negotiations involving both diplomatic and military personnel. It also went about closing the gaps in military infrastructure and logistics, demonstrating that it was willing to tackle the China challenge in the long run. India also demonstrated its ability to use hard power, and also its capability to hurt China’s interests as Beijing escalated the border crisis.

Yet, once again we hear voices trying to make a case that India and China must forget the past in order to build some utopian future based on the misplaced belief that appeasing Beijing will yield dividends. There is no statesmanship in blindly repeating the mistakes of the past. The lessons from the standoff have proven beyond doubt that standing up to Chinese belligerence is essential to maintain normalcy in the bilateral relationship. Policymakers must also understand the pulse of the Indian street that feels there cannot be hasty U-turns in India’s China policy. Let us not forget that the issues, which led to the friction in the first place, still lurk in the background. The question of large mobilisation of troops (de-escalation) and military infrastructure still hangs over it, as does the larger issue of delineating the border. Instead of a reset in India-China dynamics, a cautious normalisation is in order.

BeijingBorder disputediplomacygeopoliticsIndia-China Face-offNarendra ModiXi Jinping