"The Ugly Dragon"
The Ugly Dragon
Divyam Sharma
The concept of China’s peaceful rise or China’s “peaceful development” was an official party policy adopted under Hu Jintao’s regime. It was an assurance to the world that China’s rise as a nation will not pose a threat to international peace and security. This was aimed to create a narrative around China’s rise as beneficial for a ‘peaceful’ world order post the collapse of USSR or post the Tiananmen square incident which saw the communist country’s attempt to quash a democratic movement.
With the start of the second decade of the 21st century, the world is facing the ramifications of this ‘rise’ primarily under Xi Jingping.
The blurring of lines
Former Deputy NSA Nadia Schadlow said, “The space between peace and war is not an empty space but a landscape churning with political, economical and military changes and thus it’s important to emphasize on this period.”
War can take many forms and it’s an ever-evolving process and with the blurring lines between war and peace, the armed forces are faced with a quintessential dilemma created by the shift from a conventional state vs state warfare to a hybrid warfare between state vs state or state vs non-state actors.
Hybrid warfare or non linear warfare or gray zone conflict refers to an intense political, economic, information, military operations just short of a conventional war, the efforts are ambiguous in nature and it’s difficult to understand the extent to which it can take place. The tactics used are just below the threshold of a conventional war but can go on for a long period of time
It’s a combination of both military and non-military resources like the use of information and technology for propaganda, hacking, technological warfare using state of the art technology, meddling in elections like we saw in the US through ‘fake news’ and use of “social bots”- computer-generated accounts masquerading as real users to spread misinformation on social media platforms.
Use of conventional weapons for small scale but an intense conflict between insurgents/militants and state armed forces or between armies of two states like ceasefire violations along LOC.
Use of economic sanctions and economic power to gain leverage in a conflict, US-Sino trade war, US sanctions on Russia or US sanctions on Iran that forced the middle eastern country to come to talks over its nuclear project and forced Iran to sign the nuclear deal (JCPOA 2015) to get rid of sanctions.
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File photo, representational image. Indian Army and Chinese Army in Ladakh. Photo: ANI |
The ‘Three’ warfares
The Chinese PLA believes that future wars will be marked by three “non” warfares: Non Contact, Non-linear and Non-symmetric or Asymmetric warfare.
Non-contact warfare: A state of warfare where the advanced adversary uses its weapons and aggressive military posturing to intimidate the enemy. There is no contact between the forces but the show of weapons, conducting military exercises, use of media and information for building a narrative that the forces are well equipped to eliminate any threat and cannot be trifled. Methods are used to avoid any direct contact because of an implicit understanding that any large scale conflict is not beneficial and strong psychological impact on the opponent will act as a deterrent.
Non-Linear: As mentioned earlier, it’s the hybridisation of warfare with ambiguity regarding the rules of war and the blurring of lines between enemy and a non-combatant.
Non-symmetric or Asymmetric: Warfare between parties whose relative military power differs. A conflict between a strong powerful state and a relatively less powerful state or a conflict between state and non-state insurgents or armed militants. Since a warring state do not engage directly considering the cost of war, the use of proxies creates a non- symmetric warfare. Example, Pakistan’s active support to terrorists, militants in Kashmir to fight their war against India or Iran’s support to Houthi rebels in Yemen to fight the state.
“He who occupies the field of battle first and awaits his enemy is at ease, and he who comes later to the scene and rushes into the fight is weary”- Sun Tzu (Void and Actuality)
China revised it’s “political work guidelines of the People’s Liberation Army” in 2003 and introduced the concepts of ‘three warfares’- Public Opinion warfare, Psychological warfare and Legal warfare. These were tools to fight a war before an armed war.
It’s imperative to know that PLA is an armed wing of the Chinese Communist Party, it’s primary objective is to serve the party and its principles. Unlike a national army of any other nation, PLA’s first allegiance is towards CCP and then to the people in an indirect way through the party. The relationship between PLA and CCP is not elusive.
In conclusion, the Chinese mouthpiece Global Times’ failed attempts to create a narrative around their military’s prowess to psychologically get over India shows how they use botched up information to get an edge. China called India’s pre-emptive actions in Ladakh on 29-30th August as an attempt to change status quo and accused them of crossing the LAC but failed to realise that all these actions by Special Frontier Force were on the Indian side of LAC.
The last battle PLA fought was in 1979, they claim that PLA is skilled in High altitude warfare and can overpower India, it is nothing less than a joke. While they forgot that the last major High altitude battle India fought was in 1999 in Kargil with our men highly trained and skilled. We defend the world’s highest battlefield, The Siachen Glacier, these aresquandered attempts by China to present themselves as an outlier in warfare.
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| Army trucks moving towards eastern Ladakh, Photo: PTI |
Source:
https://warontherocks.com/2014/08/peace-and-war-the-space-between/
https://thediplomat.com/2020/08/china-attempts-to-shift-its-boundary-with-india-in-ladakh-again/
Book: Kargil: Past Perfect, Future Uncertain? By Vivek Chadha (Chapter- The case of China)
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