Going by current trends of the Indian political leadership and the apex national security establishment of investing more on diplomacy than military preparedness to ward off ‘The China Threat’, the analytical answer is a big NO.
Strategic analysis would suggest that it should be a pressing strategic imperative for Indian decision-makers to work towards a military checkmating of China to neutralise ‘The China Threat’ and in turn the Pakistan threat assiduously nurtured militarily by China. But the follow-up question is whether India can ever hope to militarily checkmate China and improve India’s security environment?
Going by current trends of the Indian political leadership and the apex national security establishment of investing more on diplomacy than military preparedness to ward off ‘The China Threat’, the analytical answer is a big NO.
Checkmating China by India involves two major questions. Firstly, the political will and strategic audacity of India’s leadership to adopt a ‘hands-on’ approach to checkmate China, not as a strategic subsidiary of the United States but standing tall on its own two legs. Secondly, does India have adequate financial resources to bankroll increased defence expenditure to acquire substantial nuclear and conventional military deterrence to checkmate China from its current strategy in South Asia?
The answer to the first question is that it is unlikely that the existing mind-sets of India’s political leadership and apex national security establishment would undergo a change. Both these entities are likely to concentrate all strategic decision-making with themselves bypassing institutional inputs. Also keeping the Indian Armed Forces hierarchy out of apex level national security decision-making and more vitally nuclear weapons decision-making by these two entities leads to ‘mentally challenged’ strategic policy decisions. Political will and strategic audacity therefore cannot blossom in such a truncated decision-making environment.
The second question pertains to financial resources to bankroll sizeable defence expenditure to acquire substantial nuclear and conventional military deterrence against China. Financial resources are no longer a problem today for India. The Indian problem on increased defence expenditure is that massive amounts of the Indian budget are earmarked for non-productive political-populist schemes like NREGA and other subsidies which lead to substantial budget deficits and to offset which the Defence Budget becomes the notable casualty in terms of being asked to surrender thousands of crores of rupees every year before the presentation of the Budget.
The existing mind-set of underwriting wasteful expenditures on political-populist measures at the cost of Indian national security requires a complete transformation of policy approaches.
So the final answer is that India will never be able to militarily checkmate China’s enhanced military postures impinging on Indian security. If India’s political leadership under different political dispensations had been imbued with the will of checkmating China, they would not have allowed India’s slippage in its defensive postures and war preparedness, and kept pace with China’s constant military expenditure increases, not in an arms race, but in a sincere effort to not to allow the strategic and military chasm between China and India in terms of nuclear and conventional military deterrence differentials to grow.