The plateau is close to “Chicken’s Neck,” a narrow corridor of Indian territory that connects mainland India to its northeastern states, an area the size of Oregon, where 45 million people live˳ India saw the Chinese incursion and construction as a dangerous move toward control over the Doklam Plateau, and it reawakened New Delhi’s fear of China cutting off northeastern India in a war by taking over Chicken’s Neck˳
Indian soldiers blocked the Chinese˳ After an intense face-off for 73 days, both sides withdrew, but in the past five years the People’s Liberation Army has moved back into the area and continued building border infrastructure˳ A few years later, the most lethal confrontation on the disputed border occurred in the northern Ladakh region in June 2020 when Chinese soldiers killed at least 20 Indian soldiers with wooden staves and nail-studded clubs, and the Chinese military seized more than 40 square miles of territory controlled by India˳
After the Dec˳ 9 clashes, the border agreements between India and China lie in tatters˳ Indian strategic planners, traditionally preoccupied with the Pakistan threat, now face a more complex security calculus˳ After the lethal clashes in Ladakh in 2020, India reinforced its defenses there with an additional 50,000 troops˳ Indian military planners worry that sufficiently reinforcing the border with China might come at the cost of their ability to deter Pakistan˳
For New Delhi, China’s new aggressiveness presents a clear dilemma: Should India continue to build strategic and military relations with the United States and the partnership of America, Australia, Japan and India — known as the Quad — even though Beijing has made it clear it sees the Quad as an anti-China grouping? While the Quad, and its more overtly militaristic version, the AUKUS (Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States) alliance, constitute a viable deterrent to China in the maritime Indo-Pacific theater, India is the only partner that confronts China on its land border˳
From New Delhi’s perspective, the Chinese military aggression on the disputed border is the price India is paying for joining hands with the Western alliance˳ New Delhi takes pains to portray its independence, even turning down an American offer of assistance against China at the time of the 2020 intrusions in Ladakh˳ New Delhi has restricted Indo-U˳S˳ cooperation to the realm of intelligence and privately asked Washington to lower the rhetoric over China˳ This is unlikely to change˳
Within India, Mr˳ Modi’s strongman image has taken a dent from the confrontation with China˳ His insistence that India has not lost territory to China provides ammunition to his supporters, but the numbers of his blind supporters have dwindled˳ The Chinese military’s most recent aggression shows that Beijing continues to fuel the confrontation, and relations between India and China face a negative spiral without a predictable end˳ The political cost to Mr˳ Modi, it seems, will eventually be decided in Beijing as much as in New Delhi˳
Ajai Shukla, a retired Indian Army colonel, is a consulting editor for the Business Standard newspaper in New Delhi˳
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