Chinese Dragon: Enemy at the gates

Earlier this year an interesting article was published in a staunchly pro government news blog in China. This article predicted six wars that china is sure to fight in coming years to resolve the border dispute and reclaim those territories. For those who’re unaware of Chinese system a lot of the news agencies are directly or indirectly controlled by PLA (People’s Liberation Army) and articles of such nature are penned by Generals or strategists.This quasi official document shows the prevalent thinking within Chinese security establishment, however the most interesting part is not the prediction of wars but how they’re fought.

The article details first war of “Taiwanese Unification” between 2020-25 to be fought with Taiwan, South China seas battle in 2025-30 with Malaysia, Philippines, Vietnam, The “Southern Tibet” war in 2035-40 with India, “East China seas” in 2040-45 with Japan and US, “Outer Mongolia” war in 2045-50 and finally a war with Russia in 2055-60 to recover disputed lands.

While all the proposed wars involve, direct military action and coercion to win the adversary, the case with India is unique and curious. The best strategy to counter India, according to the article, is to incite disintegration of India into several smaller countries. This way India will have no power to cope with China. What are the reasons behind this strategy? Of course India is a powerful neighbor and unlike Taiwan, Malaysia and others, it can inflict heavy damage in an all out war but we’re talking of 2035. Given the nature of leadership and governance in India, China will be far ahead of India both economically and militarily, 20 years from now. India may not be as big a threat. Notice how this article proposes a direct confrontation ,not disintegration effort with even more powerful adversary, Russia 40 years from now.

lets take a look at history for a moment. How many wars were fought with this idea of disintegrating the enemy before a war? Tough to find an example. Even during the cold war, US and its NATO allies did not solely rely on a strategy to break Soviet Union in any of their doctrines or war games. Germany was divided after the world wars, Balkan states were created after the ethnic civil wars. So the idea of breaking India to win a war makes for an interesting case study.

The area that China thinks is part of southern Tibet is region of Arunachal Pradesh. The article proposes inciting unrest in Assam and to enable Sikkim to gain independence from Indian union thereby cutting off Arunachal from the Indian mainland. This would make Arunachal an easy target for take over. The article further proposes assisting India’s arch rival Pakistan with advance weaponry and economic aid to ensure Kashmir pot is kept boiling. The assumption is that India will be unable to fight a two front war and lose. No points for guessing that this strategy is already in place and working beautifully for China.

India is an extremely diverse country with different religions, castes, sects, races, culture and language. There will always be competing and often conflicting undercurrents in the society trying to pull it in different directions. People have often termed India a “working anarchy” or an “ordered chaos”. A lot have already predicted India’s disintegration and yet it continues to surprise all. No wonder the idea appeals to Chinese as well. But to summarize a military doctrine around this approach indicates the level of confidence that China has that this can be done..

The idea of disintegrating or subverting a country, religion or an ideology is achieved through a process generally termed as subversion. The KGB, former Soviet spy agency employed this process to great success in many countries in their quest to spread communism. Keep in mind subversion is not a classical spy or a covert operation. It’s basically a sustained propagation of ideas,views and theory, not necessarily true, to the targeted audience till their perception about their own history, culture, identity and ideology is altered to suit the aggressor. In time the propaganda takes a life of its own and the aggressor backs off only to occasionally contribute when needed.

Subversion starts with demoralization of targeted society or nation which at minimum will take 30 years. It is the time it takes to brainwash at least one generation of people with false propaganda. The ideas of national identity, culture, social principles and religion is targeted so that the faith is diluted. A new perception is then propagated through academia, media, intellectuals, politicians and other important sections of society. Peer pressure is applied on academics and elites to conform to the new view who in turn convince the society that all prior values were flawed. An example of this stage is Macaulay’s sabotage of Indian education which fundamentally and permanently subdued Indians to the supremacy of white man and his culture. Another example is subversion of Indian education by leftists. Today most of media, academia, elites, politicians and reformers are leftists in leaning. Religion and culture has been altered. Being a nationalist is a bad thing in media now a days. Religious leaders are mocked and beliefs seen as foolish. India wasn’t in such a chaos always. Decades of subversion has given prominence to views that are in direct conflict with India’s history and its very existence. Notice the rise of Maoists and their supporters in academia. People are openly talking of giving away Kashmir and justifying killing of CRPF personnel by Maoists. Police, intelligence agencies and army have become morose due to the sustained and unchecked threat of human rights activists. China seems to have already won this stage.

The next stage is crisis, which we see signs of, in today’s India and it may take 10-20 years to precipitate if corrective steps are not taken. Economic, social and national security crisis will occur one after the other due to demoralization of society. Those who want the crisis to mature will prop and support leaders who can be manipulated. These leaders will promise hope and change to an already willing public. Note the rise of regional parties in India almost all dominated by a single leader or family. All promised change and none delivered. On the contrary most indulge in dangerous politics. On the national scale Rahul Gandhi was propped. Arvind Kejriwal is another one who has promised hope. This is not to insinuate that Rahul, Kejriwal or anyone is propped by China or are sympathetic to China, however almost all are hostage to an ideology which is overwhelmingly leftist in nature and hate nationalistic views. They all peddle socialistic propaganda and sell utopian dream. They term every existing system rotten and corrupt and themselves are authoritarian in nature. With country in such a mess, hostiles will start testing and exploiting its weakness. Border incursions, snubbing by smaller neighbors, soldiers beheadings, economic crisis, diplomatic disasters all need to be looked at in relation to the current situation we’re in.

Subversion is a long drawn process. Notice Chinese are planning for wars to be fought as far in future as 2055. When was the last time you heard any Indian leader talking of future? The current Indian leadership lacks the qualities needed to save this country. The uneasiness with which countries hostile to India are watching Modi’s rise into prominence indicate they’re afraid of his nationalistic agenda. They’re afraid he’ll upset their strategy of balkanising India. With the murderous bomb attacks on Modi in Patna, it is clear forces inimical to India both domestic and foreign are desperate to stop him. To all, message is loud and clear, Behold, Modi is coming.