It is clear that India is at war because an adversary has made India a target for efforts designed to continuously degrade the country’s technological and industrial capabilities, writes Prof. Madhav Das Nalapat
Entities within China, who are privy to some of the discussions within the top tier of the Chinese Communist Party, say that as 2027 approaches, CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping is getting anxious about his prospects for securing a fourth term. Given the anger amongst former colleagues at the roughshod manner in which they are being treated by Xi, the consensus within his inner circle of supporters is that a spectacular victory needs to be secured by that time.
Taiwan remains the prime target for such an attempt, but there are competing views on what needs to be done in order to establish control over Taiwan. A set of planners say that by choking Taiwan through denying sea and air access to the island country, mass unrest, much of it sponsored, would erupt across the island, and a Red Revolution would occur, in which the island government changes and a new construct begins to implement a contrary policy to the Freedom First and Forever stance of the present government led by President Lai Ching-te and by his predecessor, Dr Tsai Ing-wen.
Such a government would give greater and greater access within the councils of governance to the CCP, eventually becoming by 2031 in effect an offshore province of the People’s Republic of China in the way Hainan is. A rival group of favourites believes that enforcing a blockade would cause a strong response from the US and its allies, thereby affecting the economy and generating unrest in China as much or more as what would be planned to happen in Taiwan.
Such a situation would affect the stability of the rule of Xi. They argue that establishing control over Taiwan needs to be put off until the close of the fourth term of CCP General Secretary Xi, thereby making him a hero in the CCP pantheon rivalling Mao. This downplays the possibility that in the absence of such a victory, Xi could miss out on a fourth term in what is becoming a restive party. Accordingly, a via media was found between the two approaches. This was to ensure that “a ring of mountain fires” was lit around the world in such a manner as to sufficiently distract not just the US but also that of Japan, the UK, and Germany as well. As a consequence, they would be unwilling or unable to come to the defence of Taiwan once the PRC blockade begins.
The same sources say that the catalyst for such a policy was the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. It was decided at the highest level that the conflict would be kept going by giving “our Russian comrades” enough to sustain themselves in carrying out the war, but not enough for them to succeed in their mission of prevailing over the government in Kiev sufficiently to achieve their objective of securing enough territory to ensure Russian security and making Kiev understand that it was impossible for them to win the lost territory back.
The CCP leadership ensured that the Ukraine pot was kept boiling, including by boosting disinfo and misinfo efforts at ensuring Russophobia in western capitals and within society, so that any reflection on the China threat would get elbowed out by the “Russia threat”. They claim that it was not an accident that Hillary Clinton or Boris Johnson or Justin Trudeau were prime boosters of the “Let’s go after Russia” effort, nor that Hunter Biden shared their view, as did other notables. They did not go further where specifics of such a claim were concerned. After Ukraine, attention was turned to North Korea, so that Japan would get distracted and desist from any intervention in the eventuality of a PLA blockade of Taiwan.
In such a task, Russia was brought in as the prime mover behind provocative actions by Kim Jong Un, although much of the fuel for such an effort could be sourced to China were a comprehensive enquiry to take place. Simultaneously, action was taken to ensure that the leadership elements in the anti-China camp got discredited. Whoever persuaded now-impeached President Yoon of South Korea to impose martial law may not necessarily be as opposed to Beijing or Pyongyang as their advice to impose martial law suggested. After having been assured of “all weather support”, the mullahs in Iran were given much less than what had earlier been promised when the temperature between Jerusalem and Tehran got heated. “Logistical difficulties” were blamed for the shortfall.
After the Korean Peninsula came the turn of Syria, where a group affiliated to Al Qaeda was given the perfect opportunity to get control of the country thanks to the preoccupations of Moscow and the graft within the Assad family, mainly as a consequence of trade and trade-offs with China. Or in other words, the same source of grey zone takings by the Ukrainian Russophobes and other power groups in different countries. Turkey is the face of the revolt against Assad, an operation that involved months of preparation, including bribing elements of the Syrian military to surrender rather than to fight, as was witnessed in Afghanistan during the first Taliban takeover in 1996.
Where much of the “grey zone” funds of the Turkish leadership come, and which were used together with other donations to fund the “Free Syrian Army” march towards Damascus, originates in a superpower fronting the Pacific portion of the Indo-Pacific. As for India, developments in Bangladesh are expected to keep New Delhi distracted, thereby presenting the perfect time to play the peace card. Syria is planned to go the way of Afghanistan after the Biden pullout in 2021, where the Chinese are ubiquitous even in parades where suicide bombers march in front of the cheering audience. Those in favour of the “lighting mountain fires” strategy are delighted by the apparent success of their strategy, and believe that by 2027, there will be enough distractions to keep Japan, India, South Korea and the US too preoccupied with such fires to give Taiwan the attention and help it will need.
However, the “talk peace but make war” strategy of the CCP leadership has not passed unnoticed in India by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. War in the present era is very different from earlier wars. Israel infiltrated mobile telephones into Lebanon through a shell company controlled by Mossad which had a civilian from another country as its head. The handsets were assembled in Germany by using parts that had been supplied by Mossad. These parts were primed for an explosion when a remote message was sent to them from Israeli operatives, and they did, causing significant casualties within the higher ranks of Hezbollah, who were the group allocated such mobile handsets.
Subsequently, landline handsets used by the terror organisation also exploded, to the consternation of those who had been committed to the destruction of the State of Israel. Whether it be mobile handsets or small drones capable of following and finally eliminating target individuals, it is clear that the nature of the way war is waged has changed. In the past, war meant exchanges of fire between the adversaries, bombing and other acts of destruction.
These are days when methods of war could include the making of artificial viruses which are more infective and deadly than the viruses on which they are modelled. Once John Ratcliffe takes over as head of the CIA, it is certain that he will conduct a genuine enquiry into how the Covid-19 virus originated and who were those responsible for such a destructive act. The definition of waging war needs to include actions such as developing viruses and using hacking techniques to ferret out the weaknesses of an adversary.
Looked at through such a prism, it is clear that India is at war, not because of its own choosing but because an adversary has made India a target for efforts designed to continuously degrade the country’s technological and industrial capabilities. The reason is that India has the potential to emerge as an attractive alternative to production units located in China, a country that has expanded its own manufacturing capabilities by hollowing out equivalent capabilities in other countries.
Since the 1990s, given the innate ambitions of the Chinese Communist Party to become practically a monopoly supplier of several product lines, a policy of containment of China needed to be followed, which would hobble the Chinese in technology development while at the same time, continuing to trade with them. Instead, President William Jefferson Clinton did the opposite. He opened the store to China while at the same time seeking to constrain India in the same fields.
By 2013, it became obvious what China was doing: seeking to displace the US as the dominant power on the globe. This was the time that a policy of containment of China needed to be put into operation, so as to degrade its ability to produce items that would be essential for victory in a kinetic or other conflict. Instead, what has finally taken place within the Biden administration in the US is an effort at constrainment through technology denial, a necessary but by this stage, not a sufficient step to rein in the militarists in China from going forward with plans for a blockade of Taiwan.
Should the national security picks of Donald Trump secure Senate confirmation, he would have a team in place that has a clear view of which countries are friends of the US and which country foes. India is in the “Friends” category, and the personal chemistry between President Trump and Prime Minister Modi would play a catalytic role in the two largest democracies coming together to secure the Indo-Pacific. The diversionary fires lit by the CCP leadership would be extinguished, beginning with Ukraine. The period ahead will be stormy, but will end in the way the 1939-45 world war did, in a victory of the democracies.
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