The Dragon will eat dust in WWIII

In a hostel I stayed in Delhi for my civil services preparations, I came to be called as a bada bhai by many IIT and engineering aspirants preparing for their entrance exams. All of them were normal boys having pleasant mix of vulnerabilities and directionless strengths as conditioned by their teen years. But one chap stood out as Godzilla. It was not just on account of his size, for there were definitely some others who may also have been christened similarly is only size could have been the only criteria. What made him the common enemy was his arrogance and his effort to portray himself as the exceptionally powerful for the ordinary bunch of schoolboys around. Their was a strange swagger in his walk that cried, ‘Its between you and me!’ So guys it became an issue between one versus many. Confrontation was inevitable. One night many smaller ones pounced upon the hated Godzilla. War cry was: ‘Maro saale Godzilla ko!’ It resulted in—as it always happens in a conflict between one versus many (or few versus many) — a terrible defeat and consequent loss of face for the giant.

Guys, moral of the story is clear: Thousands of nice acts of civility and good behavior may not fetch you even a single genuine friend, but an act of arrogance and aggression is definitely bound to fetch you many enemies. There have been WWI and WWII. The trigger point was the power going astray in some aggressive form of nationalism that puffed out belligerent winds in four directions. Aggression wins you very selected friends. So in both world wars, the so called axis powers had lesser parties to their boasting kitty and the so called allied powers were able to muster up the support of many nations across the world. Whatever may be the amount of bloodbath, the result inevitably has to be in favor of the allied powers, like it happened in both world wars. The fireball escaping its burning guts is ultimately bound to douse the genie. Moreover, the leadership of the allied powers earns the right to take world leadership.

China is going much on the pattern of axis powers presently. Its inflated sense of chronic nationalism has made it blind to the bitter facts of the previous world wars. The way dragon is hissing fire around it has all the potential to trigger a third world war. But believe me, Chinese missiles and bullets might taste enemy blood in all the nooks and corners of this world, but its defeat is inevitable and ordained by the laws that governed the first two world wars. What Hitler let out through his individual manic personality, the Chinese leadership is doing it collectively. Result: They have all enemies in its neighborhood and across the world. In South Asian context, only a failed state can be counted as its real ally. If by dumping cheap exports in poor African countries, Chinese leadership has come to believe that it has dozens of allies, then it’s a gross miscalculation of strategic facts. By crossing all the limits of diplomatic niceties vis-à-vis India through claiming vast Indian territories as its own, it has taken its art of statecraft 70 year back to the Nazi era. By stepping on the toes of smaller nations around South China Sea, it has created a sort of one versus many situation. If there is a WWIII, believe me Chinese fate cannot under any circumstances be better than the belligerent axis powers.

In cooperation with America, India can play a great role in this coalition of forces against the arrogant and blinded-by-power Godzilla and beat it like those smaller boys beat the bully who ran down the stairs utterly terrified and may be even pissed in its pants. Every Chinese act of belligerence driven by madly chronic, expansive nationalism is going to earn it more and more enemies. USA beat Russia in Cold War because there was NATO. It never trumpeted its status as the sole decider of world’s destiny, even though it could have done so. It always kept many allies to its side, even though they played a marginal part in its campaigns. So China carry on with your enemy-making juggernaut, we Indians will meanwhile cooperate with Americans and your ever-longer list of enemies to beat the Micky out of you in the possible WWIII.

Was Indo-China 1962 Confrontation In Fact a War?

We lost the war to China in 1962. Was it worthy of being analyzed as a war? And put up such Himalayan psychological, defeatist dab on our young and exultant sense of nationalism? ‘War’ is unjustifiably too big an expression for these basically poorly planned skirmishes in the barren Himalayan terrain, where hardcore war strategies and ironclad nationalism melted into the anonymous mists of those far-fetched undefined territories. We had no plan at all, except the vague idea about our boundary lines. They had a stronger idea about what they thought belonged to them. It was merely a school-boyish mad rush into uninhabited wilderness to find some larger meanings which no side had a definite idea about. So the anecdotes are full of chance skirmishes, futile bravados and disproportionate hoopla about the proportions of battle engagements.

As a newly independent country, we accepted the word 'war' to qualify on the scale of capability to defend the new-found sovereignty and territories. This mere acceptance of the expression 'war' for those rudimentary childish pursuits in the wild snowy trails has done us more psychological and historical harm than the real casualties on the battle field. The stage was too hazy and distant. In the wide nook and corners of India, we grew up with this massive war defeat scar that was in fact in terrible disproportion to the scale of real operations. Admitted, China rushed in to grab a considerable proportion of the territories in Aksai Chin where our claim of ownership was just stamped by symbolic patrols and traditional belief. But losing a chunk of land over which we never had the time and capability to fully stamp our ownership, does no justice to the fact of accepting some free runs in barren lands as a humiliating defeat in a full-scale war. We just lost a few not so pitched battles, that’s all! We ourselves get hyper about the word 'war' to somehow exaggerate the scale of military operations (we as the defendants of our territories and Chinese as the greedy grabbers) to legalize our victimhood and their crime act. And for this we just accept the insulting defeat in a bloody war.

Fifty years on, what is the ground position in the actually held territories? We have all the reasons to smile and give ourselves a pat on the back and bury that scar, even if it means with a cosmetic sense of belated belief. The strength of any military unit is directly proportional to its real-life practice in the field. In mountain warfare we far outdo China. Thanks to Messers Pakistan and Co. we have been busy in mountain warfare for more than six decades. When you are fighting against the invisible enemy and try to keep your humanitarian records clean as well, it really gives you the bloodiest war drills. It has been going on against insurgencies at both the Eastern and Western fronts in the toughest Himalayan terrains. It has been at tremendous costs at the man and material fronts. But believe me it has put our forces through such fiery experiences that it can be really counted as one of the most battle-worthy in mountainous regions. Chinese military bragging meanwhile has been limited to nationalist gung-ho, hoopla and technological innovations. But there is a great difference between getting starry eyed over a new warfare gadget and getting into the real mess of a bloody situation where you have to kill the hidden enemy, spare you people and keep the thing of law in your mind in the snowy heights. We are a far superior military force, on account of our constant real-life drills, in the terrain that are in dispute with China.

Indian Navy still scores over China. It is not about having the biggest dagger in the world. What matters is that your dagger should be just long enough to reach the enemy’s heart and you should have, first, the intention, and second, the strength to push it that deep. I mean the nukes! Equipped with this deterrence, we are logically capable of engaging Chinese in--both limited and not-so-limited--conventional mountain warfare. We have invested so much of money into air warfare equipments, at the cost of depriving millions of people of basic amenities of life. However, it at the minimum gives us all the reasons to practically maintain our supply chains in the toughest terrain. So Indians forget about a few skirmishes lost to China in 1962 and be optimistic about future.