Success at Doklam

India achieves status quo ante without firing a single bullet

The ministry of external affairs stated on Monday afternoon that Indian and Chinese troops were “disengaging” in the Doklam area near Sikkim. The Doklam face-off between the two countries began over the construction of a road. It has ended with the construction halted. India, therefore, has crossed the border back into its territory. This is the restoration of status quo ante, which is what India had wanted. That India has managed to achieve its objective without firing a shot, while showing maturity and restraint in the face of the Chinese media onslaught, and with the military assessing its position carefully before making its move to achieve local positional superiority, and surprise the Chinese, are all to the credit to the government and the army. On its part, China has said it will continue to patrol the area, but that was never the issue. The point was to not change the situation on the ground, as agreed on in 2012. It is a diplomatic bonus that this episode also saw the US and Japan siding with India in their public statements.

This hopefully brings to a close the weeks-long crisis. It is also a great relief that backroom diplomacy has worked and the immediate confrontation has been defused. Of course, much is still to be learned about how this was achieved. Moreover, a careful eye must continue to be kept on Chinese activity in this strategically important region. Going forward, however, there are several lessons that the Indian government must draw from this episode. The first is that it should not be allowed to recur; an institutional mechanism must be evolved for resolving such issues and indicating what core interests might be being breached by either side. The Chinese government has claimed that it had let India know well in advance of its road-building plans. The government must see if this was in fact the case and, if so, why pre-emptive action was not taken, or discussions opened. It is precisely to fill such lacunae that a more structured mechanism must be developed. Two mature countries, nuclear-armed nations with pretensions to great power status, should not be reduced to allowing their soldiers to scuffle along the border. 

Alongside this mechanism, greater attention must be paid to the India-Bhutan relationship. After all, the dispute over the land in question is technically between China and Bhutan. That the Indian army and not the Royal Bhutanese Army stepped up in this case should not be a surprise, given the historical relationship between the two countries. But such actions should in future be given a solid and transparent legal footing in order to defang propaganda emanating from Beijing. India should also go out of its way to smoothen any feathers in Bhutan that have been ruffled by this incident. But the immediate reaction should be relief that calmer heads have prevailed, and that the confrontation has not been allowed to escalate.