Sunday, November 12, 2017

The Gallipoli Campaign: Learning From A Mismatch Of Strategic Ends And Means

SOURCE::
http://www.eurasiareview.com/04112015-the-gallipoli-campaign-learning-from-a-mismatch-of-strategic-ends-and-means-analysis/

       [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcMFpn45tDM ]










The Gallipoli Campaign: Learning From A Mismatch Of Strategic Ends And Means – Analysis



  
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British battleship HMS Irresistible abandoned and sinking, having been shattered by explosion of floating mine in Dardanelles during attack on Narrows’ Forts, March 18, 1915 (Royal Navy/Library of Congress)

                               THE  BATTLE

[ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGZoF1pwb5M ] 





  [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxTKqldkyik ]






1 Analysis 
By Raymond Adams
World War I began on July 28, 1914, 1 month after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir-apparent to the Austro-Hungarian throne.1 Most Europeans expected the conflict to be short—“over by Christmas” was a common refrain—and relatively inexpensive in terms of blood and treasure. Almost immediately, however, the combatants faced each other in a long line of static defensive trenches. The Western Front quickly became a killing ground of unprecedented violence in human history: combined British, French, and German casualties totaled 2,057,621 by January 1915.2

The character of war had changed. Armies had not changed their battlefield tactics in response to new, highly destructive weapons, resulting in massive casualties. Rising calls from British political leaders, the media, and the public demanded action to break the stalemate.

  British strategists responded by opening a new front in the east with two strategic objectives: drive Turkey out of the war by attacking Constantinople, and open a route to beleaguered ally Russia.3 The decision to open a second front in the east in 1915 ultimately failed to achieve Britain’s strategic objectives during the first full year of World War I. 

 British leaders pursued short-term, politically expedient military objectives in Turkey that were both ancillary to their military expertise and contrary to achieving the overall ends of winning the war by defeating Germany. This article examines the disastrous results of the attempt to open a second front and the disconnect between Allied strategic ends and means.

Genesis of the Dardanelles Decision

With combat in France and Belgium characterized by hopeless direct assaults on entrenched enemy positions, British strategists began planning for a new direction.4 First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill contemplated amphibious operations in the North Sea to increase pressure on Germany. He proposed a joint Anglo-French amphibious assault along the Belgian coast designed to outflank German positions on the Western Front, liberate the port of Zeebrugge, and prevent Germany from using Zeebrugge and Ostende as submarine bases.5 Ultimately, the British failed to convince the French to participate, effectively scuttling Churchill’s North Sea plan.

British political and military leaders next focused attention on Turkey and the possibility of military operations to seize the Dardanelles,6 attack Constantinople, and open a line of communication to Russia. Secretary of the War Cabinet Maurice Hankey, Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George, and Churchill advocated military operations against Turkey on the Gallipoli Peninsula.7 They agreed that the Ottoman Empire was weak and that “Germany [could] perhaps be struck most effectively, and with the most lasting results on the peace of the world through her allies, and particularly through Turkey.”8 Thus, within weeks of the outbreak of war, British attention turned east.
At the end of August 1914, Churchill formally requested that Secretary of State for War Field Marshal Herbert Kitchener organize a group of naval and military officers to plan for the seizure of the Gallipoli Peninsula, “with a view to admitting a British Fleet to the Sea of Marmara” and eventually knocking Turkey out of the war.9 



Representatives of the War Office and the Admiralty met and concluded that an attack on the Gallipoli Peninsula was not a militarily feasible operation.10 Director of Military Operations Major General Charles Callwell11 presciently observed that a campaign in Gallipoli was “likely to prove an extremely difficult operation of war.”12 He proffered that an operation in the Dardanelles would require a force of not less than 60,000, with strong siege artillery, echeloned into Turkey in two large waves.13 

 Kitchener also disagreed with opening a second front, but for different reasons. He was reluctant to divert troops from the continent, which he viewed as the primary focus of effort for the British.

A dichotomy of opinion thus emerged: the politicians advocated for a second front on the Gallipoli Peninsula, while senior military officers argued against intervention in Turkey.14 The debate continued into winter. 

 The dynamic changed on January 1, 1915, when Russia formally requested a “naval or military demonstration against the Turks to ease the pressure caused by the Turkish offensive driving through the Caucasus Mountains.”15 

 British decision  makers debated the Russian request and the larger issue of the future strategic direction of the war effort during a series of War Council meetings in early January.16 The council decided that the British would continue to fight side by side with France on the Western Front, and the Admiralty would, commencing in February 1915, prepare operations “to invade and take the Gallipoli Peninsula, with Constantinople as its objective.”17

Bureaucratic maneuvering and negotiation were thus necessary to reach a decision to launch the operation. The next major task for senior British leaders was designing the strategy to implement the War Council’s decisions. 
The final plan would call for a combined force of six British and four French battleships, accompanied by a substantial naval escort, to push through the Dardanelles and fight to Constantinople.18

Flawed Assumptions Underpinning the British Strategy

The British designed their Dardanelles plan on a series of faulty assumptions. 

         (A)    Political leaders and military planners alike assumed                    the Turks were deficient in martial skill, grit, and                        determination.19 

          (B)      Churchill displayed unbridled confidence in the                            ability of naval bombardment to destroy land                                targets.20 

         ( C )     British war planners assumed that the battle fleet                        would easily breach the enemy’s coastal defenses,                        float directly to Constantinople, and seize the                                 straits  without requiring a landing force.

         (D)     Kitchener assumed that, once through                                the straits, with naval guns pointing at                                             Constantinople, the fleet would “compel                                         Turkey’s capitulation, secure a supply route to                             hard-pressed Russia, and inspire the Balkan                                states to join the Allied war effort and eventually                           to attack Austro-Hungary, thereby pressuring                              Germany.”21
           (E)   Kitchener further assumed that once                               news of the arrival of the British fleet reached                                Constantinople, the entire Turkish army in                                    Thrace would retreat, leaving Turkey to British                            control.22 

                 (F)      Sir Edward Grey, Secretary of State for                                         Foreign Affairs, argued that once the fleet                                      moved through the Dardanelles, “a coup                                        d’état  would occur in Constantinople,                                            whereby Turkey would abandon the Central                                   Powers and join the Entente.”23 
All of the foregoing assumptions proved false, and their cumulative effect
foreordained the Dardanelles operation to disaster.

Naval Operations in the Dardanelles

British naval forces shelled the forts at the entrance of the Dardanelles on November 1, 1914, well before the formal commencement of the Gallipoli campaign. The purpose of the attack was more to punish Turkey for siding with the Triple Alliance than an attempt to secure the strait. The shelling had a more pernicious effect, alerting the Turkish defenders that a future military operation in the Dardanelles by the British was likely. Mustafa Kamal Attaturk, overall Turkish commander at Gallipoli, and Otto Liman von Sanders, a German general and military advisor to Turkey, focused on fortifying the Dardanelles after the British attack of November 1.24 The Anglo-French naval force attacked the Dardanelles in force on March 18, 1915. The battle initially favored the attackers. Naval bombardment in the days preceding the assault successfully destroyed several Turkish defensive positions at the entrance to the straits.25 By midday, the British fleet neutralized most of the Turkish mines at the mouth of the Dardanelles, leaving nine more mine belts in the approach to Constantinople.26 The Clausewitzian concept of chance in war then emerged. The fleet approached an undetected line of 20 mines, which a Turkish steamer had laid just 10 days earlier.27 Three Allied warships struck mines and sank; a fourth suffered severe damage and was unsalvageable.28 The assumption that the Turks would surrender on sight of the British naval force was incorrect, and the prospect of a collapse of the Ottoman Empire by means of a naval assault alone died on March 18. The setback caused the British War Council to delay further naval action immediately.
The council charted a new course and called for landing troops in a beach-hopping campaign from the Aegean to the Sea of Marmara, eventually attacking Constantinople.29 However, 38 days would pass before British commanders were able to embark, transport, and land military forces on the peninsula. 

 In the interim, the enemy seized the initiative.

 Turkey deployed six divisions, some 500 German advisors, and civilian labor units in a hurried effort to strengthen Gallipoli’s defenses in anticipation of the next round of fighting.



Amphibious Landings on Gallipoli

The British did not reassess their strategic objective of defeating Turkey and opening a line of communication with Russia after the failure of the naval attack. In fact, the historical record shows just the opposite: British leaders redoubled their efforts, eventually committing nearly 500,000 Allied forces to the Gallipoli operation. Kitchener appointed General Sir Ian Hamilton as the overall commander of a combined force of British, Australian, New Zealander, and French troops. Hamilton faced a challenge of epic proportions. His task was to conduct the first opposed amphibious landing in an era of high-powered defensive weapons that included innovations such as the machine gun and highly accurate artillery firing a new generation of high explosives.30
At dawn on April 25, 1915, British, Dominion, and Allied forces waded ashore onto six landing beaches at Cape Helles.31 Amphibious operations continued for 8 months, but the Allies never gained more than a foothold on the peninsula. The campaign to outflank the stalemate on the Western Front ironically began to resemble the fighting in France and Belgium, although on a much smaller scale, with Hamilton committing his troops against an entrenched and forewarned foe at Gallipoli.32 Although Kitchener and Hamilton recognized that a central assumption about the Turks—that they were a second-rate fighting force that did not stand a chance against British arms—was clearly wrong, they did not change course.33 In fairness to British military commanders, a major reason for continuing the operation was political expediency.34 David Fromkin observes, “Constantinople and the Dardanelles, because of their world importance for shipping, and eastern Thrace, because it is in Europe, were positions that occupied a special status in the minds of British leaders.”35 As Churchill further argued, “the line of deep water separating Asia from Europe was a line of great significance, and we must make that line secure by every means within our power.”36
Despite the perceived importance of the region to British war aims, the Allies withdrew from the peninsula on January 9, 1916, dashing hopes of defeating Turkey and reaching the Russians. British, Australian, New Zealander, and French casualties totaled 130,000, yet the operation achieved none of the goals set by British political leaders.

Mismatch of Ends and Means

The British experience in the Dardanelles is a cautionary tale that highlights the flaws inherent in a strategy characterized by improperly aligned ends and means.37 

 The initial plan—a navy-only effort to forcibly enter the Dardanelles, navigate the peninsula while destroying land-based targets with surface fires, and force the capitulation of Constantinople—is perhaps the classic example of imbalanced ends and means in World War I. Naval gunfire in 1915 was generally ineffective against land-based artillery and even static targets without ground-based spotters.38 

 Although the fleet had limited success in the opening days of the naval operation, decisively defeating Turkish defensive positions in the 35-mile-long strait with naval guns alone was not feasible. Furthermore, ships are by definition incapable of taking land and occupying terrain. In fact, neither Kitchener nor Hamilton had any sustainable plan to seize and hold terrain in March 1915.

Another example of mismatched ends and means occurred in the minesweeping phase of the first attack in Gallipoli. The Allied fleet “applied its least capable set of assets, that of fishing trawlers turned minesweepers manned by civilian crews, against the most difficult part of the campaign, that of clearing mines under fire.”39 
Even the amphibious landings of April 25 lacked properly balanced ends and means. A total of five British, French, and Commonwealth divisions landed at five separate beaches against entrenched defenders expecting an Allied attack.40 Although the number of forces in action in the Dardanelles consistently grew during the evolution of the operation, the fact remains that the Allies never successfully held a beachhead for an extended period, largely due to the lack of means, that is, ground forces.

Another imbalance in the ends-means paradigm was evident in British command and control. Inadequate command and control handicapped Hamilton throughout the campaign, but was especially evident during the first, crucial days of the landing. Hamilton monitored the landing from aboard the Queen Elizabeth. . . . [However], the Queen Elizabeth was not configured as a headquarters for an amphibious task force. As a result, Hamilton’s staff, what could be fitted aboard the Queen Elizabeth, was squirreled away throughout the ship.41

The commander of one of the largest, most complex amphibious assaults in history was thus virtually powerless to exert his will over his own forces, let alone those of the enemy. 

Without the means to command and control a complex military operation, the ends were all but unattainable.42 A lack of two further means—amphibious doctrine and previous army-navy joint training—also hindered Hamilton’s ability to orchestrate the landings.43 

The Clausewitzian concept of friction, compounded by the lack of command and control, amphibious doctrine, and previous army-navy training, took effect on the battlefield almost immediately. The historical record is replete with first-hand accounts of problems exacerbated by weak command and control. An Australian soldier succinctly described a frustrating scene undoubtedly unfolding for thousands of men during the Gallipoli campaign: 

 “Battalions dissolved into separated groups of men, some making marvelous progress but without possibility of any support. It was this and the strengthening Turkish resistance which led to the disturbing lack of confidence by commanders, who felt that the men should be evacuated.”44

Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, chief of the Prussian General Staff from 1857 to 1887, observed,

  “Strategy can direct its efforts only toward the highest goal that the available means make practically possible.”45

 British means in the Gallipoli campaign did not support British strategy. The imbalance between ends and means in the naval and ground campaigns in the Dardanelles doomed the overall effort to failure.


Conclusion

The changing character of war, embodied in the deadly intersection of 19th-century tactics and 20th-century weapons, created a staggering number of casualties in 1914. The carnage prompted British leaders to seek a new front to break the European stalemate. Strategists looked east to open a new theater of war. The plan to conduct operations against Turkey and open a route to Russia suffered from flawed assumptions, which led first to an ill-advised, naval-only attack in the Dardanelles. Six weeks later, this time without the element of surprise, the Allies attacked again. The second round featured a larger naval fleet with an embarked landing force of five divisions. A series of amphibious landings over the next 8 months, however, failed to gain anything more than a foothold for the Allies. The British lacked the means to achieve the desired ends in the Dardanelles, particularly in the command and control, doctrinal, training, and manpower realms. The Allies ultimately failed in their attempt to seize the Dardanelles, force Constantinople’s surrender, and open a link with their Russian ally. In the final analysis, a flawed strategy, poorly executed, did not achieve Allied ends.46

Coda: Lessons Learned on Amphibious Assault


The Dardanelles campaign was a disaster for Great Britain. Amphibious assaults against defended beachheads, among the most challenging of military operations, were widely considered impossible after the failed Gallipoli landings. The seemingly overwhelming challenges presented by amphibious assaults—in command and control, amphibious operations doctrine (or lack thereof), inter service coordination, and maintaining a beachhead after landing—convinced military and political leaders of the futility of operational maneuver from the sea. However, as Clausewitz observed,  “Historical examples clarify everything and also provide the best kind of proof in the empirical sciences. This is particularly true in the art of war.”47 
During the interwar years, military planners and theorists validated the Clausewitzian concept of the value of studying history.

 Planners and theorists analyzed the reasons for the failure in the Dardanelles and developed doctrine, conducted exercises, and structured forces to overcome the problems associated with successfully assaulting fortified coastal defensive positions.

  A generation after Gallipoli, the Allies successfully landed tens of thousands of troops on beaches defended by entrenched and well-equipped German and Japanese forces. Allied amphibious operations in North Africa, Europe, and the Pacific were instrumental in the combined effort to defeat Nazism and Japanese imperialism.

 Another lesson to emerge from Gallipoli, despite failure there, was the importance of the indirect approach, which factored heavily into British strategy during World War II. Churchill favored amphibious operations against Germany in the North Sea in 1914 in an effort to bypass the main line of resistance on the Western Front. Less than three decades later, Churchill opposed the U.S.-favored Operation Roundup, a cross-channel attack planned for mid-1942. The prime minister instead advocated for operations in North Africa, Italy, and the Balkans—presumably softer targets than Adolf Hitler’s Atlantic Wall—before a cross-channel assault against Fortress Europe.
Finally, Churchill personifies the greatest legacy of the Gallipoli campaign. A primary architect of the Dardanelles disaster, he managed to salvage his reputation and career after Gallipoli, and emerged as one of the most effective war leaders in history during World War II.

 The lessons of Gallipoli, learned at great cost in blood and materiel, were thus not in vain.
Source:
This article was published in the Joint Force Quarterly 79 which is published by the National Defense University.
Notes:
  1. Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy forged the Triple Alliance in May 1882. France, Britain, and Russia formed the Triple Entente in 1907 in an attempt to balance the growing German threat as Berlin’s economy and military grew in the early 20th century. Members of the Triple Alliance were bound to defend each other through force of arms; Triple Entente members had a “moral obligation” to defend each other. A critical event occurred on August 2, 1914, when the Ottoman Empire signed a secret treaty joining the Triple Alliance. See Hew Strachan, ed., The Oxford Illustrated History of the First World War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 10–11; U.S. Department of State, Catalogue of Treaties: 1814–1918 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1919), 11; “The Road to War: The Triple Entente,” BBC Schools, available at <www.bbc.co.uk/schools/worldwarone/hq/causes2_01.shtml>.
  2. Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire during the Great War (London: His Majesty’s Printing Office, 1922), 237–252.
  3. Russia suffered stinging losses soon after the outbreak of hostilities, particularly in the Battle of Tannenberg against Germany. The British feared a Russian collapse and thus sought to relieve pressure on the tsar by attacking through the Dardanelles to reach Russia.
  4. David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1989), 124.
  5. Ibid.
  6. The Dardanelles Strait is 35 miles in length. The entrance is 2.5 miles wide. It extends for 4 miles in a northeasterly direction, widens to a maximum width of 4.5 miles, and then narrows to less than a mile. The narrows extend for 4 miles, then widen again to 3 miles. They continue for another 20 miles before entering the Sea of Marmara. This geographic information is from Victor Rudenno, Gallipoli: Attack from the Sea (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 27.
  7. Fromkin, 125.
  8. Ibid.
  9. Graham T. Clews, Churchill’s Dilemma: The Real Story Behind the Origins of the 1915 Dardanelles Campaign (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2010), 44.
  10. Ibid.
  11. Charles E. Callwell was an influential military theorist. He published a seminal work on counterinsurgency titled Small Wars: Their Principles and Practice (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1899).
  12. Trumbull Higgins, Winston Churchill and the Dardanelles: A Dialogue in Ends and Means (New York: Macmillan, 1963), 57.
  13. Ibid.
  14. Fromkin, 127, observes, “The doctrine of the generals was to attack the enemy at his strongest point; that of the politicians was to attack at his weakest.” This “politicians’ predilection” for attacking at the enemy’s weakest point would surface again in World War II.
  15. Peter Hart, Gallipoli (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 14.
  16. Ibid., 16.
  17. As quoted in ibid.
  18. Martin Gilbert, A History of the Twentieth Century, Volume One: 1900–1933 (New York: Avon Books, 1997), 63.
  19. Hart, 22.
  20. Clews, 37.
  21. Gilbert, A History of the Twentieth Century, 363.
  22. Ibid.
  23. Ibid.
  24. Rudenno, 12–13.
  25. Martin Gilbert, The First World War: A Complete History (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1994), 136.
  26. Gilbert, A History of the Twentieth Century, 365.
  27. Gilbert, The First World War, 136.
  28. Clews, 275.
  29. Gilbert, A History of the Twentieth Century, 365.
  30. Hart, 171.
  31. Fromkin, 157. The historical record is replete with accounts of heroism and suffering on both sides. However, a detailed account of the fighting at the tactical level is not within the scope of this article.
  32. Ibid., 561.
  33. The concept of sunk cost applies in the Gallipoli campaign. The theory behind the sunk cost concept is that in a failing endeavor, such as Gallipoli, the decisionmaker justifies continued expenditure in an effort to recoup past losses.
  34. British decisionmaking in the Gallipoli campaign is a classic example of the Rubicon theory of war. Under this theory, “when people believe they have crossed a psychological Rubicon and perceive war to be imminent, they switch from what psychologists call a ‘deliberative’ to an ‘implemental’ mind-set, triggering a number of psychological biases, most notably overconfidence.” This theory helps explain why, even when the commanders realized their central assumptions about Gallipoli were wrong, British political and military leaders made no change in the overall course of the Dardanelles strategy. Information concerning the Rubicon theory of war is from Dominic D.P. Johnson and Dominic Tierney, “The Rubicon Theory of War: How the Path to Conflict Reaches the Point of No Return,” International Security 36, no. 1 (Summer 2001), 7–40.
  35. Fromkin, 548–549.
  36. As quoted in ibid., 549.
  37. Carl von Clausewitz devoted a significant amount of discussion to the importance of properly linking ends and means in strategy. See Carl von Clausewitz, On War, trans. and ed. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 127–147, et seq.
  38. Jonathan Schroden, “Strait Comparison: Lessons Learned from the 1915 Dardanelles Campaign in the Context of a Strait of Hormuz Closure Event,” Center for Naval Analyses, September 2011, available at <www.history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading-room/title-list-alphabetically/s/strait-comparison-lessons-learned-from-1915-dardanelles-campaign.html>.
  39. Ibid.
  40. Philip J. Haythornthwaite, Gallipoli, 1915: Frontal Assault on Turkey, Osprey Military Campaign Series 8 (London: Osprey, 1991), 45.
  41. Gregory A. Thiele, “Why Did Gallipoli Fail? Why Did Albion Succeed? A Comparative Analysis of Two World War I Amphibious Assaults,” Baltic Security and Defence Review 13, no. 2 (2011), 139.
  42. The ends were successful penetration of the Dardanelles, landing and sustaining assault forces on well-defended beaches, and forcing the surrender of the capital city of an empire.
  43. Thiele, 150.
  44. Peter H. Liddle, Gallipoli 1915: Pens, Pencils and Cameras at War (London: Brassey’s Defence Publishers, Ltd., 1985), 45.
  45. Grand [German] General Staff, trans. A.G. Zimmerman, Moltke’s Military Works: Precepts of War(Newport, RI: U.S. Naval War College, 1935), Part II, 1.
  46. Churchill lost his post as the First Lord of the Admiralty and Hamilton lost his command in the aftermath of Gallipoli. The conclusions of the Gallipoli Commission, which inquired into the circumstances of the failed military operation, are available at <www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/firstworldwar/transcripts/battles/dardanelles.htm>.
  47. Clausewitz, 170.



























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Saturday, November 11, 2017

DOKLAM BORDER STANDOFF : WILL THERE BE AN INDIA-CHINA WAR ?

SOURCE:
http://defenceupdate.in/doklam-border-standoff-will-india-china-war/

























http://idrw.org/doklam-border-standoff-will-there-be-an-india-china-war/#more-143026

https://defence.pk/pdf/threads/doklam-border-standoff-will-there-be-an-india-china-war.509764/










DOKLAM BORDER STANDOFF : WILL THERE BE AN INDIA-CHINA WAR ?











A week ahead of August 1, when China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) marks its 90th anniversary, Xi Jinping's Red Army had a stern message for India. A PLA major-general, flanked by three senior colonels, held a rare meet-the-press in Beijing. "Our willingness and resolve to defend our sovereignty," Senior Colonel Wu Qian thundered, "is indomitable. We will do so whatever the cost." India, he continued, should "not harbour illusions". "The history of the PLA of past 90 years," he said, "has proven our resolve."


COMPLETE COVERAGE: India-China stand-off


China's sabre-rattling, ever since the June 16 standoff with India came to light, has been relentless. One reason, insiders suspect, is that for the PLA and for Xi, the face-off at Doklam couldn't have come at a more sensitive time. On August 1, President Xi, who also heads the PLA's Central Military Commission (CMC) and is the commander-in-chief, will supervise the army's largest-ever annual war games in Zhurihe, Inner Mongolia, a show of strength that is meant to test the military a year after Xi kicked off its most far-reaching reforms. Not only that, in November, Xi will preside over a once-in-five-years party congress that will be key to his second term, as rival factions jostle for the top slots. Any sign of weakness will be seized upon.





Beijing's bluster has been met with quiet resolve from New Delhi. Nearly 300 Indian soldiers have pitched their tents on Doklam blocking the PLA from building a contentious road into territory Bhutan claims. Army officials says the troops will stay for as long as New Delhi wants them to, even through the 10 below zero winter temperatures of the plateau.


Doklam comes at a time when China is pitching its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) even as it aggressively asserts territorial claims around its periphery. "It hurts China's self-image as an emerging global power and Asian hegemon that India should turn its back on BRI and thwart its South Asian plans," says former foreign secretary Kanwal Sibal.


Doklam is now in the domain of the PMO which steers foreign policy. The MEA has been silent after its June 30 statement where it noted India's "deep concern at the recent Chinese actions" and "conveyed to the Chinese government that such construction would represent a significant change of status quo with serious security implications for India".



A senior MEA official rejects China's stand that the issue is between China and Bhutan and explains why India is on firm ground, legally and logically. "China's physical movement towards Bhutan automatically pushes the trijunction towards the Indian side thus bringing it closer to the 'chicken's neck' that connects India's Northeast to the rest of India. It's not a unilateral issue but a tripartite one. China alone or even China and Bhutan can't resolve it. The solution has to be tripartite," he says.


As China ramps up the rhetoric, New Delhi is soft-pedalling the standoff. Instructions have apparently gone out to politicians, bureaucrats and the military to not publicly comment on the stalemate. Hectic parleys are under way to defuse the crisis without any perceived loss of face. In a nudge that Beijing is unlikely to take kindly to, a US department of defence spokesperson on July 22 encouraged "India and China to engage in direct dialogue aimed at reducing tensions and free of any coercive aspects". New Delhi is looking at National Security Advisor Ajit Doval's visit to Beijing for the BRICS' NSA meeting on July 27-28 as one channel for dialogue.



The Military Imbalance

 The PLA's war rhetoric has so far not translated into additional boots on the ground. Even a month after the standoff, there has been no mobilisation on the Tibetan plateau, a prerequisite for carrying out its threats. Footage of recent 'live firing drills' released on Chinese media were from a PLA exercise last month.


The Indian and Chinese armies last fired in anger 50 years ago, in 1967. The Indian army hit back at the PLA's attempt to disturb the status quo in Sikkim, with a ferocious artillery bombardment at Nathu La on September 11 and Cho La on October 1 where over 300 PLA soldiers were reportedly killed. The incident came exactly five years after the 1962 war loss.


Since 1967, every aggressive move the two sides have made along the 4,057-km-long Line of Actual Control (LAC) has essentially been posturing, each side manoeuvring to prevent the other from altering the status quo on the ground. The closest India and China came to another war was in June 1986 when General K. Sundarji heli-lifted a mountain brigade to face off against a PLA incursion which had built a road into Arunachal Pradesh. Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping conveyed, through visiting US defence secretary Caspar Weinberger, his intent to "teach India a lesson" if the crisis was not resolved. The Chinese troops did not withdraw until 1993 when Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao visited Beijing.


Peace and tranquility have prevailed on the border ever since, and the two words formed the underlying text of a landmark 'Border Peace and Tranquility Agreement' signed by PM Rao in 1993. More recently, China's thrust on border infrastructure and the PLA's transformation have made the peace an uneasy one.


Xi's reforms of the PLA are without doubt the most sweeping in its 90-year history. The focus is on modernising and enabling greater integration through a newly set-up joint operations command system, something which India itself has long sought-and failed-to implement. The army's various departments are now under the direct control of the Central Military Commission (CMC), which Xi heads. Now, a single western theatre command handles the border with India, integrating the earlier Chengdu and Lanzhou military regions. The focus is on mobility and nimbleness, leveraging the road and rail infrastructure China has in place, and on integrating the army and air force more closely.

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IF WAR BREAKs OUT NOW"

 " " INDIAN ARMY IS DOOMED" 

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On the face of it, the odds seem to overwhelmingly favour the PLA. Weak infrastructure and a stalled military modernisation have hobbled the Indian armed forces attempts to ramp up their posture from deterrence to credible deterrence. This year's defence budget, at 1.5 per cent of the GDP, was the lowest allocation since 1950-51. The army's attempts to replace its ageing helicopters, missiles and infantry equipment after the 1999 Kargil War are yet to bear fruit. Its first howitzer buys in three decades, the 146 ultralight howitzers from the US, will trickle in only next year. Its Mountain Strike Corps, an offensive high altitude warfighting force comprising over 90,000 soldiers, will only be combat-ready by 2021. The armed forces lack strategic reconnaissance to peer at least 300 kilometres deep into China and Pakistan and detect mobilisations. The army has been embarrassed by revelations in a July 21 CAG report of its tank and howitzer ammunition being adequate for only 10 days of intense war fighting against the prescribed 40 days.



THANKS BORDER ROADS COMMUNICATIONS IS DOWN THE DRAIN


But of greater concern is the tardy pace of adding border infrastructure. Only 22 of the 73 all-weather roads along the LAC have been completed a decade after they were sanctioned, the 14 strategic railway lines to rush troops and supplies to the border remain paperbound. The IAF's dip in combat aircraft, 32 instead of the sanctioned 39 fighter squadrons, is so perilous that Air Chief Marshal B.S. Dhanoa, in a recent interview, compared it to playing cricket with seven instead of 11 players. The navy is short on both submarines and anti-submarine warfare helicopters, key capabilities in tracking Chinese submarines that are now routinely deployed in the Indian Ocean.


The government is yet to move on the recommendations of the Lt General D.B. Shekatkar committee, submitted to the MoD in December 2016. Key proposals include appointing a chief of defence staff, a single-point military advisor to accelerate the integration of the armed forces, creating integrated theatre commands to synergise the three services and cutting back on non-fighting formations to enhance the military's combat potential while saving Rs 25,000 crore over five years. A classified part of the report mentions that the focus of warfare for both the army and the air force are likely to be the mountains since this is where the disputed areas with China and Pakistan lie.



China's Firepower Boost

In Beijing, the view is that the timing of China's muscle-flexing over the Doklam incident is no coincidence amid an overhaul of the PLA. The military's massive transformation has created its own stresses and uncertainties. In the past too, PLA observers say, such circumstances have driven the military to adopt a hardline posture, driven both by domestic political considerations and the need to rally public support for the military. In the lead-up to August 1 and the 90th anniversary, for instance, the PLA's officers have been publicly pledging their allegiance to Xi and showering praise on his reforms. Former PLA officers have even used the Doklam incident to attack the army's critics and demand total support for the army.


"It's advantage India in terms of the army's training and professionalism, and advantage China in terms of infrastructure, logistics, supplies, firepower quantity and their second artillery," says Srikanth Kondapalli, an expert on the Chinese military at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.         
               

[MISPLACED COMMENT:MILITARY FACT IS 

"NEVER UNDER ESTIMATE YOUR  ADVERSARY"  --  

VASUNDHRA ]


    
 Since China's 10th five-year plan (2001-2005), Beijing had embarked on an ambitious push to build a road and rail network across Xinjiang and Tibet. A decade-and-a-half later, it is almost complete, in stark contrast with India's stalled border road-building. Beijing, no doubt, enjoys the topographical advantage of the Tibetan plateau in both western and eastern sectors, it is only bordering Sikkim in the Chumbi Valley where it faces a major disadvantage. But that too is no impediment, for this year the last two towns in Tibet-Gyalasa and Gandeng in Medog county that borders Arunachal will be connected to the massive highway network, which is now over 82,000 kilometres in length.


In all three sectors, western, middle and eastern, motorable Chinese roads now reach right up to the Indian border. In the middle and eastern sectors, in the Chumbi Valley bordering Sikkim and in Nyingchi across the border from Arunachal, the Chinese railway network will reach the border by 2019.                  [  RAILWAY HAS ALREADY  CROSSED TSANG PO & REACHED  ACROSS  - VASUNDHRA ] In the current five-year plan (2016-2020), the Yanga-Nyingchi railway to the Arunachal border, the Shigatse-Yadong railway to the Chumbi Valley and the Sikkim border, and the Shigatse-Gyirong railway to the Nepal border will be completed. As local officials in Yadong county told India Today in 2015, a 500-km rail track has already entered the Chumbi Valley and tests will begin next year. The line to Nyingchi near Arunachal is now being constructed and will be ready in two years' time. This allows China to rapidly mobilise divisions from not only the western theatre command, but also from the central, southern and eastern theatre commands to the Indian border in a matter of days.

The PLA air force also operates around a dozen airfields along the Indian border, with five big airports in Tibet, from Ngari Gunsa in Shiquanhe, which borders Aksai Chin, to Nyingchi airport near Arunachal. The other big logistical advantage for China, Kondapalli notes, is its indigenous military industrial complex that ensures independence of supplies. "They have a 30-day backup which means they don't have to depend on supplies. Our record is relatively bleak on this front," he notes.


 Most Chinese analyses of the border with India have highlighted Beijing's artillery and missile units as its biggest advantage.


A detailed study published on July 7 in the Sina military portal, China's most widely-read defence website, assessed how the country would handle a conflict with India. It noted that the PLA had made big strides in mobilisation, and revealed that in 2014, during the Chumar standoff, China was able to rapidly mobilise its 54th group army, which was involved in both the India and Vietnam wars, from Henan to Tibet to undertake a drill, while long-range rocket artilleries and J-10 fighters were also sent to border airports as deterrence. "After decades of preparation for war, the PLA has experienced a kind of metamorphosis... Weapons, drills, logistics, and military tactics have improved to a large extent. Troop deployments at the western frontier have been strengthened, as also field artilleries in Tibet. 

There is serious deterrence towards India," it concluded, suggesting China's aim was to win the war without fighting.


Will China go to War?


If China does go to war, analysts say, it will be only after carefully weighing the benefits of getting into a full-scale conventional war where it cannot score a decisive victory. To initiate a conflict will mean tearing up multiple peace and tranquility border agreements with India and disabusing its own proclamation of "peaceful development".

"It would be absurd for China to start a war over its own actions, and over disputed territory with a small country that has a security relationship with India under which India has acted," says Sibal. "China's credibility on territorial issues is very low internationally because of its actions in the South China Sea and repudiation of the UNCLOS award. It will suffer heavy casualties if it triggered a border conflict as would India with minor gains, which would puncture its balloon of military superiority."

In the event of the most plausible conflict scenario, a limited war involving only the army and air force, an advancing PLA will first have to reckon with over 250 of the IAF's Su-30MKI air dominance fighters (the IAF's fighter jets sat out the 1962 war). The IAF jets can take off from their bases on the plains with a full payload of fuel and weapons as opposed to the PLAAF fighters operating off the exposed airfields on the Tibetan plateau with reduced combat loads and fuel (due to the rarefied air). "The IAF's unlikely to wait for PLA to make the first move, our fighters will target their concentration areas," says Air Marshal P.S. Ahluwalia, former C-in-C of the Western Air Command.


INDIA's  RHETORIC

 The PLA will have to break through heavily defended passes and valleys protected by over a dozen Indian mountain divisions with 16,000 soldiers each, protected by artillery, Brahmos missile regiments and, in certain places like Ladakh and north Sikkim, pre-positioned armoured brigades with T-72 tanks. "This is not the Indian army of 1962 which fought with bolt action rifles and PT shoes," says a senior army official. "We have three army corps or nearly three lakh soldiers in the Northeast. Today, we have brigades (3,000 soldiers) where we once had companies (100 men)."


The army's emphasis on manpower is not out of place. Mountains swallow troops. If an attack on the plains would need a ratio of 1:3 or three attackers for one defender, it swells to 1:12 in the mountains. The PLA will need over 50,000 soldiers to mount a successful thrust down the Chumbi Valley and towards India's 'chicken's neck' which the Doklam plateau overlooks.


Both sides are so evenly matched that neither can advance without incurring heavy casualties which is why experts believe Doklam might not trigger a conventional war. "China prefers to coerce," says defence analyst Ravi Rikhye. "It will be very, very reluctant to actually start a war." G. Parthasarathy, India's former high commissioner to Islamabad, terms Beijing's response to Doklam as "jingoistic and afflicted by hubris" and draws a parallel to the Sumdurong Chu standoff. "This one could last for months, if not years," he says.


There is, though, a view that the standoff marks a watershed moment in South Asia. "What we have done (in Doklam) is absolutely right and in accordance with the existing India-Bhutan bilateral arrangement," says ex-army chief General Bikram Singh. "However, a strategic fallout is that taking it as a precedent, China may, in the future, support Pakistan outright in border disputes. It is, therefore, axiomatic that we expeditiously create a two-front capability to safeguard our national interests."


Collusive Threat

Over a fortnight before the Doklam face-off, army chief General Bipin Rawat met his five army commanders in Srinagar. The commanders' huddle in Srinagar's Badami Bagh cantonment on June 1 came just two months after the twice-a-year army commanders' conference. The five army commanders, whose area of responsibility-northern, western, southwestern, southern and eastern covers all the zones of future conflict, reviewed war contingencies with Pakistan, particularly its 'proactive strategy', colloquially called 'cold start'. Conceived in 2004, it cuts down on the two-week-long mobilisation time by swiftly mobilising the army to carry out lightning multi-front shallow thrusts across the border with Pakistan within 72 hours. The option of thinning troops from the China border to address the Pakistan front, as the army has done in the past, is no longer viable. 

"We cannot redeploy troops from our eastern borders now. The risk of losing territory to probes by the PLA is too great," says an Indian army general.


Earlier this year, the government lifted a 2015 MoD freeze on the army's mountain strike corps which had slashed its manpower and budgets by half-Rs 38,000 crore and 35,000 soldiers. The army is working out a revised version of 'cold start' to fight an intensive battle of 10-15 days.

An upcoming tri-services military exercise is to be held at an undecided date to work out new strategies to address a multi-front war. On July 8, army chief General Rawat told ANI that "the army is fully ready for a two-and-a-half front war" (the 'half' is for terrorists being used by either China or Pakistan to carry out acts of sabotage).


Shadow Boxing 

"It may be difficult to shake a mountain, but it is even more difficult to shake the PLA." Senior Colonel Wu Qian had said at the meet-the-press. The Doklam standoff is serving some other uses too. One of the PLA's most hawkish generals, the now retired Luo Yuan, called on the public to rally behind the army because of it. "The public should be confident about our soldiers," he said in a widely circulated article. "Do not trust the words of those who would condemn us for being too aggressive or for being too weak when we protect peace. Our army would never engage in a war without the full grasp of victory. Frankly speaking, India is truly different from the India of 1962... We really don't want to engage in a war against India. But if so, India would lose again."



Yet, despite the shrill rhetoric, Beijing is well aware that a war would be disastrous on many fronts. "This is a very difficult situation for China," says Bo Zhiyue, a leading expert on elite Chinese politics who heads the Bo Zhiyue China Institute. "There are two sides to Xi 's 'Chinese Dream' slogan. A stronger China and a stronger PLA. These two parts are not necessarily coherent." Key to Xi's ambitions, including his pet One Belt, One Road project, is a peaceful environment and preserving the global image of a responsible, rising China. This is all the more important as Beijing stakes a claim to global leadership at a time when the US is considering a retreat on some fronts.


Bo says the shrill rhetoric and muscle-flexing are more aimed at cowing India down without firing a bullet. "No country today will demonstrate its military prowess with war," he says. "The exercises in Tibet are no different from what North Korea does with its tests or the US and South Korea do with their exercises. Many in China spoke about taking back the Diaoyu Islands [or Senkaku Islands as Japan refers to them] by force, but that was just rhetoric to please the nationalists. They have to say something like that, or they appear weak. Editorials now say they'll kick out the Indian troops. It's loud rhetoric, but doesn't mean action."
(With Uday Mahurkar)




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REFERENCES:

Menon: Peace Prevails but the Old Modus Vivendi With China is Under Stress





                   [ https://youtu.be/Zowy-0QXQsE ]



CLICK/ GOOGLE  TO OPEN THE DETAILS

        [A]    https://thewire.in/88189/88189/



          [B]  Current Stand-Off an Attempt by China to                           Change the Status Quo at Tri-Junction:                                Shivshankar Menon

                BY  ON 09/07/2017    
[ https://thewire.in/155766/current-stand-off-attempt-china-change-status-quo-tri-junction-shivshankar-menon/ ]

           [ C ]  Six Expert Views on How India Should Look                      at the Latest Border Stand-Off With China

                 BY  ON 05/07/2017
   [ https://thewire.in/154449/expert-gyan-india-china-bhutan/]





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