India and China had another high-level military dialogue a few days ago. In this, the 23rd Corps Commander-level meeting aimed to resolve issues between the two nations along the disputed Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Eastern Ladakh.
Such current discussions at the Chushul-Moldo border meeting point are described by both sides as being in a “friendly and cordial atmosphere” and geared toward maintaining “peace and tranquility,” but there is a deeper divide.
The disengagement process, in which certain troops were withdrawn from eyeball-to-eyeball friction points such as Pangong Tso, Gogra, and Hot Springs, was fairly largely completed after the 2020 stalemate.
However, the next, and much more crucial stage-de-escalation-is still elusive at ground level, with both armies still having a massive number of troops and associated equipment deployed forward in-depth areas.
Persistent Military Standoff
Even though it’s a hive of diplomatic activity and disengagement from key face-off sites has been completed, the general military posture remains quite combative.
There are approximately 50,000-60,000 troops from either side remaining deployed in the Eastern Ladakh sector; this level of deployment has not been seen in this sector since the clashes of May 2020.
What this indicates is that the immediate flashpoints are temporarily neutralized, but trust is still the larger crisis, with aggressive buildup of forces and infrastructure-dominantly by the PLA along the LAC-not reversed.
The border remains unstable and militarily abnormal for the last six winters as partial de-escalation does not include the pulling back of these additional troops and hardware to original peacetimes.
The Trust Deficit Challenge
The current stalemate is underlined by a deep-seated trust deficit between New Delhi and Beijing, which India seems to be insisting that normal bilateral relations could resume only once peace and tranquility on the border are restored.
To India, this restoration involves not just de-escalation but also de-induction which will follow. China, conversely, occasionally hints that they would like the border issue to be delinked from the overall relationship. Forward deployment and unending infrastructure construction on the Chinese side indicate that the two nuclear powers are nowhere near significant normalization.
The recent talks managed imminent tensions and fortified the disengagement accomplished thus far, but they fell short of reaching an explicit timeline or mechanism for the comparable withdrawal of the forward-deployed forces, barring the de-escalation objective from its long-distance mark.
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A recent media graduate, Bhumi Vashisht is currently making a significant contribution as a committed content writer. She brings new ideas to the media sector and is an expert at creating strategic content and captivating tales, having working in the field from past four months.
