Not the time for the dragon and the elephant to dance
Till last Thursday, the biggest anticipated sideshow at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit at Uzbekistan due later this week was to be the first in-person one-on-one between Russian and Chinese Presidents Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. Xi will be travelling out of China for the first time in over two years following pandemic restrictions, and he took Putin’s side against the West in the ongoing Ukraine war, so their meeting decidedly is a big deal. But when news broke on the simultaneous disengagement of troops at the Gogra-Hot Springs friction point along the Line of Actual Control in Ladakh, speculation shifted to a Sino-Indian bilateral on the sidelines of the summit as Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to attend it as well. While there is no official word on the bilateral yet, full disengagement at that point will be completed by Monday. With this, troop pullback would be complete at all friction points since the April 2020 PLA aggression; two other spots where the stand-off continues are because of legacy issues.
Does this mean the status quo ante, as in April 2020, demanded by foreign minister S Jaishankar to resume normal ties, has been restored? No. For, it is disengagement, not de-escalation. Disengagement means troops are no longer locked in an eyeball-to-eyeball situation and are pulled back by, say, a few kilometres on either side. The buffer so created would certainly help avoid any accidental skirmish. But the pulled-back troops and heavy artillery would be stationed just beyond that position. Over 50,000 soldiers are currently deployed on either side of the Western Ladakh border. Very large deployments are violative of bilateral accords in 1993 and 1996, so the border situation continues to be abnormal. To restore tranquillity, troops will have to move back to peace stations. In other words, disengagement is a welcome first step, and de-escalation is the goal.
India did well in staying neutral on the Ukraine war, earning grudging respect from the anti-West axis while stabilising its post-pandemic economy. In June last, Jaishankar told off Europe, saying India could capably manage China on its own. Just last week, it issued a detailed advisory, it perhaps would have otherwise avoided, on the pitfalls of pursuing higher studies in China. While there is no harm in exploring talks at the highest level, a thaw is achievable if it builds mutual trust, which is currently at its nadir.