Indian and western analysts differ on how they read India’s approach towards deterring China. Western analysts (mainly American, see here and here) tend to perceive large deterrence gaps in India’s approach and are left slightly puzzled at India’s apparent lack of urgency in seeking to close such gaps. They see an increasing imbalance of power in China’s favour and expect India to close the gap through rational defence policies and in cooperation with the U.S. From this lens, India’s China problem as well as its solution is a no-brainer. Notably, many Indian analysts and retired military officials tend to think along similar lines, suggesting that military problems require military solutions.
Indian deterrence – In theory
The mainstream of Indian analysis, however, sees the matter somewhat differently and much more flexibly. In this view, India rightly adopts an equilibrium-based approach to the problem of deterrence. To put it simply, India’s toolbox in countering Chinese aggression is a comprehensive multi-pronged approach consisting of political, diplomatic (bilateral), geopolitical and military aspects. This was the case in the 1950s when India adopted a combination of conciliation as well as confrontation based on geopolitical opportunities. Arguably, this has been the case since the end of the Cold War as well. Throughout, military force has played a lesser role than would be the norm.
In other words, whereas the classical deterrence approach prioritises military aspects, the Indian way has traditionally prioritised the political lens in determining deterrence. What this means is that rather than seeing deterrence as a matter of bean counting laid over terrain, organisation, operational planning and matters of psychological resolve, the Indian way sees it as the cumulative impact of political understanding, geopolitical conditions, China’s economic and military constraints that work to disincentivise aggression. Furthermore, India’s preferred mode of deterrence is also closely tied to the core rationale of Delhi’s China strategy – to achieve a more equitable and mutually sensitive political understanding with Beijing.
This distinction – and way of Indian deterrence – also is key in explaining India’s ongoing dilemma vis-à-vis China: India has been investing in a thaw in ties with China post-Galwan in order to avoid high-risk confrontation and escalation. But instead of proportionate reciprocation, Delhi finds China exploiting the same thaw to impose further strategic costs and constraints on India. The October 2024 agreement was supposed to cool tensions and allow each side greater geopolitical flexibility. However, the Chinese actions ever since demonstrate that this was not part of their calculation.
The recent extensive military and diplomatic support to Pakistan provided by China (and increasingly towards Bangladesh as well) has only empirically confirmed to India what it had long suspected – that China seeks to box India within the subcontinent in order to increase its vulnerability vis-à-vis Beijing. This makes India face a second dilemma/challenge: How to keep its eye on the ball in terms of the long-term threat posed by China when smaller and immediate security threats in South Asia appear to be rising.
