China May Attack India by 2012

For many Indians the name of Captain Bharat Verma is not very familiar. Nonetheless Capt. Verma is credited with launching the Indian Defense Review - India’s first and widely read Journal on national defense issues.  According to some sources the IDR is renowned as the most quoted Indian defense publication. Capt. Verma very succinctly explains the rationale behind the IDR: “I realized that there was no literature available in India on defense matters written by Indians despite the wars we kept fighting. Our analysis was copied from foreign publications. We were looking at the globe (and India) through the foreigners’ eyes. Our security perceptions were what somebody else told us. Analysis mostly came from the Western publications. It was not Indian.”
So what happens when someone like Capt. Verma makes a prophecy which is considered unlikely by defense experts across the globe? How far will this ‘indigenous review’ prove correct? Well that’s for time to tell, as of now here is what Capt. Verma has to say about the future of Sino-Indian relations. China will launch an attack on India before 2012.
There are multiple reasons for a desperate Beijing to teach India the final lesson, thereby ensuring Chinese supremacy in Asia in this century. According to him, the recession has “shut the Chinese exports shop”, creating an “unprecedented internal social unrest” which in turn, was severely threatening the grip of the Communists over the society. Among other reasons for this assessment were rising unemployment, flight of capital worth billions of dollars, depletion of its foreign exchange reserves and growing internal dissent. In addition to these, in the words of Captain Verma, “The growing irrelevance of Pakistan, their right hand that operates against India on their behest, is increasing the Chinese nervousness.”
In Capt. Verma’s analysis, China is not in a position to hit, economically or militarily, on any Western targets. India presents itself as a ‘soft target’ with pending territorial issues. China would use an attack on India, both to divert domestic attention and assert presence on the global scene.
Capt. Verma’s scary analysis doesn’t stop here.  According to him, pacifist India is not ready by a long shot either on the internal or the external front to deal with the Chinese offensive.
How credible is this analysis?
According to renowned Indian strategist C.Raja Mohan “When there is relative tranquility in Tibet, India and China have reasonably good relations. When Sino-Tibetan tensions rise, India’s relationship with China heads south.” Although not widely recognized in the West, the nexus of Tibet and the unresolved border conflict between China and India ranks with the Taiwan Strait and Korean peninsula among Asia’s leading flashpoints.
An analysis by Dan Twining in Foreign Policy maintains that over the past two years, Chinese officials have publicly asserted Chinese claims to the entire Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, which some Chinese military advisors and strategists refer to as ‘southern Tibet’ .” Chinese forces have periodically engaged in small-scale cross-border encroachments, destroying Indian military bunkers and patrol bases in Ladakh and Sikkim.  At the same time, China has been systematically constructing road and rail networks across the Tibetan plateau in ways that tilt the balance of forces along the contested frontier in China’s favor; India has responded with infrastructure projects of its own, including roads and air fields, to enable military reinforcement of its border regions, but has failed to keep pace with its northern neighbor. China has also positioned large numbers of military and security forces on the Tibetan plateau, mainly with an eye on suppressing popular unrest. But the possibility of using them to “teach India a lesson” (as in 1962) remains.
Indian pundits note that public reminders from Beijing of China’s decisive victory over India in the 1962 war have spiked over the past year, sending what Indians believe is a clear signal to New Delhi at a time of rising tensions. Combined with China’s reported deployment in Tibet of nuclear missiles targeting India, officials in New Delhi feel increasingly alarmed in the face of Chinese provocation.  In striking statements little noted in the West, both Indian External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee and former National Security Advisor Brajesh Mishra recently warned China against any attempt to seize Indian-held territory along their contested border.
The possibility of a full-scale war between India and China does exist. But I guess most of the above analysis overlooks one important fact. Global peace since the end of the Second World War hinges on the most destructive weapons of modern warfare – the nuclear weapons. No matter how ironic it may sound, the only factor that could prove the above prophecy wrong is the fact that China and India posses nuclear weapons.