February 8, 2025
Why is India's strategic depth from Pakistan to China's border of no importance?

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Strategic depth – its comprehensiveness or absence – is a major determinant of a country’s national security strategy. It refers to the distance between the front line distance, also called the tactical battle area or TBA, and the base from which the army draws its strength in terms of people, material and resources. The intervening space, through which the roads and railroads connecting the two communication lines pass, is known as the communication zone or com z. There are intermediate logistics and administrative elements to support the troops in the TBA, including the population in the region. centers. The depth of this sector, and the value objectives contained within it, will determine whether a country can adopt a ‘trade space for time’ strategy when faced with an adverse situation.

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tactical depth or lack thereof

During World War II, when Germany launched Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union in June 1941, Russia made full use of its strategic depth in the face of rapid German advances. The Russians who were forced to retreat followed a ‘scorched earth’ policy, destroying or burning everything of military value, including crops and livestock; plant and machinery; The Germans within Com Z were denied any source of sustenance. As a result, the German lines of communication back towards their base in the German heartland became longer, became impractical, and eventually succumbed to the severe Russian winter. , This ‘trading space for time’ allowed the Russians to regroup, start their industrial production, and then launch a counter-attack when fully prepared.

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However, what does a country do when it is not large enough to have strategic depth? Then, it has to look over its shoulder to artificially create that depth within a neighboring country or state. The great Maratha warrior, Chhatrapati Shivaji, was among the first to employ this strategy, possibly before it was ever formulated. When faced with the overwhelming strength of the Mughal forces, instead of fighting against the odds, he withdrew to neighboring Bijapur’s territory, while continuing to harass them using guerrilla tactics.

From the early 1980s, Pakistan began to look to Afghanistan to provide this strategic depth vis-à-vis India, an idea first expressed at their National Defense University, Islamabad. This is the main reason for his interference in the internal affairs of Afghanistan, namely to achieve a sympathetic regime in Kabul. However, his plan doesn’t seem to be working, with his western front with Afghanistan as shaky as ever and the Taliban showing they are no puppets. Nevertheless, this contingency remains part of Pakistan’s strategic calculus.

What happens when a country neither has the facility of strategic depth, nor friendly neighbours? Faced with such a situation, it has to create depth by occupying areas beyond its borders. Israel is an example of this. After the Six-Day War of 1967, Israel continued to occupy the Sinai Peninsula, as it provided them with depth against any unexpected Egyptian invasion from the south. This occupation was to provide a good advantage during the Yom Kippur War of 1973, when Israeli forces could block the Egyptians at the Mitla and Gidi passes, located inside Sinai. This occupation continued after the war until 1982, when Israel relinquished control of the Sinai under the terms of the 1979 Egypt–Israel Peace Accords. Similarly, Israel continued to occupy the Golan Heights in the north, which it had occupied. from Syria in the Six Day War. Additionally, Israel occupies the west bank of the Jordan River, an area of ​​approximately 5,800 square kilometres, giving it much needed depth at its narrowest point which is barely 15 km wide east-west.

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India’s problem

India is blessed with a large landmass, with industrial centers in key areas, major cities, road and rail networks spread across the country. Nevertheless, many of these attractive targets are also within or close to the TBA, where they can be overrun in the early stages of an enemy attack. Therefore, it has to carefully examine its strategy with respect to its potential adversaries, China in the north and Pakistan in the west. Even against each of these, the strategy would be different at the operational level in different areas of the border, depending on various factors such as terrain, strategic importance of the area and the political impact of such loss.

On the Western Front, we could afford to trade space for time in a desert area that would slow down an enemy offensive due to the lack of any underlying natural resources, especially water. However, further north this would no longer be true. Major population centers of political and religious importance, for example Amritsar, which is more than 30 kilometers from the international border, and within range of enemy long-range artillery, have to be protected at all costs. Its fall will cause irreparable damage to India’s prestige both domestically and internationally. Therefore, military strategies for the two regions, deserts and plains, would be fundamentally different.

To the north, India shares a border of over 3,000 km with Tibet, which was illegally occupied by China in the 1950s. Here again, the strategies for defending these frontiers would be different in the northern, central and eastern regions. After the Galwan clash of 2020, both the People’s Liberation Army and the Indian Army have consolidated their positions and deployed forward, with neither side willing to cede any space to the other. In the central region, there are places of religious importance on the border of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, which once again have to be strongly protected from the beginning. The same is true for the Sikkim and Tawang regions of the Eastern Region. If any choice of business location can be exercised for the time being, it would be in the other valleys of eastern Arunachal Pradesh. But this option has to be exercised with caution as China claims the region as part of South Tibet, a claim reinforced by their official map published on 28 August 2023.

The bottom line is that even though India may have the luxury of large landmass, its strategic depth is of no value due to overwhelming domestic compulsions. So India would have to be forward deployed almost everywhere to thwart any pre-emptive surprise attack which, despite technological advances, can only be done with adequate ground cover.

General Manoj Mukund Naravane PVSM AVSM SM VSM is a retired Indian Army General who served as the 28th Chief of Army Staff. Thoughts are personal.

(Editing by Anurag Choubey)

Source: theprint.in

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