New Delhi, July 12: A leading defence expert has
projected that China will attack India by 2012 to divert the
attention of its own people from "unprecedented" internal
dissent, growing unemployment and financial problems that are
threatening the hold of Communists in that country.
"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," Bharat Verma, Editor of the Indian Defence
Review, has said.
He said 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, Verma said in an editorial in the
forthcoming issue of the premier defence journal.
In addition to this, "the growing irrelevance of
Pakistan, their right hand that operates against India on
their behest, is increasing the Chinese nervousness," he said,
adding that US President Barak Obama's Af-Pak policy was
primarily Pak-Af policy that has "intelligently set the thief
to catch the thief".
Verma said Beijing was "already rattled, with its proxy
Pakistan now literally embroiled in a civil war, losing its
sheen against India".
"Above all, it is worried over the growing alliance of
India with the US and the West, because the alliance has the
potential to create a technologically superior counterpoise.
"All these three concerns of Chinese Communists are best
addressed by waging a war against pacifist India to achieve
multiple strategic objectives," he said.
While China "covertly allowed" North Korea to test
underground nuclear explosion and carry out missile trials, it
was also "increasing its naval presence in South China Sea to
coerce into submission those opposing its claim on the
Sprately Islands," the defence expert said.
He said it would be "unwise" at this point of time for
a recession-hit China to move against the Western interests,
including Japan. "Therefore, the most attractive option is to
attack a soft target like India and forcibly occupy its
territory in the Northeast," Verma said.
But India is "least prepared" on ground to face the
Chinese threat, he says and asks a series of questions on how
will India respond to repulse the Chinese game plan or whether
Indian leadership would be able to "take the heat of war".
"Is Indian military equipped to face the two-front wars
by Beijing and Islamabad? Is the Indian civil administration
geared to meet the internal security challenges that the
external actors will sponsor simultaneously through their
doctrine of unrestricted warfare?
"The answers are an unequivocal 'no'. Pacifist India is
not ready by a long shot either on the internal or the
external front," the defence journal editor says.
In view of the "imminent threat" posed by China, "the
quickest way to swing out of pacifism to a state of assertion
is by injecting military thinking in the civil administration
to build the sinews. That will enormously increase the
deliverables on ground -- from Lalgarh to Tawang," he says.
Bureau Report