What is India-China standoff in Bhutan's Doklam about? What are the risks of either side miscalculating? Can this border conflict spiral out of control and escalate into a full-scale war like the the 1962 war? Can it lead to a wider regional conflict? How would such a war conclude?
What are the political implications of the ongoing Panama case hearings in Pakistan Supreme Court? How are the media and political parties lining up on this? Will the Supreme Court disqualify and remove Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif from holding office for corruption? Will it be seen as normal democratic process of accountability or a conspiracy to subvert an elected government?
Why are Indians among the top 5 asylum seekers in the world along with Syria? What's driving Indians to seek refuge in OECD nations? Is it lack of economic opportunity or increasing religious violence? Or something else?
Chinese state media have warned India of a fate worse than the defeat it suffered in their brief border war in 1962.
This month, state media said China's military had carried out live fire drills close to the disputed area.
"Shaking a mountain is easy but shaking the People's Liberation Army is hard," ministry spokesman Wu Qian told a briefing, adding that its ability to defend China's territory and sovereignty had "constantly strengthened".
Early in June, according to the Chinese interpretation of events, Indian guards crossed into China's Donglang region and obstructed work on a road on the plateau.
The two sides' troops then confronted each other close to a valley controlled by China that separates India from its close ally, Bhutan, and gives China access to the so-called Chicken's Neck, a thin strip of land connecting India and its remote northeastern regions.
India has said it warned China that construction of the road near their common border would have serious security implications.
The withdrawal of Indian border guards was a precondition for resolving the situation, Wu reiterated.
"India should not leave things to luck and not harbor any unrealistic illusions," Wu said, adding that the military had taken emergency measures in the region and would continue to increase focused deployments and drills.
"We strongly urge India to take practical steps to correct its mistake, cease provocations, and meet China halfway in jointly safeguarding the border region's peace and tranquillity," he said.
Indian officials say about 300 soldiers from either side are facing each other about 150 meters (yards) apart on the plateau.
Political attention here has been focused this summer in two very different directions. There is the Himalayan plateau where Indian and Chinese troops are engaged in the most tense and potentially explosive standoff since a 1962 border war. And there is the din emanating from the Trump administration, which has managed to frighten and confound just about every nation that counts on U.S. global engagement.
The two problems are not directly related: Indians wouldn’t want the United States to get involved in their dispute with Beijing, dangerous though it is, even if a more functional administration were in office. But the confluence is nevertheless unnerving. It has meant that India, a country with which President Trump claims to have established excellent relations, has had to grapple with both a dramatic demonstration of the strategic threat posed by China and an incipient crumbling of confidence in the American partnership it has seen as the antidote.
Let’s start with the border spat, which resembles China’s clashes with Japan over a disputed island chain and its invasive construction of islets and airstrips in the South China Sea. It began in June with a unilateral move by Beijing to construct a road in a disputed piece of mountain territory where India, China and Bhutan come together, overlooking the narrow strip that connects India’s northeast to the rest of the country.
Rather than tolerate the intrusion, the government of Narendra Modi, a populist and nationalist who shares Trump’s autocratic instincts, dispatched troops to block the bulldozers. Now Indian and Chinese soldiers are deployed just hundreds of yards apart, even as Chinese state media outlets blare angry rhetoric. Though Indian analysts say a shooting war is unlikely — China would be hard-pressed to dislodge the Indian forces from the high ground they hold — they expect the standoff to drag on through China’s Communist Party congress in the autumn.
The dust-up has served to accentuate growing Indian anxiety about its emerging- superpower neighbor. Watching China’s initiatives in South Asia, from the construction of ports in Sri Lanka and Pakistan to the hugely ambitious “belt and road” projects from Central Asia to Africa, Indians need not be paranoid to feel encircled. Their sense of vulnerability has been compounded by the perception that Russia, a traditional ally, has been driven into the arms of China by its growing conflicts with the West.
India’s strategy for balancing China depends heavily on the United States. Though unwilling to conclude a direct alliance, Modi has followed previous Indian governments in moving steadily closer to Washington, conducting joint naval exercises and buying U.S. military equipment. His was one of the few friendly governments to find some cheer in Trump’s election: The candidate, after all, had promised to improve relations with India’s friend Russia and get tough on China and terrorism by Muslim extremists.
Instead, what Indians have seen from Washington is contradictions and chaos. Though not the aim of the White House, U.S. relations with the regime of Vladimir Putin are considerably worse now than they were six months ago. Trump, meanwhile, has gyrated between embracing China’s Xi Jinping and assailing him on Twitter for failing to rein in North Korea. U.S. “freedom of navigation” patrols challenging Chinese claims in the South China Sea ceased for a while before suddenly starting again.
In Afghanistan, a vital interest for India, the Trump administration at first seemed set to adopt a welcome new policy of beefing up U.S. forces to stop the Pakistan-supported Taliban. Then reports emerged that Trump had rebuffed the plan and was leaning toward abandoning the war.
