Why deterrence remains India’s best strategy against China – Firstpost

The India–Pakistan confrontation following the Pahalgam terror attack was a moment of unprecedented escalation. Pakistan, brazen in its support for terrorism, responded to India’s calibrated Operation Sindoor with indiscriminate aggression, even if that meant targeting civilian sites. Overnight, India’s defence posture was put to the test. In response, the Indian state acted with precision and resolve, delivering a firm, proportionate strike that reminded Pakistan of the costs of adventurism. But beyond the tactical success, the episode reinforced a larger lesson: that military readiness must be a constant—even in times of perceived calm, the fog of escalation can descend within hours. A stable regional order is never a guarantee against kinetic action.

To quote External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, “It’s imperative that a contemporary and informed assessment of capabilities is made.” The recent encounter with Pakistan only reaffirms that assumption—that our adversaries will abide by rules of engagement—is not just naïve, but dangerous, especially as stakes mount.

And one must not be surprised by such an act either. We need not look far for precedent. The epic, Mahabharata, provides striking examples of how ‘well-laid rules’ of combat are bent, broken, or cast aside to seek unintended benefits on both sides. Perhaps most telling is how Krishna engineered the killing of Jayadratha, employing strategic deception. He created an artificial sunset—prompting the Kaurava camp to relax their guard—only for Arjuna to launch his fatal arrow when Jayadratha emerged. Bhishma was brought down when a woman warrior, Shikhandi, was used as a tactical shield. Even after the war had ended, Dronacharya’s son, Ashwatthama, slaughtered the Pandavas’ sleeping sons under the cover of midnight. Rules, in war, are often only as strong as the desperation to violate them.

This wisdom holds just as true in modern geopolitics—perhaps most strikingly in how China approaches the use of force. Beijing is unlikely to seek a full-scale war to seize territory outright; instead, its military posture is designed around calibrated coercion. And just like in the epic, the damage they cause isn’t merely tactical—it’s moral and strategic.

The Political Logic of a Limited War

Unlike 1962, a modern-day India-China war is unlikely to be about territorial aggrandisement. Chinese incursions—actual or threatened—are more plausibly tools of political coercion, designed to impose costs, alter India’s strategic behaviour, or extract concessions. In such a scenario, the ability to militarily endure and function under pressure is as decisive as battlefield outcomes.

India faces operational challenges in mobility, communications, and force agility that could constrain its effectiveness in a high-intensity conflict along the Line of Actual Control (LAC), especially under conditions of electronic and kinetic disruption. When units are forced to operate autonomously not by design but by system failure, the cost is not just tactical—it is strategic.

Experts believe this is precisely the risk China would seek to exploit—short, sharp engagements that don’t aim for territorial gain but for psychological and political advantage. This is why a limited war scenario must be central to India’s defence thinking. Not because China seeks a war, but because it may see utility in calibrated military pressure if India appears brittle. Ironically, a limited war benefits the weaker power, not the stronger. For China, even a stalemate could be seen as a reputational loss. That is why China, too, has reasons to avoid escalation—but only if deterrence is credible.

The Risk of Operational Collapse

At the operational level, India faces the acute risk in the face of a concerted Chinese campaign involving electronic warfare, precision strikes, and infrastructure denial. If lines of communication—already narrow and weather-dependent—are severed or jammed, Indian subunits may become isolated, resulting in limited mobility, both on land and in airlift capacity, further constraining rapid reinforcement.

And this, ultimately, is the strategic risk. This is the scenario China might seek: not conquest, but coercion through degradation. (Note: This is just an assertion). According to a defence expert on India-China, “India builds for mass, but modern threats—especially from China—require agility, survivability, and responsive enablers.” However, it lacks the enabling capabilities (like airlift, C4ISR, and logistics) needed to remain effective in fast-moving, limited conflicts—especially at high altitude. In a protracted conflict, this could be decisive.

The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is likely to combine electronic warfare (EW) and kinetic strikes to degrade, if not deny, Indian C4ISR capabilities. Once degraded, Indian forces risk being thrown into an operational environment where command and control becomes fragmented, mobility is constrained, and units are forced to fight in isolation—not by design, but by default.

Building a Nimble and Combat-Effective Force

India must pivot from a strategy of attrition to a strategy of agility. In high-altitude conflict, success won’t come from size alone, but from adaptability under stress. A force that can bend without breaking is a force that can buy time, space, and leverage.

This is not to say India will fold. Indian soldiers, as history has shown, will fight even in degraded conditions—both at the subunit and national level. The likelihood of political collapse due to casualties remains low. However, the danger lies not in India’s will to fight, but in its ability to fight effectively.

The strategic risk, then, is cumulative. China might aim to degrade India’s operational capacity to the point that New Delhi loses political leverage, not territory.

The goal isn’t necessarily for India to win a limited war—but to make sure it can withstand one. The longer India can sustain a coherent and resilient defence posture under pressure, the less attractive coercive war becomes for China.

Yet, India’s ability to offset operational risk is hampered by structural constraints. Defence spending as a percentage of GDP has steadily declined, even as the strategic environment has worsened—well below the 2.5 per cent experts deem necessary to address threats from China and Pakistan. Capacity shortfalls—whether in war stocks, communications infrastructure, or high-altitude mobility—continue to limit resilience. Roads and airlift capacity beyond Leh remain scarce. Enablers are sparse. And if these vulnerabilities are not addressed, India risks losing not just operational cohesion but strategic credibility.

The Political Dividend of Strategic Preparedness

Ultimately, this is about more than battlefield calculus. It’s about protecting India’s political agency. When Indian forces remain effective under pressure, they do more than fight—they buy the political leadership time, options, and strategic autonomy. That is the true value of deterrence: it shields not just territory but sovereignty itself.

This is the heart of the matter: India must invest not in maximalist power projection but in minimal viable deterrence. It must be able to hold its ground—not indefinitely, but long enough to make coercion fail. Long enough to retain bargaining power. Long enough to deny China the quick, political gains it might hope to secure through a limited war. In this environment, India’s best strategy is not reactive defence but credible deterrence. Deterrence works when the adversary believes that any aggression—even limited—will be met with swift, smart, and unrelenting retaliation. To achieve this, India must ensure that its forward-deployed forces are not just present but primed. Survivability, speed, and synergy must become the defining metrics of readiness.

India needs not just military reforms but political investments in deterrence. To recalibrate India’s deterrence posture along the LAC, reforms must prioritise agility over accumulation. This means shifting away from a legacy force designed for deep, conventional campaigns towards leaner units with high mobility, integrated command systems, and greater autonomy in degraded conditions.

China is a civilisational adversary that reveres dissimulation as statecraft. As Sinologist Shyam Saran has observed, deception, ambiguity, and trickery are not merely tactical tools but celebrated virtues in popular Chinese thinking—immortalised in the Three Kingdoms epic and enshrined in the Thirty-Six Stratagems of the Book of Qi.

Wars today are not always about who wins more land but about who loses less control. To deter such an adversary, India must move beyond reactive strength to proactive imagination. In a world where technology fragments the battlefield and tempo outruns deliberation, the strength of a nation lies in its ability to absorb shocks without political collapse. In geopolitics, sometimes the best move is to deny your opponent a winning one.

Shreyash Sharma is a columnist and research scholar. He holds a degree in Economics & International Relations from City University of Hong Kong.Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.