The Doklam standoff implies that the future of Asia will not be an unipolar one built around China. It will be a multipolar future.
ON 28 AUGUST, disengagement started at the Doklam plateau on the Sikkim border where Indian and Chinese forces have been in a standoff since 18 June. According to a statement issued by the Ministry of External Affairs, “expeditious disengagement of border personnel at the face-off site has been agreed to and is ongoing”. The Chinese Foreign Ministry, for its part, suggested that “Indian forces have already withdrawn to the Indian side of the border” and that “Chinese forces will continue to patrol in Doklam region”. It has also said that its forces “will remain in the region” and continue to exercise their “sovereignty over the region”. That was China trying to put a spin on the outcome as border patrolling by China was never really an issue.
The standoff had begun when Chinese troops started constructing a concrete road in Doklam in Bhutanese territory. The Indian troops promptly halted the construction work, forming a human chain, calling it a change in the “status quo” with serious security implications for India as the Doklam Plateau overlooks the strategic Chumbi Valley.
Over the last more than two months Beijing continued to harangue and wage its psychological warfare, sometimes by reminding India of 1962, and sometimes by suggesting that countermeasures would be unavoidable if the Narendra Modi government continued to ignore Chinese warnings. China also provoked India by asking what New Delhi would do if it “enters” the Kalapani region in Uttarakhand, or Kashmir. This is the first time that the Kashmir issue has been raked up by China at the official level.
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