[Reader-list] Nervous China may attack India by 2012: Expert

[Taha Mehmood]

Dear All

A very important news item this-.

I wonder, is this pronouncement an exercise in creating a sense of
fake 'panic' or is it a 'genuine' assessment of the situation?

Regards

Taha

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Nervous-China-may-attack-India-by-2012-Expert/articleshow/4771069.cms

Nervous China may attack India by 2012: Expert
13 Jul 2009, 1501 hrs IST, PTI

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.

Verma 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.