Russia’s Coronavirus Anomaly, a Question of What You Count

Posted on by Sloane Snodgrasse
Bushwalking, Politics, Public health,, Science and society

From the start of this month Russia began a gradual re-opening of services after a ten-week pandemic lockdown. This is happening despite new cases of COVID-19 continuing to materialise – the tally of confirmed case of the virus has now ticked over the 500,000 mark (as at 12-Jun-2020). There are several reasons contributing to the decision to re-open, some political and some economic.

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Concern for the damage sustained by the Russian economy by the pandemic was foremost to the Kremlin but President Putin also wanted things functioning as close to normal in time for two upcoming events important to him. The 75th end of WWII anniversary military parade in Red Square—a PR showcase of Russian power—postponed from May is rescheduled for 24th of June. Even more personally important for the Russian leader is the July 1 vote✱, Putin has put up far-reaching constitutional amendments for approval, the main outcome of which could see Putin’s iron-grip on the federation extend till 2036.

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(Photo: Reuthers / SPUTNIK)

Discontent with Russia’s approach to the crisis
An underlying reason for the hasty end to the national lockdown might be that it hasn’t been as successful as hoped. The tracing app utilised in Moscow (the epicentre of the country’s COVID-19 outbreak) has had issues with its effectiveness. Putin’s personal popularity was at risk with public resentment voiced at the prolonged restrictions (murmurings of Orwellian and Soviet-like echoes). The medical response by the Kremlin has been called out by many front-line responders for its shortcomings⊘. One doctor, Anastasia Vasilyeva (leader of a Russian doctors’ union), frustrated at the president’s insistence that the public health crisis was under control, has been at great risk to herself distributing PPE to medical workers on the front-line, provoking retribution from the Kremlin [‘The doctor who defied a President’, ABC News, (Foreign Correspondent, Eric Campbell), 06-Jun-2020, www.abcnews.com.au]. This is symptomatic of Moscow’s neglect of the regions who are expected to handle both the outbreaks without the medical infrastructure to deal with a large volume of cases✩ and the economic fallout from the crisis without adequate financial assistance [‘Russia’s coronavirus cases top 300,000 but deaths suspiciously low: ‘We conceal nothing’ Kremlin says’, (Holly Ellyatt), CNBC, Upd 21-May-2020, www.cnbc.com].

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Counting the virus’ toll: a small exercise in data massaging?
Some Russia watchers have cast doubts about the reported COVID-19 figures released by Moscow. This includes WHO has questioned Russia’s low death toll, describing it as ‘unusual’ [‘WHO asks Russia to review its Covid-19 death toll in rare rebuke’, (Natalia Vasilyeva), The Telegraph, 11-Jun-2020, www.telegraph.co.uk]. While the number of Russian virus cases is comparatively high, the official record of fatalities is disproportionately low compared to the rest of Europe…Russia’s fatality rate is 0.9% cf. UK’s, 14.4% (roughly 10% of the mean figure for Western Europe) [‘How Russia’s Coronavirus Outbreak Became One of the World’s Worst’, (Madeline Roache), Time, 15-May-2020, www.time.com]. The Kremlin has rejected the criticism that it is withholding the full impact of the pandemic, but outside observers pinpoint an anomaly in the methodology it uses to count cases. Unlike say Belgium (which is strictly inclusive), Russia has not counted deaths as caused by the coronavirus where other co-morbidities are present, ie, if a patient tested positive for the virus and then had a subsequent critical episode, the cause of death is not recorded as COVID-19 [‘Russia Is Boasting About Low Coronavirus Deaths. The Numbers Are Deceiving’, (Piotr Sauer & Evan Gershkovich), The Moscow Times, 14-May-2020, www.themoscowtimes.com].

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A deserted, locked-down Red Square 
(Source: www.citizen.co.za)

Compartmentalising the fatalities
This persuasively accounts for the recent discordant mortality statistics reported by Russian sources, eg, if you separate fatalities directly attributable to coronavirus from other fatalities for May, the unexplained “excess deaths” recorded for Moscow is up about 5,800 on that occurring during the previous three Mays [‘New data suggests Russia may have a lot more COVID-19 deaths than it says it has’, (Alexandra Odynova), CBS News, 11-Jun-2020, www.cbsnews.com]. A look at Dagestan, a region with one of the largest clusters outside of the capital, is also instructive. As of mid-May it had experienced 35 deaths listed as caused by coronavirus, but in the same timeframe it recorded 650 deaths attributed to “community-acquired pneumonia”. One explanation from Russia watchers is that “local officials want to present Moscow with ‘good’ figures” (Ellyatt). If the Kremlin were to publish both sets of figures in its official data, such transparency would deflect much of the doubt and questioning by outsiders (Sauer & Gershkovich).

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✱ that Putin is prepared to push through the referendum at this time and risk aggregating the public health and safety of Russians, confirms for many the president’s prioritising of his own  political motives [‘Russian officials, citing COVID-19, balk at working July 1 constitutional referendum’, CBC News, 11–Jun-2020, www.cbc.ca]
⊘ many medical practitioners in Russia have been disaffected by both a critical shortage of equipment to fight the virus and by unpaid wages [‘Exclusive: Did Russia pass the coronavirus test? Kremlin spokesman Dimitry Peskov Responds’, (M Chance, Z Ullah & N Hodge), CNN, 09-Jun-2020, www.amp.cnn.com]
✩ the COVID-19 emergency has exposed the deteriorating state of the Russian health service in the Putin era – the Semashko system infrastructure allowed to run down while the private medical sector has flourished [‘Can the Russian Health Care System Cope with the Coronavirus?’, (Estelle Levresse), The Nation, 09-Jun-2020, www.thenation.com]

The Choral Powder Keg: A Health Hazard Tailor-made for the COVID-19 Crisis

Posted on by funambulator@live.com
Public health,, Science and society, Society & Culture, Town planning

When a pandemic or some similar “Black Swan” event sweeps the world, hitting many countries with great intensity, particularly in Western societies with a high degree of religiosity, comfort and solace is often sought within the spiritual “safe house” of the church. As soon as the novel coronavirus landed and spread, it was apparent the church services especially where high rates of attendance was commonplace, would pose a public health risk.

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(Source: www.newslocker.com)

Yet in the US eleven state governors chose to maintain freedom of worship over community safety by exempting religious institutions from the general prohibition on public gatherings, notwithstanding that some of the states registered the biggest clusters of COVID-19. Even in other states there was a pushback by church men and women against government bans on assembly in places of worship. As a consequent 71 members of a single church in Sacramento were infected by the virus [‘Pastor who refused to close church due to coronavirus killed by outbreak’, (Rebecca Nicholson), Express, 15-Apr-2020, www.express.co.uk].

This was mirrored in overseas scenarios, in South Korea in February, one infected churchgoer infected at least 37 other members of her church on a single contact [“‘Superspreader’ in South Korea infects nearly 40 people with coronavirus’, (Nicolette Lanese), Live Science, 23-Feb-2020, www.livescience.com].

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South Korean choir with face masks  (Source: AP)

The choral petri-dish
 The holding of packed sermons in churches and other places of worship, like any close contact between confined, concentrations of people, breaches the prescribed social distancing guidelines and exacerbates the incidence of coronavirus infection. But just as dangerous and with even more potential to transmit the viral disease through communities is the choral activities of churches. The activities of choirs initially continued unabated in the early stages of the pandemic but an incident in Washington state in early March brought home how risky choir practice is. 61 people attended a choir practice at a Presbyterian church in Skagit County, within a short time 45 of the group had been infected by COVID-19 and two had died. Other choir outbreaks, some fatal, have occurred In Calgary (Canada), Amsterdam (Netherlands) and in South Korea [‘Scientists to choirs: Group singing can spread the coronavirus, despite what CDC may say’, Richard Read), Los Angeles Times, 01-Jun-2020, www.latimes.com].

Infectious diseases experts have pinpointed the obvious dangers of contagion associated with choir singing…unrestrained vocal activity at close quarters in often poorly-ventilated, confined space. The vocalists exhale and inhale deeply to sing which makes them highly susceptible to the passage of airborne particles. Through the process of aerosolisation, the virus floats freely in the air (and has been observed to survive for up to three hours) [‘Churches can be the Deadliest Places in the COVID-19 Pandemic’, (Kevin Kavanagh), Infection Control Today, 03-Apr-2020, www.infectioncontroltoday.com; Read].

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Inexplicable change of stance by CDC
With eyes fixed on the November elections and the need to shore up vital support from the Evangelical Christian Right, President Trump from his White House ‘pulpit’ intensified his call in May for governors to reopen religious institutions as an essential service, eliciting pushback from some governors. At the same time, surprisingly the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) decided to drop their warnings against choral singing despite the inherent danger it poses. CDC justifies this change of position by downplaying the likelihood of airborne transmission beyond six feet⊞ [‘Behind Trump’s demands to reopen churches: Slipping poll numbers and alarm inside his campaign’, (Gabby Orr), Politico, 22-May-2020, www.politico.com; Read).

Heightening the risk of unleashing ‘super-spreaders’
CDC’s controversial move has drawn broad criticism from medical experts including specialists in bio-aerosol research who have refuted CDC’s claim, calling it “hazardous, very dangerous and irresponsible”, and that it exposes America to new waves of super-spreading from the activity of choir members (Read).

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⇑  With religious singing relegated to the home, some American churches have tried to get round the prohibition on in-house congregational services by organising drive-in sermons

Fallout from the churches
Although many parishes and parishioners in the US have adjusted well to the new world of online sermons, some traditional congregationalists worry that the new ‘norm’ will spell the disappearance of the in-person church experience altogether [‘How the Pandemic Will Change Us’,  (Rod Dreher), The American Conservative, 13-Mar-2020, www.theamericanconservative.com].

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(Photo: www.stjohnswhitchurch.org.uk)

 

Endnote: The economics of the choral closedown
The halt to choral activities due to COVID-19 has led to a whole bunch of “knock-on” problems worldwide. Like anybody else with their income source impacted adversely by the crisis, choristers, classical musicians and organists attached to the churches affected have been deprived of livelihood. But it goes even beyond that. As the Royal School of Church Music in the UK indicated, the pandemic ”has literally ripped apart the many close-knit groups of singers and instrumentalists who (need to) spend significant amounts of time together”. Church musicians who rely on the service are especially hard hit. It is doubly hard for self-employed church organists who have lost their access to practice – unlike other musicians who keep their instruments at home, they rely on “using instruments in public buildings for the vital practice which enables them to maintain their hard-earned skill” (Royal College of Organists). [‘Pandemic has ‘ripped apart’ church choirs’, (Hattie Williams), Church Times, 01-Apr-2020, www.churchtimes.co.uk].

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(Source: eBay)

PostScript: There is another side problem resulting from the non-use of organs in churches. Like the raft of airplanes grounded due to the coronavirus, complex and expensive organs require continual attention. They need “regular playing to ensure that the fragile technical components are kept in good working order“ and  free from damage (Williams).

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⊞ the Washington Post states that CDC acted on a White House directive to omit the choir warning from it’s website guidance information. CDC may have also relied on earlier statements from WHO contending that “there is no evidence of transmission of the virus as an airborne pathogen”. WHO’s conclusions have themselves been debunked as “decades-old dogma that held that droplets only travel an arm’s length in the air” (Read)

Courting Controversy in Coronavirus Country: Belgium and El Salvador

Posted on by funambulator@live.com
Comparative politics, Media & Communications, Public health,, Science and society

As countries try to deal with an epidemic that is novel to the world of public health, with no tried-and-true templates to follow, there have been various quite differing approaches to the COVID-19 crisis. Some of these approaches have inevitably roamed into the realm of the controversial and polemical, polarising people at home and abroad. In previous blogs 7dayadventurer.com has sketched the go-it-alone path adopted by Sweden✱,〘Two Antithetical Approaches to the COVID-19 Crisis: A Controversial Outlier Versus a a Low-key Over-achiever (10-May-2020)〙and the denialist response of President Bolsonaro to the epidemic in Brazil〘Covid/Ovid 2020: Crisis (Mis)Management – How the World’s Leaders are Responding? (02-Apr-2020)  〙. 

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Belgium’s unenviable record – with an asterisk
This blog turns the spotlight elsewhere, on to an unlikely duo, two vastly dissimilar countries whose strategies towards the pandemic have proved controversial, each in it’s own way. Belgium, a small European state, has surprised and shocked many observers by its prominence on the table of world’s worst affected countries. The country has recorded 815 deaths per million of population (as at the 1st of June), easily the worst per capita toll in “First World” Europe (next closest Spain, 580/one million). Although Belgium has some distinguishable factors which contribute it its fatality rate—the country and especially the capital Brussels is the sixth-most dense in Europe, and Brussels has a very international and mobile population, a high number of Belgians reside in nursing homes (accounting for more than half of the disease’s victims)✬—there’s another (statistical) factor that goes a good way to explaining why there has been 9,580 recorded victims of the disease⊡. Belgium counts both the deaths confirmed as resulting from coronavirus and the deaths which are suspected to have been caused by the disease (most countries do not include this second category in their official COVID-19 counts)✪. (“Is Belgium the world’s deadliest COVID-19 country or just the most honest?’, (Bevan Shields), Sydney Morning Herald,  01-Jun-2020,  www.smh.com.au).

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🔺 Belgians returning home to a coronavirus-hit country

In defence of over-counting
Belgian virologist Prof Steven Van Gucht has deflected criticism of both Belgium’s numbers and its method of calculating corona casualties, commending Belgium for its honesty in selecting the more inclusive determination of the death toll. Van Gucht has argued that “public health shouldn’t be a political game or a contest on who is doing better than someone else”, adding that other governments not being honest with the public about the true scale of their outbreaks will be caught out on it later. Not everyone in Belgium applauds such transparency and honesty with the corona data, some within the kingdom’s business leadership have expressed alarm than the methodology used to ‘inflate’ mortality and morbidity numbers may have a deterrent effect on tourists returning to Belgium once the economy reopens (Shields).
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(Source: www.graphicmaps.com/)

El Salvador’s tough stand on lockdown transgressors part of a worrying authoritarian trend?
Pre-existing conditions in the Central American country of El Salvador have dictated the government approach taken to coronavirus. El Salvador’s high incidence of both gang activity and homicide prompted president Nayib Bukele (at 38 youthful and very social media savvy, eg, >1.9 M Twitter followers) to act hard and fast. Bukele’s government took a preemptive approach to the outbreak, schools and colleges were suspended and a state of emergence declared before the country had recorded its first confirmed case of the virus. Borders were closed, public gatherings in excess of 500 people banned, anyone caught driving cars without a sanctioned reason were detained at confinement centres for a 30-day period. Quarantine-breakers have been dealt with, summarily and harshly. Towns in El Salvador deemed to not be complying with the president’s strict lockdown orders have been cordoned off by the police, barring public egress [‘Savior or Strongman? El Salvador’s millennial president defies courts and Congress on coronavirus response’, (Patrick Oppman), CNN, 21-May-2020, www.edition.cnn.com].

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(Source: El Salvador Presidency via Reuters)

The new Salvadoran president has gone particularly hard on the country’s street gangs, the maras, who he fears would take advantage of the state of emergency to increase their criminal business activities when the security forces were busy policing the lockdown measures. Most controversial has been Bukele’s treatment of gang prisoners during the crisis –  shockingly dehumanising images have emerged of large numbers of half-naked convicts shackled and huddled together in tight-knit formation (with zilch regard for social distancing), resembling a great amorphous mass of  “human cargo” [’El Salvador’s president accused of using coronavirus to bolster autocratic agenda’, (Patrick J Mc Donnell & Alexander Renderos), Los Angeles Times, 01-May-2020, www.news.yahoo.com].

Recently Bukele has copped a lot of flak for the way he’s handled the crisis, including from labour organisations decrying the draconian quarantine measures as abuses of human rights. The legality of his actions has been questioned as has the increasing militarisation of the regime [‘One Year After Taking Charge, Nayib Bukele Faces Severe Criticism for Handling of COVID-19′, (Zoe PC/ Tanya Wadhwa), News Click, 03-Jun-2020, www.newsclick.in/].

El Salvador’s ‘hip’ president: taking a selfie before his speech at the UN 🔻

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Shades of  the White House
As an outsider—both as the son of an immigrant family from the Middle East and from a minor centre-right party which sits outside the political establishment traditionally dominated by the two main parties in El Salvador)—the president has deliberately attempted to work outside the mainstream including the National Assembly (NA) to achieve his aims. And he’s not adverse to employing military muscle to intimidate opponents⌽ while also reaching out to El Salvador’s impoverished with cash and food handouts (to buttress his personal popularity with the social base). Political opponents in the NA have accused Bukele of using the pandemic to consolidate an authoritarian regime, and of seeking to violate the national constitution (Oppman). The similarities seemingly extend to shared personal traits. President Bukele has disclosed his prophylactic use of hydroxychloroquine, while referencing Trump’s use and endorsement of the drug. The El Salvador authorities have managed to hold the death toll thus far to 53 (06-Jun-2020) at the cost of drastic restrictions on individual liberties.


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✱ Sweden‘s top epidemiologist has now conceded the government’s laissez-faire approach was seriously flawed – with a status quo of 43 fatalities per 100,000 people and Sweden finding its borders with its Scandinavian neighbours remaining firmly closed [‘Top epidemiologist admits he got Sweden’s COVID-19 strategy wrong’, (Bloomberg), National Post, 03-Jun-2020, www.nationalpost.com]
⊡ as at  06-Jun-2020
✬ some countries simply don’t count deaths occurring in nursing homes in their COVID-19 tallies, the UK only belatedly included them later in the crisis
✪ if Belgium applied the same criteria as most countries the recorded number of deaths by COVID-19 would be around half of what it is
⌽ such as deploying the army inside the Legislative Assembly as ‘bouncers’ [‘Nayib Bukele’s military stunt raises alarming memories in El Salvador’, (David Agren), The Guardian, 16-Feb-2020, www.theguardian.com]

India v China, the Road to War, 1962: An Early Flexing of Regional Muscle by Two Future Asian Superpower Rivals

Posted on by Bonza Rottwheeler
Comparative politics, International Relations, Military history, Political geography, Political History, Regional History

Just last month there was a border flare-up on isolated Himalayan territory between northern India and China (Tibet)…one with familiar echoes of the past. A seemingly random clash of troops on the banks of Pangong Tso (eastern Ladakh) apparently initiated by the Chinese, some injuries, accusations of trespassing and of illegal building of defence facilities, a serious face-off between two bodies of troops 〚’China vs India: Beijing troops take control of border accusing India of trespassing’, (Brian McGleenon), Express, 18-May-2020, www.express.co.uk〛.

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Nathu La border, 2020  (Photo: AFP / Getty Images)

Though the incident is concerning of itself—two Asian military superpowers with nuclear empowerment going head-to-head—this is nothing new, there have been a number of such “minor incidents“ between the two countries over the past six decadesφ. Similar incidents to this occurred in 2017 at the same location and at the Doklam tri-junction (India/Tibet/Bhutan). Small incursions across the contested borderlands by both sides have long been a common occurrence 〚‘Chinese Troops Have Entered Disputed India Territory Several Times in Recent Days’, (AFP), Business Insider, 19-Aug-2014, www.businessinsider.com〛.

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Asian brotherhood – before the strains
Independent post-colonial India and the People’s Republic of China both emerged in the late 1940s. Initially the relationship between them was cordial, India even fulfilling a role as a diplomatic go-between for communist China to voice the isolated Peking regime’s concerns on world bodies like the UN〚‘India-China War of 1962: How it started and what happened later’, India Today, 21-Nov-2016, www.indiatoday.in〛. Indian leader Jawaharlal Nehru pursued a pragmatic approach to the gigantic northern neighbour, entering into the Panchsheel Pact (“Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence”) with China, eventually even recognising Peking’s right to rule Tibet. Nehru’s expression or slogan for the relationship during these “glass half-full” days was Hindi-Chini bhai-bhai (Indian-Chinese brotherhood) (India Today).

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Deterioration of Sino-Indian relations
In 1959 the relationship started to turn for the worst. The Lhasa Uprising and the Dalai Lama’s subsequent exile into India didn’t endear India to China and its leader Mao Zedong. But much more permanently troubling has been the ongoing spat between China and India over their shared and disputed borders. India inherited one nightmare of a border mess from the British colonials⌫…on two separate fronts – in the northwest of the country it has several contested boundaries with Pakistan and China (ranging over Kashmir, Jammu and Kashmir,  Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand), and in the northeast with China (Arunachal Pradesh (“South Tibet”), Assam, Sikkim).

Border clashes and the road to war
In 1959 there were clashes on India’s North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA) – at Kongka Pass, Ladakh (nine Indian and one Chinese soldiers killed) and at Longju, on the disputed McMahon Line (one Indian border guard killed). Both sides argued that the other transgressed into its territory first, a standard refrain in the Indo-Chinese confrontations. Mao was rebuked by Soviet leader Khrushchev at the time for harming the relationship with India〚’China’s India War: How the Chinese Saw the Conflict’, (Neville Maxwell), May 2011, www.chinaindiaborderdispute.files.wordpress.com〛.

From sabre-rattling to open war
Within three years the continuing border fracas developed into a full-blown border war between China and India…in October 1962 the Chinese People’s Liberation Army attacked the concentration of Indian border posts in Ladakh. The brief war itself was an unmitigated disaster for New Delhi and Nehru. The Indian army was badly led, out-manoeuvred and out-fought by the disciplined, efficient Chinese soldiers. Having spectacularly pushed the Indians back, Peking unilaterally called a ceasefire after one month of fighting and withdrew to the Line of Actual Control (a demarcation line separating the territory controlled by each side) leaving China in control of Aksai Chin (the location of Peking’s principal claim).

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The Sino-Indian war subsumed within the broader context of the Cold War
As India licked its wounds and tried to compose itself after the shock of the military debacle, Nehru set about portraying China as the belligerent aggressor and India as the aggrieved party merely trying to defend its own territory. Given the prevailing political climate of the time, the US and the UK readily agreed with New Delhi’s assessment of  China‘s actions as “bellicose and expansionist”. Peking was almost universally depicted as the villain in the piece with many Western countries adopting the “knee-jerk” anti-communist response, automatically denouncing Chinese aggression and offering support for the victim India. Both the US and the Soviet Union, who had just emerged from a superpower nuclear stand-off over the Cuban Missile Crisis, funnelled  lavished amounts of aid to India in the war’s wash-up〚Gregory Clark, Book Review of ‘India’s China War’, www.gregoryclark.net/; Neville Maxwell, India’s China War (1971)〛.

“Forward Policy”
The subsequent investigative work of Anglo-Australian journalist Neville Maxwell on the lead-up to the war turned this hitherto-accepted view of the conflict on its head. Maxwell obtained a copy of the top-secret, classified Henderson Brooks-Bhagat Report⊗ leaked from an ‘insider’ and published its findings in a book in 1971. Maxwell and the HBB Report exploded the “convenient military mythology” of the 1962 war as being caused by China’s unprovoked aggression 〚’National Interest: Who’s afraid of Neville Maxwell?’, (Shekhar Gupta), The Indian Express, 22-Mar-2014, www.indianexpress.com〛.

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Aksai Chin  (Source: www.thediplomat.com)

The documents revealed that India from the end of the Fifties pursued “Forward Policy’, an aggressive strategy of military patrolling of disputed land claimed by China (provocatively and repeatedly setting up military posts ever more forward, so that the Indian post troops found themselves eyeballing the Chinese ones✦), Also disclosed was the folly of India’s complete unpreparedness for war at the time 〚’Burying Open Secrets: India’s 1962 War and the Henderson-Brooks Report’, (Shruti Pandalai), The South Asia Channel, 02-Apr-2014, www.archive.org/〛. The classified report and Maxwell show an ill-conceived plan from go to woe on India’s part…Nehru and members of the government pushed the military into a course of reckless adventurism on the northern borders (with Nehru urging the Indian army to drive the Chinese invaders out of the Dhola Strip)(Clark).

Peking showed itself willing to negotiate border disputes with it’s other southern neighbours, working through obstacles and doing so amicably with Burma, Nepal and Pakistan (the latter only too happy to reach a settlement with the PRC, seeing it as buying an insurance policy against it’s number one enemy, India).

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(Image: www.differentbetween.info/)


Failure of diplomacy, a negotiating cul-de-sac 
In negotiations with India, China made it clear that it was prepared to exchange it’s claims to NEFA in it’s entirety for New Delhi’s recognition of it’s claim to Aksai Chin (important to China as a route between it’s northwest province Xinjiang and Xizang (Tibet)). Eminently fair and reasonable as that appeared, Nehru was unwaveringly intransigent and refused to budge on an inflexible, previously-stated position that the frontier and boundaries were already delimited. Nehru presented the Chinese with what was tantamount to a fait accompli, saying effectively, this is what we insist upon, agree to this and then negotiate the rest. Or equally unhelpfully Nehru would insist that the Chinese evacuate Aksai Chin but without making a reciprocal concession on India’s part (Clark).

An alternate view to Nehru’s refusal to countenance any degree of compromise at the negotiating table (Maxwell) has it that at least up until 1959 the Indian PM was favourably disposed to Chou En-Lai’s Aksai Chin/NEFA exchange proposal (Clark).

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Chou En-Lai in India  (Source: www.indiandefencereview.com)

A calamitous miscalculation
The approach of Nehru and his defence minister, Menon, was predicated on the assumption that Peking under no circumstances would resort to war¤ — this transpired to be a fatal misreading of the Peking mindset. Equipped with this (false) sense of security the Nehru government felt free to push the envelope as much as it liked, getting closer and closer to the Chinese posts, raising the stakes each time. Premier Chou from the Chinese side tried repeatedly to negotiate a solution with the Indian PM, while all the time fortifying China’s military position on the disputed borders. 

Extra-cabinet Policy-making
Nehru, intent on projecting an unwavering show of strength, insisted that the retention of “India’s territories” were non-negotiable, a question of “national prestige and dignity”. With the domestic opposition egging on the government to take an even more aggressive stance on the border issue, Nehru set the stakes too high, as the situation proceeded relentlessly, he could not back down without risking great loss of face. As India plunged deeper into the diplomatic crisis, Nehru monopolised decision-making in his own hands,  often by-passing cabinet and parliament altogether  (‘India’s China War‘).

Ultimately, a frustrated Peking lost all patience with such bloody-minded stonewalling by the Indian side and took the drastic step that to Nehru and New Delhi had been previously unthinkable 〚’China Was The Aggrieved; India, Aggressor In ‘62’, Outlook, (Interview with N Maxwell, 22-Oct-2012, www.outlookindia.com; ‘India’s China War’〛.

 

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(Source: www.firstpost.com/)

India’s ”Pollyanna approach” to the military situation
India blundered into a war it was wholly unprepared for. As Maxwell pointed out, India’s championing of a non-aligned position in world politics and the prestige that afforded it, led it to let it’s guard down defence-wise. During the Fifties the strength of the country’s armed forces was allowed to become depleted. The complacency circa 1960 was manifest in Indians’ characterisation of the border confrontations with the PRC as a “police action”, and in Nehru’s comments that the Himalayas represented an “effective barrier“ to stop China. The effortless annexation of Portuguese Goa in 1961, against hardly any opposing forces, further lulled India into an unrealistic assessment of its own military capability. Signs of hubris even! When it came to the actual conflict in October 1962, the contrast was stark. India had maybe a quarter of the strength of China stationed in the conflict zone. India was deficient to the Chinese in many other areas: in weaponry (shortage of tanks and artillery; it’s jawans (soldiers) lacked the warm clothing essential for the weather and were unacclimatised to the altitude; the Chinese had the advantages of location and communications; and the Indians underestimated the difficulty of the terrain 〚’’Reassessing the Soviet Stand on the Indo-China conflict’, (Arun Mohanty), Russia Beyond, 25-Oct-2012, www.rbth.com; ‘India’s China War’〛.

Blame for the military fiasco also lands heavily on the generals themselves…Lt-General Kaul in particular comes badly out of the report’s findings. The politicians did not get realistic advice from the military commanders on India’s capacity to handle the border conflict, in part because they themselves had dismissed the unfavourable but accurate advice they were getting from subordinate officers at the front concerning the army’s clear lack of combat readiness (‘India’s China War’).

Drifting away from non-alignment
There had been an Indian eagerness to engage in reckless war rhetoric in the lead-up to the Himalayan war. India was awash with a mood of nationalistic jingoism…following Pandit Nehru’s lead very few were talking about negotiation, inside and outside the government. This, together with it’s swift recourse to warfare to secure Goa just ten months earlier, lost India credibility in the eyes of other countries in the non-aligned camp, and as Nehru was very much the embodiment of non-alignment statesmanship, this diminished him as well⊟. The fracturing of Indian non-alignment was further underscored with the country gravitating towards both Moscow and Washington at the conflict’s end (‘India’s China War’).

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As we have seen since 1962, the posturing and muscle-flexing by India and China on the mountainous border continues to the present. These fracas may on the surface be ‘contained’ shows of bluster, but the geo-strategic importance of the China-Indian border, and its proximity to another unresolved latent border flashpoint in Kashmir (India v Pakistan), remains a very real concern for all three players to avoid the errors of the past 〚’India’s two-front conundrum’, (Shahzad Chaudhry), The Express Tribune, 31-May-2020, www.tribune.com.pk〛.

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PostScript: An emerging rift in the “fraternal socialist states”
The Indo-Chinese War had piquant ramifications for the Soviet/PRC relationship. When the conflict took a serious turn, China’s expectation would be that it’d get the support of its fellow socialist state against a capitalist democracy, but the USSR annoyed Peking by adopting a neutral stance (a sign to the PRC of emerging “Soviet revisionism”)◊. Moscow’s position shifted over the course of the conflict, initially tilting slightly toward the PRC then back more openly toward India. The Soviets saw friendship with India and Nehru as useful—in a Russian global strategy that was moving towards a peaceful co-existence with the capitalist world—culminating in the 1971 Indo-Soviet Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation. The war signalled the emerging ideological gap between the two communist powers which would splinter further apart in 1963 (Mohanty).

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Φ the former Indian army chief VK Singh has stated that he is unconcerned by the most recent fracas, attributing Chinese aggression to an attempt to deflect attention away from it’s current problems at home〚’Amid India-China border stand off, Army Commanders Conference begins’, The Hindu, 27-May-2020, www.thehindu.com〛
⌫ “(India) inherited frontiers…(but) no boundaries”, as Maxwell pithily put it
⊗ the report to this day has not been officially released by any Indian government, it is said, due to its “extremely sensitive” nature and “current operational value” (Pandalal)
✦ in the sensitive Chip Chap Valley almost 40 Indian posts were positioned on territory claimed by China.
¤ this was a massive fail on the part of the Indian bureaucrats too. The Congress government was acting on advice from Intelligence Bureau director BN Mullik who assured it China would not react militarily to Indian advance movements.
⊟ in the trauma and shock of the catastrophic military reversals, a despairing Nehru tried to talk the US and Formosa (Taiwan) into attacking China. As Maxwell noted of India’s curious dualism in this: to Nehru the use of force was “reprehensible in the abstract and in the service of others, but justifiably both politically and morally when employed by India in disputes” (‘India’s China War’)
◊ the USSR had its own boundary disputes with China in the Far East which weren’t resolved until the early Nineties