Jaganath Sankaran (2023) State or soldier? Explaining China’s decisionmaking in India-China border crises, Journal of Strategic Studies, DOI: 10.1080/01402390.2023.2212133
Prevailing explanations for India-China border crises rely on rational actor models and assumes centralized decisionmaking. Instead, Sankaran argues that the several recent India-China border crises cannot be understood without separately interrogating the role of the PLA in China’s national security policymaking. Sankaran argues that the PLA uses its operational independence to continuously challenge Indian forces on the contested border. The Indian forces, when confronted, pushed back. The several recent border standoffs are a manifestation of the interactions between the two armed forces.