People love to assume policymakers spend months and years on Grand Strategy, yet in action most of the hypotheticals that come up just don't make sense. It's not some big game of Civ or Risk.
> blue-water navies
PLAN is not a blue water navy yet and by most standards won't be for the next 7-8 years.
> Not a coincidence that a ring of naval bases are cropping up around India
Agreed, and it's not like India doesn't have similar bases in the Eastern Indian Ocean or in the SCS as well.
> People love to assume policymakers spend months and years on Grand Strategy, yet in action most of the hypotheticals that come up just don't make sense
Whether anyone is acting on or mitigating a risk doesn't change the risk's existance. A good way for a country to lose its sovereignty is to assume its risks won't be capitaised on.
> PLAN is not a blue water navy yet and by most standards won't be for the next 7-8 years
That's proximate.
> it's not like India doesn't have similar bases in the Eastern Indian Ocean or in the SCS as well
Bases are an asset. Not immunity. If someone needs to coerce India, threatening or deploying a blockade (ideally, on energy) remains a capital way to do it.
Barring building and maintaining one of the largest navies in the world, India's only real remedy to the situation is onshoring production and reducing energy import dependence. (Though, as you say, that's no guarantee it will be done.)
People love to assume policymakers spend months and years on Grand Strategy, yet in action most of the hypotheticals that come up just don't make sense. It's not some big game of Civ or Risk.
> blue-water navies
PLAN is not a blue water navy yet and by most standards won't be for the next 7-8 years.
> Not a coincidence that a ring of naval bases are cropping up around India
Agreed, and it's not like India doesn't have similar bases in the Eastern Indian Ocean or in the SCS as well.