The Doklam confrontation is not over by any means, and no one can say how it will turn out. As the two sides reinforce their positions, the portents are not good. In the meantime, India needs to stop overplaying the vulnerability of the Chicken’s Neck, the narrow corridor between north and northeastern India.

Indian commentary has identified the Chicken’s Neck as the driving concern behind New Delhi’s insistence that it must stand firm in Doklam. The Chicken’s Neck area is the area between Bhutan, China, Nepal and Sikkim in the north and Bangladesh to the south. At its narrowest, between Bangladesh and Nepal it is 14-17 km wide. Beyond this, it is about 200 km by 60 km in area. The strategic argument is that China could use Doklam to thrust through the Chumbi Valley to sever northern from northeastern India.

This is an extremely dubious thesis. It is about as credible as arguing that the Siachen Glacier is vital to the security of Kashmir and northwestern India. For one thing, Indian forces in the Doklam-Sikkim sector are superior to their PLA counterparts, a point that Indian experts never tire of repeating. India clearly has the advantage of the heights, numbers, and logistics. If so, a Chinese breakthrough here is highly unlikely.

But assuming that the PLA does get past our defences, a thrust from Doklam or from the trijunction of Bhutan, China and India will have to traverse 100-130 km of Indian territory, with Indian forces all round. Note that the PLA will have to negotiate winding Indian roads on which there is no place to hide. It cannot get its men and equipment off the road, and Indian long-range artillery, rockets and attack aircraft will pick them off in a “turkey shoot”.

If the PLA gets to flatter land, it will be able to fan out. However, by the time it does this, Indian forces from both flanks will have massed. The Chinese may even be vulnerable in their rear, with the Indian army harrowing them from behind. Again, long-range artillery, rockets, and aircraft will have a field day.

Assuming that nevertheless Chinese forces make it to flatter ground and try to consolidate their positions, they will face an enormous logistical problem. Their supplies will have to come all the way from Tibet. In military parlance, India will have the “interior” supply lines which are much shorter while the Chinese will have the exterior lines going back to the Tibetan plateau. As a result, their logistics will be horribly exposed to Indian interdiction. The PLA forces in the Chicken’s Neck area will gradually be starved of supplies and will be destroyed or captured.

Another possibility is that the Chinese would try to take and hold this area with special forces that are parachuted behind Indian lines. Chinese special forces have grown and improved in capability over the past decade, but they are not much more than a short-operations force against paramilitary or insurgent opposition. Their ability to hold ground against regular military forces and expand their operations is extremely limited.

This then is the commonsense military truth. It is not clear why Indian analysts, including unnamed or retired military analysts, continue to propagate the myth that the Chicken’s Neck is vulnerable, but it does us no good to repeat this myth endlessly. Certainly, the PLA knows that a thrust here would be suicidal.

Having said that, there is one circumstance in which the Chicken’s Neck would be vulnerable: all-out war with China. In that case, India would be fighting desperately in many sectors, and it might not be able to defend the Chicken’s Neck sufficiently. If so, the Doklam road would be of little or no relevance since the entire border would be in flames and India’s military situation would be perilous across hundreds of kilometres.