The Doklam standoff has emerged as a litmus test for India in terms of how resolutely it can stand up against an increasingly hegemonic China to protect the interests of Bhutan as well as its own interests.

While decades of counterinsurgency operations and peace processes have taken the sting out of the region’s major insurgencies, collaboration between groups continues to pose security challenges, particularly in the exploitable border areas adjacent to the upper Sagaing Region of Northwest Myanmar.

It will take some time before the PLA can claim to be a modern military, at par with Western armies, capable of undertaking extended global missions. But the PLA is poised for a “Giant Leap”, and that is bound to dramatically change the ‘balance of power’ dynamics.