During the recent meeting of the Foreign Ministers of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue or the Quad, India’s External Affairs Minister, S. Jaishankar said that the situation at the India-China Line of Actual Control (LAC) has arisen due to the “disregard” by China of “written agreements”. But what China has been doing at the LAC is not a mere “disregard”. It is a blatant violation of international law as part of a larger game of Chinese expansionism. Let us understand how.
Breach of law
The India-China LAC engagement is guided by a series of bilateral agreements that the two sides have signed over the years. A central tenet of all these agreements is the complete proscription on the threat or use of force. For instance, a 1993 agreement between India and China provides that neither side shall use or threaten to use force against the other by any means. It further enunciates that the India-China boundary question shall be resolved through peaceful and friendly consultations. Likewise, Article I of the 1996 agreement on confidence-building measures between the two sides prohibits the use of military capability against the other side. The prohibition on the use of force is also enshrined in Article I and Article VIII of the 2005 and 2013 agreements, respectively. States being forbidden from using force in international relations is a cardinal rule of international law codified in Article 2(4) of the United Nations (UN) Charter. The UN Charter recognises two exceptions to this rule — self-defence under Article 51 and UN Security Council authorisation under Chapter VII of the Charter.
