Whenever a Malayali has been in a position of authority w.r.t China we've come to grief. Be it K. M. Panniker or V. K. Krisha Menon or anybody who's succeeded them.
This man goes about claiming a virtue out of a necessity of the 1993 agreement on the LAC which doesn't talk of the LAC at all but defines ways to regulate the behavior of the troops stationed there.
He thinks what's happened now & Doklam was avoidable or could be better handled but has nothing to say about the GoI's capitulation during earlier Chinese incursions when he was the NSA.
He has a prescription for what our FP has to be with our neighbors notably Bangladesh, SL & Nepal but neglects to mention that when the Chinese invested in Hambantota, they first approached us but we're rebuffed. They went ahead with the Chinese. I wonder what cost benefit analysis did this man undertake then. None of the Indian PM's visited Bangladesh or Nepal when he was the NSA & even before. In fact when Modi visited Nepal in 2014 , he was the first Indian PM in 2 decades to have visited Nepal.
He thinks India ought not to toe the US line on Iran but I wonder if he remembers what was the GoI's stance when more stringent sanctons were imposed during Obama's tenure when he was the NSA.
This is what happens when we have ideologically charged bureaucrats who occupy the high office. They see everything including the nation's supreme self interest through that prism.
The entire UPA Govt was Badly Compromised
MMS , Antony , Khurshid , Chidambaram
And above all The Gandhis