High up in the Himalayan mountains, most of which are uninhabitable, the world’s two largest armies face each other. Tensions on the disputed Sino-Indian border, where some 100,000 troops are quartered in remote outposts, rarely make foreign headlines. But it is one of the most dangerous places in the world. In 2020, clashes on the border left more than 20 people dead, marking the largest fighting between China and India since the war between the two countries in 1962.
Since then, tensions at the top of the world have persisted. Over the past four years, both sides have sought to build infrastructure and deploy more troops along the border. Just as China is arguing with many of its neighbors over competing territorial claims, the unresolved border dispute with India is a marvel of volatility. A risk assessment released in March through the U. S. Director of National Intelligence warned that sporadic clashes between Indian and Chinese troops “risk miscalculation and escalation into armed conflict. “
The worsening border crisis reflects the growing strategic rivalry between India and China. Bilateral relations deteriorated drastically after the clashes of 2020. In the face of China’s military superiority and competitive foreign policy, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has sought to deepen India’s alignment with the United States. and other countries distrust Beijing. He accepted India’s new role as a counterweight to China in the Indo-Pacific region. It reinforced the country’s participation in the Quad, its security partnership with Australia, Japan and the United States. In many areas, bilateral relations between China and India are functionally frozen, reminiscent of the time between 1962 and 1988, when the two countries did not have general diplomatic relations due to the border dispute.
Beyond the border – the most damaging flashpoint – Indian officials see Beijing entering their backyard. India has long claimed that China is using its alliance with Pakistan, its archenemy, to keep India trapped in the region. China’s warmongering is also resurrecting India’s old strategic considerations of a conceivable two-front war, with Pakistan acting in tandem with China. In South Asia, China and India also compete for influence in smaller countries such as Bangladesh, the Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka. Modi appears to have learned that India’s growing role externally will depend on how it handles China militarily and politically. At the time of publication, it seemed very likely that he would win a third term as prime minister in this year’s parliamentary elections. If his victory is confirmed, it will be driven in part by the strength of the symbol he projects of himself as a self-confident global leader who will guide India to great military prestige and keep China in check.
However, this increasingly competitive posture is very likely to cause more problems. Modi’s technique before Washington makes the India-China rivalry seem like a subset of the broader China-U. S. festival. Some Indian analysts fear that the situation will change by inspiring Beijing to deal directly with Washington rather than New Delhi, reinforcing the feeling in India that China does not see it as an equal. India’s closer alignment with the United States may also inspire China to use coercive tactics opposed to India to send a strong message to the United States and its allies. While this would arguably serve a domestic purpose, Modi’s strongman stance hinders international relations with China, prolonging the crisis. To be sure, Modi has already engaged in talks with Beijing, and those efforts have hardly succeeded. But returning to high-level talks with China remains the most productive solution for identifying stability on the border and India’s reputation as a marvelous power.
The origins of the China-India border dispute date back to the 1950s, when Chinese forces occupied Tibet, which had long served as a buffer zone between the two countries. The Chinese and Indian governments inherited the borders of the regimes they replaced. , the Qing dynasty, and British India, resulting in a multitude of overlapping claims. In 1962, a brief war broke out along the disputed border, resulting in a crushing defeat for India. This humiliating loss engendered a deep and enduring distrust of China that still a de facto border imposed through Beijing after 1962, called the Line of Actual Control (LAC), functions as a continuous border, even if the two countries agree on its precise location.
Between 1993 and 2013, Indian and Chinese diplomats signed a series of border agreements in an attempt to minimize the clash and lessen the threat of escalating violence by, for example, restricting the use of firearms between the two militaries. But a basic war of words persisted and led to recurring outbursts, adding a series of border clashes in 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2017. The two countries tried to cover their differences at two informal summits in 2018 and 2019, but the worst is yet to come. In the spring of 2020, thousands of Chinese infantrymen massed into reclaimed spaces across India, leading to clashes in which at least 20 Indian infantrymen and 4 Chinese infantrymen were killed.
After each primary crisis in the past, the two sides have tried to reach peace agreements and ease their differences, but not after the surprise of 2020. In an interview in April, Modi finally admitted that the stalemate had taken a toll on India-China relations: “The prolonged scenario on our borders,” he said, has led to “an anomaly in our bilateral interactions. “China has played a larger role in many of India’s potential foreign policy and strategic choices in the afterlife. 4 years. Since its independence in 1947, India has sought strategic autonomy and has pursued a general policy of non-alignment, avoiding formal alliances. But China’s increasingly competitive posture and developing strength in Asia have led Indian foreign policymakers to turn to the United States and its allies.
This is not the turning point Modi was hoping for. Before taking power in 2014, he warned Beijing to get rid of its “expansionist mentality. “But those difficult discussions have belied concrete measures to build, accept and identify direct contact. with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Modi eagerly sought deeper economic ties, welcomed Xi to India a few months into his first term, and traveled to Beijing in May 2015 for a stopover. Between 2014 and the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Modi met with Xi 18 times and made a stopover in China five times, an unprecedented point of interaction between the leaders of the two countries.
However, this bonhomie has not led to any genuine replacement in Beijing’s foreign policy. Its long-standing alliance with Islamabad has remained intact. And China has worked to thwart Modi’s global ambitions. New Delhi resented Beijing for obstructing India’s efforts to become a permanent member. of the UN Security Council in 2015 and for not allowing India’s access to the elite organization of nuclear suppliers in 2016. China blocked Indian calls at the UN Security Council between 2016 and 2019 to appoint the leader of the Pakistani jihadist organization Jaish-e-Muhammed. , guilty of attacks on Indian soil, as a terrorist.
China then increased pressure on the border. Like other expansionist moves in the South China Sea, where it has clashed with the Philippines and other countries over maritime claims, China has become bolder in announcing its territorial claims in the Himalayas. and criticize India for any attempt to strengthen its position in those regions. Regions. The bloody standoff that followed in 2020 and the resulting Chinese land grabs put Modi in a difficult position, because admitting that China had brazenly taken lands claimed across India would make him look weak. At first, he categorically denied that Chinese troops had crossed the border and entered Indian territory. He claimed that not an inch of land was lost; By some accounts, India lost access to approximately 775 square miles that it once patrolled. He continues to avoid speaking directly about China, for fear of drawing attention to the fact that India has lost ground to its neighbor under his leadership. At the same time, his government responded in other ways. He banned 59 Chinese apps, targeted Chinese corporations with tax raids, and created barriers to Chinese investment. Indian public opinion has also become increasingly hostile towards China, discouraging diplomatic engagement and engagement.
Modi’s domestic critics and warring political parties have blamed him for wasting territory on China, but this has not hurt his government. By beating the drum of Hindu nationalism and insisting on India’s wonderful status as a force, Modi has deflected domestic grievances about his foreign policy. With the help of India’s docile media and staunch pro-government social media, there is little discussion of India’s China policy in the public sphere, let alone in Parliament. His tougher stance toward China has helped him forge stronger ties with the United States and its countries. allies, but has done little to resolve the underlying dispute or restore stability to the border.
In the words of External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, India’s foreign policy is now focused on how to “manage a tougher neighbour while also securing its own rise”. In line with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s predilection for condemning past governments, Jaishankar argued that India’s former leaders were guilty of having “consciously underestimated the Chinese challenge” until Modi sparked a strategic revolution and aligned himself more blatantly with the United States. New Delhi and Washington were already “natural allies,” according to Indian officials in 1998; signed a civilian nuclear deal in 2005 and the “closest partners” in 2013. But Modi’s government has translated this defence and security from fine words into concrete deeds. In 2016, India signed a military logistics pact with the United States, which temporarily designated India as a “major defense partner” along with its “closest allies and partners. “the American countryside.
As the rivalry between China and India is absorbed into a wider geopolitical dynamic, the border becomes more volatile. The prospect of either side giving the floor and reaching a territorial compromise is slim. More than 20 circulars of high-level military talks since the 2020 clashes have produced little progress, and any small provocation or miscalculation may simply galvanize a new round of fighting. As China consolidates its military positions over the past four years and India tries to keep up with those movements, the border has become particularly militarized and an accidental escalation can have very serious consequences.
Modi may feel that he has pursued a strategy that will gain him domestic popularity. But if it doesn’t translate its strategy to China, it risks undermining all its achievements by pushing India to the point of not going back with a full-scale strategy. The most productive path for India would be to revive high-level political engagement in disputes similar to the Himalayan clash with China. Many of those disagreements can take a long time to resolve, but some can be addressed. In the meantime, both sides deserve to make controlling the crisis a pressing priority, reaffirm their commitment to existing bilateral agreements and explore tactics to strengthen them, given the rapid conversion dynamics at the border. China and India can take small steps towards the purpose of demarcating the Latin American and Caribbean region once and for all by reviving the border demarcation procedure, which was halted in 2002.
New Delhi could simply take inspiration from Washington’s style in managing its relations with Beijing by seeking to establish safeguards and prevent a competitive appointment from degenerating into a genuine dispute, without having to reach a complete reconciliation. This, of course, would require Beijing to be willing to compromise, which is not guaranteed. But by sticking to his strongman symbol for domestic purposes, Modi increases the threat of turning the border into a permanent flashpoint.
Over the past year, China has reached out to the United States, the European Union, Japan, Australia, South Korea and Vietnam, but not to neighboring India, sending the message that it is in no hurry to reach crisis. The very low opinion that Indians have lately of China will likely deter Modi from taking any action for fear of giving the impression of normalizing relations. But he has enough political capital and nationalist credentials to convince the public that talks between leaders will advance India’s interests.
High-level negotiations will be needed to break this impasse. Meetings between Chinese and Indian military officers since 2020 have been little more than formalities. Only the commitment of the top leaders at the highest level will achieve genuine change. Any solution to the border dispute may simply involve the exchange of amounts of territory between the two countries, and Modi will have to convince a chauvinistic Indian population that such a compromise is worthwhile.
But it is in the interest of Beijing and New Delhi to let this crisis get worse. China needs to divert resources from its main security fear in the east, the seas near the Pacific, to its western front with India. Modi needs to be caught in a protracted crisis with a tougher neighbor that would obstruct his domestic and global ambitions. Restoring stability to the China-India border is a rapprochement, but it would be a far greater end result than open war.