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ID:
170898
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| Summary/Abstract |
How did China and India manage to prevent the 1986-87 Sumdorong Chu Crisis from escalating into a war? I argue that it was a combination of changing geopolitical factors (Sino-Soviet rapprochement and the end of Soviet support for India in the context of Sino-Indian tensions) and military factors (conventional deterrence and perceptions of limited revisionism) that help explain crisis management. While these geopolitical and military factors helped avert immediate escalation, the crisis truly ended only after China and India sought a new modus vivendi during Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s landmark trip to China in December 1988. The absence of great power (Soviet) support meant that India had to make a costly signal to China in the form of Gandhi’s trip that happened during the 1987-89 cycle of protests in Tibet against Chinese rule. Nevertheless, Gandhi’s visit took place after India had demonstrated its military strength and resolve in its ability to defend the status quo on the border, and therefore should not be interpreted as a sign of weakness. In other words, I argue that successful deterrence requires broader foreign policy reorientation. At the same time, considerations of power (in the form of internal/external balancing) are central to strategic stability in the Sino-Indian dyad, and that any recourse to diplomacy that ignores the realities of military power is unlikely to be successful for crisis managemen
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| 2 |
ID:
083928
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| 3 |
ID:
194355
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article provides a triangular explanation of the recent surge in China-Indian border escalations. It argues that although escalations stemmed from the disputed borders (the first factor), two additional factors, the policies of new nationalist leaders Xi and Modi and the impact of international politics with the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) as a case study, also triggered them. In the preceding decades, these three factors were not operational simultaneously. A grand push of events connected them in a way that developments on one side affected the other two. The article explained the linkages between different factors and subfactors and their reinforcing interplay. The ill-defined boundary provided a foundation for the conflict. The assertive policies of Xi and Modi provoked the rivalry in five ways: competition for influence, status, militarisation, changes in the line of actual control (LAC), and invocation of the Quad. The article then elaborated India’s unrivalled strategic advantages in balancing China and how the ‘China factor’ strengthened India’s ties with the US, Japan and Australia bilaterally and under the Quad. The contemporary Sino-Indian rivalry has expanded beyond disputed borders. Domestic and international politics have started influencing it, making it Asia’s foremost geopolitical challenge.
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