The inevitability of Sino-Indian conflict

The adoption of triangular diplomatic and a military strategy by China occurred in the context of Sino-Indian border tensions (1959-62) and following China’s failure to deter India’s forward policy and to bring it to the negotiation table on the border dispute. Whiting defines the Chinese calculus of deterrence as ‘persuading a perceived opponent that the costs of his continuing conflictual activity will eventually prove unacceptable to him because of the Chinese response’.1 Whiting concludes that China’s deterrence policy with India was a ‘complete failure’ that ‘resulted from too great a degree of Sinocentric, idiosyncratic behavior for effective interaction with a nonChinese world’.2 This chapter explains that the events of the 1950s and particularly in 1961-62 made the Sino-Indian conflict inevitable even though war in the future between China and India is not inevitable. This is so because a pattern of controlled and reciprocal escalation has emerged along with the formation of an institutionalized, inter-governmental diplomatic and an economic discourse between the two continental states. ‘Escalate, stabilize relations and negotiate’ is now, after 1962, the commonly shared norm of Sino-Indian relations. Before 1962, the norm was ‘escalate but don’t negotiate’; that attitude led to lashing out by both sides and eventually war. Why was Sino-Indian conflict inevitable even if the 1962 war could have

been avoided, according to one view, had Nehru agreed to negotiate the border dispute and to admit that a dispute existed? The answer lies, in part, in China’s well-advertised view that the root cause of Sino-Indian dispute lay in Indian links with US imperialism and later with Soviet revisionism.3 India was a pawn in the international anti-China campaign; and this explained Nehru’s unwillingness to negotiate a border settlement. The deterioration in Sino-Soviet relations played a role in Chinese perceptions. Compare Moscow’s attitude to China’s actions in the Himalayan area in 1950 and in 1959. In 1950 Stalin supported Mao’s plan to liberate Tibet and to teach the Tibetans a lesson.4 By 1959-62 Moscow’s stance had changed – from friendship with China to a neutral position on the Sino-Indian border and later friendship with it and disapproval of the use of force by China. Another answer comes from Mullik – the existence of an ‘eternal struggle’ was inherent in the presence of two civilizations and continental states and the struggle had cultural

as well as strategic dimensions.5 Here the implication was that two ambitious continental states were bound to cross swords unless one accepted a subordinate status to the other; only the timing and circumstances that showed up the rivalry was unpredictable. Mullik’s view of Nehru’s assessment of China is corroborated by US Ambassador to India, Chester Bowles’6 assessment of Nehru’s attitude towards China. Krishna Menon’s remark that ‘we will regroup and fight again’ after the 1962 debacle7 implied the existence of a long-term Sino-Indian conflict. The hypothesis that Sino-Indian conflict was/is inevitable is not self-

evident. Whiting notes two Chinese characteristics which are relevant to my discussion. One, the use of force is not a paramount characteristic of Chinese foreign policy. Two, Whiting’s analysis points to the existence of a Zhouist line in Chinese actions with India. The record show a willingness to compromise and settle the border question by negotiations as was done with Burma, Nepal and Pakistan.8 If Whiting is right, there is a distinction between the Maoist emphasis on power coming from the barrel of a gun and his theory of revolutionary violence, and on the other hand, the presence of Premier Zhou Enlai as the key interlocutor with India indicates an emphasis on maintaining friendly relations and seeking a negotiated border settlement with India. With regard to the use of force in Tibet in 1950 a legalistic argument could be made that this was intended to secure China’s borders rather than to expand beyond them as the borders were defined by China’s leaders. A forensic examination of Chinese diplomatic method, however, suggests

that a conflict with China becomes inevitable if another power centre or a potential one in Asia chooses to treat China as a point of opposition rather than as a point of attraction. That is, if China’s self-image about its peacefulness and the justness of its revolutionary aims, and its territorial and international aims are questioned, then rivalry is likely. Indian diplomatic accounts – by Mullik, Gopal, Patel and Bajpai – reveal a questioning of Chinese motives and aggressive behaviour in Tibet and concerns about Maoist statements about Tibet as the palm of the five fingers of Ladakh, Bhutan, Sikkim, NEFA and Nepal that merited liberation.9 Conflict became inevitable when India refused to fall in line on the border question and refused to abandon its ties with Western imperialists and Soviet revisionists and the Tibetan government in exile. In the context of America’s containment of China policy in the 1950s, the rise of Sino-Soviet territorial, ideological and diplomatic differences by 1959, and the growth of Indian ties with the US and Soviet Russia – China’s two international rivals – the conflict with India went beyond the border issue; that was a symptom not the cause of the conflict. The implication is that the conflict would end if the two sides achieved a general political settlement that included the border question. Gittings emphasizes that Nehru’s willingness to admit that a border dispute

existed was the root cause of the conflict; Maxwell highlights Nehru’s refusal to negotiate and his forward policy as a provocation that led to the conflict. Both comments require clarification. The Sino-Indian diplomatic experience

shows that Indian efforts to discuss Chinese border maps in the mid 1950s were met by evasive replies that the maps were old and had not been reviewed and revised. Later Beijing argued that the time was not ripe to discuss the boundary issue or to acknowledge that a dispute existed until 1959. The sceptic may argue that the willingness to negotiate – that exists in Chinese communications – was a diplomatic stance to convince Indian and international public opinion about China’s sincerity. But the framework of negotiation was formed after China had built its strategic road in Aksai Chin – its lifeline to Tibet from Xinjiang in 1957. This created a claim that Aksai Chin was always a part of China. Dorothy Woodman, a recognized world authority on the Himalayan area notes that Ladakh was independent, and it had formed relations with the British, and it was not a part of China.10 In other words, China’s willingness to negotiate was to first delay consideration of the issue until the time was ripe; it became ripe after the Aksai Chin road was established, and then the time was ripe to argue that the old Chinese Nationalists maps were the basis of China’s claims and a boundary dispute existed. Here a declared ‘willingness to negotiate’ was meant to create manoeuvrability for China’s diplomacy and to buy time for road building in Ladakh, to secure military communications with Tibet, and to make military preparations for a war contingency with India. After 1962, following escalation of a border dispute and diplomatic rivalry

into a border war, the Sino-Indian relationship was framed within two parameters: 1. diplomatic and strategic rivalry was inevitable given the different worldviews, diplomatic interest and the search for international space by the two countries and bureaucratic space by the practitioners. 2. War was avoidable because of the danger of escalation and great powers’ intervention. 1962 showed the limits of war as a policy option for China and India. However, the first parameter showed the importance of military buildups by both sides in the Himalayan region, and for China to build an anti-India front in the subcontinent, south of the Himalaya, in outer Asia. Was this a sign of China’s insecurity – that required it to have friendly allies in outer Asia – as its outer defence line in addition to its defences in inner Asia – its frontier in Tibet and Xinjiang? Or was this China’s ambition to break out in the Indian Ocean world? Beijing’s first major response post-1962, was to build its position in Pakistan – India’s vital strategic flank, and China’s bridge to the Middle East, South Asia and the Indian Ocean worlds. China joined Pakistan in forming a strategic triangle against India after it failed to rein in India during 1950-62. Earlier during 1954-62 Pakistan had opted to form a strategic triangle with the US against India, claiming that India and the USSR were expansionist forces and this danger required Pakistani-American cooperation to check them. China did not join the US-Pakistan-India triangle during the 1950s because India and China were engaged in the diplomacy of peaceful coexistence, Nehru was cooperative with China on the Tibet question, the border dispute had not surfaced, the US was engaged in containing China and China viewed it as the imperialist that sought to build an anti-China front.

Like British India before 1947, China after 1949 demonstrated its geopolitical orientation in the Himalayan region by its activism in Tibet and Xinjiang affairs; and like Britain it had a sense of the limits of its power and interests. In the early 1950s it was limited to consolidation of its military and political position in Tibet and Xinjiang, to developing its relations with India, and only when diplomacy and deterrence failed to check India’s border policy and its realignment with the US and the USSR, did Beijing seek to form a triangle with Pakistan and to accept Pakistan’s approach to contain India. China adopted the logic of a Sino-Pakistani-Indian triangle following the

inconclusive results of the 1962 war. Even though India has been defeated in the Himalayan border the score card for China was mixed. It had humbled India and gained an ally in Pakistan but this was cancelled by the loss of two important allies – Moscow and Delhi, and by evidence of a US diplomaticmilitary tilt towards India. As a victor Beijing was unable to dictate to India the terms of surrender, and an advocate of Sino-Indian friendship became anti-Chinese. Sino-Indian relations were tied to the border question after 1959; along with the Kashmir issue the importance of territoriality stimulated Indian nationalism vis-à-vis two immediate neighbours. Before 1962 Indian diplomatic practitioners led by Nehru had highlighted the themes of world peace and Sino-Indian friendship. The 1962 war put an end to the distracting influence of such rhetoric. Also, the over-reliance on diplomacy as the main channel of discourse in India’s political culture and bureaucratic politics was reversed. An accelerated military buildup in the Himalayan region with help

from Washington and Moscow followed. These changes were irreversible and permanently altered the framework of Sino-Indian relations. China had won the 1962 battle but it did not secure long-term gains for itself. 1962 started a prolonged process of escalation by both China and India. Border negotiations stalled, and India lashed out against China’s support of Pakistan during the wars in 1965 and 1971. In the early 1960s US diplomatic practitioners argued that China was a destructive force for both India and Pakistan.11 This view of China became a point of contention in the political discourse within India after 1962 between India’s pro-China Communist Party lobby and India’s centre-right opponents of Nehruvian and Chinese diplomacy. China’s recruitment of Pakistan as a strategic partner in its diplomatic and

military fight with India was the third step in its ‘Look South’ policy in which India, not any other South Asian state, was the obstruction in Beijing’s quest for leadership in the Third World. India’s location in China’s southern zone, its influence in the Third World, its alignments with two major Chinese rivals, the US and USSR, its economic and military potential and it cultural and strategic rivalry came in the way of China’s quest for advancement as the major Asian power, as the revolutionary centre of Afro-Asian politics. The formation of a two-way diplomatic and a military front with Pakistan were intended to enhance the pressure on India from two sides.