Containing China: The US Steps in As India-China Border Tensions Flare

According to Alice Wells, the soon to be retired top U.S. diplomat for South Asia, there are similarities between China’s aggressive actions on the China-Indian border and in the waters of the South China Sea.

She said to the Atlantic Council, a think tank based in Washington, D.C., "For anyone who was under any illusions that Chinese aggression was only rhetorical, I think they need to speak to India. If you look to the South China Sea, there's a method here to Chinese operations, and it is that constant aggression, the constant attempt to shift the norms, to shift what is the status quo. It has to be resisted."

Wells’ comments are about the recent fights that have occurred along the sprawling borders between India and China.

One battle occurred on May 5 in the Pangong Tso Lake area involving 250 soldiers. Another happed in Naku La Pass in the Sikkim sector on May 9. Both skirmishes resulted in some minor injuries caused by fistfights, stones and metal bars.

Current events are almost always based on what has happened in the past. The 1962 Sino-Indian War is seen as the beginning of Chinese Indian border conflicts but other events leading to it are worth mentioning:

• The People’s Republic of China (PRC) was established in 1949 and India, under its first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, was one of the first nations to grant diplomatic recognition to the newly created PRC.
• A year later the Chinese staged a military takeover of Tibet by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), later built a road, and placed border posts in Aksai Chin, an Indian controlled region that the Chinese had captured along with Tibet.
• In 1959, Nehru allowed the Tibetan religious leader at the time, the 14th Dalai Lama, who fled Lhasa after a failed Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule, to settle in northern India.
• Between 1959 and 1962 a series of skirmishes led to what is called the confrontation at Thag La Ridge and the beginning of the named conflict.

At the same time things were heating up in other parts of the world. The youthful U.S President John F Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev were embroiled in the Cuban Missile crisis with the threat of a nuclear conflict on everyone’s minds. At the height of the crisis the Soviet newspaper Pravda published a front-page article that put the entire blame for the 1962 war with China on India that further emphasized the split between Communist and non-Communist countries.

During the 1962 border conflict, it was the U.S. that came to India's rescue and there were plans to send the USS Kitty Hawk aircraft carrier to the Bay of Bengal to support India against a possible Chinese invasion.

Alice Wells, in her talks with the Atlantic Council emphasized that the United States backs India's claims and encouraged New Delhi and Beijing to resolve their issues diplomatically.

The U.S. has been building close ties with India over the past few decades while relations with China have become increasingly acrimonious on multiple fronts.

Today, China still claims about 90,000 square km of territory under New Delhi's control.