Posted on 06/28/2007 1:29:35 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
New Delhi - In revelations that could jar improving India-China relations, recently declassified CIA documents detail what the US saw as Chinese deception and Indian naivete that led to the 1962 war between the Asian giants, Indian media reported Thursday.
CIA documents on the India-China border dispute that were declassified on Tuesday offer insights on how the US intelligence agency viewed the former Soviet Union and China in the darkest days of the Cold War.
In three chapters dealing with the 1962 border war that India lost, CIA analysts suggested that the Chinese government under Premier Chou En Lai deceived India by giving false assurances to Prime Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru that the border issue was a petty problem which could be resolved by lower-level officials, the CNN-IBN network reported.
The boundary dispute, which involved large areas along their 4,000-kilometre border, later proved to be the main reason behind the bitter war between the neighbours.
The CIA documents paint Nehru as a naïve and romantic statesman who trusted the Chinese. They claim the Indian leader kept disagreements on the border issue out of the public domain to maintain his relationship with Chou.
'The Chinese diplomatic effort was a five-year masterpiece of guile, executed - and probably planned in a large part - by Chou En Lai,' the Times of India daily quoted the CIA analysis as saying.
'Chou played on Nehru's Asian, anti-imperialist mental attitude, his proclivity to temporize and his sincere desire for an amicable India-China relationship,' the analysis added.
The analysis is part of a 702-page trove of previously secret documents, known within the agency as 'the family jewels,' that detail the CIA's clandestine reports and actions during the 1960s and '70s.
Indian strategic experts pointed out that though the CIA revelations were nothing new as the India-China conflict had already been examined threadbare, they had the potential to inject mistrust between the sides.
Even after four decades since the war, India and China are still holding a dialogue to resolve the boundary problem, with both countries claiming large, overlapping areas along their common border.
India alleges that China illegally occupies 43,000 square kilometres of land in Kashmir while China has laid claim to large parts of India's north-eastern Arunachal Pradesh state and earlier claimed Sikkim.
Booming two-way trade and increased dialogue between the countries has, however, significantly improved bilateral relations in the past few years.
India alleges that China illegally occupies 43,000 square kilometres of land in Kashmir while China has laid claim to large parts of India's north-eastern Arunachal Pradesh state and earlier claimed Sikkim.That's nothing. Russia now claims most of the polar ice cap. Who said geopolitics is dead?
The documents have revived interest in reports that Nehru tried to keep a lid on China's activities by striking a secret deal with Zhou en-Lai no less. Apparently Nehru promised to recognise China's occupation of Tibet through a border trade agreement. In return Zhou en-Lai committed himself to an eight year moratorium on the border in Ladakh. That moratorium expired in 1962, when India and China went to war. - LINK
Yeah, pinkos never support communists because they are evil traitors, only because they are “naive.”
It is not as simple as that. Both sides were acting agressively on the local level. The Indian commanders assured Nehru that the Army could handle any situation. I think the CIA is wrong on the assessment of Chou planning the war. The PLA never trusted Chou and was under the control of Lin Piao a rival. CIA has been wrong before and will be again.
There is a possible conflict in the future between China and India, over something that seems far fetched on the surface, but could push them both into a very bloody war.
Demographics.
Between the two nations, there may be from 30-60 Million young men who due to a terrible imbalance of the sexes, will never have a chance to be married; and because of changing economies will never have a chance for even modest employment.
While you could imagine unemployed and single young men to be hardly worth consideration as a threat, the truth is that they can become extraordinarily destructive. That many young men could quite possibly destroy both nations from within. Unless they are eliminated.
Neither nation would really want to go to war, and the official causus belli would be unimportant, perhaps a fight over empty wasteland, almost uninhabited high altitude mountains of little value.
Each nation would also want to avoid escalation that could risk great destruction or even nuclear war. So most likely through back channels they would agree to limit their war to just the barest of conventional weapons: rifles and artillery, keeping their professional armies in reserve.
In essence, a repeat of World War I’s trench warfare, but on a much grander scale, a war designed to cause as much lethal conflict as possible, while maintaining a battlefield stalemate.
To put it in perspective, if 100,000 men died A DAY, the war would have to last a minimum of ONE YEAR and as long as TWO.
Other demographic imbalances, to include just overpopulation, as many as 300 million people, could make it bloodier and longer.
The total number of dead would rival or exceed World War II, and the war would continue until some degree of demographic balance was restored to both nations.
Other than weapons and cheap uniforms, a ball of rice and a gallon of water a day for each draftee, such conscript armies would correct an imbalance that nature has failed to adjust.
Is Nehru related to former President Jimmy "Islamist Appeaser" Carter? Same naivety, same type of catastrophic consquences (that we haven't come close to seeing fully play out)...
You scenario of 100,000 men is one of the most moronic that I have heard in a while. How will the 100,000 men per day get across the Himalayas from far away Chinese mainland? Ditto for India? How will they maintain your supply line and logistics over the Himalayas? And if you are relying on just foot soldiers and their sheer numbers to do your fighting, then its already a lost cause. They will die of cold and hunger rather then the enemies bullet.
Neither China nor India would fight that kind of a war. The next Indo-China war (if not nuclear) would be short and swift involving not many men.
BTW India and China have much less reason to go into a war then does US and China. And gender imbalances will result in tougher competition among men. Only the best ones will be able to breed. It does not mean the losers (high on testosterone) will form an army and go on rampage, invading the neighborhood.
The only thing that prevented US forces in Korea from being overrun was that the vast Chinese numbers were decimated with hemorrhagic smallpox. But this still revealed a great paradox of the modern battlefield. Beyond a certain point, and in the absence of nuclear weapons, sheer numbers can only be met with sheer numbers.
In planning for D-Day, the Allied forces knew that they could accept 90% casualties and still win, if they could maintain a beachhead. In the Chinese scenario for an invasion of Taiwan, the same rule would apply. If they can just get enough raw manpower onto the island, it would be near impossible for the US to dislodge them.
But I have no doubt that in an China India war, the battle would initially begin with a conventional encounter, resulting in mutual frustration, which is common at the start of a war. But if one side or the other realized the possibility of a mass attack to overwhelm the other, its enemy would have no choice but to do the same.
The diplomatic effort in the world would be to persuade both sides to not use nuclear weapons. Neither side would be too enthusiastic about their use, fighting over such a small thing.
And thus, smoldering hostilities would remain for months until vast armies could be rallied. And all that time, the conventional armies would just be creating complex and deadly defenses.
It is a good question whether a covert agreement to use infantry, or a tacit agreement, or just an evolution of the battlefield, would be behind the immense muster, but it is as obvious as a US draft would be, were we to be in a truly major war, such as against China.
I do agree that the US and China have been in preparation for war with each other since at least the 1980s. But rather unexpectedly, in the last 10 years or so, the China India scenario has entered the picture as perhaps even preempting our conflict.
It is not the potential for such a conflict that seems so preposterous, it is the scale that is abhorrent to the mind. But such slaughter is not unheard of. There were battles during the Taiping Rebellion after which it was said that over a five square mile area, a man could not set his foot on the ground for the bodies.
A war fought mostly with swords and pikes, in the age of the rifle and the cannon.
If I were a betting man, I’d give just about any odds of China having its way with India. India is the France of Asia.
In a worldwide poll, India was found to be the one of the most pro Bush country in the world, and it is generally an extremely pro-American country. just like France, right?
Nothing against the Indians but this article is about military prowess within a future Sino-Indo conflict. If and when this happens, India will be toast, again.
China’s only advantage in conflict with India is massed infantry-the territory is not congenial for armour & airbases in Tibet & Xingjiang are not in great numbers.India holds a gun to China’s head-oil supplies to the Middle East,which it can shut off at will.
The sino-India war was the only conflict India lost militarily since independence.If that’s your yardstick,America should be worse than France courtesy of Vietnam.
I have never heard anything about China’s oil supplies passing through India. If the history of these two nations is any guide, however, the PLA would be in Nagercoil before they used up the first half of their fuel reserve.
Passing through the Indian Ocean from the Arabian Sea-all well within operational reach of India’s navy & airforce.History is often very misleading-prior to the war of 62,Indian ordnance factories manufactured needles & knicknacks-its very different now.
Then perhaps you should read more. Indian navy controls the shipping lanes passing through the Malacca Straits and is the strongest navy on the Indian ocean (save for the US navy).
And did France ever liberate any country like India did with Bangladesh? Or did they send 4 million soldiers to fight in the WWII?
BTW for the size of the US military, even they lost in Vietnam and Somalia, both several times smaller then the US. And when was the last time the US fought a country equal in size or bigger? I hope you know where “Nagercoil” is located on the map before you get too carried away with your hyperbole.
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