Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
graver. Indian actions would have been seen as constituting an extremely
dangerous threat to China's rule over Tibet.
The consequences of such Chinese perceptions—whether they would have
been advantageous or disadvantageous to India—need not concern us here. The
point is that more vigorous and effective Indian actions in support of Tibetan
autonomy would have led to very different Chinese perceptions of India. As it
was, however, India's various efforts to sustain the old status quo in Tibet were
ineffectual. Indian actions in the early and mid 1950s were not, in fact, very
threatening to China.
COUNTER-FACTUAL PROPOSITION II:
WHAT IF INDIA HAD WON THE 1962 WAR?
The specific outcome of the 1962 war was similarly in accord with China's
interests and a manifestation of a successful exercise of Chinese power—and had
a profound asymmetrical effect on subsequent threat perceptions. China's leaders
decided that India was encroaching on the territory of 'China's Tibet' in
collusion with US and Soviet pressure on China, with the intent of fundamentally
weakening, or even ending, Chinese rule over Tibet.
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Warnings to India to
desist from its threatening policies were not effective, and China's leaders
decided forceful measures were necessary to cause New Delhi to adopt a more
sober attitude.
Having decided to move toward use of military force, Chinese leaders paid
close attention to such matters as marshaling well-acclimatized forces to strategic
areas, pushing roads into forward areas, accumulating adequate material at
forward dumps, laying out workable operational plans for swift offensive thrusts
combined with appropriate deceptions, engineering situations of local numerical
superiority, achieving tactical surprise, the coordination of diplomatic and
military means, and last but by no means least, defining achievable war aims
together with a war termination strategy in which China held the initiative. PLA
forces marshaled local superiority, achieved both strategic and tactical surprise,
and struck swiftly.
Indian defenses crumbled and retreat quickly turned into rout. Chinese forces
advanced largely unopposed and according to their own timetable to the southern
line it claimed as a boundary—on the foothills of the Himalayan range and
looking out on the plain of the Brahmaputra River. Chinese forces then stopped
unilaterally and withdrew, unpursued by Indian forces, to positions north of what
China claimed was the line of actual control prior to the initiation of India's
forward policy.
From Beijing's point of view, the 1962 punishment of India was a necessary
and salutary, if politically expensive, lesson. The heaviest costs for China were
associated with the Indian military buildup that followed India's 1962 defeat, plus
