This lecture by Professor Sarah Paine traces how the rivalry between China and India reshaped Asia through a series of pivotal decisions, shifting alliances, and limited wars from 1949 onward, with the United States, Soviet Union, and China all attempting to influence the subcontinent—often with unintended long-term consequences.
Pivotal decisions that set the stage
Mao’s conquest of Tibet (1950–51): After winning the Chinese Civil War in 1949, Mao eliminated Nationalist remnants and then conquered Xinjiang and Tibet, which had been autonomous since 1911. Between 1950 and 1957, China built road systems through Tibet, with only the western route providing year-round access. This gave China control over Tibet’s mineral resources (roughly 40% of China’s total), enabled a pincer on Xinjiang, and critically reduced the buffer zone between China and India to the small Himalayan kingdoms of Nepal, Bhutan, and Sikkim. India could not deploy troops to these areas until it entered a road-building race with China.
US-Pakistan military alliance (1950s): Under Eisenhower’s “pactomania” strategy to contain the Soviet Union, the US formed the Baghdad Pact (Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan) and signed a military aid treaty with Pakistan. This horrified India’s Prime Minister Nehru, who saw it as arming his country’s primary adversary. Eisenhower later admitted it was “perhaps the worst kind of plan and decision we could ever have made.” The alliance poisoned US-India relations throughout the Cold War because any arms given to one side were inevitably aimed at the other.
Sino-Soviet split (1960s): Mao needed Soviet technological aid and nuclear assistance until China detonated its first atomic weapon in 1964. Once he no longer needed Soviet help, Mao publicly listed grievances: Russian occupation of Chinese territory (exceeding the area east of the Mississippi), Stalin’s manipulation of China to fight Japan, the taking of Mongolia, fighting “to the last Chinese” in the Korean War, and attempts to divide China at the Yangtze. Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization, desire for peaceful coexistence with the West, and refusal to recognize Mao as senior communist statesman deepened the rift. The Soviets wanted naval bases on Chinese soil; China refused. The split became public in 1960 and worsened over competing influence in Vietnam, where China harassed Soviet aid shipments passing through its territory.
1969 Sino-Soviet border conflict: Fighting broke out over river islands on the Amur River during the Vietnam War. The Soviets asked the United States if they could nuclear-strike China; the US refused. This moment revealed that the Soviet Union and China had become each other’s primary adversaries, not the United States—a fundamental reshuffling of Cold War alignments that gave the US a swing position.
The alliance structure: who could cooperate and why
The framework of primary adversaries: Paine argues that durable cooperation requires sharing a common primary adversary. The US failed in South Asia because it tried to befriend both India and Pakistan, but they were each other’s primary enemies. By contrast, India and Russia shared China as a problem, and Pakistan and China shared India as a problem—these pairings could produce real cooperation.
India-Russia alignment: The Soviets found India useful as a counterbalance to China. Russia provided military and economic aid, plus crucial UN Security Council vetoes blocking plebiscites in Kashmir that India might lose. India signed a formal security pact with the Soviet Union in 1971. Their shared China problem made this a durable relationship.
Pakistan-China alignment: After China invaded India in 1962, Pakistan recognized China as a potential ally against their shared adversary. In 1963, Pakistan ceded territory to China (Paine surmises this was related to nuclear development cooperation). Bhutto played the “China card” to secure nuclear assistance. Their shared India problem made this alignment functional.
US failures with both sides: The US wanted India and Pakistan to settle their differences and jointly oppose communism. Instead, each wanted maximum US aid to use against the other. Pakistan also wanted good US-China relations, which was a non-starter until Nixon’s 1971 opening. The US wound up alienating both.
Key wars and their consequences
Sino-Indian War (1962): China launched the war during the Cuban Missile Crisis when the Soviets were distracted. China took the Aksai Chin Plateau—the territory it needed for its western road route through Tibet. India had no roads to deploy troops there. The defeat was total and transformed India from an idealistic, non-militarized state into one that doubled its army to 750,000 within a decade, created 10 mountain divisions, and remained permanently hostile toward China. Paine notes the counterfactual: if China and India had teamed up instead, the global order would look completely different.
Indo-Pakistani War (1965): Pakistan invaded through the Rann of Kutch and then Kashmir, hoping to settle border issues while India appeared weak after Nehru’s death. India counterattacked through Lahore. The US imposed a double arms embargo. Pakistan, more dependent on US spare parts, was worse off. The Soviet-brokered Tashkent Declaration ended the war. India restored its military reputation; Pakistan gained nothing.
Bangladesh War of Independence (1971): After East Pakistan’s Bengalis won elections, the Punjabi-dominated army launched a massacre, sending millions of refugees into India. India armed East Pakistani insurgents, then sent in its conventional army—quickly winning. Pakistan lost over half its population when Bangladesh became independent. The US, in the middle of Nixon and Kissinger’s secret diplomacy to open relations with China, refused to raise the humanitarian crisis at the UN, blamed India for the war, and sent the carrier Enterprise to the Bay of Bengal. India responded by signing its military pact with Russia, upgrading relations with Vietnam, and shutting out US scholars. Pakistan, facing overwhelming Indian superiority, concluded it needed nuclear weapons.
Instruments of national power and their limits
Diplomacy: The US successfully brokered the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty (the only mutually beneficial agreement India and Pakistan ever signed), but received no enduring gratitude. US attempts to mediate the Kashmir dispute failed because the US didn’t share a primary enemy with either side. When great powers aligned (US and USSR in 1965, US and China in 1999 Kargil crisis), they could tamp down conflicts.
Economic aid: The US provided far more economic aid than Russia or China—including 20% of its wheat crop ($1.5 billion) during the 1967 Bihar famine—but gained no lasting goodwill. President Johnson delivered aid at the last minute (“ship to mouth”) out of anger at India’s Vietnam stance. India’s subsequent Green Revolution (driven by Ford and Rockefeller foundations) ended famines, but the US received no credit.
Military aid: Arms to Pakistan drove India toward Russia; arms to India after 1962 drove Pakistan toward China. US military aid to Pakistan’s ISI during the Afghan-Soviet war was diverted to fund the Kashmir insurgency from 1989 onward. China provided nuclear assistance to Pakistan. Every short-term military aid decision produced long-term blowback.
Carrier battle groups: The US sent the nuclear-powered Enterprise to the Bay of Bengal in 1971; the Soviets sent naval assets in response. It had no effect on the war’s outcome and only enraged India.
Sanctions and embargoes: The US repeatedly embargoed both India and Pakistan, but sanctions failed to prevent nuclear proliferation—both tested weapons in 1998. After 9/11, the US desperately needed Pakistan again for Afghanistan operations.
Territory trades: Pakistan ceded territory to China in 1963, likely for nuclear assistance.
Funding insurgencies: All major powers played this game. The CIA supported Tibetan insurgents (1957–61), but too late—China’s road network was already complete. China funded Naga, Mizo, Manipuri, and Naxalite insurgencies in India (the Naxalites remain active today). Pakistan funded the Kashmir insurgency. India allegedly funded Baloch and Pashtun insurgents in Pakistan. These “frozen conflicts” impose horrendous costs on local populations while outside powers bear none—Paine compares Kashmir to Korea and Palestine as conflicts where veto players can derail peace with minimal effort.
The US-India relationship today and lessons
The US-India relationship has fundamentally changed because both now share China as a primary adversary, whereas during the Cold War they did not. Russia’s decline after 1991 removed India’s key patron and made the US a more natural partner.
The lesson of primary adversaries: Common enemies cannot be conjured. Before intervening in any region, a power must map who considers whom their primary adversary, how long that has been true, and who might “crash the party.” If your potential partners don’t share a common primary adversary, cooperation will be shallow or counterproductive.
Limited vs. unlimited objectives: Bismarck’s wars (Danish, Austro-Prussian, Franco-Prussian) succeeded because each had limited objectives—taking territory without overthrowing governments—allowing him to reshape Europe’s balance of power without triggering a grand coalition. Putin’s war in Ukraine has unlimited objectives (regime change, cultural destruction), making it far more dangerous and difficult to resolve. Limited wars where the losing government survives are more manageable.
Small and medium powers matter: Their aggregate wealth exceeds any single great power. If they align on shared objectives, great powers must pay attention.
Some problems are not solvable: Good strategy requires recognizing when a problem is intractable and focusing scarce resources on feasible goals.
Q&A highlights
Why the USSR appealed to decolonizing nations: Nehru’s generation experienced World War I’s butchery, the Great Depression, and colonial exploitation. Marxism offered a plausible explanation. The Soviet Union’s rapid GDP growth (from 8% to 18% of world production between the 1920s and 1940s) seemed impressive. Crucially, citizens of democracies could see their own countries’ flaws (segregation, inequality), while dictatorships controlled information—few knew about the gulags, which held over 10% of the Soviet population.
Gorbachev as true believer: He genuinely wanted to improve communism, not abandon it. His reforms were meant to make the system work better.
The Sino-Soviet split’s depth: Beyond ideology, the two powers had genuine territorial disputes, a history of Stalin manipulating China to fight Japan, and competing security interests. Russia’s need to militarize both its European and Chinese borders (after the split) was economically devastating—a key factor in winning the Cold War.
China’s lost opportunity with India: If Chiang Kai-shek had won the Chinese Civil War, China and India might have formed a productive partnership based on shared anti-colonial sentiment (evidence from the Mahatma Gandhi Museum in New Delhi shows deep mutual respect). Instead, Mao’s invasion of India in 1962 created a permanent enemy.
Nuclear proliferation driver: The 1962 war convinced India that non-alignment was a non-starter; the 1971 war convinced both India and Pakistan they needed nuclear weapons. The Non-Aligned Movement’s refusal to join either superpower’s nuclear umbrella directly incentivized proliferation.
Russia’s future and Siberia: Putin’s war in Ukraine is depleting Russia’s Cold War stockpiles and leaving Siberia open. China covets Siberian resources, particularly Lake Baikal (20% of the world’s surface fresh water—critical for water-starved northern China). Paine predicts China will eventually extract concessions from a desperate Russia, likely through negotiation rather than war given both have nuclear weapons.
Why Europe had the Industrial Revolution: Europe’s geography (peninsulas, rivers, Mediterranean) fostered trade, and its political fragmentation into competing states prevented any single empire from stagnating. Institutions like insurance, banking rules, and international law (Hugo Grotius) emerged from this competitive commercial environment. China’s civilizational success was actually a barrier to reform—it saw itself as the only civilization, with everyone else as barbarians, making it difficult to learn from others.
Russian cruelty: Paine’s research into Russian language and history reveals a pattern of extreme coercion embedded in the culture (e.g., the word “sila” means both strength and coercion; “detente” in Russian means “unloading a gun”). Living on indefensible steppe land required being meaner than everyone else. Solzhenitsyn documented cruelty not just in gulags but among families, neighbors, and society broadly—a pattern remarked upon by European travelers as far back as the 17th century.
Paine’s Cold War book project: A conceptual history of the Cold War from 1917 to 1991, organized around strategic concepts (limited/unlimited war, primary adversary, frozen conflict, veto player) and examining what strategies worked and what didn’t for all major and medium powers.
