Ameya Pratap Singh
Disputes over territory are perhaps the largest contributors to interstate conflict, as the recent examples of the Israel-Palestine and Russia-Ukraine conflicts have evidenced. The most insurmountable entry in this category, at least in terms of the length of the disputed boundary, is the 2,100-mile long disputed Sino-Indian border.
But boundary disputes of such magnitude are not set in stone, either. Just as the ebbs and flows of the China-India rivalry over the years have proffered moments of tension and war, they have also created opportunities for political entrepreneurs to craft détentes – and occasionally, even consider the possibility of a settlement.
The use of territorial swaps to settle boundary disputes is assumed to be taboo, owing to the immutable properties of a state’s territorial holdings. Domestic publics generally view any compromise of a state’s territory as a surrender of national prestige, ideology, and even the nation’s raison d’etre. However, in certain moments, such concessions are proposed and seriously deliberated upon. Two such moments took place in Sino-Indian relations in the Nehru-Zhou and Rajiv-Deng periods.
No comments:
Post a Comment