Herbert Wulf
Introduction
Asia’s superpowers, China and India, are vying for an intensified global role. This, along with other controversial relationships, is putting them increasingly on a collision course. Is there even a threat of war? After fighting in the Himalayan border region in 2020, the world’s two largest nuclear-armed forces stood face to face for months. Communication between the two leaders was at a freezing point. Since the end of the colonial era, three disputed border areas in the Himalayas have been at the heart of the military conflicts. While neither government wants to start a war, Indo–Chinese relations are marked by conflict, competition, lack of co-operation and, increasingly, a collision course. They increasingly see each other as rivals.
Despite decades of efforts to find a diplomatic, internationally binding solution to the border disputes, including several meetings between Xi Jinping and Narendra Modi as well as former heads of government, no solution has so far been found. Both sides insist on their irreconcilable positions regarding the course of the common border. There is not even agreement on the length of the border. India speaks of a border of about 3,500 km, China of 2,000 km (International Crisis Group, 2023, p. 1). Recently, the positions have become even more entrenched.
Today, both governments are pursuing nationalist policies that are domestically oriented towards the recognition of their global role and “intimately connected to sovereign assertiveness and power projection abroad” (International Crisis Group, 2023, p. I). Both countries are investing heavily in military capabilities—quantitatively in the number of soldiers and weapons and qualitatively through the constant modernisation of their armed forces. They are demonstrating their military presence, which increases the risk of a large-scale collision that might not be limited to the disputed areas in the Himalayas but could affect the entire region and beyond.
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