India, China exchange accusations, but avoid military escalation after conflict

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The governments of India and China confirmed this Tuesday (13) that there was a new border skirmish between soldiers from the two countries last Friday (9), they exchanged accusations, but sought to avoid an escalation in the confrontation between the nuclear powers.

The Indians were more detailed, with Defense Minister Rajnath Singh speaking to Parliament about the episode. “These skirmishes continue to occur, and it was not something of major importance,” he minimized.

The Congress-led opposition criticized the testimony, saying Singh was inaccurate in saying the incident “led to injuries on both sides”. The minister also said that he maintains the military alert in force in the disputed border regions since a previous episode, in 2020, when at least 20 Indians and 4 Chinese died in a fight in the Ladakh region.

Since then, six Army divisions have been deployed to sensitive areas, as well as squadrons with Russian Su-30 and French Rafale fighters, the latter recently purchased. In the Assam sector, air defense was deployed with a new Russian S-400 system.

Chinese and Indians have about 3,500 km of borders that are not officially demarcated. Friday’s incident took place in Tangwan, which is in the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, which China considers part of its Southern Tibet region.

In 1962, the communist dictatorship won a war against New Delhi in the western border region, but disputes continue. Before the 2020 crisis, the last single combat death occurred in 1975.

According to Singh, “Chinese soldiers illegally entered our territory” and were blocked. China tells the same story with the opposite sign. “We urge the Indian side to rein in and restrain its frontline forces, and to work with China to maintain peace and security,” said a spokesman for the People’s Liberation Army’s Western Theater Command.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said in an interview in Beijing that the situation is “generally stable”.

Everything indicates that the crisis will be contained, but so will the suspicions and primary motivations. According to reports in the always alarmist Indian media, the incident in Tangwan comes in the wake of the militarization of that region by the Chinese side.

Around 300 troops, according to the Times of India newspaper, arrived in the region at the beginning of the month, and infrastructure works, such as roads and checkpoints, are being carried out.

Leaving the punctual scenario, India is on the side of the United States in the Cold War 2.0 against China, although it maintains great ambiguity in the name of its interests, rejecting sanctions against Russia due to the Ukraine War.

New Delhi has been a military customer of Moscow since the Cold War, although it has varied its suppliers in recent years. But when it comes to China, which is Vladimir Putin’s main ally, it is on the team of American President Joe Biden, even though it is Beijing’s partner in the Brics group.

It is a waltz that began to be danced decades ago, but which took on a new form with the American withdrawal from Afghanistan and the transformation of Pakistan into a state dependent on Beijing. Islamabad has rivaled New Delhi since both countries were created in the partition of British India in 1947.

The Taliban’s return to power in Kabul, a group that was fomented by Pakistani intelligence services in the 1990s precisely to gain an anti-India ally to the west, suggested to the Indians greater control of China in its strategic surroundings.

As a result, in the Indo-Pacific theater, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has been an ally of Washington, strengthening ties in the Quad group (which also includes Australia and Japan) and promoting joint military exercises.

One of the most recent took place last month and was precisely in the Indian Himalaya region, to train action capacity at high altitude. One of the problems for border control from side to side is precisely the fact that it extends over one of the highest areas in the world.

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