Costly Conversations in South Asia: 1962 and Beyond

The "costly conversations" model that Oriana Skylar Mastro develops in her new book The Costs of Conversation: Obstacles to Peace Talks in Wartime provides a useful new approach for interpreting the 1962 Sino-Indian War. To assess the applicability of this model, Mastro examines the behaviors of the Chinese and Indian governments during this brief but consequential conflict. As a limited interstate war fought in Asia during the first two decades of the Cold War, this conflict makes a good match for the chapters she devotes to China in the Korean War and North Vietnam during the Vietnam War and affords an opportunity to investigate the actions and policies of both belligerents. This essay will review these China and India studies and suggest another South Asian situation that might benefit from analysis through the same theoretical lens.

Mastro defines China's diplomatic stance in 1962 as "open" both prior to and during the war. That is, Beijing expressed a desire for direct communications with New Delhi without imposing any preconditions. Indeed, it made such offers publicly and repeatedly. New Delhi, on the other hand, insisted throughout the war that it would only engage in talks after Chinese forces had withdrawn to prewar positions. Its diplomatic stance was, therefore, "closed" in terms of the costly conversations model. Mastro then proceeds to apply her approach to explicate why the two sides made these strategic choices by assessing the respective leaderships' views of the "strategic costs of conversation" through the prism of two factors: (1) "the likelihood that the enemy will interpret an open diplomatic posture as a sign of weakness" (p. 14) and (2) "how the enemy may change its strategy in response to such an interpretation" (p. 7). She posits that a state will only turn to an open posture if it thinks that its own strength and resiliency have been demonstrated and concludes that the enemy lacks the "strategic capacity" to prolong or escalate the war. She looks first at China (chap. 3) and then at India (chap. 4), a division that could cause some confusion of chronology for readers not familiar with the 1962 war. However, this structure facilitates the focus on each in sequence and is thus suited to the study's aim of examining each state's diplomatic stance during the conflict.

The 1962 Sino-Indian War resulted from the confluence of multiple developments in the post–World War II era. In part, it was caused by a dispute over the possession of territory encompassing more than 130,000 square kilometers along the 3,500-kilometer border that divides the two countries. Though still unresolved today, this dispute was especially acute at the time because it involved two large, newly independent powers who were proud and highly sensitive to issues of sovereignty as they sought to establish themselves as global leaders in the evolving postwar, postcolonial order.¹ Of particular importance for China was the status of Tibet, which was harshly incorporated into the People's Republic in 1951 and the scene of unrest and rebellion through 1959.² India's efforts to assert its claims along the border and to contest what New Delhi saw as illegal occupation of Indian soil thus deepened Beijing's anxieties regarding foreign support for Tibetan separatism.³ These fears were accentuated in 1961 when India, pursuing Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru's ill-conceived "forward policy," advanced small army patrols and outposts into the mountains to counter what Indian leaders saw as Chinese encroachment. There was also an ideological element of the dispute. Mao Zedong and other Chinese leaders viewed "big bourgeoisie India" as part of the "anti-China tide" sponsored by the United States and other capitalist enemies.⁴

Determined to teach India an enduring lesson, China launched a series of well-planned "self-defensive counterattacks"⁵ on October 20, 1962, that tore apart India's thin defenses. Chinese forces halted on October 24 to create an opportunity for talks, but India rejected negotiations without a Chinese withdrawal. After waiting three weeks, Chinese forces resumed their offensive on November 16, inflicted further humiliating defeats on...