SINO-INDIAN RELATIONS: A TALE OF TWO ASIAN GIANTS

In the last decade, China and India have risen to prominence in the Indo-Pacific region, requiring U.S. policymakers, subject matter experts, and military officials to shift their attention toward understanding this critical relationship. The maintenance and stability of the Indo-Pacific region depend on the dynamics of the Sino-Indian relationship. Thus, a better understanding of Sino-Indian relations can have significant implications for how the U.S. strategy progresses in the Indo-Pacific region. First, to understand the 21st-century Sino-Indian relationship, this thesis analyzed the factors that led to cooperation and discord between China and India during the 1950s and early 1960s, which culminated in the 1962 border war. Second, the thesis analyzed Sino-Indian relations from 2008–2017, identifying whether factors from the 1950s and early 1960s apply to current and future Sino-Indian relations. Despite the nuances that mark both periods, the 21st-century Sino-Indian relationship has followed a similar path of cooperation, competition, and conflict, which culminated in the 2017 Doklam standoff—the longest border standoff since the 1962 border war. Overall, across both periods, this thesis found that unresolved territorial disputes, competition for energy resources, a race for regional influence, and assertive leadership have hindered cooperation. Extrapolating from the research, these factors will likely continue, creating a rocky way ahead for the Indo-Pacific region.http://archive.org/details/sinoindianrelati1094562788Lieutenant, United States NavyApproved for public release; distribution is unlimited