Indo Chinese Border: Several Soldiers Killed..

[ArrynField]

https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/06/16...dakh-skirmish/

[Elefant&Castle]

https://www.usnews.com/news/world-re...ash-in-decades

American intelligence believes 35 Chinese troops died, including one senior officer, a source familiar with that assessment tells U.S. News. The incident took place during a meeting in the mountainous region between the two sides – both of which had agreed to disarm – to determine how the two militaries would safely withdraw their presences from the region.

Not sure how they arrived at this assessment - drone video, radio intercepts?

[prospectiveHKer]

I don't think China cares much about having allies, they're in their century of world domination. For the CCP it's only a matter of time who is the next target. I don't think it will get to a war between them but then it's 2020 so we're not done yet!

Good luck to them on a century of world domination without allies. The US built alliances the world over in the twentieth century. Britain may have gone it alone for a few decades in the mid-nineteenth century but needed numerous allies to defeat Napoleon and was starting to ally up again with Germany's rise toward the end of the period.

China's rise actually looks a lot more like Germany's - lashing out because of perceived lack of status or respect or hierarchical position but inviting encirclement by states impacted by that behavior and increasingly hostile to it. Not a great precedent for its future given what happened between 1914 and 1945.

[Mr Chips]

Not disputing your points, but I think it is also important to acknowledge that India has also adopted an increasingly nationalistic political tone. Maybe not to the same extent as China, but it is there. Modi in particular has championed himself in some ways as a strident Hindu nationalist, betraying the multiethnic and multi-religious state that India was founded on. I'm not using that to excuse China's aggressive behaviour, but that does make de-escalation and conflict resolution potentially even more difficult, if both sides are driven increasingly by hard-edged nationalism:

https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/Indi...an-nationalism

And Indian Geopolitics...

[shri]

Saw this on my feed... so I guess the situation has deescalated for the time being.

https://twitter.com/ChenDingding/sta...82340640026627

[AsianXpat0]

https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/sa...a-india-clash/

[ArrynField]

Saw this on my feed... so I guess the situation has deescalated for the time being.

https://twitter.com/ChenDingding/sta...82340640026627

Nice...

Things will no doubt de-escalate

Prayers for families that lost loved ones on both sides

[shri]

https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/sa...a-india-clash/

Thanks for this ... a good long read even though it gets a bit confusing given the unfamiliarity with the regions involved.

Wish someone could animate these images I keep seeing into a multi year time lapse of sorts.

[AsianXpat0]

https://twitter.com/shashj/st...58666544390144

https://twitter.com/shashj/st...81327933902849

What I gather from the coverage.
1) There has been a contested border for a long time.
2) The measures to prevent conflict over the contested border have been eroded by escalations over a period of time bringing both sides closer to each other and into contact.
3) Seems the Chinese units were prepared for confrontation (armed with weapons) and erecting a tent right on top of the LAC (plus construction of permanent defences in multiple locations).
4) Reportedly there have been Chinese fatalities and some Indians taken prisoner.

There is more nuance than this (including Indian units building a bridge on their side behind the contested LAC), but the above seems to be a summary of the conflict. Don’t expect it to go away any time soon when China looks to want to South China Sea the area (preferably without conflict) but the hotheads at the front want to fight.

[shri]

FT cartoon. Not too sure what the reality is anymore..