AHC: Escalate the Sino-Indian War

ben0628

Banned
In 1962, there was a month long conflict between India and China that quickly became a decisive Chinese victory.

The Challenge is to escalate the conflict and turn it into as big of a war as possible between the two nations. How big could it get? Who would win? Who else could get involved?
 

trurle

Banned
You need some better infrastructure on Chinese side. Chinese were actually refraining from using aviation despite large technical superiority - because of terrible logistics problems. IOTL, Chinese advanced exactly on so much as they can supply.
Earlier (1947 instead 1951, for example) incorporation of Tibet to China, with consequent extensive road building program may help to escalate the conflict with India in 1962.
 
In 1962, there was a month long conflict between India and China that quickly became a decisive Chinese victory.

The Challenge is to escalate the conflict and turn it into as big of a war as possible between the two nations. How big could it get? Who would win? Who else could get involved?

I'm not sure it's terribly plausible, but if the question is how big it could get.... Delay the Sino-Soviet split by a year-and-a-half, two years. The invasion of India takes place at the same time as the Cuban Missile Crisis, as in OTL. Mao misreads the situation in the Caribbean and mobilizes the rest of the PLA en masse to the Indian border, North Korea, Fujian, and Shenzhen. Open fighting continues in the Himalayas, ships exchange fire in the Taiwan Straits, and sniping tics up across the DMZ in Korea. Then things escalate.

Mass death ensues on three continents, functionally destroying most of the states between the Rhine and the Korea Strait. India is left a junior partner to a traumatized US. Western Europe is the world's greatest source of highly-skilled immigrants. Central Europe isn't. The Soviet Union is a vaguely defined region of widely dispersed rural communities with no pretense to overarching government. China is a mess of petty warlord states. Yugoslavia is world socialism.

It could have gotten about as big as wars get.
 
You need some better infrastructure on Chinese side. Chinese were actually refraining from using aviation despite large technical superiority - because of terrible logistics problems. IOTL, Chinese advanced exactly on so much as they can supply.
Earlier (1947 instead 1951, for example) incorporation of Tibet to China, with consequent extensive road building program may help to escalate the conflict with India in 1962.

The Indians need better logistics too. One reason they got trounced so badly was that they couldn't adequately supply the units they committed.
 
The Indians need better logistics too. One reason they got trounced so badly was that they couldn't adequately supply the units they committed.

Earlier Tibetan invasion and greater infrastructure build-up could spark Indian concentration on their logistical trains in case of a war with China, especially if there is a small skirmish before the OTL Sino-Indian War. A taster for the main course, so to speak.
 
Earlier Tibetan invasion and greater infrastructure build-up could spark Indian concentration on their logistical trains in case of a war with China, especially if there is a small skirmish before the OTL Sino-Indian War. A taster for the main course, so to speak.

I think you do need a medium level border conflict prior to the actual war to shock Nehru out of his Pan-Asian idealism as far as China was concerned.
 

trurle

Banned
I think you do need a medium level border conflict prior to the actual war to shock Nehru out of his Pan-Asian idealism as far as China was concerned.

Armed conflicts in long (few years) term prevent other armed conflicts, because of better entrenchment and tactical awareness on both sides.

To escalate war, small border conflict just before open hostilities may help a bit though. Chinese may be tempted to annihilate reinforcing Indian forces while they are en route.
And yes, i know India had logistics problems too. Just China had even bigger problems in Eastern India.

So place a better roads on both sides for supply, use large cauldron made of mountains, put a lot of cannon fodder inside, use a mutual animosity due recent conflict to heat up. Spark the fire, and a millions minced humans ensues. :(
 
On the logistics question, what about World War II?

Suppose that after the shock of Singapore when they began construction on the Ledo road, with the expectation that Burma would be overrun, Stillwell insisted on a further backup route. After all, the furthest Japanese advance in northern Burma did eventually cut off the Burma road even with the Ledo road. I'd be surprised if anyone thought it was impossible.

Assuming Stillwell demands a backup, the only real option is "over the hump". They couldn't build a road through there, but I imagine expanding the airfield in Ledo or improving road and rail near it probably could do something to ease the logistics. [Feel free to correct my ignorance if the limits were something else - pilots or airplanes or whatever.] Postwar any extra capacity could easily go to waste, but as a secondary POD let's say the late Empire or (more likely) the early Republic of India place 2-3 small outposts on the frontier beyond what existed in OTL and supplies them by air drop (or maybe a small airfield).

The Chinese begin construction of new and/or better roads up from Yunnan towards the same region in 1950 as part as the move nab Tibet, and especially after annexing the place. It's not done out of any particular focus on India, but because sovereignty demands borders be guarded on both sides.

An optimistic Nehru might in turn see the potential for a direct Indian-Chinese road to be a symbolic if not a practical link, and put some money towards developing a proper road to the border. A road which the Chinese would sooner or later feel obligated to match, for very different reasons. This would all be a low-budget sideline, but I think it's more or less plausible.

A decade later you could supply a much larger conflict in the region, and the Indians might be more hostile, with roads they expected to link the two states used against them.
 
Armed conflicts in long (few years) term prevent other armed conflicts, because of better entrenchment and tactical awareness on both sides.

I agree but when dealing with India in the 1950s and 60s you can't discount Nehru's idealism. The border conflict doesn't necessarily need to be in East India. Maybe an Indian attempt to gain influence in Tibet pre PRC conquest, leading to an Indian military mission in Lhasa (advisers and the like) seeing the PLA first hand and convincing Nehru that the Maoists aren't nice fabian socialists like he was.

Bonus points if this spurs Nehru to warm up to the US, thus also escalating tensions with China.
 
This is a huge coincidence but my wife's family friends father was our guest for dinner tonight. He's pretty ancient and is a retired Indian Navy officer. He was talking about Nehru's outreach to the Chinese in the 1950s- the ship he was serving on was sent to Hiroshima for the ceremonies commemorating the fifteenth anniversary of the nuclear bombing. He said that they were all shocked by China because wherever they went they were greeted by synchronised groups of Chinese shouting "Hindi Chinni Bhai Bhai" (Indians and Chinese are brothers) but they were'nt allowed anywhere without an escort and weren't permitted to speak to anyone during their time in China.

It left them with a deep suspicion of China which seems to have been pretty much reflective of the state of mind of junior Indian officers of the period.

Of course junior officers are just junior officers but I thought it was an interesting coincidence.

He also said that when the Sino-Indian War broke out he was on foreign training at Dartmouth in the UK and all the Indian navy officers were expecting it to blow up larger than it did. They were quite disgusted with the performance of the army.
 
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