India and China are on a collision course as competing Asian great powers

Evidence

During the Cold War, India, the third “swing” core state, was an ally of the Soviet Union and fought one war with China and several with Pakistan. Its relations with the West, particularly the United States, were distant when they were not acrimonious. In the post-Cold War world, India’s relations with Pakistan are likely to remain highly conflictual over Kashmir, nuclear weapons, and the overall military balance on the Subcontinent. To the extent that Pakistan is able to win support from other Muslim countries, India’s relations with Islam generally will be difficult. To counter this, India is likely to make special efforts, as it has in the past, to persuade individual Muslim countries to distance themselves from Pakistan. With the end of the Cold War, China’s efforts to establish more friendly relations with its neighbors extended to India and tensions between the two lessened. This trend, however, is unlikely to continue for long. China has actively involved itself in South Asian politics and presumably will continue to do so: maintaining a close relation with Pakistan, strengthening Pakistan’s nuclear and conventional military capabilities, and courting Myanmar with economic assistance, investment, and military aid, while possibly developing naval facilities there. Chinese power is expanding at the moment; India’s power could grow substantially in the early twenty-first century. Conflict seems highly probable. … India will strive to emerge, not only as an independent power center in the multipolar world, but as a counterweight to Chinese power and influence.” — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 675

Categorization

• QUESTION: Huntington’s 1996 prediction of Sino-Indian conflict is worth testing against the actual 2000s-2020s trajectory of India-China relations (BROKS agreements, the 2020 Galwan clash).
• XREF: Connects to the ongoing great-power rivalry literature and to current analyses of the China-Pakistan-India triangle.