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The 1962 Debacle, as it is remembered in India, was the inexorable ramification of a century-old British border dispute, thrust upon a newly independent India. When China reached a juncture whence it could act proactively to the sense of injustice about colonial actions against them, the result was an eruption of a xenophobic, aggressive imperialism.

There is a Chinese phrase oft quoted within the Chinese government: "If he strikes me once, it is his fault. If he strikes me again, it is my fault." The People's Republic of China seemed to have taken this mentality to heart, and in the effort to exorcise the demons of colonialism, have become imperialists themselves. Subverting various indigenous countries and areas in affirmation of vague "historical" citings had become a fundamental cornerstone of China's geo-strategic maneuvering in the '50s and '60s.

The Chinese claims to Aksai Chin and large areas of Arunachal are a mix of an expression of this neo-colonial sentiment and the desire to acquire a dominant status in Asia by keeping rival India in a weaker bargaining position. This is not saying that the PRC is necessarily "evil" in this respect, as many Indian journalists are prone to claim; it is simply geopolitics. What is unusual, however, is the rather unscrupulous means, even among the big-power nations, that the PRC has taken to reach this position. When China sought recognition of its claim on Tibet after its occupation, the Chinese leadership avidly cultivated India, and won the heart of a high-minded but naïve Prime Minister Nehru. "Hindi-Chini Bhai-Bhai" (India and China are brothers) became the soundbyte of the day - and the Chinese cannot be faulted in their execution of this deception. While the shells fell and the bullets flew around the Jawans in the snow-capped hell of the Himalayan battlefield, the Indian leaders in Delhi were romancing the fluffy pull of empathy with a fraternal Asian nation that, too, had suffered exploitation by the Western colonial powers.

The '62 war highlighted several critical failures in India's warmaking abilities. First, and perhaps most significantly, the conflict highlighted political naïveté and ignorance toward the strategies of warfare and international relations. During the entire conflict, Indian diplomatic actions remained flaccid, and fluctuated between being confrontational to being manhandled. For example, intel told that the Chinese were building a road through Aksai Chin, yet the Government, apart from a few angry condemnations, chose to ignore the strategic significance of it for almost a decade, instead repeating to itself the mantra of Hindi-Chini bhai-bhai. Even upon discovery of this transgression, India's protests were weak-kneed. Later, in the middle of 1962, Indian leaders suddenly woke up to the presence of Chinese soldiers, to the exasperation of much of the army, on the Thagla Ridge. Nehru, advised by Krishna Menon and a coterie of sycophantic generals, ordered a reckless operation on the attacking Chinese. In the adoption of a forward policy, against the clamoring of sound tacticians, India deployed on ground chosen for its political significance, rather than tactical defensibility. The leadership's untenable demands on the Army were the root cause of the '62 debacle.

The war also highlighted the fact that the army was acutely under-equipped, out-dated, and ill-trained to deal with sustained conflict in the Himalaya. The acclimatization of troops was of critical import in this mountain war. Though Indian kill ratios were vary favorable, the damage caused by non-acclimatization of troops, particularly in the eastern sector, compared to the troops in Ladakh, who were better equipped and acclimatized, is very evident.

The psychological and political effects of the '62 war were far-reaching. Because of the war, India's image, especially among the "Third World", the nations remaining non-aligned during the Cold War, suffered. But internally, the shock galvanized the people into one united nation. Krishna Menon resigned and Nehru's dream of Sino-Indian friendship was shattered, but India did not relinquish its independent policy of Non-Alignment, though a shadow was shed on India's position as the leader of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). However, statements by the PRC promoting the Chinese revolution as a model and Beijing's actions in the Taiwan Strait in 1958 and the 1962 Sino-Indian War alarmed many Third World nations. During the 1960s China cultivated ties with Third World countries and insurgent groups in an attempt to encourage "wars of national liberation" and revolution to forge an international united front against both the superpowers. Third World appreciation for Chinese assistance coexisted, consequently, with growing suspicions of China's militancy. These increasingly militant tendencies, contradictory to the much lauded "Principles of Peaceful Coexistence" soundbyte, destroyed what active influence the PRC had on the NAM. Discord between China and many Third World countries continued to grow, while relations India and the Soviet Union warmed to counter the decision by Pakistan to cavort to the Western Camp in an effort to counter Indian superiority and influence. The two most powerful nonaligned nations strayed further from their NAM policies, and thus the weakened NAM did not wield as much influence during the later part of the Cold War as it did during the beginning, and thus the era of a strictly bi-polar Cold War world was ushered in.

The Indian Army's defeat by the Chinese in the border war of 1962 was a national humiliation, but the nation reacted to the '62 war with an unprecedented surge of patriotism. The main lesson India learned was that right does not make might in the world of geopolitics, and that India must strengthen its defenses and stand on its own feet to be of consequence in the world. India's policy of weaponization via indigenous sources and self-sufficiency was thus cemented. National sovereignty, it would affirmed, could not come at the expense of becoming a client state of any superpower or by joining any military alliance with or under them.

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