Sarah Paine — The war for India (lecture & interview)

Paine frames the lecture around three outside powers—Russia, the United States, and China—intervening in the affairs of India and Pakistan. Her method is to map each actor's primary adversary, the geography of the relevant theater, and which partnerships are durable. She distinguishes limited wars, aimed at less than regime change, from wars that overturn governments, and highlights the quick outcomes of the 1962 Sino-Indian War and the 1971 Bangladesh war. The larger point is that allies can cooperate against a common existential threat even when their long-term aims conflict; absent that shared threat, ideologically similar states may still fail to coordinate. This is an analytical framework, not a claim that alliances are permanent or that every intervention follows one pattern.

Paine identifies Mao's decision to reconquer Tibet after the Chinese Civil War as a pivotal choice. She emphasizes roads built from 1950 to 1957, especially the western route, which enabled China to move and sustain forces in Tibet and strengthened access toward Xinjiang. In her account, this infrastructure reduced the buffer between China and India to the Himalayan kingdoms of Nepal, Bhutan, and Sikkim, while leaving Aksai Chin and Arunachal Pradesh as disputed areas. Paine argues that these strategic effects were central to the later Sino-Indian conflict; her discussion focuses on geography and military access rather than treating the border disputes as isolated incidents.