China and India agree to deescalate tensions over Himalayan border.

 

Presidents Xi and Modi at the BRICS summit. BBC/Getty.

China and India have agreed to deescalate tensions over the disputed Himalayan border. BBC. President Xi of China and President Modi of India met with each other on the sidelines of the BRICS summit held in South Africa. Relations between the two countries has been poor for years due to conflicting claims over their border. Both sides have agreed to pull back troops from the border and to attempt to improve relations between the two BRICS members. 

My Comment:

Not mentioned in the article that the border disputes between India and China often devolved into violence of a sort. That violence resembled medieval warfare, with soldiers from both countries beating each other with clubs, but generally didn't involve shooting. People still died and it massively increased tensions between the two sides. 

It does seem that might be a thing of the past now. Both China and India have major reasons why they should avoid any conflict with each other. China is focused on Taiwan and India has their own internal problems to deal with. And nobody wants to see a war between nuclear armed enemies like China and India. 

But I think the real cause for this is BRICS. Both China and India are all in on BRICS and are founding members of the ever expanding political and economic alliance. Both countries essentially see the alliance as a lot more important than some border dispute over what is probably fairly useless. And I think it's very likely that the other main members of the alliance were trying to make sure that this issue didn't break the union apart. It very easily could have if some conflict happened over this disputed territory. 

I don't think this issue will go away entirely, both sides are unlikely to give up their claims on the disputed territory. But I do think that some kind of formal agreement to maintain the status quo will be made soon as both countries value the BRICS alliance and have little reason to provoke a conflict with each other. 

Though this is good news for China and India, it's probably bad news for the current occupants of the White House here in the United States. The warhawks want their war with China over Taiwan and without the threat of India possibly taking advantage to take the disputed territory in the Himalayas China can properly focus on Taiwan. And they are losing a wedge issue that could have broken apart the BRICS alliance. 

It's just another example of how blunderingly bad the Biden foreign policy has been. BRICS is the biggest threat to American dominance of the world we have faced since the Warsaw Pact and it's just getting worse. Having China and India cozying on up with each other is terrible as well, though not anywhere near as bad as Russia and China doing so as well. I have said for awhile that the foreign policy mistakes made under Biden are the kind of thing that even Donald Trump would have a massive amount of trouble reversing.