By Jeff M. Smith
The recent Border Defense and Cooperation Agreement is less a breakthrough than a missed opportunity.
During what was sure to be his last trip to China before national elections next year, on October 23 Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh inked a new agreement with China to improve management of the longest disputed border in the world. The resulting Border Defense and Cooperation Agreement (BDCA) is designed to reduce tensions at the Himalayan border that brought China and India to war in 1962 and has served as an irritant in bilateral relations ever since. As recently as this spring the border was the site of a contentious standoff when a Chinese border patrol set up camp several miles across the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in the Ladakh sector of Jammu and Kashmir.
Unfortunately, the final text of the BDCA was decidedly uninspiring. It brought the two sides no closer to a final settlement and did little to advance the more modest goal of improving border management. Restating previously agreed-to principles, the BDCA merely commits the two sides to non-specific “periodic meetings” of military and civilian officers. They agreed to avoid having border patrols “tail” each other through unspecified means; they “may consider” establishing a hotline between military headquarters in both countries; and they agreed to cooperate “in combating natural disasters or infectious diseases.”
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