China and India are once again engaged in a military standoff over the border dispute in the region of Ladakh. The scuffle between the military personnel of both countries on May 5, 2020 along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) is not new. The recent standoff came at the heels of Indian declaration of Ladakh and Sikkim as its Union Territory in October 2019.[1]
Border tensions between China and India are not a new phenomenon. Previously in 2017, the two states engaged in a conflict in Doklam, when Indian soldiers in Sikkim took Chinese border guards completely by surprise when they crossed into Bhutan and physically blocked Chinese road construction crew from extending a track towards LAC.[2] All crises in the past one decade were diffused successfully by the intervention of higher political leadership on both sides.
