NEW DELHI -- Forty years after China humbled India in a two-front Himalayan war masterminded by Chinese leader Mao Zedong, the lessons of that crushing defeat still reverberate in New Delhi. The war was Mao's attempt to demolish India as an alternative democratic model and geopolitical rival to communist China by heaping humiliation on it when it was militarily weak and least expected to be attacked.
That aggression changed the fortunes of the two Asian giants. India, respected then as a model pluralistic state in the developing world, never fully recovered from that invasion and is still searching for a role in international affairs commensurate with its size. India has not yet realized that to be recognized as an important international power it has to start behaving and acting like one. So far, it has displayed the pretense of being a great power without having the stomach and spine to be one.
In contrast, China, a backward state racked by economic calamities in 1962, has gone on to successfully assert itself as a major global power through a display of indomitable spirit and political single-mindedness. It has found a cost-effective way to take on India through proxy threats mounted via Pakistan and, to a lesser extent, Myanmar. Few recognize India today, contrary to the international view prior to the 1962 war, as a strategic peer to China.