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“Tensions along parts of the 3,500 km frontier that China and India share have simmered ever since the two sides fought a brief but bloody war in 1962,” South China Morning Post added, referring to the 30-day China-India war along their vast Himalayan frontier at the height of the Cold War.
During the days of Kennedy presidency, as the Cuban Missile Crisis played out in October of 1962, China launched an all-out attack on Indian forces along India’s eastern Himalayan border.
Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s socialist policies wreaked havoc on India’s economy and left the country’s military ill-prepared and ill-equipped for an armed conflict with their Communist neighbour. India’s Nehru, being a fervent Socialist, saw Mao’s China as an ideological ally. As the Chinese Army advanced deep inside the Indian border, Nehru-led Indian government admitted being ‘caught napping.’
At that crucial moment, President Kennedy came to India’s aid — despite Nehru’s hobnobbing with Moscow and Soviet client states — to halt the Chinese. Kennedy even dispatched a U.S. aircraft carrier battle group to the Bay of Bengal in an apparent attempt to put pressure on Communist China. The U.S. mobilisation was a major factor in convincing Chairman Mao to stop the Chinese offensive, bringing the war to a quick close.