China is simply not interested in attacking India..Mountains and nuclear weapons cannot guarantee India's absolute security. India's nuclear delivery capabilities are very limited, and its nuclear strike capability is probably on par with North Korea's. Its deterrent effect against China's multi-layered air defense system is somewhat insufficient.
India builds consensus by creating enemies and inciting populism, which has nothing to do with the strength of the enemy you mentioned.
DPRK isn't exactly a low bar in nuclear deterrence any longer. It's a but more difficult to place it specifically (it's nuclear arsenal is contradictory), but overall capability and floor capability (i.e. retaliatory) for DPRK is very high&grows rapidly. Their benchmark (which is US/ROK counterforce at point blank) is supremely high, no nations work against conditions so dire.
Put UK or France against US counterforce - they'd just collapse, entire force and c&c design would have to be reinvented from ground up.
And no, with all that, India (for China at least as compared to US v DPRK) is far more dangerous.
Both ways: China's ABM capability isn't significant yet (it is early in deployment, capability is only being built and functionally - politically - doesn't exist yet).
Nor counterforce is (yet) realistic* for PLA against a country this big, with something of a nuclear triad.
*assuming indians don't outright sleep, which they can.
People act as if China didn’t want to resolve the issue.
Well, political damage from the 1963 war is semi-permanent, there's very little that can be done about that.
I believe we talked at some point abt that in the past - while tactically successful, war went against two very different strategic cultures. That war was meant as a message, but messages work only when sides speak same strategic language.
Which is why Sino-vietnamese conflicts, regardless of tactical success, were a strategic victory for China, and for all the grievances, they aren't a show stopper in relations with Vietnam. With India, long term message turned out literally the opposite from one Mao wanted to convey. And it'll hardly turn around.
