Why the Himalayas Are Worth Fighting For

The ocean is the reason Chinese and Indian soldiers have died over this rugged, seemingly irrelevant piece of land.

By
Phillip Orchard
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3706

It says quite a bit about the sheer improbability of a major China-India war in the Himalayas that this week’s deadly clash in the Galwan Valley – which produced the first fatalities along the disputed high-altitude border since 1975 – played out the way it did. No shots were fired, no explosives detonated. Rather, it […]

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Phillip Orchard
Phillip Orchard
https://geopoliticalfutures.com/author/porchard/
Phillip Orchard is an analyst at Geopolitical Futures. Prior to joining the company, Mr. Orchard spent nearly six years at Stratfor, working as an editor and writing about East Asian geopolitics. He’s spent more than six years abroad, primarily in Southeast Asia and Latin America, where he’s had formative, immersive experiences with the problems arising from mass political upheaval, civil conflict and human migration. Mr. Orchard holds a master’s degree in Security, Law and Diplomacy from the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, where he focused on energy and national security, Chinese foreign policy, intelligence analysis, and institutional pathologies. He also earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Texas. He speaks Spanish and some Thai and Lao.

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