Misperception and Miscalculation during the Sino-Indian Conflict of 1962:

An Analysis of the Indian Decision Making Process

Deep Jyoti Barman

PhD Candidate

CIPOD/SIS

Jawaharlal Nehru University

2011

India and Peoples Republic of China (PRC) fought a bitter war in the high Himalayan wastes

in the winter of 1962. The genesis of this war lies in an unresolved border dispute between

the two Asian neighbours. The aim of this dissertation is to explain the research puzzle: why

did India, a relatively weaker power, pursue a provocative military strategy and an

unyielding diplomatic stand against the more powerful PRC. This question is not a novel one

as there have been many studies to understand wars among asymmetric powers. (Paul, 1994;

Arreguín-Toft, 2005; Sullivan, 2007) But most of the existing literature is geared towards

understanding puzzle: why do strong states lose war against weaker states? This corpus of

literature has its origin in understand American involvement and subsequent defeat (in some

cases) in Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, or Soviet Union’s defeat in the hands of the mujahedeen’s in

the Russo-Afghan war. This dissertation on the other hand is an attempt to understand the

reason as to why a weaker state would enter into a military conflict with a stronger state. Sun

Tsu’s “Art of war” a military classic had long ago stated that one should only enter into a war

when it is sure about its victory. Did the Indian leadership fighting the Chinese in 1962 think

that they would defeat the Chinese? A cursory reading of the memoirs of Palit (1992), Dalvi

(1969), Mullik (1971), or secondary literature on the war by Maxwell (1970), and Hoffman

(1990) would show that the Indian leaders were very pessimistic about the likely outcome of

any military conflict with China. Why would a democratic country like India which was

trying to become a normative power in the early years after its independence agree to fight

with China?

The core of this chapter is a detailed statement of the causal argument advanced in the

dissertation. The theory proposed in this dissertation is: when a state (particularly a weaker

one), is engaged in a crisis situation with another state, it bases its security not on the basis of

its military capability and resolve but rather on the reaction of the international order to the

war which would deter the more powerful adversary. In other words, the weaker state

believes that because of its unique situation in the international order, other states would have

a stake in its survival. An underlying assumption of the weak state is that, the adversary has a

world view consistent with its own, because of which it would be deterred from escalating the

conflict to war. Bolstered by this belief, the weaker state is more likely to undertake certain

policies which are non-reflective of its relative power, thereby impeding diplomacy, which is

gravitates both states towards war. There are two stages to this causal argument, each

expressed as a hypothesis below: the first portion links the belief about security to

misperception; the second extends that to miscommunication and crisis outcome. The logic of

each will be sketched out in turn, and then predictions are derived to allow for testing in the

dissertations empirical work. The chapter also includes an attempt to place the research

within the existing literature, and an explanation of the methodology of inquiry pursued in the

remainder of the dissertation.

The literature on misperception and miscalculation states that wars are the result of different

expectations held by the belligerents about the outcome of a militarized conflict. (Blainey,

1988; Jervis, 1976; Johnson, 2004) According to them, war is the ultimate reality in which

misperceptions about military superiority ends and a shared knowledge about the existing

balance of power evolves, which brings the adversaries to the negotiating table to divide the

issue of conflict according to the prevailing power differentials. This explanation is

satisfactory for states with marginal power difference. But does this misperception and

miscalculation about relative power exist between states with a wide gap in their power

ratios? This question gets even more perplexing when we factor in the fact that the India and

China were not natural rivals. There is a lack of ancient hatred and past wars to support

explanations of war such as hyper-nationalism, etc. Moreover, India and China since their

independence in late 1940’s have been on very cordial relations. The Panchsheel Agreement

signed in 1954 has been the cornerstone of Sino-Indian relations which talks about the five

principles of peaceful co-existence. Moreover, the Indian Prime Minister, Pandit Jawaharlal

Nehru supported PRC’s inclusion in the United Nations Security Council, and India did not

react provocatively to the Chinese takeover of Tibet. These two policy examples bolster the

view that India and China had a very cordial relation until the final months before the war.

There is a strand of literature which points at a possible domestic politics angle originating

from the failed “the great leap forward” movement of General Mao which made the Chinese

leadership to fight a war with India. (Garver, 2009) But this dissertation does not concern

itself with the Chinese causes for the war but rather on India’s decision to enter into a

military contest with the powerful PRC. In presenting the benign relationship between India

and PRC we should not lose sight of certain irritants in their relationship such as India giving

asylum to Dalai Lama who fled from Tibet after the Chinese occupation, the training and

support of the Khampa revolutionaries by Indian intelligence agencies, etc. But these factors

would impact the Chinese decision making process; a factor that does not concern this

dissertation.

Literature Review:

The literature on misperception and miscalculation is exhaustive. For a systematic of this

literature, it can be divided into two categories: the analytic-revisionists and the cognitive-

perceptual categories.

In most of their basic premises, the analytic-revisionists studies comprise an extension of the

logic of the rational theory of decision making. These theorists are convinced that actions

taken by the actors reflect purpose or intention, and are chosen as a calculated solution to the

strategic problem. (Allison, 1971: 13) The proponents of this approach assume that statesmen

accurately perceive external threats and opportunities, and select policies on the basis of cost-

benefit calculations in order to advance national interest. (Levy, 1983:76) This branch is

committed to the notion of rationality and implies consistent value-maximizing choices, and

generally ignores the possibility of chance, lack of coordination, unintended consequences

and coincidences. Instead, it suspects that “well laid out plans give events a coherence they

would otherwise lack,” and that hidden manipulations and conspiracies, rather than confusion

and chaos, are the factors responsible for the failure of national actors to meet the challenge

of an impending onslaught. (Jervis, 1976: 321) In short, the analytic-revisionists argue that

wars are not accidental but an act of deliberation by both parties involved. This category

refutes the concept of strategic surprise. Ben Zvi (1979) argues in his essay “The study of

strategic surprise” argues that the analytic revisionists believe that when a country attacks

another country, the initiator’s reaction is never a surprise to the national leadership of the

victim state, since the attacker merely reacts to a deliberate posture on the part of the victim,

who provoked the confrontation as a carefully thought-out means of maximizing a broad

cluster of desired goals, whose importance far outweighs the losses anticipated in the course

of the confrontation. According to him, these theorists perceive the outbreak of war as the

culmination of an elaborate scheme, intended to provoke the enemy into firing the first shot.

(Ben Zvi, 1979: 130)

The analytical revisionist category of research have been criticised for being predisposed to

downgrade and obfuscate any conceptual, cultural, or communication impediments to a

timely and accurate analysis of signals. They believe that states have a shared and

homogeneous understanding of the world view, each other’s military capability and resolve.

Moreover, they seem to have absolutely no problem with the concept of war which the

rationalists such as Fearon, et al have categorised as ex post inefficient. James D. Fearon in

his seminal work, “The Rationalist Explanations of war” (1995) argues that wars are

accidental and the result of bargaining failure. According to him, states being rational actors’

should have an interest in resolving their disputes peacefully rather than through military

contest since wars are ex post inefficient. He mentions three main causes of war: private

information, commitment problem, and the problem of issue indivisibility. Private

information simply refers to privileged information available to national leaders. The

information could be secret military alliances with other nations, new technological or

organizational innovation, motivational level of the troops, etc. In short, private information

can be understood as any information that is exclusively available to national leaders that

influences the probability of winning a military conflict. Fearon, in his essay, argues that

private information can skew the accurate calculation of the military balance of power,

thereby fostering misperceptions, which may lead to war. The “commitment problem” is

another cause of war. Since the international order is anarchic, there is no guarantee that once

the power transition happens, the adversary will not renege previous agreement. Therefore,

states would rather fight a war when they have a greater probability of winning it, than

consent to a negotiated solution which the adversary would renege once it is able to improve

it position of power. Indivisibility of certain issues of conflict (such as sacred territory, etc.) is

another cause of wars.

The second category of literature falls under the cognitive-perceptual umbrella, which relies

largely on cognitive premises as the basic analytical tool. These theorists are skeptical about

the prospects for fully overcoming the problem of confusion, ambiguity and deception. The

cognitive-perceptual school seeks an explanation of war in terms of the perceptual

mechanisms and predispositions which obscure the ability of states to accurately perceive the

existing balance of power. These theorists (Jervis, 1976; Vertzberger 1990) argue that states

look at themselves and others through perceptual lenses which are rigid and exclusive,

thereby skewing reality and producing unique understandings about the world order, relative

military capability, resolve, etc. which makes signalling difficult. Jervis adds that there is an

innate propensity among states to see ambiguous information as confirming pre-existing

images and beliefs “about how the world works and what patters it is likely to present us

with”. (Jervis, 1985: 18) According to this category, policymakers are bound to distort or

dismiss information as unreliable and unfounded which is incompatible with their initial

beliefs, particularly those which comprise the core of their belief systems (Jervis, 1976: 187-

190).

Thus, whereas analytic-revisionist studies overestimate human capability to control the

operational environment, most cognitive-perceptual works underestimate the ability of

decision-making units to overcome the obfuscating screen of ambiguity, noise and deception,

and thus to act objectively to the unfolding situation rather than react from the premises of

certain fixed premises. In short, the analytic-revisionist category reduces the complexity of

human behaviour in crisis situation to a hyper-calculating monistic unity, where the leaders

are followed unquestionably and orders are interpreted accurately and immediately to the last

man. On the other hand, the cognitive-perceptual category believes that the decision makers

are controlled by their immediate environment to such an extent that objectivity is severely

compromised and incoherence and incoordination is rampant.

This research makes an attempt to steer clear of falling in the extremes of either of the above

mentioned categories while unravelling Indian’s decision to enter into a war with China in

1962. This dissertation while attempting to systematically reconstruct the perceptual and

behavioural patterns by which Indian political and military leadership decided to engage into

a war with PRC, it is essential to carefully scrutinize not only the two major determinants

about future adversarial behaviour that pertain to opponent’s intentions and capabilities but

also the behaviour of external powers, especially United States and Soviet Union.

Blainey (1988) argues that wars are a result of disagreements between states regarding the

ultimate outcome of war. He purports that if states could accurately measure the military

capability and resolve of themselves and their adversaries, then they would all have a shared

understanding about the ultimate outcome of any militarized contest between them. Under

such shared understanding, the states would eagerly resolve their disagreements in a peaceful

way depending on the prevailing power differentials, thereby avoiding the unnecessary cost

of war. But in the Sino-Indian context, the power difference was so vast that India could not

possibly think of emerging as a victor. In the absence of a clear sight of victory, why would a

democratic state engage in warfare with a powerful PRC?

Van Evera (1999) on the contrary argues that wars are results of deliberate move by certain

states to exploit the “window of opportunity”. According to him, misperceptions and

miscalculations about the structure of power is the prime cause of war. The causes of these

misperceptions are militarism and nationalism which introduces perceptual biases in

misperceiving both capability and resolve, thereby leading one or both states to believe that

offense is a better option than defence. Van Evera claims that offense dominance, or the

perception thereof, will encourage both expansionary states to expand and status quo states to

become more aggressive due to greater security fears. Offense dominance also heightens

first-move advantages, leads to greater power shifts, encourages secrecy and dangerous

diplomacy and discourages agreements. His measures of the offense-defence balance include

military technology, strategy, geography and diplomacy. In addition, perception seems to

play an even larger role than the actual balance of power. Although Van Evera’s work

provides a more acceptable explanation about inter-state warfare, it fails to address the

question: why doesn’t the weaker power simply submit to the demands of the more powerful

adversary and save itself the cost of costly war? Moreover, the literature on Sino-Indian war

(Maxwell, 1970; Dalvi, 1969) suggests that it was India which acted provocatively rather

than PRC. But in the absence of the expectation of victory, why would a weaker state escalate

the conflict?

This dissertation while greatly benefitting from the existing theoretical literature on the

causes of war finds a lacuna in it and makes a modest attempt to fill the vacuum. It is obvious

from the very onset that this dissertation falls under the cognitive-perceptual research

category as it centres on the bounded rationality assumption based on false optimism. Here

false optimism is not operationalized in the traditional way whereby states overestimate their

military capability, resolve, military strategy, etc. but rather about its unique position in the

international order and the favourable reaction of other states towards its crisis situation.

Theoretical Framework:

After situating the project in the existing literature, this chapter now turns to the specific

causal chain proposed by the theory. It begins with a summary of the existing work that

explains the bargaining model of war and the causes for its failure before moving to the next

stage where the causal chain proposed by the dissertation will be presented in a two stage

hypothesis: first, false optimism should lead to underestimation of adversary’s resolve; and

second, such an underestimation should lead to sending of strong signals (both tying hands

and sinking costs) which leads to unnecessary conflict.

What stops two states engaged in a dispute from effectively communicating their strength and

resolve to their opponents so that they can reach a negotiated solution without fighting a war?

Even if they are talking, and they often do, they still fail to agree on a solution that is

peaceful. Fearon’s three causes have been introduced earlier as the main causes forwarded by

the bargaining theory. If we peel the “private information” cause then we see that states have

an incentive to withhold information as that might have an edge during actual combat such as

information about new technologies, morale of the troops, secret military alliances, etc.

Secondly, even if states communicate their true intentions and capability, the adversary might

disregard the information as an attempt to bluff in order to secure a better bargaining position.

Misperception and miscalculation theorists (Jervis, Lebow, and Stein, 1985) argue that

sometimes due to perceptual lens such as those of culture, ancient hatred, past wars, and even

different military doctrines (Twomey, 2009) can skew the signals to such an extent that the

recipient state might misperceive a strong signal as weak or vice versa, completely miss the

signal as noise, or misinterpret the signal as re-affirming pre-existing biases. Hence a large

part of the literature on misperception and miscalculation is dedicated to the problem of

signalling resolve.

Theorists such as Mesquita (1983), Slantchev (2011), Powell (1999) have argued in their

works that to credibly signal resolve, states have to send signals that are costly. The existing

literature distinguishes between two types of costly signals that state leaders employ in trying

to credibly communicate their foreign policy interests to other states, whether in the realm of

grand strategy or crisis diplomacy. Leaders might either tie hands by creating audience costs

that will suffer ex post if they do not follow through on their threat or commitment (i.e. costs

arising from the action of domestic political audience); or shrinking costs by taking actions

such a military mobilization, etc. that are financially costly ex ante (Fearon, 1997). Both these

actions create credibility of threats because they alter the cost of making a threat in the short

term. Proponents of the audience cost mechanism argue that leaders can make more credible

threats when their constituency is more likely to hold them accountable for backing out from

their word. This creates an incentive for leaders not to bluff and not to make threats when

they are not certain that if the target state does not comply they will be able to carry out the

threat.

The appeal for costly signalling strategies rest on the intuitive link between credible threats

and averting war- if the enemy ultimately wants to avoid war, a threat convincing enough,

threatening enough, to make him or her count on war is also likely to make him or her yield.

(Wszolek, 2007) But this linkage between costly signalling and war aversion is too simplistic

and has been criticized by many scholars. The psychological approach suggests that every bit

of new information does not necessarily convey the true intention of the rival state because

information available between states is inherently noisy. The noise generated by overlapping

and often contradictory information generated from different segments of the government,

domestic politics, etc. can greatly impede the communicative ability of the signals. Moreover,

commitment problem, trade-offs between military efficacy and diplomatic initiatives, and the

salience of the future have all been hypothesized to cause misperception of signals and cause

a crisis to end in war, even without uncertainty. (Lai, 2004) to this effect Sagan and Suri

(2003) argues that, contrary to most assumptions about crisis bargaining, the October 1969

alert, demonstrates that a major increase in military readiness, even a global nuclear alert, did

not necessarily create a kind of costly commitment that can enhance the credibility of a threat

by placing the reputation of a leader at stake. Sagan and Suri in their research demonstrates

that although the October 1969 nuclear alert was a loud signal it failed to deliver the intended

message to the receiving Soviet Union, thereby suggesting that despite popular understanding

even military signals can be cheap, indicative of a bluff rather than resolve.

This proves that signals do not have an inherently costly or cheap value but rather their true

value depends on the perceiver’s interpretation. This dissertation building on the above

arguments about the ambiguity of signals argues that – during crisis, a state which due to a

sense of false optimism believes in its immunity from its more powerful adversary- is

predisposed to either dis-regard even costly signals as indicative of bluff or re-interpret it to

fit the existing perceptual biases. This complicates further, the already convoluted problem of

making honest threats in a crisis situation when the environment is fraught with suspicion and

full of noisy and contradictory information.

Hypothesis: 1

When a state believes that there are other states which have an interest in its security due to

its unique position in the international order; it is more likely to misperceive the adversary’s

signals as weak, and this misperception, ceteris paribus, will lead to the underestimation of

the adversary’s resolve.

This hypothesis has two components. The first focuses on opacity as a result of misreading of

the world order due to a unique understanding about its own identity. The second part focuses

on how this opacity manifests itself: underestimation of the adversary’s resolve.

The first part of the hypothesis suggests that, national leaders have private information about

the unique position their country occupies in the current international order because of which

other nations would have an active interest in maintaining its pivoted position. Bolstered by

this understanding, the national leadership is more susceptible to misperceive the adversary’s

signals as weak, since the ‘belief about one’s position’ operationalizes in the form of a biased

calculation about the balance of power. Here the misperception is not so much about military

capability as in about relative resolve of the states. The logic of this causal argument is: since

the state believes that other states would react in a favourable or predicted manner to any

escalation between itself and the adversary, the adversary will be deterred by the prospect of

disturbing the overall balance of power. In other words, the cost of war calculations for the

adversary will substantially increase not vis-à-vis its opponent but with the prospect of losing

control over the escalation of the war due to involvement of other states. In short, third party

intervention due to systemic factors (pivoted position of the state) makes any military

engagement highly uncertain and risky. The second part of the hypothesis follows from

existing literature on overconfidence and war. Johnson (2004) has argued in his book that the

primary way misperception works out is underestimation of the adversary’s will. This claim

will be tested in the dissertation.

Hypothesis: 2

When a state underestimates the adversary’s will-that comes from Hypothesis 1- it is more

likely to undertake policies which are non-reflective of its relative power, thereby impeding

diplomacy and leading to unnecessary escalation of conflict and possibly war.

Jervis (2002:302) notes that since interpretation of indices depends on theories, perceivers are

likely to go astray when these are incorrect. He farther adds that, this can lead the

underestimating nation to think that it is stronger than it really is…(Jervis, 2002: 302) As a

result the nation may pursue a tough bargaining stand and more aggressive policies to farther

improve its position in the negotiating table. (Blainey, 1988; Stoessinger, 2001) This claim

will also be tested empirically in the dissertation.

Summary of the Theoretical framework:

For the bargaining process to work efficiently, both sides must have a homogeneous view

about the distribution of power among them. The shared understanding helps them to

understand eachother’s signals and thereby helps them to locate a negotiated settlement

below the threshold of violence which is ex post inefficient. But, as proposed by this

dissertation, states do not necessarily hold similar view about the international order. This

disjuncture leads to miscalculation of the balance of power, followed by underestimation of

adversary’s resolve and subsequently hardening of unrealistic bargaining positions, which

increases the probability of war.

The third chapter will examine the instances and reasons for India’s miscalculation of PRC’s

cost of war. The chapter will demonstrate how a skewed understanding about the

international order and one’s pivoted position in it leads to overestimation of the net cost of

war. This miscalculation of the cost of war due to misperception about one’s importance in

the international order manifests into unrealistic and aggressive postures to improve one’s

bargaining position. Once a state, particularly a weak one, is under the above mentioned

misperception, it disregards even strong signals sent by the adversary, even worse

misperceives them to corroborate their preconceived biases. This leaves the adversary,

particularly the stronger one, with very little option other than carrying out the threat, either

to evade negative effects of audience cost or retain its reputation in the international system.

Research Methodology:

These two hypotheses will be evaluated through the study of Sino-Indian war of 1962. This

section contains a detailed statement about the methodology used in the course of this

dissertation along with the merits of this case study, including specific empirical predictions

of the general theoretical hypotheses, and merits of the chosen case study.

Predictions:

The two hypotheses lead to six predictions that should be apparent in the empirical record.

These are essentially of the validity of the theory and can be used to test it. These are grouped

into several categories. First, predictions about the nature of the existing world order and

one’s pivoted position should exhibit a growing sense of security due to miscalculation about

the cost of war. Secondly, predictions about underestimation of adversary’s resolve should

exhibit proliferation of aggressive policies and hardening of the bargaining stand. Thirdly,

actors should be surprised once reality contradicts their predictions. Specific predictions as

each of these categories are listed below.

I) Special understanding about the existing world order and its pivoted position in it

i) Special view about the existing world order and its pivoted position in it

should make the national leadership discard the possibility of war.

ii) Because the national leadership does not believe that the crisis would end

in war, the political leaders should have a more important role in dealing

with various aspects of the crisis, often infringing into territories that have

traditionally been the domain of the military. In other words, the political

leaders should downplay any advice by the military that does not coincide

with its existing belief system. A lot of inter-governmental, and especially

civil-military tension, should be apparent during the crisis.

II) False optimism about the unlikelihood of war should result in underestimation of the

enemy’s resolve:

iii) Despite strong signalling from the adversary, the national leadership

should continue to downplay the likelihood of war and declare the

adversary’s signals as attempts to bluff.

iv) The two states should have very different momentum for war. The state

under the influence of false optimism should lag behind significantly in its

war preparations. There should be a clear disjoint between the tough

bargaining stand taken by the state and its actual war fighting preparations.

III) Perception meets reality: surprise!

v) When war actually happens the political leadership should express shock.

Leaders often have incentives to conceal their surprise, so it may manifest

itself as hastily reinforcing or last minute changes in strategy, a new

willingness to join some security community or plead other nations to

intervene on its behalf.

vi) The war should be very short and the adversary should be able to secure its

objectives with minimum cost.

Investigation of the empirical record in the case study is cantered on these predictions as well

as hypotheses more generally. These predictions focus on relatively operationalized factors

stemming from the hypotheses, and thus ease the task of assessing theory’s validity. To the

extent the cases align with the predictions, the dissertation’s hypotheses are supported.

Case Procedure:

Predictions derived from the hypotheses allow for detailed process tracing to assess the

causal force of the theory in the case material. Assessing the various ancillary predictions of

the theory generally requires examination of leaders’ statements, policies implemented, and

reaction of the adversary’s behaviour. Process tracing provides relatively robust grounds to

assess the validity of a theory as it characterizes not only macro-level outcomes but also

micro-level processes by which outcomes occur and judges whether these corresponds with

the theory’s predictions. (George and Bennett, 2004) Thus the data requirement for this

methodology, are, thus substantial.

Merits of case study selection:

Sino-Indian war is an excellent case to investigate using the dissertations theoretical

framework for two primary reasons. First, both these states lack qualities such as ancient

hatred, previous wars, etc. which might make the states suspicious of latent factors other than

the issue of conflict. This helps us to look at the particular dispute as an isolated case.

Second, the wide gulf between the military capabilities of both these states makes mutual

optimism about winning the war redundant.

Conclusion:

Clearly, the proposed theory does not have a monopoly on possible explanations of all wars

between asymmetric powers. This dissertation is only a modest attempt to understand the

causes of war between asymmetric powers under very specific conditions.

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