This article assesses the dynamic political and military relationships among Tibet, China, and India in the late 1950s and early 1960s. By examining the three governments' calculations and security interests, the article shows that the relationships among the three are best understood from a realist perspective. The focus in the article is on the Sino-Indian dispute over the territory known as “Assam Himalaya,” located on the far eastern end of the Sino-Indian border, between southeastern Tibet and northeast India. The article covers a relatively lengthy period, from 1913 to 1962, but in doing so it shows that territorial claims and the desire for secure borders were the key concern of all the countries involved—Tibet, China, India under British imperial rule, post-1947 India, and the United States.

The leaders of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) who seized power in Beijing in 1949 viewed Tibet as Chinese territory. In this respect, they were no different from previous rulers of China. The chairman of the CCP, Mao Zedong, carefully devised a plan to re-annex Tibet, which had been effectively independent of China since 1911. The CCP's recent victory in the Chinese civil war gave Mao high confidence that he could reclaim Tibet without provoking outside intervention. Such a move not only would bring international political benefits but would also carry a symbolic meaning at home and thereby legitimize the rule of the CCP. Although Mao sent troops to Tibet, he also planned to rely on negotiations and coercive diplomacy. This article highlights the complicated relationships that emerged on the international scene as a result of China's actions in the early 1950s.

Tibet, which had enjoyed de facto independence from 1911 to 1950, was resubordinated to China in late 1950 and 1951 through a combination of political pressure and military force. On 10 March 1959 a mass revolt broke out in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet. Amid growing turmoil, the 14th Dalai Lama fled the capital. After Chinese troops moved into Lhasa on 20 March to crush the rebellion, the Tibetan leader took refuge in neighboring India. The Chinese People's Liberation Army quelled the unrest and disbanded the local government. This article looks back at those events in order to determine how the rebellion was perceived in China and what effect it had on relations with India.

In October 1950 the Chinese leader Mao Zedong embarked on a two-front war. He sent troops to Korea and invaded Tibet at a time when the People's Republic of China was burdened with many domestic problems. The logic behind Mao's risky policy has baffled historians ever since. By drawing on newly available Chinese and Western documents and memoirs, this article explains what happened in October 1950 and why Mao acted as he did. The release of key documents such as telegrams between Mao and his subordinates enables scholars to understand Chinese policymaking vis-à-vis Tibet much more fully than in the past. The article shows that Mao skillfully used the conflicts for his own purposes and consolidated his hold over the Chinese Communist Party.

This article examines U.S. policy toward Tibet from the end of the 1940s to the end of the 1980s, especially the 1950s and 1960s. U.S. policy during this period operated on two levels. At the strategic level, the United States consistently supported China's claim of sovereignty over Tibet. But at the tactical level, U.S. policy varied a great deal over time, ranging from the provision of military and financial aid to Tibetan guerrilla forces in the 1950s and 1960s to the almost complete lack of official attention to Tibet in the 1970s and early 1980s. The article explains why the U.S. government has never accepted Tibet's claim to independence and why the question of Tibet, after falling into obscurity in the 1970s, reemerged on the U.S. agenda in the mid- to late 1980s. The article highlights the cynicism that has often characterized tactical shifts in U.S. policy.

This article analyzes the Chushi Gangdrug Tibetan resistance as narrated primarily by Tibetan veterans. The article recounts the origins of the Tibetan resistance forces, their relationship with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, their eventual laying down of arms in 1974, and their legacy in the present-day exile community. Analyses of the Tibetan resistance and the guerrilla war must take account of cultural as well as political and historical factors. The war, pitting a voluntary Tibetan guerrilla movement against the Chinese Communist army, had implications well beyond Tibet and China. India, Nepal, and the United States all became involved. In addition to presenting the perspectives of the soldiers alongside those of the relevant states, the article situates its discussion within the latest anthropological literature on international relations and the Cold War.

Events in South Asia in the 1950s and early 1960s had a long-term impact on the Cold War and on relations among the countries involved—China, India, Pakistan, the United States, and the Soviet Union. This article provides an overview of U.S. relations with South Asian countries during the early Cold War. It highlights the connections between U.S. policy priorities and commitments in South Asia on the one hand and developments in Tibet on the other. The article considers how U.S. policy priorities and actions in South Asia shaped, and were shaped by, China's reassertion of control over Tibet in the early 1950s and by the frictions that emerged between India and China in 1959 as a result of Beijing's brutal crackdown in Tibet.