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In 2020, Dan Altman wrote “What History of Modern Conquest Tells Us About China and India’s Border Crisis,” which explores the relationship between territorial conquests, war, and the ongoing border conflict between China and India. Four years later, we invited him back to discuss how the conflict has developed and how it applies to other ongoing conflicts.Read more below.Image: PxhereIn your 2020 article “What the History of Modern Conquest Tells Us About China and India’s Border Crisis,” you explored the relationship between territorial disputes, territorial conquests, and war, highlighting China’s efforts to take territory from India’s Ladakh border region. In the past four years, how has the conflict over the region evolved?  Although the crisis atmosphere of 2020 eventually eased, the situation along China and India’s disputed border remains tense. China continues to hold some of the areas that it occupied in 2020, and no one should be surprised if a similar crisis emerges in the future.At the risk of oversimplifying, I would classify China’s encroachments in 2020 as successful. In the past, China has achieved territorial gains with such tactics against not just India but also Bhutan, the Philippines, and Vietnam. Why would an ever-stronger China not turn again to tactics that have worked for it in the past?How can India respond to Chinese provocations across the entire length of the border?In 2020, I concluded that “several precedents suggest that India’s attention may turn to an easily overlooked option: turning China’s tactics back on Beijing by advancing elsewhere along the disputed border, working around Chinese posts and patrols without firing a first shot.”Seven weeks later, Indian troops advanced to occupy heights near one of the main Chinese encroachments next to Pangong Lake. India avoided the areas China had occupied, which would have required dislodging People’s Liberation Army soldiers, instead opting