On 20 October 1962, a border dispute between India and the People’s Republic of China erupted into open warfare, leaving the Indian Army reeling and the country’s political leadership in a state of panic. A State of Emergency was declared, a National Defence Fund established, and recruiting stations for India’s armed forces were flooded with eager volunteers. This chapter dissects the impact of joint covert action operations undertaken by India and the United States in the wake of Sino-Indian hostilities. It examines how and why the CIA assisted the IB in equipping and training a clandestine warfare unit tasked with monitoring Chinese military supply routes into Tibet and oversaw the insertion of nuclear-powered surveillance equipment on two of India’s Himalayan peaks to collect data on Chinese atomic tests. Coming at a point when new mechanisms for the implementation of covert action where being introduced by Whitehall, including the Counter Subversion Committee and the Joint Action Committee, the chapter also analyses how the border war was approached by Whitehall as an opportunity to test new British covert capabilities and to roll-back communism in South Asia.

Could the Cold War have ended at the turn of the 1960s? This chapter argues against viewing the downing of Gary Powers' U-2 plane as an unfortunate incident that precluded a superpower agreement. Khrushchev skillfully used the incident to embarrass Eisenhower and ruin the May 1960 Paris summit. However, it is doubtful that Khrushchev could have ever made the concessions – not least over Berlin – that would have led to the end of the Cold War. He remained determined to defend his revolutionary credentials, particularly against his Chinese critics. Fundamentally, the Soviet Union faced an identity crisis: was it a content superpower seeking to maintain its position or the center of world revolution aiming to overthrow the existing order? The roads not taken in 1960 remain unknown, but the sequence of events that played out over the spring and summer of 1960 led to a heating up of the Cold War.