Bruce Riedel is a senior fellow and director of the Brookings Intelligence Project. He is the author, most recently, of JFK's Forgotten Crisis: Tibet, the CIA and the Sino-Indian War, from which this article is excerpted.

On the evening of November 19, 1962, U.S. Ambassador to India John Kenneth Galbraith was hosting a delegation of U.S. senators, including Mike Mansfield (D-Montana) and Claiborne Pell (D-Rhode Island), for dinner at the ambassador’s residence in New Delhi. News of the “Black November” disaster, the height of violence in the short but devastating Sino-Indian War, had begun to arrive in the capital just two days prior, and the extent of the brutality—primarily borne by the far weaker Indian side—was becoming more apparent by the minute. Galbraith recalled that Indian finance minster Morarji Desai, the guest of honor, “was sunk in gloom. Into the conversation came the most improbable rumors. A Polish ship had been seen in Calcutta with suspicious maps of the Bay of Bengal. This affirmed some design by Poland in the area” because Poland was a communist state—and thus a co-conspirator with China in the dispute. Galbraith concluded that “it was a hideous evening and I brought it to an end as quickly as possible.” The experience of managing a major crisis was fatiguing but also exhilarating; he later wrote that “an exhausting government crisis has this in common with a sex orgy or a drunken bat: the participants greatly enjoy it although they feel they shouldn’t.”

In his diary Galbraith wrote that November 19 “was a day of unbelievably dismal developments. The Chinese had taken over most of the political division known as the North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA), over 30,000 square miles of northeastern India, and with incredible speed. The Indians at all levels are in a state of shock.” All Indian Airlines flights across the country were canceled to divert the aircraft to military use.


At the peak of the crisis on November 19, Nehru wrote two letters to Kennedy. They were delivered immediately by the Indian embassy in Washington to the White House and also to Galbraith in India. The existence of these two letters, especially of the second one, was not made public at the time—probably owing to the embarrassment it would cause the Indian government. In his diary Galbraith makes only a cursory mention of them, writing that “not one but two pleas for help are coming to us, the second one of them still highly confidential.” For years afterward, successive Indian governments denied that the letters existed, but they amounted to a desperate and astounding plea for the United States to join a war against China.

By late November Kennedy had already ordered a massive airlift of weapons and material to help India. Just as people were starting to exhale after the Cuban Missile Crisis—today known as Kennedy’s major foreign-policy achievement—he was also skillfully managing U.S. involvement in what looked poised to become a war on a similar scale. It may have in fact been the Cuban Missile Crisis’ combination with the Sino-Indian war, sparsely covered in today’s history textbooks and lectures, that really distinguished him as a talented statesman.

In 2010 the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum made available the original letters available in full. (Up to then, they had been heavily redacted allegedly in part at India’s request.) The first, dated November 19, “EYES ONLY,” letter begins with an expression of Nehru’s gratitude for what Kennedy had already done since the attack began in October. “We are extremely grateful to you and the Government and people of the USA for the practical support given to us,” Nehru wrote, and “we particularly appreciate the speed with which the urgently needed small arms and ammunition were rushed to India.” Nehru then told the president that during the lull in fighting earlier in November, the Chinese had “made full preparations” for a second attack. Two Indian divisions were now “fighting difficult rear guard actions” in NEFA and might not last much longer.

Nehru described the grim battlefield situation—the came to the point of the letter: India needed “air transport and jet fighters to stem the Chinese tide of aggression. A lot more effort, both from us and from our friends will be required to roll back this aggressive tide.” Nehru then made his pitch, writing, “I hope we will continue to have the support and assistance of your great country in the gigantic efforts that have to be made.” The prime minister closed by telling the president he was also writing a similar message to British prime minister Harold Macmillan.

Almost at the same time as the White House received this first letter, Galbraith sent an urgent telegram classified TOP SECRET EYES ONLY FOR PRESIDENT, SECRETARY AND SECRETARY DEFENSE. It began, “I have just learned under conditions of the greatest confidence that another” letter from Nehru is “in preparation.” Having been briefed on the second letter by Finance Minister M.J. Desai in great secrecy, Galbraith wrote that it reflected the “new disasters and further large Chinese advances today and will ask for some form of back up support to the Indian Air Force by USAF amounting to joint Air Defenses to deter attacks on cities and lines of communication while the Indians commit IAF to tactical operations and attacks on Chinese communications which they believe is now the only chance of stopping Chinese and preventing cutoff of eastern India or more.”

Just a decade after American forces had reached a cease-fire with the Chinese Communist Forces in Korea, India was asking JFK to join a new war against Communist China. Galbraith sent the telegram in advance of the letter because he knew he had to buy some time for the president to consider the huge commitment India was seeking.

He said he would urge Nehru not to start any air strikes prematurely and for the Indians’ “careful consideration of the acceleration of the conflict in the air.” Yet he warned the president that the “Indian mood is desperate and the situation indeed grim.” Galbraith’s urgent telegram concluded, “I have learned of this move under conditions of greatest confidence even senior Ministers not being yet informed. My staff is not informed. You must protect the fact of my knowledge and this warning now and indefinitely.”

India’s ambassador in Washington, Braj Kumar Nehru, delivered the second letter late in the evening of November 19. It began with a dire assessment of the situation facing India and ended with a specific request: “A minimum of 12 squadrons of supersonic all weather fighters are essential. We have no modern radar cover in the country. The United States Air Force personnel will have to man these fighters and radar installations while our personnel are being trained.” The Indian prime minister spelled out the implications of his request, writing that “U.S. fighters and transport planes manned by U.S. personnel will be used for the present to protect our cities and installations” from the Chinese. Moreover, American pilots and fighters would “assist the Indian Air Force in air battles with the Chinese air force over Indian areas,” while Indian aircraft attacked Chinese PLA troops and supply lines on the ground. Air attacks inside Tibet would be undertaken by the Indian Air Force alone. In addition to the fighters and radar installations manned by Americans, Nehru also requested “two squadrons of B-47 Bombers” to strike in Tibet. India was ready to “spare no effort until the threat posed by Chinese expansionist and aggressive militarism to freedom and independence is completely eliminated.” In this second letter Nehru was, in fact, asking Kennedy for some 350 combat aircraft and crews: twelve squadrons of fighter aircraft with twenty-four jets in each and two bomber squadrons.

Ambassador B. K. Nehru was so stunned by the contents of the messages from Prime Minister Nehru that he did not show them to any of his staff and kept the only copies in his own desk. Many years later he told an American historian that Nehru must have been exhausted and psychologically devastated by the news of India’s defeats when he sent the two letters. The British prime minister received similar letters that Harold Macmillan referred to briefly in his memoirs as “agitated.”

In the New Delhi ambassador’s residence, Galbraith wrote that November 20, 1962, “was the day of ultimate panic in New Delhi, the first time I have ever witnessed the disintegration of public morale. The wildest rumors flew around the town.” He convened his embassy planning team to send three immediate recommendations to Washington, “which I came up with overnight with the benefit of insomnia”: cranking up the airlift of supplies, sending twelve more C-130 air transports immediately and most importantly, sending “elements of the Seventh Fleet . . . into the Bay of Bengal.” The Indians had not asked for a demonstration of American naval power, but Galbraith felt it was essential to have a very visible symbol of U.S. support for India. He also thought that a U.S. Navy carrier battle group would signal China that America was serious. Washington immediately agreed with Ken’s suggestion and Pacific Fleet Headquarters in Honolulu was tasked to send one at once.

Galbraith also had advice for the Indians. He urged them not to start air operations against China until an answer to Nehru’s second letter arrived from Kennedy. He noted, “There is no technical chance that we could accord them immediately the protection that Nehru asked.” It would take time to get the U.S. Air Force on the scene. Galbraith was also skeptical of the impact of airpower on the PLA based on America’s experience in Korea ten years before where “we learned in Korea that even with complete control of the air, we could not keep them from applying their forces or advancing.” Air attacks would prompt retaliation, including attacks on Indian cities like Calcutta and perhaps a drive down from Tibet to seize all of eastern India.

The ambassador and the visiting U.S. senators called on Nehru the morning of November 20 and then shared lunch with the prime minister. After lunch Galbraith hoped for a nap, but instead “a message came from President Kennedy” replying to Nehru’s two urgent letters. Kennedy proposed to send immediately a high-level mission led by Ambassador Averell Harriman, a longtime friend of Galbraith’s, to assess India’s needs. He also promised to immediately increase the airlift of supplies and to deploy the U.S. Navy to the Bay of Bengal. An aircraft carrier was dispatched to sail to Madras, but was later recalled when the crisis eased.

In his diary Ken Galbraith reports that, on the morning of November 21, “like a thief in the night peace arrived.” Just before midnight on November 20 the Chinese government declared that a unilateral cease-fire along the entire Sino-Indian border would begin within twenty-four hours. In addition, in the east China would withdraw from the territory it had conquered by force in NEFA. Mao unilaterally imposed the border offer he had made to Nehru before the war in November 1959: China would keep the strategic but uninhabited land in the west, and in the east retain its claim to NEFA, but adhere to the de facto border situation that existed before the 1962 war. The war was over on China’s terms. India had lost.

In 1965 India released final casualty figures for the short war: 1,383 soldiers had died, 1,696 were missing, and 3,968 had been captured. The Chinese losses are unknown, because Beijing never provided any accounting of its casualties. Judging from what the Indians found on the battlefield after the PLA withdrew to the LOAC, the Chinese had also suffered significant dead and wounded. But the Indians did not capture even one Chinese soldier, perhaps the best illustration of the rout that India’s army suffered in NEFA.

At noon on November 22 Galbraith met with Nehru to compare notes. The prime minister “was inclined to think the Chinese offer of a ceasefire and withdrawal was real,” Ken reported, despite suspicions the U.S. ambassador himself harbored. Nehru cited two factors that convinced Mao to halt the war. First was the “anger of the Indian people when aroused” and the risk of an open-ended conflict that anger would produce. The second factor in Nehru’s judgment “was the speed of the American response.”

This raises the great “what if” question about the 1962 forgotten crisis. What if the Chinese had not issued their unilateral cease-fire and withdrawal? How would Kennedy have answered Nehru’s desperate appeal for American pilots to start flying combat missions to fight the Chinese and defend India?

Almost certainly Kennedy would have responded positively. His track record on India in general and the 1962 crisis in particular shows he believed that the rivalry between India and China was an existential issue for the United States. He had expressed this belief earlier in his 1959 speech on the race between China and India for leadership in Asia. “We want India to win,” he said then. As president he had greatly stepped up economic aid to India. When the Indian prime minister made an urgent request for arms and equipment in October 1962 Kennedy said yes. When Pakistan complained and asked for compensation, he refused to be blackmailed.

The immediate dispatch of Averell Harriman and a large mission of American experts and advisers to assess Indian needs after receiving Nehru’s second letter on November 19 was the action of a president preparing for war. Harriman and two dozen senior Kennedy officials arrived in New Delhi at 6 p.m. on November 22. Galbraith took them immediately to see Nehru, who was “very grateful for our prompt reaction.”

The Chinese invasion of India had been so over- shadowed by the Cuban missile crisis that it was not until late November that the president spoke publicly about the stakes in South Asia. Before then Galbraith was his public voice, and it was the ambassador’s statements and actions that had warned Mao of American resolve. Yet Kennedy could confidently tell the American people that U.S. ground troops would not be necessary, that India had enough soldiers to fight its battle: What India needed were arms and air support. The situation would not have evolved into another Korea or Vietnam.

Of course, we will never know what the specifics of American assistance to India would have been if the war had continued. Just a week after Harriman arrived in New Delhi, Kennedy sent Galbraith a private message asking him to stay on as ambassador and offering to personally intervene with Harvard to exempt Galbraith from its rule that professors could only get a two-year leave of absence without jeopardizing tenure. Galbraith probably would have wanted to give Nehru a positive answer to his appeal for help, and we can be reasonably certain that America, India and probably Great Britain would have been at war together against China, not so long after the world’s eyes were fixed on a nuclear war that threatened to break out in Cuba and remains so much clearer in Americans’ memories.