and speak to michael kugel man he's the deputy director of the program at the think tank the wilson center hi there michael both countries india and china say they've agreed to ease tensions but we just saw in that report that more troops being sent into the area that doesn't quite sound like deescalation does it no it doesn't and when you have a deadly clash like you did recently where you had so many troops die on both sides and you know this is the 1st time in many years when you actually had on that that is a long disputed border but i think it's going to be very difficult to expect to climb down the escalation ladder so quickly and indeed it's a good sign that there are talks a plan and of course there was a by a long process that was about wish you earlier in june between military commanders on both sides and it seems like both sides are still committed to returning to that but i think that both sides particularly india could accrue some major political longer abilities if they aren't seen as as pushing back i mean the emotive government in india has already come under a lot of criti

a little earlier i spoke with michael kugel man a senior associate in south and southeast asia at the woodrow wilson center he says neither country is in a good position for an escalation of tension. these 2 countries really cannot afford to be in a position where they have to worry about an escalation of leading to things borrowing out of control in a conflict so i think that you have to hope that better minds will prevail calmer winds will prevail i think the question of how india will respond right now i think that india is under a lot of pressure suit not to back down just because again we're talking about at least 20 dead indian soldiers that would be very politically risky for the indian government to continue with this position of we need to deescalate we need to deescalate but on the other hand india is the weaker of the 2 i mean china is a more powerful country than india so there's only so much that india could do if it were to try to retaliate the dynamic is very different between india and china than it is from india and pakistan where there of course there are going to nu

overstepping the so-called line of actual control that separates the 2 let's speak to our guest now michael kugel man who is a senior associate in south and southeast asia the woodrow wilson center he joins us from washington d.c. on skype sir thank you so much for joining us here on al-jazeera so as we've said this disputed a sense has been going on for decades but it has escalated in recent weeks how do you read it so who would you blame i suppose for beginning the escalation if you want to put it that way and crucially why do you think it's happening now. well i mean we still don't know the full story as to what happened back in may well when these tensions 1st broke out there's been over differing reportage there's been conflict conflicting reports from both the chinese and the indian sides but what i think is extremely surprising is that we had this incident that we had very recently where as you noted there were at least 20 indian fatalities we don't know the number of chinese fatalities and that's because a dialogue process had begun there was a process in place to deescalate this crisis e