In Autumn 1986, as a young army captain deployed in India’s northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, which China claims as its own territory, I readied to go to war with China. The provocation: a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) company, about a hundred men, had entered territory that India claimed and established camp on a yak grazing ground called Wangdung, across a rivulet called the Sumdorong Chu, north of the hotly disputed Tawang township.