Tensions between the two most populous countries totaling about one third of world inhabitants were ratcheted up a notch this week, with no resolution in sight. Indian Prime Minister Singh strongly objected to China's new and ongoing commercial projects in Pakistan and the disputed territories it controls in Kashmir. Within a wider context from China's point of view, this is only one more step towards total domination of Central Asian natural resources and industry, highlighted by China's monopolies on most such resources in Afghanistan, to NATO's and the U.S.'s great dismay.
While Pakistan is internally preoccupied in terms of security due to militants with Afghanistan in much the same plight, China is swooping in to capitalize, snatching up mines of precious and base metals, agricultural lands as well as key heavy industries in the two countries. Meanwhile, the U.S., NATO and Pakistan itself seem strangely willing to take on the proverbial "dirty work," and content to hand off the rewards to China, which has yet to deploy rapidly growing military powers abroad, anywhere. Needless to say the extent to which the U.S. military is strained and NATO cooperation halfhearted makes them vulnerable, and Chinese expansionism easy. Not even the U.S. military command could be so dumb as to instigate a war between them.
Kashmir is a contentiously disputed region between India, Pakistan and China in which armed conflict has flared several times between the countries since 1947. The U.N. has deployed several large peacekeeping forces to the region to little success other than maintaining a status quo detrimental to everyone involved, especially the Kashmiri people. Yet, in the 1970s, India and China agreed to the peaceful principles of coexistence, which then set the stage for the Non-Aligned Movement, arguably the most peaceful global force during the Cold War. All this leads to a far-fetched but poignant question: Are Al-Quaeda and China working together, as their alignment of interests (other than religious) suggest?
If the U.N. Security Council had any prescience whatsoever, they would address the rising tensions between India and China head on without delay. The potentially dire consequences of not doing so have no historical precedent in human history because of the size and military capabilities of the two countries, both nuclear powers. But China is a permanent, veto-wielding member of the Security Council, so little is likely to be done if it were presented as an issue, as was the case with the Korean and Vietnam Wars. China-India tensions, almost inevitable as a current event, must be actively reduced to avoid a catastrophe beyond the proportions of the World Wars.

