D.C. – US Senator Bill Hagerty from Tennessee has made a shocking and unproven accusation that China used a “electromagnetic weapon to literally melt Indian soldiers” during a border dispute with India about five years ago. The Republican senator didn’t say the 2020 Galwan Valley clash by name, but the timing of his comments makes it very likely that they were about the deadly event.
Hagerty added, “China and India have a long history of problems and lack of trust.” “China and India were fighting over a disputed border just five years ago, and China used an electromagnetic weapon to literally melt Indian soldiers.”
The senator’s comments were part of a larger conversation about how international ties are always changing. His comments came only two weeks after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping met on the sidelines of the SCO Summit in Tianjin. This encounter allegedly worried people in Washington.
The US and India have had a complicated relationship, especially since President Donald Trump took office. Recently, he put a 50% tariff on Indian goods because India kept buying Russian energy. Trump’s comments have been inconsistent lately. At first, he said that the US had “lost India to darkest China,” but then he called New Delhi a “important partner” and a “very good friend.”
Senator Hagerty’s remark has not been formally acknowledged by either the Indian or Chinese governments, but a Chinese academic made a similar claim in 2020 without any proof. The scholar asserted that “microwave weapons” were employed to displace Indian forces off a hilltop. At the time, the Indian military officially called this assertion “baseless” and “fake news.” The employment of directed-energy weapons is a very advanced and controversial topic, and there has never been any public proof that they were used in the Galwan Valley.
India-China ties hit a new low in June 2020 after the Galwan Valley incident, when 20 Indian soldiers were killed in a horrific, seven-hour fight. It was the first violent fight between the two sides in more than 40 years. They used stones, clubs, and fists because both sides agreed not to use guns along the Line of Actual Control (LAC).
Even if their diplomatic relations have been strained lately, both the US and India have a great interest in keeping their strategic cooperation strong. Trump said earlier this week that his government will keep talking to India about the “trade barriers” and that he was looking forward to talking to Prime Minister Modi in the next few weeks.