I have re-added everything from 1968 forward. The problem is very simple: your last sentence above. This article is not, and never has been about the current crisis. It is about the entirety of the dispute between these three nations (with the ancillary involvement of the US) that began in 1968ish. The deep background cannot be a coatrack, because it is what the article has always been. There was never a time, nor should there ever have been a time, when the article was only about the most recent events. In fact, your attempt to transform it into only the "current crisis" is you coat-racking, by changing it from it's broad focus to an unnecessarily and unacceptably narrow one. The goal of this article, as explained in the lead, throughout the body, etc., is to describe the dispute: the reasons, the positions, and the practical consequences. Yes, the section definitely needs to be shorter and summarized, but not cut entirely.