Latest / China Considered / Lines of Fire: China, the US, and the India-Pakistan Standoff with Šumit Ganguly

Transcript

Lines of Fire: China, the US, and the India-Pakistan Standoff with Šumit Ganguly · China Considered

• 0:08
  >> Elizabeth Economy: Welcome to China Considered, a podcast that brings fresh
• 0:11
  insight and informed discussion to one of the most consequential issues of our time,
• 0:15
  how China is changing and changing the world.
• 0:17
  I'm Liz Economy Hargrove, Senior Fellow and Co Director of the Program on us,
• 0:21
  China and the World at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
• 0:26
  Today I'm joined by my friend and colleague Sumit Ganguly.
• 0:30
  Sumit is a Senior Fellow here at the Hoover Institution.
• 0:33
  He's also one of the world's leading experts on India as well as on
• 0:36
  the India Pakistan relationship.
• 0:39
  We saw recently the outbreak of four days of deadly fighting between India and
• 0:43
  Pakistan in early to mid May that ended with a US brokered ceasefire.
• 0:47
  China seemed to step in a bit, but didn't seem to have an actual game plan for
• 0:51
  how to resolve the situation.
• 0:53
  I want to talk about the conflict itself and how China and
• 0:56
  the United States fit in.
• 0:57
  But first, I think this is a conflict that very few people,
• 1:00
  including myself, quite frankly, really understand.
• 1:04
  Can you give us, Sumit, a little bit of historical background?
• 1:07
  Well, first maybe just tell us what exactly happened and then perhaps we can
• 1:11
  talk a little bit about the history leading up to this because it's certainly
• 1:16
  not the first time that the two countries have had a challenging interaction.
• 1:21
  So maybe just what happened in this instance.
• 1:24
  >> Sumit Ganguly: In this instance what happened is towards late April,
• 1:28
  when it is quite pleasant in Kashmir, when spring has come to Kashmir,
• 1:33
  which is an extraordinarily beautiful part of the world,
• 1:37
  some people have referred to it as the Switzerland of Asia.
• 1:42
  There were substantial numbers of picnickers just
• 1:46
  outside the the summer capital of the Indian controlled
• 1:51
  portion of the disputed state of Jammu and Kashmir.
• 1:56
  The dispute goes back to 1947, from the time of the creation of India and
• 2:03
  Pakistan and over which India and Pakistan have fought three wars.
• 2:09
  And while these mostly Indian and a handful of foreign
• 2:14
  picnickers just outside the summer capital Srinagar
• 2:19
  of the Indian administered portion of Kashmir were
• 2:24
  enjoying themselves and having food and drink,
• 2:29
  quite abruptly a group of terrorists attacked.
• 2:35
  These picnickers, separated women and children and
• 2:39
  then segregated Hindus and Muslims.
• 2:42
  And they asked the Hindus to recite certain verses of the Quran
• 2:48
  which any Muslim would know, but most Hindus don't.
• 2:52
  And that's how they managed to segregate the men and
• 2:56
  then proceeded to shoot the men in cold blood.
• 2:59
  It was an absolutely gruesome, cynical and
• 3:04
  pitiless massacre and 26 tourists were killed.
• 3:10
  A number of locals who were Muslims actually took it upon
• 3:14
  themselves to shield as many people as they could and
• 3:18
  carry them away from the reach of the terrorists.
• 3:22
  Obviously there was a colossal failure in terms of
• 3:26
  intelligence because the terrorists traversed an area
• 3:31
  of 150 miles from what is called the Line of Control,
• 3:36
  which is the de facto international border between India and,
• 3:41
  and Pakistan in the disputed region of Kashmir.
• 3:46
  So the fact that they were able to travel that far into Kashmir,
• 3:52
  Indian controlled Kashmir, reveals two things.
• 3:56
  One, clearly there was an intelligence failure and
• 4:01
  very possibly some connivance from disaffected Kashmiris,
• 4:06
  because how do you go 150 miles in a heavily militarized
• 4:11
  area without some shelter, some support from the local population?
• 4:18
  In the wake of this attack, Prime Minister Modi,
• 4:22
  who is a Hindu nationalist, made it abundantly clear that he
• 4:27
  was going to make Pakistan pay a price for the attack.
• 4:32
  He announced that these terrorists had been supported by Pakistan,
• 4:38
  an allegation that Pakistan obviously denies.
• 4:43
  But it has denied similar accusations in
• 4:47
  the past when there has been fairly clear cut evidence.
• 4:53
  A Pakistan based group called the Resistance Front took
• 4:57
  responsibility for this attack.
• 5:01
  And for about a week or so nothing happened on the Indo Pakistani border,
• 5:07
  though vigilance by the two militaries were dramatically increased.
• 5:13
  Shortly thereafter, India launched a massive missile strike
• 5:18
  not only into the disputed areas of Kashmir, but into Pakistan proper.
• 5:25
  Furthermore, since the first time since 1971,
• 5:30
  it also used air power to strike targets within Pakistan,
• 5:35
  including at an air base which is widely believed
• 5:40
  to have Pakistan's nuclear command authority.
• 5:45
  And that I thought was a fairly bold and
• 5:49
  one could even argue brazen move on the part of India.
• 5:55
  The Pakistanis, for their part, retaliated and, and the numbers vary,
• 6:02
  but the claims go from three to five Indian warplanes were shot down.
• 6:09
  It is fascinating.
• 6:10
  I heard the Indian Air Chief Marshal on a television channel where he said,
• 6:16
  in response to a question from an Indian reporter about the allegations
• 6:21
  of the planes being shot down, his phraseology was wonderful.
• 6:27
  He said, in combat there are always losses.
• 6:31
  However, all our pilots have returned home safely.
• 6:37
  Which means that he's conceding some planes were shot down,
• 6:42
  but they managed to bail out over Indian territory.
• 6:47
  So technically he's right on both counts.
• 6:51
  >> Elizabeth Economy: So I'm guessing from the way that you describe the massive
• 6:54
  intelligence failure,
• 6:56
  you're talking about a failure of intelligence on the Indian side.
• 7:00
  Is there any cooperation, has there ever been any cooperation between the Pakistani
• 7:04
  intelligence and the Indian intelligence such that you would think,
• 7:08
  you know, maybe, you know, if this were truly not in the interest
• 7:12
  of the Pakistani government and there was no, you know, support.
• 7:16
  And it doesn't sound like Prime Minister Modi has provided any evidence that
• 7:20
  the Pakistani government has actually supported.
• 7:23
  Supported this.
• 7:25
  Could there have been sort of some kind of intelligence sharing that could have
• 7:29
  stopped this from happening, or is that just really not.
• 7:31
  There's not even that kind of discussion going on.
• 7:35
  >> Sumit Ganguly: No. Unlike in the Cold War,
• 7:38
  when even at the height of the Cold War,
• 7:41
  the US cooperated with the Soviet Union on a whole range of issues,
• 7:46
  including, I was just discussing with a colleague the other day over
• 7:51
  lunch that there was a major agreement on the avoidance of accidents at sea,
• 7:57
  which held throughout the course.
• 8:00
  Cold War.
• 8:01
  And there was the hotline that was inaugurated after the Cuban Missile Crisis
• 8:07
  and there were times when a flock of Canadian geese set off a nuclear alert.
• 8:16
  You know, our colleague here at Stanford, Scott Sagan,
• 8:20
  has written about these kinds of episodes.
• 8:23
  And there was a conscious effort on the part of both the US and
• 8:28
  the Soviet Union to avoid inadvertent escalation,
• 8:33
  to avoid inadvertent conflict.
• 8:37
  There were a series of confidence building measures
• 8:41
  that were put in place in the 1990s.
• 8:44
  However, all those have completely frayed over the last two decades.
• 8:50
  And most particularly after swarming terrorist attack in November 2018,
• 8:58
  which there is incontrovertible evidence that
• 9:02
  the group that attacked the city of Bombay had links with
• 9:07
  the Inter Services Intelligence Directorate of Pakistan.
• 9:14
  So whatever little cooperation existed after
• 9:18
  that has basically simply evaporated.
• 9:23
  >> Elizabeth Economy: So one of the reasons that I think the rest of the world
• 9:27
  became so concerned, not only because of the, you know, sort of senseless
• 9:31
  loss of life, was because both Pakistan and India are nuclear powers.
• 9:36
  And there was, of course, a concern that somehow, you know, this might escalate.
• 9:41
  You never want to see this kind of conflict in any case, but
• 9:44
  when you have two nuclear powers with, as you've described,
• 9:48
  very little sort of political diplomatic engagement that would, you know,
• 9:52
  enable them to de escalate on their own, you know,
• 9:55
  this caused quite, quite, I think, a lot of concern globally.
• 9:59
  I mean, do you think that there was ever really a risk of some kind of use of
• 10:03
  nuclear weapons?
• 10:04
  Could it have escalated, you know, had the United States not stepped in or
• 10:09
  other nations not stepped in?
• 10:11
  Is there, Was that a sort of a realistic proposition?
• 10:17
  >> Sumit Ganguly: When two countries are implacably at odds and possess nuclear
• 10:22
  weapons and have fought four wars and endured multiple crises,
• 10:27
  one would be, it would be extremely sort of Pollyannish to suggest,
• 10:33
  no, there's no danger of nuclear escalation.
• 10:38
  Again, the literature on political science and
• 10:41
  international relations is replete with discussions of inadvertent escalation.
• 10:48
  In fact, Barry Posen at MIT wrote an entire book of how a conventional
• 10:53
  conflict in Europe could escalate to the nuclear level.
• 10:58
  So that prospect, that shadow was always present.
• 11:06
  But both sides had compelling incentives not to resort to nuclear weapons or
• 11:14
  even engage in real nuclear saber rattling because India,
• 11:20
  nor Pakistan, India nor Pakistan want to be the country
• 11:26
  that breaks the post Hiroshima nuclear taboo.
• 11:31
  That's number one.
• 11:32
  And second, given the density of populations on both sides of the border,
• 11:39
  a nuclear exchange would be just devastating.
• 11:45
  During the height of the Cold War,
• 11:48
  there were studies done of a simple 1 kiloton
• 11:53
  airburst over Charlottesville and over Leningrad.
• 11:59
  This is all in the unclassified domain, mind you,
• 12:03
  these are both fairly industrial cities in industrialized countries.
• 12:11
  The devastation and the human suffering that it would
• 12:16
  have cost is simply mind boggling to the point.
• 12:21
  As Sir Michael Howard, the great British military historians once said,
• 12:28
  perhaps this the survivors will envy the dead.
• 12:34
  >> Elizabeth Economy: That is a very powerful statement.
• 12:36
  So what is at the heart of the conflict?
• 12:39
  Actually you mentioned they fought four wars.
• 12:41
  This has been going on since 1947, establishment of Pakistan.
• 12:48
  Why, why and why can it not be resolved?
• 12:51
  I mean those are sound like simplistic questions but
• 12:54
  I think it's important to understand what's at the heart of all of this.
• 12:58
  >> Sumit Ganguly: It's anything but simplistic.
• 13:00
  I mean I think this is the critical issue.
• 13:03
  I've had perfectly intelligent people say there must be vital minerals in Kashmir.
• 13:10
  And I said well if there are, I certainly am not aware nor have India or
• 13:15
  Pakistan ever claimed that there have been.
• 13:18
  There are vital rare minerals in Kashmir.
• 13:22
  No, it is not so much about say oil deposits or
• 13:27
  rare earths and the like.
• 13:31
  It is much more about the following.
• 13:35
  It has to do with the time when India and Pakistan were created from
• 13:41
  the breakup of the British colonial empire from what was called British India.
• 13:48
  At that time there were two distinct nationalist movements.
• 13:53
  One for the creation of Pakistan, which said that the Muslims
• 13:57
  of South Asia need a homeland because once the British leave
• 14:02
  a predominantly Hindu population will marginalize and
• 14:06
  maltreat Muslims and consequently we need our homeland.
• 14:12
  India on the other hand was built on the principle of secular civic nationalism.
• 14:19
  That was the nature of the Indian nationalist movement, that regardless
• 14:23
  of your ethnicity or linguistic background, your religious background,
• 14:28
  you can thrive under the aegis of a secular democratic plural state.
• 14:33
  And the commitment to this was quite genuine.
• 14:36
  It was not a cosmetic commitment.
• 14:39
  And Kashmir became an issue because it was a so called princely state.
• 14:45
  Now there were 561 others which were nominally independent as
• 14:51
  long as they recognized Britain as the paramount power.
• 14:57
  But Lord Mountbatten, the last British Viceroy said well with us
• 15:01
  leaving the doctrine of paramount sea lapse lapses, so
• 15:05
  you have a choice of either joining India or Pakistan.
• 15:10
  And if you're predominantly Muslim and
• 15:13
  in an adjacent area then you will go to Pakistan and if you're,
• 15:18
  and if you're predominantly Hindu you will go, go to India.
• 15:23
  There were a handful of anomalies where for
• 15:27
  example there was the state called Hyderabad deep inside India
• 15:32
  where the monarch was Muslim, the population predominantly Hindu and
• 15:38
  he wanted a Berlin corridor and India said, dream on.
• 15:43
  That's not going to happen.
• 15:44
  >> Elizabeth Economy: Right. >> Sumit Ganguly: You're deep inside
• 15:46
  the Indian territory.
• 15:47
  You're going to join us.
• 15:49
  And it's to Prime Minister Nehru's credit that there
• 15:54
  was a princely ruler within Pakistan who wanted to join India.
• 16:00
  And Nehru said, I'm terribly sorry, I'd like to have you.
• 16:04
  But again, there's this problem.
• 16:06
  You're nowhere near the border.
• 16:08
  Kashmir posed a peculiar problem.
• 16:11
  It had a Hindu monarch who was quite autocratic,
• 16:16
  who had mistreated his Muslim peasantry very badly.
• 16:21
  But the, it had a predominantly Muslim population and
• 16:28
  it abated both India and Pakistan.
• 16:34
  And there was a contradiction in British policy.
• 16:37
  On the one hand, predominantly Muslim areas would go to Pakistan,
• 16:44
  but the monarchs also had the final word.
• 16:49
  So this is an inherent tension here and the monarch in this case,
• 16:53
  Maharaja Hari Singh, didn't want to join either India or Pakistan.
• 16:57
  He didn't want to join India because he didn't want
• 17:00
  to give up his vast landed estates and there would be land reform in India.
• 17:05
  He didn't want to join Pakistan because he had treated his Muslim subjects badly and
• 17:11
  he thought he could have this Switzerland of Asia and
• 17:15
  thrive on tourism and apples and apricots.
• 17:19
  Fruits grow in abundance in Kashmir.
• 17:23
  I've been there as a tourist and I mean you literally stop by a highway and
• 17:27
  you can shake a tree and you can get a harvest of apricots.
• 17:32
  >> Elizabeth Economy: Sounds amazing.
• 17:33
  >> Sumit Ganguly: It's an amazing place.
• 17:35
  So he thought he could thrive on this.
• 17:37
  And when the Pakistanis forced his hand in that,
• 17:44
  they sent in troops disguised as disgruntled
• 17:49
  tribals and attacked his realm.
• 17:54
  And very soon they had reached the borders of, not the borders,
• 17:59
  the outskirts of Srinagar, the capital where the maharaja was.
• 18:04
  And in a panic he appealed to India.
• 18:07
  India agreed to provide assistance if two conditions were met.
• 18:11
  One, he would have to sign the instrument of accession legality.
• 18:16
  But Nehru, being a democrat with a small D,
• 18:19
  said I will only accept this if a man called Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah,
• 18:25
  who is the leader of the largest popular organization in
• 18:30
  the state which incorporates both Hindus and Muslims,
• 18:35
  only if Abdullah grants his imprimatur to the accession so legitimacy.
• 18:42
  And Abdullah said, I do not wish to live in a country
• 18:46
  founded on religion and furthermore, this is my homeland.
• 18:51
  And so yes, once he got that from Abdullah,
• 18:55
  he accepts the instrument of accession, sends in troops,
• 19:00
  but not before Pakistan has carved out one third of the state and
• 19:06
  India two thirds of the state.
• 19:09
  And it's pretty much remained the same.
• 19:12
  There have been virtually no territorial adjustments,
• 19:17
  despite three wars and multiple crises.
• 19:21
  Today it is not about the identities of these two states.
• 19:26
  Pakistan lost more than half of its territory
• 19:31
  in 1971 when in a war with India.
• 19:35
  And why did it break away the East Pakistan, which is Bangladesh today,
• 19:40
  largely on the basis of linguistic nationalism,
• 19:44
  because Pakistan had imposed a one language formula which was
• 19:49
  unacceptable to the Bengali population in East Pakistan and ultimately
• 19:54
  led to linguistic subnationalism and then a military crackdown and
• 19:59
  then Indian intervention leading to the creation of Bangladesh.
• 20:05
  So if religion alone could not make Pakistan cohere,
• 20:09
  clearly that could not be the basis of, of nation building.
• 20:15
  By the same token, one would be hard pressed to say
• 20:19
  with a straight face that India today is a secular state.
• 20:26
  >> Elizabeth Economy: Okay, that was a tour de force.
• 20:29
  >> Sumit Ganguly: Thank you.
• 20:29
  >> Elizabeth Economy: Thank you. Shamit, I think you just took,
• 20:32
  I don't know how many books you've written, maybe 20 or more, and
• 20:37
  gave us the best, the best narrative and tutorial through many of them.
• 20:42
  No doubt.
• 20:44
  That was just superb.
• 20:47
  So let me ask you then, now let's zoom out a little bit and
• 20:52
  talk about how this conflict has played into or
• 20:56
  played out in a broader geostrategic space.
• 21:00
  So one of the narratives that has come out of this conflict has been
• 21:05
  around the military hardware.
• 21:07
  That was used by India and used by Pakistan.
• 21:10
  And Pakistan of course was relying to some extent on Chinese military equipment.
• 21:17
  Whereas India, I think had some Western equipment,
• 21:20
  maybe some French, maybe some American.
• 21:23
  And I think a lot of media commentators basically said
• 21:27
  Pakistan emerged as the more successful in this dog fight.
• 21:32
  Is that your assessment?
• 21:35
  Does it tell us something about the state of play of Chinese, you know,
• 21:39
  military equipment?
• 21:40
  That should surprise us.
• 21:43
  >> Sumit Ganguly: Prima facie that seems to be the case, however,
• 21:47
  I talked to a colleague of ours who will remain unnamed
• 21:52
  because I don't have permission to quote him, explained to me that yes,
• 21:59
  if those five planes were downed, that's a serious setback.
• 22:05
  But apparently Western militaries,
• 22:09
  when they carry out air sorties like this and
• 22:13
  penetration into someone else's adversaries airspace
• 22:19
  also have an entire suite of planes accompanying
• 22:23
  the fighters with electronic jamming equipment,
• 22:28
  which makes it exceedingly difficult for
• 22:32
  an adversary's aircraft A to intercept them and B,
• 22:37
  also to protect them from incoming missiles.
• 22:43
  He said, I honestly don't know if the Indian air force has that capability.
• 22:48
  The last time India used air Power was 1999, but
• 22:53
  it was carefully confined to airspace with Indian airspace
• 22:58
  with firing missiles into Pakistani controlled territory in Kashmir,
• 23:05
  the heartland of Pakistan, was not attacked this time.
• 23:10
  The planes flew into the Pakistani heartland.
• 23:14
  So yes, the Chinese, I think it's called the JC17 Thunder,
• 23:20
  obviously is a capable aircraft, but
• 23:24
  I think its capabilities might be exaggerated owing
• 23:30
  to the lack of this envelope that the Indian Air force
• 23:35
  may not have had to protect their fighter planes.
• 23:41
  But nevertheless this will bear considerable scrutiny.
• 23:47
  I can imagine Jane's Defense Weekly going haywire in the next few weeks,
• 23:53
  carefully scrutinizing every skirmish, air skirmish, and dog fight.
• 23:59
  >> Elizabeth Economy: Right.
• 23:59
  And presumably they'll have a better sense over time about exactly what capabilities
• 24:04
  the Indians did bring to.
• 24:06
  Did bring to the fight, did bring to bear.
• 24:08
  >> Sumit Ganguly: Yes. >> Elizabeth Economy: And
• 24:09
  what about the broader sort of geostrategic landscape in terms of how,
• 24:14
  I mean, not only China and the United States, but
• 24:18
  Russia might play into all of this?
• 24:21
  What are the interests, as you would see them, of the great powers in.
• 24:26
  In this conflict?
• 24:26
  I mean, it's a little bit complicated.
• 24:28
  Right, because India has for a long time been very, you know,
• 24:32
  closely aligned with Russia.
• 24:34
  It is now a much stronger.
• 24:36
  Become a much stronger partner of the United States, has its own territorial
• 24:40
  conflict with China that has recently, you know, quieted down.
• 24:45
  And Pakistan, for its part, I think, continues to get some military equipment
• 24:49
  from the United States, nonetheless has become much more closely tied to China.
• 24:54
  How do you understand the kind of geostrategic gamesmanship around all
• 24:58
  of this?
• 24:59
  >> Sumit Ganguly: Yeah, a lot of this will become clearer in the next weeks and
• 25:03
  months ahead.
• 25:05
  But since a MiG 29 was shot down, and it is also believed that a Russian Sukhoi 30,
• 25:11
  which is a fairly sophisticated aircraft, was shot down,
• 25:15
  though we don't have independent confirmation thereof,
• 25:19
  we do know that the MiG was shot down, the MiG 29 was shot down.
• 25:24
  However, the Russian S400 surface to air missiles apparently performed
• 25:30
  extremely well, even based upon, say, accounts in the Financial Times or
• 25:35
  by Reuters, which don't have a dog in this fight.
• 25:40
  So I suspect that the Indians will now think long and
• 25:45
  hard about their continued reliance on Russian military technology,
• 25:53
  particularly aviation technology, and
• 25:57
  will fret about Chinese capabilities along its northern borders,
• 26:03
  which it has been beefing up lately.
• 26:07
  But now I think the Indians will take the Chinese, the People's Liberation Army,
• 26:14
  Air Force, much more seriously, because there was a time a couple of
• 26:19
  decades ago when the Indians had superior aircraft, mostly Western,
• 26:24
  purchased from abroad, but just qualitatively superior aircraft.
• 26:29
  But now, with the Chinese building bases in Tibet and
• 26:33
  with the performance of these aircraft that the Pakistanis used from China,
• 26:39
  it'll give the Indians pause about a lot of their Russian and Soviet equipment.
• 26:48
  And obviously Western militaries will carefully analyze how,
• 26:54
  say, the Indian Raphael performed.
• 26:57
  Not the Indian, but the French Rafael,
• 27:01
  which the Indians had recently bought, performed,
• 27:06
  which was part of the mix in these dogfights and
• 27:11
  this recent thaw that you referred to with China,
• 27:15
  the Indians will have to give it considerable thought
• 27:20
  because the thaw, as I have argued, is merely a pause.
• 27:26
  It's not something that.
• 27:29
  It does not mean that the central border dispute has
• 27:34
  somehow miraculously been shelved or Put aside,
• 27:39
  it's merely a pause as China deals with, you know,
• 27:44
  economic disruption, which was happening anyway.
• 27:50
  The, the tariff war with the United States having other fish to fry like Taiwan and
• 27:59
  various other bottlenecks in the Chinese economy behooved
• 28:05
  China to try and sort of settle the border with India.
• 28:10
  But the, the centrality of the dispute just hasn't gone away.
• 28:16
  And consequently the Indians will have to think long and
• 28:21
  hard about how it deals with China and
• 28:24
  an adversary that is basically in hawk to China.
• 28:30
  Between cpec, the, the China Pakistan Economic Corridor.
• 28:35
  >> Elizabeth Economy: Yeah.
• 28:36
  >> Sumit Ganguly: And its deep reliance on Chinese weaponry and
• 28:42
  an implacable adversary.
• 28:46
  The Indians will have to do some serious recalculation and
• 28:51
  hope that like previous administrations,
• 28:55
  despite the mercurial nature of the Trump administration,
• 29:01
  that it will proved to be at least somewhat steadfast.
• 29:08
  >> Elizabeth Economy: Yeah, I mean, I do think President Trump has seemed to
• 29:13
  relate well to Prime Minister Modi.
• 29:16
  >> Sumit Ganguly: So far.
• 29:17
  >> Elizabeth Economy: So far.
• 29:18
  And, you know, certainly in the first Trump administration, I think the quad,
• 29:22
  you know, India, the United States, Australia and Japan,
• 29:26
  that relationship was actually bolstered, you know, in contrast to
• 29:30
  the relationship between the United States and the European, our European allies.
• 29:36
  For I think, a set of reasons, some of which have to do with sort of China.
• 29:41
  I think the United States actually placed, the Trump administration placed
• 29:46
  a higher priority on strengthening our relations with our allies and
• 29:51
  partners in Asia and India.
• 29:52
  It was an important, I think a very important component of that effort.
• 29:57
  And I imagine that that will continue.
• 29:59
  I think if we look at the early visits of, you know, Secretary Hexseth and meetings
• 30:04
  with Secretary Rubio and, you know, former National Security Adviser Waltz,
• 30:09
  a lot of importance was placed on the countries in the Indo Pacific and
• 30:13
  the relationship with the United States.
• 30:16
  So, I mean, I take your point about the mercurial nature of the,
• 30:20
  the president and the administration writ large, but I do think we've seen at
• 30:25
  least some initial signs of continuity from the first Trump administration.
• 30:31
  Bode well.
• 30:31
  And I mean, it hasn't materialized, but
• 30:34
  I think early on there was the sense that India might be one of the first
• 30:38
  countries to end up doing a trade deal with the United States.
• 30:41
  I don't know if you have any insight into where that stands.
• 30:44
  I haven't heard much about it recently.
• 30:47
  >> Sumit Ganguly: Everything you have said is correct up to this point.
• 30:54
  Trump has significantly muddied the waters in
• 30:58
  India by offering to mediate an end to the conflict.
• 31:03
  This is the last thing the Indians want to hear.
• 31:07
  They have a staunch opposition to third party mediation.
• 31:12
  And this goes back to their unhappy experience at the United
• 31:18
  nations in 1947, 48, when they took the case,
• 31:23
  the Kashmir case, to the United nations, not as,
• 31:27
  not invoking the inherent right of self defense, but
• 31:32
  as a breach of international peace and security.
• 31:38
  And they made fundamentally legalistic
• 31:43
  arguments, not political arguments.
• 31:48
  And Pakistan turned the whole issue on its head,
• 31:52
  playing the victim that it's really we who are much smaller,
• 31:57
  who are the victims of Indian aggression.
• 32:01
  And completely dispensed with the legal arguments.
• 32:05
  And the Indians kept hammering away at the legal arguments and they basically lost.
• 32:11
  And they've never forgotten that experience.
• 32:15
  And consequently, they remain extremely
• 32:19
  hostile to the idea of third party intervention.
• 32:24
  And Rubio, Secretary of State Marco Rubio
• 32:29
  muddied the waters even further by saying,
• 32:33
  we can meet in a neutral place to discuss this.
• 32:38
  And this just raised the hackles of the Indians.
• 32:42
  And a good friend of mine was saying that I think now the trade deal is in abeyance.
• 32:50
  The Indians are so angry with Trump and Rubio,
• 32:54
  even though they are not publicly stating this, but they are livid.
• 33:00
  And making a trade deal at this point would,
• 33:03
  there would be the audience costs in India would be much too high.
• 33:09
  >> Elizabeth Economy: That is fascinating.
• 33:10
  I mean, it helps explain, I think, why when the de escalation took place and
• 33:16
  Pakistan said, yes, thank you to the United States for
• 33:21
  intervening, and India remained silent.
• 33:24
  And then, you know, President Trump, I mean, talk about muddying the waters.
• 33:28
  I think maybe worse than that.
• 33:30
  Apparently he said something about, yes, I promised, you know,
• 33:33
  trade or you're going to get no trade.
• 33:36
  And that's what brought them, what brought the deal together.
• 33:41
  So I guess he probably brought two things together that made India extremely upset.
• 33:46
  The threat of, you know, no trade and the fact that the United States
• 33:51
  interceded in the conflict in a way that India did not appreciate.
• 33:56
  Let me just ask you on that front, then, you know,
• 33:59
  whether or not you think India transmitted that to the Trump administration in
• 34:03
  advance of the Trump administration's efforts.
• 34:06
  So did they go into it knowing that this was not welcomed by India,
• 34:11
  or did they go into it not realizing that?
• 34:14
  Because I think that says two very different things about the administration,
• 34:17
  the U.S. administration.
• 34:19
  >> Sumit Ganguly: The tragic part is that there is no ambassador in New Delhi.
• 34:27
  There's just a DCM who's a career Foreign Service officer.
• 34:32
  And dcms, as you know, have limited authority, particularly in the present
• 34:38
  administration, which is skeptical of the State Department to begin with.
• 34:44
  Second, there is no Assistant Secretary for State for south and Central Asia.
• 34:52
  The person is still awaiting confirmation hearings, let alone confirmation.
• 34:59
  There is a Senior Director for South Asia on the nsc,
• 35:04
  but there is no NSC director.
• 35:08
  Secretary Rubio is wearing that hat.
• 35:11
  >> Elizabeth Economy: Right.
• 35:11
  >> Sumit Ganguly: Trump also made a statement which revealed his extraordinary
• 35:16
  ignorance of the region, which has all the Indians laughing
• 35:21
  with various memes on social media, namely that the Indians and
• 35:26
  Pakistanis have been fighting each other for thousands of years.
• 35:33
  >> Elizabeth Economy: Dear.
• 35:34
  >> Sumit Ganguly: Need I say more?
• 35:36
  There was no India or Pakistan.
• 35:38
  >> Elizabeth Economy: Right.
• 35:39
  >> Sumit Ganguly: At present political formations until the 14th and
• 35:43
  15th of August 1947.
• 35:45
  >> Elizabeth Economy: Yeah, you need, you need not say anymore, Shamit,
• 35:50
  but what I need to say is thank you very much and
• 35:53
  it sounds like there is a an excellent opening for an ambassador,
• 35:59
  US Ambassador to India that you could fill and that maybe we would
• 36:04
  be well served by having you or certainly someone of your caliber and
• 36:09
  deep expertise helping to helping everyone understand both India and
• 36:15
  the complex dynamics in the region and how best the US And India can work together.
• 36:22
  Because it sounds like this is not a problem that's going away and
• 36:28
  US Needs your kind of expertise to be able to navigate it,
• 36:33
  I think in a useful way moving forward.
• 36:36
  So thank you for taking the time to speak with all of us and
• 36:40
  help us understand this really complicated and but fascinating set of issues.
• 36:47
  >> Sumit Ganguly: Thank you for this opportunity and particularly for the time.
• 36:51
  Because normally in a conventional radio interview,
• 36:55
  one has to explain all this in less than 10 minutes and
• 37:00
  one can barely scratch the surface.
• 37:03
  Unlike in this podcast where you have given me ample opportunity
• 37:08
  to carefully delineate the complexity of this issue.
• 37:14
  >> Elizabeth Economy: Well, you did it in a really fascinating way, so
• 37:16
  I'm sure that all of our listeners are going to benefit from hearing you.
• 37:21
  If you enjoyed this podcast and want to hear more reasoned discourse and
• 37:25
  debate on China, I encourage you to subscribe to China Considered via
• 37:29
  the Hoover Institution website, YouTube channel, or
• 37:32
  podcast platform of your choice.
• 37:34
  On our next episode of China Considered, we will explore a different
• 37:39
  geopolitical conundrum and we will hear from former US ambassador to Russia,
• 37:44
  Michael McFaul, who will share his thoughts on the Russia-China relationship.
• 37:49
  [MUSIC]