Sarah Paine — The war for India (lecture & interview)

ℹ️ EPISODE INFO

Released

January 16, 2025

Duration

2h 13m

Channel

Dwarkesh Podcast

Watch on YouTube

▶ Open ↗

📝 EPISODE DESCRIPTION

How the rivalry between China and India reshaped Asia forever. I’m thrilled to launch a trilogy of episodes: a lecture series by Professor Sarah Paine of the Naval War College, each followed by a deep Q&A. In this first episode, Prof Paine talks about key decisions by Khrushchev, Mao, Nehru, Bhutto, & Lyndon Johnson that shaped the whole dynamic of South Asia today. This is followed by a Q&A with me. Come for the spy bases, shoestring nukes, and insight about how great power politics impacts every region. Huge thanks to Substack for hosting this! 𝐄𝐏𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐃𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊𝐒

• Transcript: https://open.substack.com/pub/dwarkesh/p/sarah-paine-india
• Apple Podcasts: http://apple.co/3RFuS7b
• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6beCTbPFOXKXNYPAsU7vQa

𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐑𝐒

• Today’s episode is brought to you by Scale AI. Scale partners with the U.S. government to fuel America’s AI advantage through their data foundry. The Air Force, Army, Defense Innovation Unit, and Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office all trust Scale to equip their teams with AI-ready data and the technology to build powerful applications. Scale recently introduced Defense Llama, Scale's latest solution available for military personnel. With Defense Llama, military personnel can harness the power of AI to plan military or intelligence operations and understand adversary vulnerabilities. If you’re interested in learning more on how Scale powers frontier AI capabilities, go to https://scale.com/dwarkesh To sponsor future episodes, go to: https://www.dwarkeshpatel.com/p/advertise 𝐒𝐀𝐑𝐀𝐇'𝐒 𝐁𝐎𝐎𝐊𝐒

• "The Wars for Asia, 1911–1949" https://www.amazon.com/Wars-Asia-1911-1949-S-Paine/dp/1107697476

• "The Japanese Empire: Grand Strategy from the Meiji Restoration to the Pacific War" https://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Empire-Strategy-Restoration-Pacific/dp/1107676169 𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒 00:00:00 - Lecture intro 00:02:43 - Mao at war, 1949-51 00:06:12 - Pactomania and Sino-Soviet conflicts 00:15:14 - The Sino-Indian War 00:20:32 - Soviet peace in India-Pakistan 00:22:32 - US Aid and Alliances 00:26:46 - The difference with WWII 00:30:41 - The geopolitical map in 1904 00:35:42 - The US alienates Indira Gandhi 00:43:30 - Instruments of US power 00:54:13 - Carrier battle groups 01:03:13 - Q&A begins 01:05:03 - The appeal of the USSR 01:10:08 - The last communist premier 01:16:14 - India and China’s lost opportunity 01:32:51 - Soviet proxies in foreign politics 01:58:36 - Bismark’s cunning 02:03:37 - Training US officers 02:07:35 - Cruelty in Russian history

🎤 SPEAKERS

• Sarah Paine

  guest

• Dwarkesh Patel

  host

🧾 EPISODE SUMMARY

In this episode of Dwarkesh Podcast, featuring Sarah Paine and Dwarkesh Patel, Sarah Paine — The war for India (lecture & interview) explores how Great Powers Played Cutthroat Billiards Over India and Pakistan Sarah Paine explains how the U.S., USSR, and China tried to manipulate India and Pakistan during the Cold War, often misreading local rivalries and creating long‑term blowback. She shows how two key decisions—China’s conquest of Tibet and America’s alliance with Pakistan—reshaped South Asian geopolitics and poisoned U.S.–India relations for decades. The lecture introduces a framework of “primary adversaries,” limited vs. unlimited war aims, and “frozen conflicts” to understand why alliances formed as they did and why some conflicts never end. In the interview, Paine extends these lessons to today’s China–Russia relationship, nuclear proliferation, and the challenges of U.S. grand strategy and intervention.

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