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

1. 0:00 – 2:43

   Lecture intro

   1. SPSarah Paine0:00

      "You're arming the Pakistanis. Whom do you think they're going to shoot?" "It'll be us." That pact poisoned U.S. relations with India for the duration of the Cold War. Putin is dumping all his ordinance on Ukraine. He is leaving Siberia open. It's not a question of whether the Xi-Putin bromance is going to end, it's when. Pay attention to what dictators say because they've got to communicate at some level to their own populations. They quite often tell you exactly what they want to do and you think, "That's insane. Who would do that?" Well, hello, hello. I need to start with a disclaimer because I work for the U.S. government and they require you to do a disclaimer. So, the ideas that you're about to hear are my ideas. They don't necessarily represent those of the U.S. government, the U.S. Navy Department, the U.S. Department of Defense, let alone the Naval War College where I work. Are we all good on this? All right. So today, I'm going to tell you a story of three protagonists, Russia, the United States, and China that all wanted to work their magic on India and Pakistan, which didn't exactly appreciate it. So, two big topics. One is intervening in someone else's problems, a cottage industry for the United States. And also, before you do that, you m- really ought to check out the alignments. Who's the primary adversary of whom? How long has it been that way? And also, ask these questions about all the neighbors and anyone who might want to crash the party along with you. It's also a story of a series of limited wars. What's a limited war? It means it's for something less than regime change. So however it turns out, the governments that started that war are still in place. And two of them resulted in quick victories, the ideal in warfare. The first one was the, uh, Sino-Indian War of 1962 and the other one was the Bangladesh War of Independence in 1971. And these wars changed things in many short term expected ways and then in many long-term, highly unexpected ways. So, here's the, my game plan, and it's literally a game plan. I'm gonna start out with the pivotal decisions made by different players that then, once they're made, uh, certain things are foreclosed and certain things are possible, and this is the playing field that's delimited by these pivotal decisions. And then I'm gonna look at the teams. Uh, some allies were prime allies, others were subprime and they mixed and matched over time. So then I'll do teams, and then I'll do the game, the interaction, and then at the end of I'm gonna do the plays, some of the techniques and things that you can do to play this game. Pivotal decision number

2. 2:43 – 6:12

   Mao at war, 1949-51

   1. SPSarah Paine2:43

      one: when Mao won the Chinese Civil War in 194- uh, '49, it didn't end. He also spent the next two years not only eliminating nationalist remnants, but also conquering Xinjiang and Tibet. Tibet had been autonomous since 1911 when the last dynasty had collapsed, and Mao decides that he is going to reconquer Tibet. Tibet's an interesting place. It contains, I think, about 40% of China's mineral resources, so there's a lot of money to be made in Tibet for those with the capital to invest in big mines. If you look at this map, the Han Chinese, the preponderant group of China, they inhabit, they dominate as far west as the Chongqing Basin in Sichuan. China has put large armies into Tibet exactly twice. Once under the Qianlong Emperor in the late 18th century, and they didn't stay for very long, and then under Mao in 1950 and they have stayed forever and built roads so they could keep on sending more in. Between 1950 and 1957, China built a series of road systems through Tibet and the western route there is the only one that provides year-round traffic. The problem with, uh, the other two is, well, check it out, they go through 14 or 15 mountain ranges, which means you go vertical up, vertical down, do that 14, 15 times, and then between monsoon rains and snow and mudslides, they're very difficult to maintain. And then the eastern one crosses the major roads, uh, river systems of South Asia, so that's difficult. So only the western route is the really good one and it's really important for the Chinese. If you want to conquer Tibet, you truly want that one. All right, so if you look at this, that western route provides not only the ability to control Tibet, but it also provides a pincer onto Xinjiang. If China wants to come in one way and the other way, it's a good way to get in. If you look on those two circles there, those are the disputed areas between China and India. The northern one is the Aksai Chin Plateau, which China has taken from India and India still claims, and in the south is the Arunachal Pradesh, which India still owns but China claims. So, these are the, the areas that they're, uh, fighting over. But once China took Tibet, before there'd been a big buffer zone between China a- and, uh, India, right? There's all this Tibet and no one could really get in there. Now China's built roads so it can get in to places where India cannot deploy troops until it gets into the road races with the Chinese. And so it reduces the, the buffer zone between China and India to these small Himalayan kingdoms of Nepal, Bhutan, and Sikkim, so it changes things. S- so that's pivotal decision number one, deciding to conquer Tibet. Pivotal decision number two is the United States, in order to deal with the Soviet Unions under Eisenhower, did what the wits back in the day called pactomania. What is that? It's forming all sorts of bilateral relations and also regional groupings in order to counter the Soviets institutionally and wall them in that way. And part of this was, um, what was called the Northern Tier strategy, as seen in the Baghdad Pact, where you get Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Pakistan to form this thing and it's to wall off the Soviet Union from the oil fields of the Middle East.And, uh, the other thing you should look at this map before it goes away, look where Pakistan's located, where you think it is, and then go to the east and that's East Pakistan.

3. 6:12 – 15:14

   Pactomania and Sino-Soviet conflicts

   1. SPSarah Paine6:12

      In the 1971 war, uh, there's gonna be a civil war and Pakistan's gonna lose East Pakistan, which is Bangladesh today. So just keep that in mind. So what, as part of the sweetener for Pakistan to join the Baghdad Pact, the United States allied with Pakistan and gave them a, a big military aid treaty. And here's Nehru, the, uh, prime minister of India, and he is horrified. "A military pact between Pakistan and the United States changes the whole balance of power in this part of the world. It affects us most, especially the United States must realize that the, uh, reaction of India is gonna be..." You're arming the Pakistanis. Wh- whom do you think they're gonna shoot? It'll be us. And the Indians were just appalled that we did this. And, um, afterwards, Eisenhower admitted it was perhaps the worst kind of plan and decision we could ever have made. It was a terrible error, but now we're stuck with it. Because what the United States is slowly discovering is it, if you arm either India or Pakistan in this, uh, period, it's gonna aim it at the other one. And so that pact poisoned US relations with India for the duration of the Cold War, and set up things in ways the United States ultimately wasn't happy with. Okay, those are two pivotal decisions. Now for a pivotal situation. It's really the devolving situation between Russia and China. Until Mao got, uh, atomic weapons in 1964, he really had to shut up, and he, because he needed Russian, uh, technological aid, he's been totally cut off from the West after the Korean War, he's being, uh, isolated, so he truly needs, uh, Soviet aid, and he also, if he wants nuclear weapons, he needs some of their aid to do that as well. So he has to keep his mouth shut. But once he detonates an atomic weapon, here's what he tells the Russians, and they just about lose it. "Uh, there are too many places occupied by the Soviet Union. The Russians took everything they could. We have not yet presented a count of this list." Under the tsars, the Russians took from the Chinese sphere of influence territory exceeding US east of the Mississippi. Think the Chinese didn't notice? Yes, they noticed. So Mao all of a sudden is calling that, and the Russians are appalled. But Mao has other gripes against the Russians. Stalin in, uh, in the lead up to World War II had made sure to set up the Chinese to fight Japan so that he wouldn't have to, so it leaves him just fighting Nazis, not alone, not Nazis and Japanese. And then, uh, Stalin takes Mongolia, which had formerly been, uh, part of the Chinese sphere of influence, and in the Korean War he's more than happy to fight to the last Chinese, and then during the Chinese Civil War, the Russians tell, uh, Mao, "Oh stop, Yangtze, you need to take a little breather here." Because he wants a divided China like the divided Germany he has and then the divided Korea he's gonna get. You want to be surrounded by these little broken states around you if you're a continental power. And then when Stalin dies and, uh, Mao wants to be senior statesman of communism, Khrushchev is appalled by that. Then Mao is appalled when Khrushchev does de-Stalinization because Mao has his own cult of personality and then Khrushchev wants to do peaceful coexistence with the West while Mao is ramping it up in the Cultural Revolution. So there's no meeting of the minds and then all this becomes very, uh, public when it hits the propaganda press of the communists of the Sino-Soviet split in 1960. All right, the Russians have their own gripes about the Chinese, and here's how they go. Um, the Russians look around at the West and particularly the United States and go, "Wow, they got bases everywhere. The British have got bases everywhere. How come our allies won't give us bases?" I mean, well if you occupy Eastern Europe, the whole place is a base, but that's a different matter. Uh, so the, the Russians want the Chinese to let them keep a couple of remaining tsarist treaty ports essentially, uh, and, uh, wants to expand them and the Chinese say, "Forget it." And in fact, after the Korean War when the Chinese have troops all up in Manchuria, which is where these bases were located, and there's a succession struggle going on 'cause Stalin's just died, the Russians have to return the bases 'cause there's just too much bad stuff happening where they live. And then what Mao does in '54 and '58, uh, which just appalls the Russians, are these two Taiwanese Strait crises. What's going on? Mao is lobbing, uh, uh, all kinds of ordinance on these islands that are owned by Taiwan that are very close to the People's Republic shores, and the Russians are appalled. They are not consulted and yet they have a friendship treaty that obligates them to provide, to join a war under certain circumstances, and the Russians are going, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. There are gonna be nuclear follow on, uh, from this stuff." So, uh, the Russians then ask the Chinese if it's okay if they have a combined naval base on China's shores and China says, "Forget it." (laughs) And the Russians are thinking, "Okay, well then we're not gonna give you any of the plans for the atomic weapon." And, uh, it all devolves. So there's no love lost on either side. And then what exacerbates these tensions is the Vietnam War, uh, where China wants influence over neighbor Vietnam, that is pretty typical, but Russia wants influence over Vietnam to do a pincer on China which China doesn't like at all. Meanwhile both of them want to prove their revolutionary credentials by aiding the Vietnamese, North Vietnamese, so Russia's aid needs to come by train over China, uh, lest the United States sink it, the, the good stuff if it goes by sea. So, um, the Chinese, uh, feel obliged to let it go through but they're just hassling the Russians the whole, uh, the whole time through. They, they take it apart, tear it apart, say that it was from China and the Russians are just apoplectic. So their relations are getting worse and worse and worse and, and, uh, the squabbling is just incessant. So it's not surprising that the Sino-Soviet border war of 1969 breaks out during the Vietnam War. And while all this is going on, this is the, one of the river islands, the Amur River forms much of their border and this is one of the islands there, and there's much fighting over it. And the Russians come to us, the Americans, and say, "Uh, is it okay if we nuke these people?" (laughs) And the United States says, "No. (laughs) There is no way it's okay to nuke these people." And Mao figures it out. The one that wants to nuke you, that's the primary adversary. So right, prior to that moment, the United States is the primary adversary of both Russia and China. Now with this, th- they are primary adversaries of each other. It causes a reshuffling of the allies, and I'll get to that later. So okay. I've done the playing field of these decisions that deliminated, delimited it. But now I'm gonna get to the allies, and some allies are better than others. And here we got Mao and Khrushchev. Look at these lovebirds. Boy, when that divorce took place, boy did it mess up the extended family. Never mind. Um, and the point if, for my purposes tonight, when I, I'm gonna use the word alliance really loosely. If you sign a mutual defense, uh, pact, for my purposes tonight, that makes you an alliance, uh, allies. And if you're a political scientist, you've got something that's much more complicated, but forget it. I just can't handle it. So we're gonna do it this way. All right. So, um, uh, Stalin didn't think much of Nehru at all. He thought he was a lackey of British colonialism, but Khrushchev thought India was really important to counterbalance, uh, China. And here's Nehru thinking about it. "We have to be on friendly terms with both Russia and America." But actually, he felt much more in common with Russia. Why? Because, uh, he favored Fabian socialist, uh, economic, uh, policies that were much more akin to what's going on in, uh, Russia than it was in the United States. Moreover, the United States was segregated and, um, which appalled Nehru. And in addition, the United States was cozying up to all the colonial powers, so, uh, Nehru- ru thought the Russians were the better bet. While this is going on, the Indians were non-aligned, and they treated the Chinese really generously, and I've got a whole list, uh, of generosity. So India immediately recognizes China in 1950. Uh, countries like the United States didn't forever. And, uh, when the San Francisco Treaty, I think is signed 1951 in the United States ending the war with Japan, uh, India refuses to sign because China, uh, and Russia aren't there to sign as well, and then, uh, to help China break out of its, uh, uh, diplomatic isolation at the end of the Korean War, India signs a friendship treaty with China, and as part of that friendship treaty, it recognizes Chinese sovereignty over Tibet under international law. Contrary to what Vladimir Putin is doing lately, under international law, if you recognize someone's sovereignty over territory, that is permanent. You cannot back out of it legally under international law. So, um, the Ri- uh, the Chinese promise, I don't know, there's something like peaceful coexistence or whatever they're promising the, the Indians, but that has no permanence under international law, where- whereas this thing does. And then, uh, from 1960 on, the Indians are voting to seat the People's Republic of China, not Taiwan on

4. 15:14 – 20:32

   The Sino-Indian War

   1. SPSarah Paine15:14

      the UN. Meanwhile, in the background, all this road building is going on. Those roads are being built between 1950 and 1957, and th- the Indians aren't gonna figure out until 1958 that the roads are there. Meanwhile, road's completed. The, um, Ra- the Chinese wanna complete their, uh, control over Tibet, and so they're gonna send big armies up there, and Tibetan culture is m- much more, it's of Indian origin. It's not Chinese origin. So this repression of Tibetan culture just appalls the Indians, and then two days before the People's Liberation of Army is gonna make it into Lhasa, which is the capital of Tibet, the Dalai Lama flee. He's the spiritual leader of Tibet. He flees to India where he's remained ever since to the absolute horror and anger of China. So at about this time, the Chinese come to the Indians and say, "Look. Why don't we do a swap on sovereignty? You recognize our sovereignty over that Aksai Chin plateau where nobody lives, but it's really good for the roads, for China's western route, and then we'll recognize your sovereignty over this much more densely, uh, populated Arunachal Pradesh." And Nehru doesn't wanna hear anything about it. So during the Cuban Missile Crisis when Russia is much too busy worrying about whether, who's gonna be lobbing nukes at whom, this is when China launches, and in the 1960 Sino-Indian War, and China just take, plain takes the Aksai Chin, uh, plateau. The Indians are appalled 'cause they don't have any roads to be able to deploy up there whereas the Chinese do. Their defeat is just total, and they can't believe the Chinese did this to them. Here's Nehru afterwards. "There are not many instances in history where one country, that is India, has gone out of her way to be friendly and cooperative with the Chinese government and people and plead their cause in the councils of the world and then the, for the Chinese government to return evil for good and even to go to the extent of committing aggression and invade our sacred land. Who does this?" So I get it. The Chinese get the territory they want. That was the goal of that war, but what they have done is, uh, taken a country, uh, India which had its leadership terribly idealistic, not interested in becoming militarized at all, and making them angry forever. Uh, mil- uh, India immediately doubles the size of its army to, within the next 10 years to up to 750,000 people, creates 10 mountain divisions useful against China, and, uh, they've never ceased being so angry. And then if you think about this, what if, instead of playing this game this way, China and India teamed up? Uh, I would suspect we would be in a completely very different world order now if that is what they'd done instead. Uh, but this is China's decision, not India's fault on this one. All right. So, um, that wasn't great.So, let's check out other possibilities. Once, um, that happens to India, India is all of a sudden looking for Russia to counterbalance China, and, um, you also have, uh, um, Pakistan wondering what's going, what to do. And what the Pakistani notice after all this that, well, the Chinese are not going to be teaming up with India, right? They've just invaded the place. And so, this is when Pakistan sees that China might have real possibilities as an ally, and, uh, Bhutto is gonna play the China card for the nuclear chip, trying to get, um, Chinese help for all of that. And here's what happens. So, you have the '62 war and then in 1963, Pakistan really inexplicably is ceding territory to China. Who does that? And there are various possibilities, but I'm surmising it's, uh, 'cause it's gonna be help on nuclear development. Th- that, that would explain why you would, uh, give a lot of territory. But we don't know. There was supposed to be some mutual defense pact maybe, and there's some other things going on. Anyway, you can imagine what it may or may not have been. Okay. In the case of Pakistan and China and India and Russia, they had quite a, a good relationship because, uh, the Pakistanis and the Chinese shared India as a, as a, their problem, and the Russians and the Indians shared China as their problem, and that worked pretty well. But the United States was just a disaster from both Indian and, um, Pakistani point of view and vice versa, 'cause the United States wanted to befriend both of them. But if you befriend one, the other is appalled, and so the United States wound up appalling everybody. And so, what the United States wanted to have happen is for India and Pakistan to put aside their differences and then combine against China and stop communism from spreading. India and Pakistan want to use the United States for maximum aid to use against the other, which is a nonstarter for the United States, and then Pakistan really would like it if the United States would, um, be nice with China as well, because Pakistan wants to have good relations with the United States and China. And that's a nonstarter for the United States until, um, 1971 when there are secret visits and things going, it's later on. Okay, so in 1962,

5. 20:32 – 22:32

   Soviet peace in India-Pakistan

   1. SPSarah Paine20:32

      India gets trounced in this war with China. They look like they're militarily feckless. And then in 1964, Nehru dies, right? He'd been, um, the head of India since independence in 1947. He'd been there a long time. So, he's dead. So, 1965 for Pakistan looks like a good year to settle border problems. (laughs) And so what they do is first they invade through the south, th- if you look way down at the bottom there, the Rann of Kutch, and that seems to go pretty well. And then they decide they want to go for the thing they really care about, which is Kashmir, and they do that. Well, the enemy gets to vote and the Indians invaded straight through Lahore, (laughs) which isn't remotely what the Pakistanis had in mind. And then the United States, uh, does a double, um, arms embargo on both of them for doing this. And the problem is the Pakistanis are much more dependent on US military aid. The Indians were more diversified, so they just didn't have, uh, enough spare parts to continue this thing, uh, so it's a very, uh, unhappy event for them. They, they lose it. And, um, what happens, n- neither the United States nor Russia wants either one of them fighting that war. Um, the Russians are thinking, "We want the military aid to go to India in order to count balance, counterbalance China, not to decimate the Pakistanis." And the United States doesn't want it either. So, the United States is very happy that the Soviets broker the Tashkent Declaration that ends this war. But Pakistan is, um, worse off after this thing. It is... And, and India has restored its reputation for knowing what it's doing, um, on the battlefield. So, um, uh, for Pakistan, uh, the United States is really problematic 'cause we're interested in being nice to them when we want something out of them and then we're not so interested when we don't want something out of them 'cause we don't share a primary enemy. So, what we really wanted were listening bases. Um, the technology of the day, uh, was such that if you want to

6. 22:32 – 26:46

   US Aid and Alliances

   1. SPSarah Paine22:32

      surveil the Soviet Union, you want to send these big U-2 planes over and given their ranges and you're not supposed to be doing it, and so, uh, we had U-2 bases I think Norway, West Germany, Turkey, Pakistan, and then Japan, and in addition we had a listening base at Badaber and these were really important things for us during this period, so we're paying the Pakistanis a lot of money to get it. Except there was, uh, one of these UP- U-2 planes gets shot down over the Soviet Union. They finally get so they can, uh, 'cause they fly at really high, uh, altitudes, they shoot it down. And Khrushchev is furious. He hauls in the Pakistani ambassador in Moscow and he goes, "Where is this place Peshawar? We've circled it on the map," and like, i.e. we're gonna blow it off the map if you all don't wise up. And the Pakistanis are like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa." And so, um, between the- these sort of threats in 1960 about the U-2 and then the United States freezing arms in the 1965 war, which the Pakistanis believe that th- they lost it over that. Oh yeah, and by the way, in that 1965 war, the United States had, um, when we provided arms to everybody, we said, "Oh, we will guarantee that they, e- no one uses it, that Pakistanis and Indians don't use it against each other." And of course, we could do nothing about that and the 1965 war, the Pakistanis are using US tanks to go after Indians in the largest tank war since, battle since World War II. So, there are a lot of upset people in South Asia. But here is, um, Ayub Khan-... leader of Pakistan telling the United States that, "The United States forgets that our security hazards and political liabilities have increased to a dangerous level," due to this U, U, uh, U-2 stuff, "and we kept our part of the contract whilst the Americans betrayed us. At every turn, they built up India against us, they failed to help us in the '65 war, and finally stopped military aid. Uh, they think that we exist for their convenience and that our freedom is, uh, negotiable. Dream on." So when the, uh, lease came up for the listening post at Batabar in 1968, the Pakistanis canceled it. They're sick of it. Uh, meanwhile, the Indians weren't too thrilled about the, uh, United States either. This is earlier when, uh, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was president. Here's Mahatma Gandhi telling, uh, him, "Allied support for freedom and democracy seems hollow so long as America has the Negro problem in her own home." Indians were appalled by segregation. They knew exactly which end of the bus they'd be sitting on. Uh, so there are issues both ways, and in fact, Nehru and his daughter Indira Gandhi found the United States really impossible to work with and, uh, they looked at capitalism as the way station to imperialism and fascism whereas Americans looked as, at socialism as the way station to communism, so there's no meeting of minds on all of this. And so if you look at the alignments of primary adversaries, India and Pakistan from, uh, most of the time are primary adversaries. Uh, Pa- uh, was India is always Pakistan's primary enemy, but you could argue that with the '62 war, is it Pakistan or is it China who's the primary adversary of India? And then when you get to the 1971 war, which I'll discuss a little more in a second, uh, where Bangladesh is broken off and then Pakistan is less, has less than half the population, then you could argue that for India, China is the primary adversary. And, um, then if you look at, at that reshuffling, if you also look at the 1969 war that reshuffles the, um, nuclear powers. So formally, Russia, uh, Russia and China had shared the United States as their primary e- enemy, but after the '69 war, they're each other's primary enemy and this gives the United States a swing position of team up with A or team up with B. And the United States teamed up with China to overextend Russia in the Cold War because, uh, it always felt that the Soviets were the bigger threat in those days. So anyway, as you're looking at alignments, you can apply this kind of framework to any country on the planet to try to figure out what's going on, and, uh, think about how alliances

7. 26:46 – 30:41

   The difference with WWII

   1. SPSarah Paine26:46

      work. If I look at the World War II allies, probably one of the most effective alliances in world history, if you think about what people ultimately want, then, uh, the British want an empire in which the sun never sets, the United States wants to decolonize everybody, and Joe Stalin wants a communist wonderland. Those are mutually exclusive, but to get there you have to go through the common way station of getting rid of Hitler. So, uh, the common existential threat can be a super glue of the most unlikely partners. But let's look at the access. What i- what they want at the end of the war are spheres of influence in different parts of the world. So for Italy it's, uh, um, empire in the Mediterranean, Japan and the Pacific, and then Hitler, it's all over Eurasia. That's not mutually exclusive, but if you look who their, the primary enemy who stands in the way of those plans, it's Britain for Italy, it's Russia for the Germans, and, uh, for the Japanese it's first China and then the United States. None of it aligns so they fight parallel wars and allow the allies to take them out in, um, detail. So when you're thinking about alliances in the world today, when you're wondering what's going on with Iran or whatever, figure out who's their real primary enemy. Get it straight. Does that primary enemy, um, is that an existential threat for them? So if you've got countries that line up on same primary enemy, existential threat for all around, the most unlikely people will cooperate. On the other hand, people who are very likely to cooperate, maybe like the fascists, they all shared this basic ideology, but if they don't have the same primary enemy and the same, uh, theater of interest, geographically the same int- uh, theater, they may not cooperate very well at all. So you can apply this to anything you want to apply it to. So back to my game here, if you're looking at, uh, the cards people have to play, the United States has lousy cards because we don't share primary enemies with anybody, so it's a stalemate. You, you help India, the Pakistanis hate you. You help Pakistanis, the Indians hate you. It's no win. But if you look at India, India and Russia share a China problem. That's good. They can cooperate on that. And then you have Pakistan and China, they share an India problem, they can make things happen over that. So there are less cards for them to play and zero for the United States to play. It's just the way it is. So, um, the game, uh, the name of the game and strategy is to get the outcome that you wanna have happen and, uh, uh, it's like, how do you play this game of five person, five country cutthroat billiards to get remotely what you want out of it? So for the English majors among you, I have a metaphor. For the rest of you, you can just, uh, bear with us. Imagine, uh, a game in which every ball can be a cue ball and players can take turns, come, leave, do whatever at will. Sometimes they'll cooperate some of the time, but they don't necessarily wanna-... pocket the, uh, put the same ball in the same pocket. And, uh, so if that's the case, there's going to be no enduring cooperation and understand that you want to have... Your goal is going to be the ultimate shot you want to take, but as you're taking the intervening shots, people are going to try to disrupt it. How on earth do you get through this, Gabe? So this is what the next section is, is all about. So if you look at this map and where Pakistan's located, it's this very strategic location in the center of, not quite center, but of Eurasia, the center of the, the Soviets' boundary there, and I'll give you a, a map. This is from Halford Mackinder. He's one of the most famous people to publish on geopolitics. This is his 1904 map. It's actually quite famous, and he talked about how Russia occupies the heartland. In his day, it was all these railway systems. He thought that was the prime piece of

8. 30:41 – 35:42

   The geopolitical map in 1904

   1. SPSarah Paine30:41

      real estate in the world, and then it's surrounded by this inner marginal crescent, and you look where Pakistan's located, it's right in the center there, right up by Russia and it's a really crucial location for, before sat- satellite imagery ha- is available to put listening boat, uh, posts on Russia. Russia's huge, huge, so you've got to have a bunch of listening posts to track their missiles and things. And then if you want access to Afghanistan, which when the Russians go there, we want access, and of course, we, when we go there, we really want access, so it's a strategic location. For the Pakistanis, the United States was so frustrating to deal with because we'd be on and off interested in them because we don't align on a primary enemy. So pre-satellite imagery, we really wanted P- to, uh, cozy up to Pakistanis, so we have U-2 bases, but then there's, uh, different things, technology changes. And before we get facilities in Iran, uh, we want this listening post in Badaber, uh, but technology will eventually change. And then for a while, we truly want the Pakistanis to get the mail through to China when we're trying to break China out of diplomatic isolation and then cooperate against the Soviet Union and Pakistan delivers the mail, but then we, we set up an alternate setup in Paris to go through our embassies that way, and Pakistan is again irrelevant. And then when Russia's in, uh, Afghanistan, Pakistan's essential to get aid to insurgents to cause the Russians trouble, and then of course when we're in Afghanistan, we really wanna, uh, cooperate with the Pakistanis and that works until we cap Osama bin Laden without telling the Pakistanis in, uh, in their territory about Abbottabad and then relations are really not so great. And so it, it, it's a very bumpy ride and in these periods when we really need the Pakistanis, we don't pay attention to human rights or the really big one, nuclear proliferation. And so the proliferation is, uh, is pretty steady. So if you look at, uh, after... The United States is having trouble, uh, ne- negotiating all this so that whatever you do in the short term doesn't wreck you in the long term, but in order to get to the long term, of course you've got to go through the short term. So after the U-2 crash, uh, in Russia where it gets shot down and the Pakistanis are having a heart attack about that, that's when the Pakistanis look to cultivating more better relations with China because th- the US relationship is just too, too potentially costly and the Americans cut off the military aid. And then, um, when, um, the Pakistanis are being very nice about delivering the mail, uh, for, uh, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger to line up invitations in Beijing, the United States is ignoring, uh, a humanitarian nightmare 'cause all of this, that coincides with the 1971 Bangladeshi War for Independence. So let me explain what that is to you. So Pakistan was holding presidential elections. The dominant ethnic group in Pakistan are Punjabis. Sometimes the Sindhis... Uh, like the Bhutto family, I think they're Sindhi, but anyway, but be- generally speaking, the... Particularly the army, the Punjabis dominate. Uh, Bengalis live in Bangladesh. They won the election. And the Punjabis are furious, so they send the army to start butchering people in East Pakistan to overturn the re- the election. So there are refugees pouring into India. So this is the backdrop of, of what is going on there. And for anyone who wasn't in the know, the United States is saying nothing about this. The United States... Eh, eh, there's this massive humanita- humanitarian crisis and the United States got nothing to say? The United States has something to say about everything. But it had to do with this is the moment that Nixon is trying to get himself invited to Beijing so that he can talk to Mao about cooperating with the Chinese to over- extend the Soviets in the Cold War, which is ultimately what we do and it's very important to win the Cold War and this is integral to this. But everyone else is looking, going, "What on earth is going on?" So you have, uh, Nixon's doing the mediation in the background. We got refugees flying all over the place. Uh, India comes to the United States and says, "Look, you need to tell the Chinese not to intervene in this thing." And the Indians also say, "You need to bring this up at the UN, the humani- uh, the human rights stuff," because India's literally getting millions of refugees trying to flee this, this mess and the United States won't do any of it, and it gets even better. The United States has the gall to blame the Indians for the war. Dream on. Uh, so Indira Gandhi is just, uh, furious at this one, and so the United States had wished that India would cease being an- uh, non-aligned and aligned with the West. Oh, well, they ceased being non-aligned, all right. They sign a military pact with Russia over this, and then they upgrade their relationship with Vietnam, which totally upsets, uh, the United States, and it gets even better. They, um, they shut down Indian... Uh, they won't give scholars any visas to come to India to

9. 35:42 – 43:30

   The US alienates Indira Gandhi

   1. SPSarah Paine35:42

      study India, so you wonder why US universities didn't have any Indian studies programs? It's all about, uh, this. So, uh, that explains what was going on with all of that. Total mess. Meanwhile-Uh, but, but for Pakistan, as all this is going on, um, the Shah of Iran falls in, uh, I think it's, like, February 1979 and then the Russians invade and des- raid, uh, Afghanistan in December 1979 and sudd- suddenly Pakistan is totally essential once again. And the Pakistanis are really getting sick of being kicked around so an outgoing President Jimmy Carter offers them, I don't know, $400 million or something, uh, this is Zia here going, "Peanuts," to the peanut farmer and, uh, the incoming Reagan administration then ups it to 3.2 billion in that money gets funneled through the I- the Inter, uh, Service Intelligence Directorate, it's like the, I don't know, the CIA plus, plus, plus in Pakistan and when you put that kind of money into that kind of bureaucracy, you're gonna make them incredibly powerful and then they're the ones who decide how they're gonna allocate money to insurgents in Afghanistan, and I got it, there weren't any great choices, but they're, um, arming some really anti-Western folks in there, uh, probably some guy named Osama, last name bin Laden. But any- (laughs) anyway, I'm not sure the details on that one, but it, it is gonna have 9/11 follow-on effects and also, the Pakistani, the ISI is also taking some of that money and putting it into Kashmir which is gonna have real problems for India, uh, later on. So there are, uh, real ramifications for all of this, of needing Pakistan but actually what is happening anyway, and then throughout there is, uh, the Pakistanis are getting closer and closer to building the bomb. So when the Russians go piling into Afghanistan, here's Zbigniew Brzezinski, uh, Carter's National Security Advisor telling him, "Uh, our security policy cannot be dictated by our non-proliferation policy." Really? I thought that was our, our security policy. And the problem with peripheral- proliferation is it tends to be a one-way street whereas Afghanistan has been anything but. And then here, Deng Xiaoping was in town and he told Carter, "We applaud your decision to basically toss all these proliferation human rights considerations for Pakistan and just arming them." No kidding, because the Chinese are providing the nuclear spare parts. So, uh, the United States isn't the only country to have trouble navigating this, uh, cutthroat billiards. The Pakistanis have their share of boomerangs, just look how the wars were. So wars, uh, create incredible costs, so the 1965 war, the Pakistanis get exactly nothing and, uh, the United States, uh, Pakistan had been the largest aid recipient of the U- I'm not sure if I got that right, but anyway they're a huge aid recipient from the United States. Well, after this war we're not so interested, so that's a lot of money down the tubes. And then in the 1971 war, great guys, you lose Bangladesh, which by the way has over half your population, so that Pakistan is no longer the most populous Muslim country, Indonesia is. And, uh, if you look at the, the Kargil War 1999, this is when Pakistan tries again go below the line of control in Kashmir to try to take some more of Kashmir back. Uh, Ca- uh, uh, Pakistan has to cross right back and then it gets sanctioned for all of this. So none of these wars have actually worked out very well for Pakistan and then if you think about it, India and Pakistan are natural trade partners. So if you take all these wars and just add up all the costs and then think of the opportunity cost if Pakistan had been able to take this money and spend it on road systems, on education, and then all the lost trade, uh, it gives you a sense of the real cost of all of this. Okay, well, those are Pakistan's problems, India has its own problems. Uh, here you've got Indira Gandhi and Richard Nixon. They really didn't like each other. I mean look at her, she looks as if she's just been fed bad fish and he looks like he served it up, and they just, they cannot abide by each other. So in the 1940s when Kashmir is erupting, uh, Indira Gandhi thinks, well, no it's Nehru her dad, thinks that the United States should be supporting India because it's secular and it's democracy. And the United States is appalled during the Korean War when India remains non-aligned instead of supporting the United States because it's secular and demo- democratic. And, uh, the Pakistanis are totally outraged 'cause they're looking at this going, "Okay, these Indians are a- non-aligned, we're aligned, we're taking these risks for, uh, uh, Peshawar and stuff with the U-2s and, uh, you're helping these people who are about to ally with the Soviet Union? Who are you kidding?" So it's a, a total mess. So the Indians have their own self-inflicted blows, uh, Nehru and his very controversial but his devoted advisor Krishna Menon and his daughter Indira Gandhi were really good at making these totally insulting remarks to American VIPs. Okay, it hits the target without a doubt, but the ego that has just been hit is huge and like an elephant is not about to forget. And, uh, meanwhile Pakistan in contrast is just being this welcoming host so the United States is going, "Ugh, India," and Pakistan is better and it, it makes really bad trend lines for India because of the 1962 war, the United States supported India, in the 1965 war it's neutral, in the 1971 war it supports Pakistan. That's not great. And then India's own very heavy-handed treatment, uh, of solutions to the insurgency of Kashmir doesn't make that thing go away, it just gets worse. So they have their own problems. China also has its problems with the interaction. It's complicated. So on the one hand on the Sino-Indian War, absolutely China gets the territory, uh, but at what cost? You've got this permanent enemy forever and as opposed to, uh, teaming up with them. If they teamed up they would, actually would have had incredible leverage for what the global order is gonna look like. But that's just not to be. And moreover if you look at the 1971 war, after the United States won't help with China, uh, India's going, "Okay, I think we need nuclear weapons because then we'll be able to protect ourselves against China." And after that war when Pakistan's lost over half its population, it has to deal with Indian population and territorial just overwhelming superiority, the Pakistanis go, "I think we need nuclear weapons in order to solve this problem." So there's been proliferation all over the place. But as a result of the 1971 war where they're-... the, um- (clears throat) the, uh, Pakistan tries to overturn the elections. Here you have a- a Indian defense, uh, analyst, uh, Subramaniam saying, "The Pakistani decision to overturn its elections by deploying the army to East Pakistan gave India an opportunity the like of which will never come again." And what they did is they armed insurgents in East Pakistan, then sent the conventional army in, and that was it for Pakistan in, uh, East Pakistan, over. The interaction for Russia works a little better. We're- for Russia and India, it's really quite a good relationship. What Russia offers to India, not only military and economic aid, but also very useful vetoes on the UN Security Council. India does not want plebiscites in Kashmir that it might lose, so it gets, uh, the Soviet Union to veto those things so there are no plebiscites. And then as India is trouncing

10. 43:30 – 54:13

    Instruments of US power

    1. SPSarah Paine43:30

       Pakistan in the 1970 war- '71 war, and the United States wants them to halt. Uh, India, no way. India wants to finish the job, so it gets the Soviet Union to veto that one and India does indeed finish the job. And meanwhile, for Russia, India's really useful. It's a good counterbalance for China. So there's this rather, a beautiful relationship. They have very cordial relations. Okay. So I think I've now covered the playing field, right? And, uh, I've covered the players and teams and, uh, their problems with interacting, that's very difficult. Now for some of the plays and the instruments of national power, and here's the menu of choices. You can start with the light items: diplomacy, public support or denial of public support, or you can move into more expensive things down the menu. Okay. For, uh, one of the things you can do is help negotiate a y- really useful treaty which the United States did, it brokered this Indus Water Treaty of 1960. It's the only time, I th- that I know of, maybe you all know of something, where India and Pakistan have signed an agreement to the massive benefit of both of them. What does this agreement do? You can see it's a really dense river system, both India and Pakistan need to irrigate. To do that efficiently you need dams, and both of them were poor and didn't have the dams. They were gonna cost a billion dollars, the United States was willing to kick in half that money if they would both sign the treaty and no terrorist event or anything derailed it, so they signed it and this treaty has been ba- it's been operating some of these dams ever since to enormous benefit of both countries. Does the United States get any enduring gratitude from either one of 'em f- for doing this? No. Zip. Okay. Next one is the United States, uh, tried to exercise diplomacy and t- to, uh, convince the Pakistanis and Indians to settle their differences, and it was a- a total flop. And because if you're gonna try to befriend both India and Pakistan, you- you wind up becoming the enemy of one or the other. And the United States diplomacy was based on certain false assumptions which are one, that India and Pakistan could be cajoled into settling their differences, and their idea is anyone who's so stupid as to think that is crazy. And if you're going, "Well, what are the origins of these differences?" Uh, partition was brutal. So, the British colonized the Indian sub- subcontinent and then they left in 1947, and they left really rapidly so that there was no time to, uh, to, uh, set up any institutional framework. And also you're talking millions of people. And, um, so Pakistan's going to be one thing and then, uh, I- uh, India's going to be the other, and so Hindus are just fleeing and- and, uh, Sikhs are fleeing out of Pakistan and Muslims are fleeing out of, uh, India, going back and forth, and millions are killed while this is going on. So this is the origin, at least the modern origin, of why Pakistanis and Indians are so bitter. In addition, the United States thought, "Well, surely the China threat is gonna make the Indians come around and realize this non-aligned stuff's nonsense." Uh, not- not quite. Uh, when India non- uh, what is it? Aligns, it- it aligns with Russia, not the United States. So that doesn't remotely work out the way the United States wanted. And then the United States thought, "Well, hey. We in the West, we're rich. We give the, uh, Indians and Pakistanis all this aid. Um, this'll force them to be nice to us and be less nice to the communists." Wrong. India and Pakistan are really astute and they get lots of aid from everybody. So, when the great powers do align, Russia, China, US, or- or at least two of those align, then you can actually get stuff done. So e- that's when you get the Tashkent Agreement for the 1965 war. This is the United States and Russia both want India and Pakistan to cease and desist and stop blowing each other off the map. And also in the Kargil conflict, uh, when Pakistan is yet again trying to resolve Kashmir by invading and then gets itself into trouble and this guy, Nawaz Sharif who was the head of Pakistan, he all of a sudden gets on a plane with his family look- like he- it looks like he's coming into exile and he- he's trying to fly into the United States. The United States go, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. What do you think you're doing?" (laughs) And, uh, says, "You- you're not coming in here until you admit that you crossed the line of control and then you need to get right back." And so he agrees to sign the Washington Agreement to- to go right back, but it's absolutely humiliating to- for the Pakistanis to go, "Oh yeah, we went south of the line of control and then, uh, well, that didn't work out so now we have to go right back." The- he had gone to China already and pleaded his case to the Chinese and they told him to get right back because there was a lot of nuclear saber-rattling going on and the Chinese were not interested in a nuclear war over this, so Pakistan had the choice of, "Okay. Fight India- f- fight India by your lonesome or cross back." So they crossed back. Um, and there were other cases, uh, in the inter-Cold War period, uh, when the great powers cooperated and- and tamped things down like terrorist incidents in New Delhi and in Mumbai that didn't go anywhere 'cause the great powers told the Indians and Pakistanis to just dial it back.All right. The another thing you can do is to publicly support someone. And this is what goes on with Goa, which was a Portuguese colony. The Indians wanted it back. The Portuguese said, "No way, you cannot have it back." And the Indians took it back and the United States supported Portugal. Why? It's a NATO ally and we have very important bases in Portugal. So we kept the bases, but we made the Indians really angry. And there are other areas of public support or, or not criticizing people publicly. Um, for instance, in the 1971 Bangladesh war when the United States refuses to support India by telling China, "Don't enter this place." Uh, but of course it was December, so the road system would've been a little rough to even try that. But it made the Indians mad. Or if you think during the Cold War, so with Nehru, it's the 1956 Hungarian crisis where the Russians sent tanks into Hungary. The Indians don't say anything about that. There's the Berlin crisis in 1961 where the Russians are pretty rough, and the Indians don't say anything about that. And then In- Indira Gandhi comes in and when the Russians send tanks into Czechoslovakia in 1968, the Indians say nothing. And then when the Russians invade Afghanistan in '79, again, the Indians say nothing. So this is one way that you make your allies feel better about things. Another thing is, uh, if you're one of the five veto holders of the, at the UN Sec- Security Council, you can do your public support that way. And I've already mentioned these Russian vetoes on Kashmiri plebiscites that the Indians truly didn't want to have happen, or, uh, short-circuiting the Indian offensive in Bangladesh. So, uh, this is what Russia did for India and it was a very valuable thing for them. Uh, you can also put money where your mouth is. Economic aid. And it's interesting, the United States provided far more economic aid than, uh, either the Russians or the Chinese. But still, uh, both Pakistanis and Indians preferred China and, uh, Russia respectively. And some of this aid was really important. During the Bihar famine in 1967, the United States sent 20% of its wheat crop to India and it was worth $1.5 billion. That's not something to be sneezed at. Uh, for, I don't know, was it 90 million people? It's a lot of people who, uh, might have starved to death. And that didn't work out well at all, because Johnson at that point, President Johnson at that point, was so mad at the Indians because they, from his point of view they were cuddling up to the North Vietnamese, and the Vietnam War wasn't going well for Johnson. So he was furious. So he privatived the aid but he did it always at the last, uh, minute, ship to mouth. And Indira Gandhi was furious. She said, "I don't ever want us, ever to have to beg for food again." Uh, and she never did. Uh, so the United States got no gratitude for en- or enduring anything. Oh, and a whole other piece of it is India's, is not subject to famines anymore and part of it's from the Green Revolution, and who does that? It's the Ford and Rockefeller Fund- Foundations who figure out the, the different strains of, of grains that you want to grow. And does the United States get any credit for that? No. Zip. And here is Krishna Menon who is Nehru's controversial advisor saying, "Look, we wanna encourage a little competition between the donors." And they did, and India just ... E- even Indira Gandhi who hates Nixon, she's racking up the aid. Here's Secretary of State John Foster Dulles saying, "Well, concerning India and Pakistan, it's difficult to help one without making the enemy of the other." And of course the United States tried to help both and angered both of them. Amazing. So, another instrument of national power is military aid. It is even more difficult to calibrate than the economic aid. So you can see, um, with the Pactomania event where, um, uh, Eisenhower's building these bilateral relations and, uh, treaty organizations to contain the Russians. Formally there'd been no Cold War in South Asia, but once Eisenhower alli- uh, allies with Pakistan, all of a sudden the Russians are in there too. So that's a bit of a boomerang. Um, another one. So when the United States provides military aid to Pakistan, that just drives India to seeking an alliance with Russia which isn't exactly what the United States wanted. And then when the United States helps India right after the 1962 war with China, that alienates the Pakistanis and then they try to buddy-buddy with China, not remotely what the United States wanted to happen. And then when the United States provides aid to the ISI, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, which is the Pakistanis then are funding things to, uh, get the Russians out of Afghanistan. They're also diverting it into, um, Kashmir. So in 1989 this insurgency heats up and it's remained heated ever since. And then, um, you wind up with China providing, uh, nuclear help to the Pakistanis. So it's difficult with these things. You get a short term thing but then the long term thing you, that winds up may not be what you want at all. The other instrument of national power, if you've got one, is carrier battle group. You could send one of those around, which is what the United States did. Here's Enterprise. It was the United States' first, uh, nuclear propelled

11. 54:13 – 1:03:13

    Carrier battle groups

    1. SPSarah Paine54:13

       aircraft carrier. And so during the '71 war the United States sent this into the Bay of Bengal. The Russians sent some naval assets. Had no effect, uh, on that war. Pakistan lost, right? Uh, the Indians were furious. They just regarded this as an absolute threat and, "How dare we do this anyway." And, uh, maybe it would've been better to have left Enterprise in their home p- home port rather than doing this. And then of course there's sanctions and embargoes. The United States, uh, does this all the time. And if you look at, uh, the list of the times we're embargoing stuff ... So, uh, at partition we're embargoing everybody, and then during the '65 war we're embargoing everybody, and then, uh, as various people are making nuclear progress and different things, there are these embargoes that come and, and go. And Pakistan's really mad because India does a test, uh, nu- an atomic test in 1974 and Pakistan doesn't do anything until much later. And it's looking at him like, "Why are you sanctioning us on this nuclear stuff? The Indians have actually done this. We haven't." And so if you look at this chart you can see where the ups and downs of these sanctions go, and clearly they didn't stop-... proliferation because in 1998, you have these tit-for-tat nuclear t- uh, atomic tests by both. And when the United States tries sanctioning, but then it's just too late, they've already tested the stuff. And so the United States basically gives up. And then after 9/11, of course we desperately need Pakistan again to deal with Afghanistan. So, i- it's a complicated world out there. All right, so another, um, instrument of national power is you can trade off your territory if you really want to. Most people don't. But, um, the Pakistanis clearly, uh, did that in 1963, and we could all speculate on what they got. I mean, my hunch would be something to do with nuclear things. But hey, um, it's not as- es- uh, as if this information is out there in the public. It isn't. Oh, another thing you can do is g- uh, GoFundMe insurgency. So you can, um... and this is done by the United States, Russia, China, India, Pakistan. Think of, you got a country, uh, that you don't like that has some minority people that want to secede, and so they're fighting there. Well, you can go fund that insurgency and then the one you don't like is pinned because they're gonna be paying attention to that insurgency. And while they're pinned there, they can't probably do things elsewhere that you might care about. So this is the logic of what's going on. So the United States belatedly decided, "Ah, let's help the Tibetans." And so the CIA is helping them between '57 and '61, but look at the dates. We did the road system. The road system in Tibet's completed by 1957. It's too late. So all you do is get these people killed because the Chinese have got the road system all set up in there. So that doesn't exactly work. But what for after the '62 war all the way until 1979 when Deng Xiaoping calls it off, the Chinese are funding insurgencies of, uh, let's see, the Mizos, the Manipuri and the Naga people, uh, all don't like different aspects of Indian rule and the Chinese are more than happy to stir that pot. And the, uh, the really big pot to stir are the Naxalites. It's huge and while, as long as the Pakistanis have got East Pakistan, they can f- uh, stir some of that up. And, uh, by the way, these Naxalites are still there in India. They, they have not gone away and it's a serious part of, uh, India where they are. And then of course Pakistan's location right next to Kashmir means they can stir that forever. And, uh, the tragedy of these, what they're, uh, they become are frozen conflicts is the outside, uh, power, if they are playing their cards right, their amoral cards right, uh, they're not bearing any of the costs, they're pinning someone they don't particularly like, all the costs are borne by the local population who are suffering horrendous deaths, lack of e- uh, economic growth, you're just having warfare where you live. What a total disaster. So that's how it works. Um, another... two can play at this game. So the Indians, uh, according to the Pakistanis, have funded the Baloch, uh, Baloch people. They straddle, uh, Iran and Pakistan and don't particularly like being told what to do, so apparently, uh, India's supposed to have, have put its finger on that scale. The other thing the Pakistanis accuse Indians of doing is, uh, encouraging a Pashtun insurgency up north, and that would be a way of diverting Pakistani attentions from Kashmir. If they're totally busy w- with Pashtuns, they can do less in Kashmir. But what you're, th- the result of these things is people are becoming more and more bitter, uh, the hatreds just spike, the economic growth isn't happening, poverty everywhere, and it makes these problems more intractable, not less. So when I think about these f- what I, frozen conflicts, there are a number of ones that you know about. Besides Kashmir, there's Korea, there's Palestine. And so if you look at Kashmir, if I've got it right, uh, so you fund that thing and then what's great from China's point of view, if, uh, Pakistan is doing that, um, India's is frozen, that it can't do other things 'cause it's constantly paying attention to what's going on in Kashmir as opposed to go, "Hmm, China, I don't know about this." And/or in the Korean War back in the day, uh, if things are all stirring, stirred up in Korea, uh, China has to really pay attention to that, and it delays the rise of China, and in those days, that benefited Russia. But these things can change over time as to who the beneficiary is. And then you can play this game and think about how it works in Palestine, and I'm no, um, expert on that part of the world, but I think this frozen conflict veto player, uh, works, that they're these veto players who are vetoing peace, uh, very easily. All you have to do is send a certain number of package bombs and peace is not gonna happen. So, uh, cutthroat billiards. Uh, what do you need- what can you take away from all this? Well, common enemies cannot be conjured. And so check out the alignments of who these common enemies are before you leave the parking lot, um, and figure it out for all possible players who might want to crash the party. Like, who are, what's their primary objective? Who's their primary adversary? What primary theater are they truly interested in? And then, uh, you've got your hunches on how you think this is, and then you should reassess early and often to see if your assumptions are correct. And don't worry about changing your mind. Uh, some people get really hung up about being wrong. Don't worry, uh, uh, uh, uh, reassessing is a sign of strength. It's like, "I got more information, I've changed my mind." Good thing. Don't double down on bad information. And then, uh, if you're looking into areas of the world that are ethnically diverse where people have been at odds for a long time, uh, expect veto players and real difficulty in settling that matter out, and part of good strategy is recognizing cert- some problems it's not feasible to solve. And then we all have scarce resources, you can't...... do everything. Focus on those things where you think you can solve. And, uh, but if the great powers align, things could happen. And the story's even better than that. That sure there are a few big powers, but the small and medium powers, if you add them all up, they are far, uh, uh, uh, uh, the aggregate, their aggregate wealth exceeds any one great power. So if the smaller powers agree on what they're up to, then the, the, the big powers have to pay attention, and that's a positive thing.

    2. DPDwarkesh Patel1:02:10

       Before we move on to the interview, I just wanna say a quick thank you to today's sponsor, Scale AI. The AI race is the Manhattan Project for the modern age. Whoever wins reshapes the balance of global power. That's why Scale partners with the US 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. Whether through its work with the government or with businesses like OpenAI, Google DeepMind, or Meta, Scale is at the forefront of US AI innovation. If you're interested in learning more about how Scale powers frontier AI capabilities, go to scale.com/dwarkesh. All right,

12. 1:03:13 – 1:05:03

    Q&A begins

    1. DPDwarkesh Patel1:03:13

       back to Sarah. So it seems like the lesson from this lecture, the big lesson is we couldn't be allies with both Pakistan and India at the same time. We had to choose one. So which one should we have chosen?

    2. SPSarah Paine1:03:24

       Oh, well, the pri- our primary enemy was pretty much the Soviet Union for the duration of the Cold War. I mean, China was a problem, but the Soviets were the big problem. And so, uh, India and Pakistan never fit that bill. And so it's, uh, had, uh, it had to do with whatever the problem of the day was, and Pakistan had a very, uh, critical location, and so we needed it for a whole bunch of things, and you can see how that works. So while you need them, you pay a lot of money to them, and, uh, presumably the money's worth it for them for the hassles of dealing with a difficult tenant. Uh, so that's how, uh, it, it, it worked. But, um, nowadays, the relationship with India is changing. In fact, it has changed because their big buddy, Russia, is... Well, after the end of the Cold War, instead of being the big friend, it was the big nuisance, not so much for India but for everybody else. And, uh, now for India, its primary adversary is China without a doubt, and the United States, I think, is looking that China poses a primary threat. And to the extent that both of them see it that way, that will make them align and Pakistan less so.

    3. DPDwarkesh Patel1:04:35

       Um, it sounds like at the time, it was right to choose Pakistan as the main ally for the United States.

    4. SPSarah Paine1:04:40

       Well, we tried to choose India, uh, too, but, uh, yeah, we tried to do them simultaneously, but India's further south, right? And so for a long time before we got satellite imagery, you wanna have listening posts and things up in Pakistan, so India just simply doesn't have the location for that. So that was the original reason for interest in Pakistan.

13. 1:05:03 – 1:10:08

    The appeal of the USSR

    1. SPSarah Paine1:05:03

    2. DPDwarkesh Patel1:05:03

       I want to better understand why the Soviet Union was such a charismatic example for countries that were decolonizing-

    3. SPSarah Paine1:05:10

       Oh.

    4. DPDwarkesh Patel1:05:10

       ... like India.

    5. SPSarah Paine1:05:11

       Uh, I think go back and put yourself as a generation of what your life experience was. If your life experience was World War I, the total bittry- butchery of it, so you're telling young men your age, go, "Ah, you're in a trench. I want you to go up and over the edge onto oncoming machine gun fire." We know what's gonna happen when that, when it happens, right? And they're literally, in battles like the Somme, they're losing hundreds of thousands of people. I don't mean casualties, I mean, I mean dead-dead. And so, uh, and then you have the Great Depression afterwards, and then add to it India's been colonized by a bunch of really opinionated white people, right? And transferring a lot of wealth outta India to England. And so, uh, you look at Marxism, and boy, it sounds plausible, right? It sounds like these evil capitalists, they're just wasting lives, and surely this is the explanation. Now, the technicalities of Marx's labor theory of value don't actually turn to be, turn out to be accurate. It's not just labor that produces value. Like Silicon Valley, you understand it's what comes up here produces a tremendous amount of value, and that k- uh, Marxist theory doesn't recognize that, and so there are massive flaws in theory. And then when you put communism into practice, if you wanna have equality, which is what they wanted, if you're gonna have equality, you're not gonna have any liberty, right? Because in order to make it equal, you just expropriate and then you divvy it out to every, to everybody, and there's no liberty in that, right? And, uh, uh, another piece about democracies and even flawed ones, even if they have a semi-free press, you... A lot of the icky news bubbles up, but in dictatorships, it doesn't, right? So you compare the seamy sides of, uh, some, uh, democracies that aren't doing that well and then to the, the, the public, the PR thing that the, that the dictatorships are presenting. So you can picture Nehru of his generation. He's sick of British, right? And so Fabian socialism, he's not for killing lots of people to impose socialism. He has a, uh, he has a much lighter touch than Stalin (laughs) .

    6. DPDwarkesh Patel1:07:28

       Uh, one thing I was thinking about while you were mentioning th- uh, that Gandhi and Nehru had a big problem with American segregation-

    7. SPSarah Paine1:07:34

       Yeah.

    8. DPDwarkesh Patel1:07:34

       ... is, uh, uh, at the same time in the '50s, uh, by that point-... over 10% of the Soviet population had, at some point, been in the gulags or are currently in the gulags. And segregation is very bad, gulags are even worse, and it's the same proportion of the population that's in the gulags. Uh, maybe people just didn't know about the gulags back then?

    9. SPSarah Paine1:07:55

       Um, I don't think-

    10. DPDwarkesh Patel1:07:56

        Mm-hmm.

    11. SPSarah Paine1:07:57

        ... communists let you know those things.

    12. DPDwarkesh Patel1:07:58

        (laughs)

    13. SPSarah Paine1:07:59

        Right? It, it, this is when, um, for a lot of Russians, 'cause we were, uh, my husband and I were in the Soviet Union in the 1988/'89 academic year, and that's early Gorbachev before everything totally falls apart and there's no food, so there was, there wasn't much food, but there was some food. And, uh, it was just as the Russians were suddenly being able to read in a fairly free press about the things that had happened and they were appalled about what had gone on under Stalin, and they just hadn't realized all of it.

    14. DPDwarkesh Patel1:08:32

        One of the reasons that socialism was appealing to these decolonizing countries was because in the preceding decades, from the '20s to '40s, the Soviet Union actually had pretty good growt- uh, growth rates. In th- those 20 years, their GDP went from 8% to 18% of world production. Was that just catch-up growth? What was going on at that time?

    15. SPSarah Paine1:08:48

        Oh, Russia? Uh, well, uh, there was tremendous rebuilding after World War II. There's another piece, is it was so weird, when, when we were in Russia in '88/'89, um, anything that was sold at the markets that came from somewhere else, they would mark it, "Importnaya," means imported. So the idea, and I remember thinking, "This is really weird," 'cause normally you, you would say it's, I don't know, Hungarian this and that or whatever. And I thought, "Hmm, this means it's anything from somewhere else is better than what we got."

    16. DPDwarkesh Patel1:09:18

        (laughs)

    17. SPSarah Paine1:09:18

        That it's a really bad sign. And, uh, they, they had, like, a what I would call a donut empire. Normally when you think of an empire, mother central is the most developed part and then there's the periphery, where the, all the natural resources are taken away. That, it was an inverted empire. Russia was the donut. The rich places were places like Czechoslovakia, and Poland had been much richer places. And so the Russians are, uh, like serf owners, are, uh, sucking in all the wealth from these places. And I think that's another reason why the shattering of the Soviet Union when they lost all of their enserfed Eastern Europe, why it was such a mess for Russia. They did not realize and they still don't realize the degree to which they were living off the wealth produced in the, uh, west, the European portions of Russia that since became independent.

    18. DPDwarkesh Patel1:10:07

        Hmm.

14. 1:10:08 – 1:16:14

    The last communist premier

    1. DPDwarkesh Patel1:10:08

       Who, who was the last Soviet leader who, like, truly believed in communism?

    2. SPSarah Paine1:10:12

       Gorbachev was a true believer. He, um, he did not believe it was possible to take a U-turn on the road to communism, so that when he was doing his reforms, it was to, um, improve communism, make it better. So he absolutely believed in it.

    3. DPDwarkesh Patel1:10:29

       When, um, uh, you're, you're, you started your career in Soviet studies and you were trying to figure out, like, what's going on in the Kremlin all the time. What, what is it, what is the key to figuring out Kremlinology? What is the key to figuring out what's happening in the Politburo?

    4. SPSarah Paine1:10:40

       Well, what I did for my, uh, doctoral dissertation, so I wrote a history of the Sino-Sov... Well, the Russo-Chinese border when, when it was figured out, which is between 1858 and 1924 is when all this territory went. And what I did is... So most of this isn't Soviet, right? It's 17 to 24 is the Soviet part. But you go to archives in Russia, you see what they'll let you see. You go to ar-... And this is when you could go to those archives. They're closed now. And I went to Beijing, saw the archives you were allowed to see, and then in Nanjing there were some other ones there. And then in Taiwan, the ones they would allow you to see, and then Japan, the ones they would allow you to see. And they're all lying about different things or covering up different things. So it's a jigsaw puzzle. You sort of put it, you put it together that way. So, uh, that was how, um, I did it. And also for the whole Kremlin, Krem- uh, nana-, Kremlinology.

    5. DPDwarkesh Patel1:11:32

       (laughs)

    6. SPSarah Paine1:11:33

       ... um, is pay attention to what dictators say, because they've gotta communicate at some level to their own populations. They ca- uh, quite often tell you exactly what they want to do and you think, "That's insane. Who would do that?" Well, hello, hello. Right? Uh, so read what they have to say and read what others have to say. Then you need to read things in, um, uh, the Russian language. So, uh, I just, I read a lot of things. You just read broadly, read more broadly than whatever your topic is, 'cause it's, it's, um, the unknown unknowns is what you're after. What are the things that are truly important and you have no idea about? And the only way you get to those is archives or reading broadly where you bump into things and, "Woo, that turns out to be important."

    7. DPDwarkesh Patel1:12:16

       Wh- when you were giving the lecture, it seemed like these primary adversaries, whoever it is, it's, like, very permanent and it, there's some, like, deep reason why it has to be this way. But if you look at the Sino-Soviet split, it's just, like, they're both communist, th- they're both Leninist, uh, parties, and th- the, the, they have this falling out over, there were a couple of things you mentioned, but, like, it, it's not clear why somebody has to be somebody else's primary adversary, why you can't turn that around.

    8. SPSarah Paine1:12:38

       Oh. Well, you can, but, uh, Russia and China, uh, have these territorial differences, and the issues I listed there of fighting to the last Chinese in the Korean War, Mao didn't really like that. There are a lot of Chinese who die in the Korean War where the Russians sort of get them in there and then it's like, you're stuck. You have to, for prestige reasons, stay there. And the really big one I didn't discuss in any detail. So Stalin's really worried about a, um, two-front war, Nazis in the west and Japanese in the east. And so he brokers the second united front between the Chinese nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek and the Chinese communists under Mao at a place called Xi'an in late 1930, um, wait, is it '36? And so it's called the Xi'an Incident where Chiang Kai-shek was reputedly kidnapped and up there, but really what's going on is, uh, it's setting up this second united front and then the Japanese go ballistic, and that's when they invade all the way down the coast and up the, uh, Yangtze River. And that means the Chinese are fighting Japanese for you. The Japanese are not gonna launch into Siberia. So that works for Stalin, but the Chinese realize this and they does not appreciate it.

    9. DPDwarkesh Patel1:13:54

       Yeah. But then they helped the communists get into power in China, right?

    10. SPSarah Paine1:13:58

        No, he wanted to-

    11. DPDwarkesh Patel1:13:58

        Like, you think they'd be grateful for that?

    12. SPSarah Paine1:13:59

        No, no. He wanted a divided China. He's telling Mao, "Oh, stop at the Yangzi. Stop at the Yang- You need breathing space there." And Mao's...

    13. DPDwarkesh Patel1:14:05

        (laughs)

    14. SPSarah Paine1:14:05

        And keeps on going.

    15. DPDwarkesh Patel1:14:08

        Uh, i- if you're the president or if you're the Secretary of State and you're looking at this where there's these interweaving systems of alliances and you give some guy aid because he needs something and it pisses everybody else off, how the hell are you supposed to keep track of this? How, how... (laughs) Do they have these matrices that you got up there and they're... (laughs)

    16. SPSarah Paine1:14:23

        Um, uh... We have so many wonderful people, uh, working in the State Department. I've met a number of them because they come and are students at the War College. You should be proud of all the people who work for the Department of State. They are all of these different experts from different parts of the world that get sent around hither and yon. Uh, very thoughtful people. Also, I've read in the archives many CIA reports, because I've gone to these presidential archives starting with the Truman administration all the way up to Bush Sr. As you get to the more recent stuff, uh, less of it's been declassified. So the, uh, th- is, I've read... Most of the CIA reports I've read are from earlier periods where they've been declassified. It's impressive, the level of analysis. And I know that the CIA has several people, there's the analytical part of it and then there's the, uh, send, uh, send people out to do, we aren't even gonna talk about, what they're...

    17. DPDwarkesh Patel1:15:11

        (laughs)

    18. SPSarah Paine1:15:11

        W- which is completely different. Um, but they're very fine analysts. And then we have, like, the Department of Agriculture has very fine analysts about agriculture of the whole world. So we have a tremendous amount of expertise. And, um, the other thing that presidents get, and also high-level, uh, bureaucrats get, are these daily reports where i- and they're very short, because they have to be, about what's going on everywhere in the world that, that people think is important for them to know. So there are a tremendous number of h- smart, well-educated people trying to get information to presidents, secretaries of states, and things. And then you have all these regional desks where there's, uh, I don't know, I can't remember exactly. I don't know the, the organization chart of the State Department, but you can look at it. It's by region of, of the world. People work there and, and provide this. So there are wonderful experts that are working on this.

    19. DPDwarkesh Patel1:16:05

        Uh, you mentioned in the lecture that if China and India had figured out a way to work together, the world order could've looked completely different.

    20. SPSarah Paine1:16:11

        Uh-huh.

    21. DPDwarkesh Patel1:16:11

        Sp- spell out the counterfactual for us. How, how would it have been different?

15. 1:16:14 – 1:32:51

    India and China’s lost opportunity

    1. DPDwarkesh Patel1:16:14

    2. SPSarah Paine1:16:14

       Well, uh, I spent the grand total of a week in India. It was a trip on the way back from Australia, and that was the amount of time we had. But we went into the Mahatma Gandhi Museum in New Delhi, and there's a whole piece of it where Chiang Kai-shek is giving him things. And it became really clear that Chiang Kai-shek had a really good relationship with India, deep respect for India, and this shared desire of, "Uh, we wanna be independent. We don't want Japanese running around our country. We don't want a bunch of Westerners running around. We share this with India." And so I think, uh, if you get Chiang Kai-shek winning the Chinese Civil, uh, Chinese Civil War and things, you might have had them team up and had a much more productive relationship.

    3. DPDwarkesh Patel1:16:57

       Hmm. That, that's interesting, because you often, you think of... Like, when you hear nationalists, you think they're the ones that are gonna be interested in territorial disputes. But in fact, the, you know, of, uh, they wouldn't have cared about Tibet or something and...

    4. SPSarah Paine1:17:06

       Well, next time you're in New Delhi, go check out the museum. But, uh, uh, when I was there, it was like 20 years ago, but I remember being impressed and going, "Wow, there's all..." And then when Gandhi was assassinated, this is Mahatma, not the, um, Indira, who was also assassinated, no relation, um, that, uh, the Chinese and the nationalists sent all sorts of condolences and, and different things. So yeah, there could've been a diff- a different outcome.

    5. DPDwarkesh Patel1:17:32

       I, I wonder if the worst thing about the Non-Aligned Movement was that because they wouldn't fall under anyone else's nuclear umbrella, they wouldn't ally with a great power that had nukes, they, in order to kee- keep up deterrence, they had to build nukes themselves. And so then you have this nuclear proliferation, and, you know, that, that was like the... It, it was, it's really important to get, uh, people allied with one great power, even, even if it's not you, just to prevent the nuclear thing from going wide.

    6. SPSarah Paine1:17:56

       I think the 1962 war made Nehru realize that non-alignment was a non-starter. And that's, uh, for the reasons you're talking about. It's like, "Okay, um, uh, we just got eaten alive by the Chinese. Okay, we need big friend, and we probably need some, uh, big missiles eventually." And it's, it's not immediately. Uh, the Indians don't come around to that we absolutely need nuclear weapons, uh, until the Bangladesh war when China's become more of a threat.

    7. DPDwarkesh Patel1:18:24

       Um, b- by 1971, uh, sh- uh, like, did Nehru really think that the Soviet Union might still win the Cold War? Why might he think-

    8. SPSarah Paine1:18:31

       Well, as I said, Neh- Nehru's dead in, like, '64.

    9. DPDwarkesh Patel1:18:33

       Oh, sorry. Yeah.

    10. SPSarah Paine1:18:34

        So it's his daughter.

    11. DPDwarkesh Patel1:18:35

        But, but when, when did they become allies with, uh, the Soviet Union?

    12. SPSarah Paine1:18:39

        Oh, well, the official alliance... Well, I'm just defining what an alli- I, I made up what, what an alliance is. So I would say it is the security pact that, uh, Indira Gandhi signs in 1971.

    13. DPDwarkesh Patel1:18:50

        Right. So at that point-

    14. SPSarah Paine1:18:51

        That... But, but-

    15. DPDwarkesh Patel1:18:52

        ... did they really think the Soviet Union could've won the Cold War? Like, why didn't they just ch- ch- choose the winner (laughs) in retrospect?

    16. SPSarah Paine1:18:57

        Oh, uh, oh, well, I remember the Cold War vividly. Um, we felt we were losing it most of the way through.

    17. DPDwarkesh Patel1:19:03

        And why is that?

    18. SPSarah Paine1:19:05

        Well, we always felt... Well, A, because the propaganda, right? Because they're all living beautifully, and then they're quite good, they're very good at propaganda. So, um, uh, w- the United States had massive racial problems. Think about 1960s. Uh, Martin Luther King are pointing out hideous problems with this country. Civil rights, uh, demonstrations everywhere, anti-, uh, Vietnam War demonstrations everywhere. The women's movement, the environmental movement. There were loads of unhappy people pointing out all of these problems, which is a good thing because then the United States starts working on fixing su- some of these problems. Of course, they're not fixed, but there's improvement on them. Whereas in Russia, it's no one could travel, so you can't see how unbelievably poor they are.

    19. DPDwarkesh Patel1:19:53

        Yeah.

    20. SPSarah Paine1:19:53

        And so you go to Moscow and you think, "Well, this is a plausible city." Well, there is only one plausible city in the place, or maybe it's two, Saint Petersburg or, well, it's, but Leningrad in those days.So, uh, people didn't realize. But yeah, we felt we were lo- losing the Cold War. In fact, oh, at the very end of the Cold War, because I was in the Bush archives. So Gorbachev's in and, um, Bush... Uh, Reagan and then Bush are thinking, "Well, he just looks like another one of these people, and we're not gonna take the propaganda seriously." And then they started going, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa." And then it's in '88 where Bush is going, "Whoa, maybe it is gonna end." And then the United States teams up with Helmut Kohl of Germany to do the fastest, uh, get the Russians out of Eastern Europe ever, but, um, Gorbachev is the one who wants to cooperate with the West. Oh, the... One thing you should know about warfare, you think the winners win it? No, actually it's when the losers decide they've had enough. That's when a war ends. Uh, otherwise it doesn't end. So d- uh, uh, the Russians got sick of it, and they quit.

    21. DPDwarkesh Patel1:20:59

        I wonder if there's a lesson in here for what people call the Cold War with China today, where people think, you know, it's really competitive. China might have a bigger economy than us soon. And really if you actually got to see what's happening day-to-day in China, maybe you might decide, like the Soviet Union, there's a bunch of things broken with it. They're not really competitive in the long run economically, and so we're gonna win.

    22. SPSarah Paine1:21:17

        Uh, well, I don't know win/lose, but, uh, they have a much... A very low per capita standard of living. Do the math. You go, yeah, they've got a big economy 'cause they're... I don't... They're not a third of the world's population now, but it's- it's huge. And, uh, d- divide the 1.3 billion, whatever it is, you come up with a low number for per capita standard of living. And I think for human beings, that's the number that matters, right? Of h- uh, what is your family income look like? So, uh, they got a long way to go on that one.

    23. DPDwarkesh Patel1:21:50

        I wanna go back to Kissinger in 1971. So because they want an, uh- uh, somebody to, like, send the message along to China to open up, they shut up about Pakistan's-

    24. SPSarah Paine1:22:02

        Yeah.

    25. DPDwarkesh Patel1:22:02

        ... genocide in Bangladesh where, uh, numbers vary, but somewhere between 300,000 and three million people died.

    26. SPSarah Paine1:22:08

        It was awful.

    27. DPDwarkesh Patel1:22:08

        Hundreds of thousands of people were raped. Um, uh, I know they didn't have email back then. There was no other way to get the message across? You have to abet a genocide in order to g- get a message across to Mao?

Episode duration: 2:13:30