Why Should We Care About the India-Pakistan Border Conflict? | with Nitin A. Gokhale
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And welcome once again to Why Should We Care About the Indo-Pacific, brought to you by IEJ Media and the Bauer Group Asia, our sponsor. We will talk more about them in due course. I'm Ray Powell, the former U.S. military officer. I am in California. My co-host, Jim Caruso, former diplomat, is in New York with hopefully a reliable internet connection. How are you, Jim? You can hope all you want. We just don't know. Well,

Well, hopefully New York will join the rest of the civilized world and bring on this new thing they call the interwebs. So our guest today is Nitin Gokhale. And I hope I got the pronunciation of your name close to correct.

He is one of South Asia's leading strategic affairs analysts. He's a conflict reporter turned into a media entrepreneur. He's got 40 years of experience covering military security and geopolitical issues. He is also the author of the book, Securing India the Modi Way. Sir, welcome to our podcast.

Thank you, Ray. And thank you, Jim. Pleasure talking to you and joining you on this podcast. I've heard of this podcast from friends in Mumbai where you have come earlier or you've been interacting with them. One of the things. Thanks there. So it's a real pleasure to come here. And what a time to join this podcast. Well, we have been talking about needing to do an India-Pakistan dialogue.

episode for quite a long time. And well, events happened then. And so this was, you know, the thing about India-Pakistan is it's never the first on anyone's list of potential crisis points, but it's always on everybody's list somewhere. And all of a sudden, now we have two nuclear armed powers in something of a hot border conflict.

And so, sir, we would like to kind of get your sense of what exactly is happening on the India-Pakistan border. How did we get here and why should we care? Well, it's a long story. It began in 1947, but I'm not going to go back that much. It was partition of India and then Pakistan was created. But just to look at the issue from, say, 2020 onwards, five years ago,

When India actually changed the status of the state of Jammu and Kashmir, which Pakistan claims is a disputed area. Pakistan has a big claim on Jammu and Kashmir. It's a border state in the north of India and also abuts Pakistan. And that has been the cause for four wars between India and Pakistan since 1947.

So it's not something that is taken very lightly by anybody. But we thought after 2020, when everything was seeming to be normal in Jammu and Kashmir, which for our viewers here, for your viewers here, it's divided in two parts. Part of it is controlled by Pakistan. It's called in the Indian parlance, it's called Pakistan occupied Jammu and Kashmir. And India controls Jammu.

or administers the rest of the, or the major part of Jammu and Kashmir, which was divided in 1947-48 after the first war. A sort of ceasefire was declared there. That's why it's a line of control and not fully international border between the two parts of Jammu and Kashmir.

So that having said, India changed the status, abrogated a special clause in the Indian Constitution called Article 370, which had given special status to Jammu and Kashmir, which was abrogated in 2019. And it fully sort of got integrated into the Indian Union and under the Constitution. And Pakistan then, India said and thought,

Pakistan has no right over that part of Jammu and Kashmir. And India continues to claim the other part, which is controlled by Pakistan. That's the background.

So how did we get here? There have been incidents in the past three years or so where security forces have been targeted by Pakistan-based terrorist attackers, terrorist groups, sponsored and supported and funded by Pakistani army has been the long-standing situation there. And they were essentially targeting security forces.

But they upped the ante suddenly in April and shattered the peace and seeming normalcy in the Kashmir Valley by killing, selectively killing Hindu tourists.

in a place called a very famous and popular tourist spot called Pahalgam. And they killed 25 Indian tourists, picked them up one by one, asked them for their religion and killed. And then they told some of the survivors, especially women, to go and tell in their language, Modi, that we have killed your husband and your father, Modi.

or wherever they met and tell them that we are here. So they belong to a group called Lashkar-e-Taiba, one of the proscribed groups headquartered in Pakistan. And the other group that is active is Jaish-e-Mohammad. So that was the trigger for the recent episode that we are seeing now. We are right in the middle of it. So then India waited for 14-15 days, first stopped

or kept the treaty called Endless Water Treaty in abeyance, which meant that the water going from upper Iperian India into lower Iperian Pakistan was...

being controlled and sort of there was no compulsion for India now to share hydrological data with Pakistan which created problems for the or will create problems for their agricultural economy down in Punjab and in provinces of Pakistan then on 7th of May early morning of 7th of May

Indian missiles and standoff weapons fired both from the fighter jets as well as from the ground.

targeted nine precisely selected targets, which were terrorist headquarters or terrorist camps in Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir, as well as mainland Pakistan. Now, this is the escalation, or this is unprecedented, because nobody so far had dared to target the headquarters of Jaish-e-Mohammed and Rashkari Tawheba

in the heart of Pakistan, Punjab, which is Pakistan's strength and bulwark. And they killed, according to Pakistan's own admission, 35 people, including relatives of the leaders of Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Tawbah. And then...

Early this morning, which is 8th, we are now evening in India, 8th of May. The early morning or last night, in fact, 7th, within 12 hours, 7th of May, Pakistan tried to attack military installations in India's north and west, 15 or 16 of those locations. But each of them, according to Indian sources,

Ministry of External Affairs as well as Ministry of Defence. Each of those drones and missiles were thwarted. They were prevented from striking their targets. And then this morning on 8th May, Indian time, India targeted Pakistani cities and air defence systems in major Pakistani cities, including Lahore, which is again the heart of Pakistan, and the Pakistani DGISPR, that is the Inter-Services Public Relations Agency,

went on record in a press conference to admit that these drones came and hit several targets in major Pakistani cities. There was panic in Islamabad, in Rawalpindi, in Gujranwala, in Bhawalpur, in Karachi. And India has claimed so far that the air defense system in Lahore has been damaged. We are there. And as we speak, we don't know what the next step in the escalatory ladder is going to be.

whether Pakistan is going to climb that because India has said our targeting and our action was precise. It was non-escalatory, non-military in nature, and we only targeted the terrorists. So we do not want to escalate further, but we reserve the right to escalate if Pakistan attacks us and our military installations. That's where we are. Ray? That was a great explanation, Ateem. Thank you for that.

Let's go back to what happened a couple of weeks ago. Why would the Pakistani terrorists, much less the government, choose this time to undertake clearly what was designed to create a visceral, angry reaction by targeting tourists and civilians?

Well, two explanations there. Pakistani army has been at the receiving end of several setbacks in the past couple of years. They're being hammered in Balochistan where they're losing control. There is an insurgency there which is gaining an upper hand over the past year, definitely.

Another province called Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is also slipping out of control of the Pakistani army. There is an insurgency there. And on the western border with Afghanistan, Pakistan is getting a beating from, of all people, the Taliban.

who are ruling Afghanistan right now, their relations have gone south. They have deteriorated over the last three years. Although Pakistan took credit of installing a Taliban government in Afghanistan in August 2021, but it hasn't gone the way they wanted that script to evolve. So they're feeling a lot of heat internally.

And India, over the past nine years now, has cut off diplomatic ties, has not bothered to talk to Pakistan, has drawn down the diplomatic strength both ways. I mean, they have withdrawn. There's no high commissioner from India in Islamabad. There is no high commissioner from Pakistan in Delhi for almost three years now.

And no trade, none of these things are happening. India is refusing to talk to Pakistan because it says talks and terror cannot go together. So that has also angered the Pakistani. General Asim Munir, the Pakistani army chief,

has been feeling the heat from several quarters, like I said. The Pakistani army standing is at its lowest in memory amongst even the people of Pakistan. They are mocking them because he's imprisoned the most popular Pakistani politician, Imran Khan. He's in jail for the last two years.

So he needed something to rally the nation, rally the people. And he thought that if you sort of create or have an incident, a terrorist incident or an attack, India will immediately react, which will give him a chance to rally the army, the nation, and then draw India into a wider conflict.

at least that is what the initial assessment is. Otherwise, there was no earthly reason like you asked rightly. Why would they do this at this point in time? But that's the assessment and India then, instead of striking immediately like it did, uh,

not exactly immediately as they had done in 2016 and 2019. They had taken 10 to 15 days even that time. But here it was supposed to be only a precise, if you look at the statement from India, it has gone to great lengths and great pains

to explain to the world and to everybody who cares that we are only targeted the terrorists because they are the ones who are sponsored and they are being supported by the Pakistani army. Although the opinion in India is that you should hurt the Pakistani army and not just the terrorists, but that's a different issue altogether. So talk a little bit about this relationship that India believes the Pakistani army has to terrorists.

Because obviously, you know, we've seen this in other parts of the world. We've seen it, for example, with Iran's relationship to a number of different terrorist groups. We generally consider these to be proxies of Iran. But, you know, how close do we think that the Pakistani army or the intelligence services are to these particular terrorists in in this region?

They go back a long way and very thick partners in crime. One very prominent incident is in Mumbai where, Ray, you've attended some of those think tank events on 26th of November. So in 2008...

10 gunmen of the Lashkar-e-Tauiba, the terrorists who came across in a boat via the sea and attacked several five-star hotels in India, some of the Israeli establishments and killed 164 people, including five Americans. And I just want to recall that incident because this wouldn't have been possible to pin that blade

or that responsibility on the Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is a Pakistani group funded, sheltered, supported and protected by the Pakistani army. Very close to their bases they operate. They get trained by some of their ex-soldiers, special services group like the Para Special Forces. So one of those fellows was caught allegedly

Alive in Mumbai. And from there on, the entire conspiracy was unraveled really at that point in time. The Pakistani ISI is known to have started this policy of bleeding India through thousand cuts in 1989 by launching a proxy war in Jammu and Kashmir and before that in Punjab.

And India has sort of paid heavy price of lives and, of course, damage to property and its reputation over the past 40 years nearly because it started off in 1986 in Punjab and 1989 in Jammu and Kashmir. So that's the proof. In fact, Bruce Riddle, one of your analysts, has written a book on the Pakistani army and the nexus between the Lashkar-e-Tawheba and Jaish-e-Muhammad.

giving out the proof how they operate, how interchangeable they are as far as their personnel are concerned. Not in the sense of after retirement people join these

terrorist groups. So that's the kind of nexus. It goes deep. It is also because they believe in their ideology of jihad for Islam and punishing India, which they see as an eternal enemy as far as Pakistan is concerned. So what gets everyone's attention, of course, is this is two nuclear-armed large countries with large armies and, as you said, historic enmity between each other.

How do you see this winding down or will it escalate?

Well, at the moment, tempers are very high and Asim Munir needs some escape route, which I think was provided by India in the first statement itself, that we targeted only terrorists and not military installations. It was not meant for civilians, not meant for economic targets. So probably the first response he's already done by unleashing drones and missiles

on 7th May night. Now, India has also now done the response to it.

Probably, my sense is, given the financial condition and the economy in Pakistan, also its internal situation, if Pakistan does something again and India thwarts most of it, it doesn't get too painful for India. And I think all other countries who are concerned with it, the world over, from the United States to Russia and China and to Saudis, they will then, I think, ask Pakistan

both the countries, especially Pakistan, now to end it here because that suits everyone that you sort of, you square off your losses, whatever they are. Pakistanis have been claiming that five Indian fighter jets have been down by then. We have not seen any official statement or acknowledgement or proof

There could be certainly some damage. But remember, these airplanes actually, and Pakistanis acknowledge this, that they used, Indians used only standoff weapons, even if from their own airspace. So what has happened exactly, we still don't know. There's fog of war. But I think this ramping, off-ramp opportunity will come in a couple of days, the first one.

after the initial exchanges get over in the next 24 hours or so.

So ever since the October 7th attacks in Israel, we've had this conversation or we've heard this conversation about this idea of reestablishing deterrence against these kinds of terrorist attacks. If there were to be an off-ramp and India and Pakistan were to come to some kind of an agreement to cease the border strikes,

Would India feel like it has done enough to reestablish deterrence against this kind of terror attack?

Oh, yes. I think I have to take you back to 2019 when India targeted an isolated terror camp called Balakot by air. In fact, by using the Spice missiles taken from Israel and also mounted on a French airplane called the Mirage 2000s.

And it had sort of deterred Pakistan from mounting, or the Pakistani-based terrorist groups from mounting large-scale terrorist attacks since then until the Payal Ram attack. So I think India is aware that these deterrents, this kind of deterrents last only maybe a couple of years or three years. But having actually crossed a red line and a...

And something unprecedented that India has done this time is to target a terrorist organization headquarter in Punjab, which Pakistan considers like their engine.

propelling the country, Pakistan. And having targeted those two headquarters in Punjab, this may be seen by Pakistan as very humiliating. And that may not then create the deterrence that we're looking for for five years or six years, but maybe a couple of years. But then Pakistan also knows by now that if India can target

a precise location in a populated, heavily populated area, then everything, all bets are off. So I don't know whether Pakistan will really then want to take that risk of inviting another punitive strike from India. So therefore, maybe this acts as a deterrence is what my sense is. But again, irrationality also takes over when such things are involved. So China obviously has a lot of influence on Pakistan. It's a major country.

development and security partner China and India have had a fraught relationship. On the other hand, Russia and India have a positive relationship, as the United States and India have. Is there any way some grouping of these countries can work with India and Pakistan to not only negotiate a halt to these hostilities, but a more permanent solution to Kashmir? Well, permanent solution, both countries, especially India,

has been insistent that it's a bilateral issue. Russia has so far supported this. President Trump has made one of those off-the-cuff remarks that he would like to negotiate and sort of intervene. But again, India will not entertain that. Pakistan doesn't mind somebody intervening on their behalf or between the two countries.

China has always kept away from the bilateral issue, surprisingly, because China is their closest ally and friend.

And Russia has also sort of dilly-dallied many times, but ultimately supported India's position and India's right to retaliate or carry out punitive action. So I don't think India will invite or like to invite somebody to come and mediate or negotiate. As we speak, the Iranian foreign minister is here a week after he was in Pakistan.

And he did say somewhere before coming here that we don't mind mediating. But again, no word on that as he ends his day in Delhi. So the only grouping that you spoke about where India and Pakistan are together, along with Russia and China and not the United States, is SCO, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

which is driven by China. And China may gently persuade Pakistan to keep the tension down, keep the peace or bring back the peace because China needs peace.

the Indian market now particularly in the current context where the United States has launched a tariff war against them and they feel besieged or under siege by the US and the Europeans are not exactly welcoming so the only market left for them right now is India and they do not want India to get distracted or feel that China is doing this so maybe maybe behind the scenes

I would think that the Chinese would sort of provide quiet counsel to the Pakistanis and say, OK, hold off now. Let's go off ramp. So one of the things that's befuddled the international press since this started was this question of how many Indian jets,

have been shot down by the Pakistan side. And of course, we've heard numbers anywhere from one to five or six or zero. What should we make of all this?

So, you know, one has been trying to dig around and as a career journalist, that's my job. That's the basic instinct that one has to try and dig around. I've been trying to figure out because one thing is very clear that no pilot has been lost in this. So let me be very specific on that. No pilot has been lost.

Because in Indian context, in the Indian military, like I am sure in the American military, you have to inform the next of kin in case there are fatalities and do it immediately. You can't hide the casualties there. So, and the first morning, first night when all this happened and with this fog of war and there was a lot of speculation, the Air Force sources told the military

media that reports on a day-to-day basis that all pilots have been accounted for. That was one line statement that was given. So that's the first thing that I must state.

Whether there are losses of aircraft where aircraft have crashed, certainly I think there have been some crashes, some losses. But the exact figure, one has not been able to put a finger to it. Like you said, the figures have gone from one to five. Somebody has told me, oh, there could be three aircraft and two large male UAVs.

So, you know, therefore you don't know. But again, India is such a thickly populated country that you will have to find debris somewhere and the villagers and the city folks somewhere that debris would have been, you know, sort of found if there were crashes. This also intrigues me because otherwise when India has had peacetime crashes, the first report or the first visuals come from villages whenever these things have happened.

My own experience as a day-to-day reporter, sort of reporting for channels and newspapers, has always been that I've got first visuals or photographs or videos from villages when these aircraft have crashed. We haven't got anyone, anyone so far. Now, I can't believe that in a country of 1.4 billion population,

Nobody has seen the crashes there. So therefore, I'm a little skeptical. What is it? Is it a disinformation campaign, misinformation campaign? Today, India's foreign secretary during the press briefing was asked about this. He says we will share details when the time comes, appropriate time comes. So again, that tells me that there's something wrong. Some losses have happened.

So I'm actually a little confused about this or maybe not completely certain what has happened. But certainly there's something has happened as far as the Air Force is concerned. Although they hit their targets, they did that. But was it malfunction? Was it some jamming, some...

Because on the first day when India launched the attack, there was no response of a counterattack from Pakistan as far as the air defense was concerned. Now, so I don't know what exactly happened. I mean, I know it's a convoluted answer, but I thought I'd give you all the inputs that I've got so far.

So you mentioned earlier that Pakistan has a lot of domestic turmoil, separatist groups in the southwest along the Afghan border. They've jailed the key opposition figure. Is there any concern in India about instability in Pakistan and the importance of having it a stable neighbor? And your foreign minister, Jaishankar, is a very experienced naval diplomat.

Maybe there's an opportunity here to try some rapprochement of something. I'm sorry, Ray, for using diplomatic speech. French, of all things. I know you like to do that, but Ray likes when I talk pretty. Maybe.

Well, see, I think what India has been doing for the last seven, eight years is that it has moved its priorities or it has looked at its neighborhood and its challenges and has concluded that its main primary adversary is China.

And Pakistan is something that you have to deal with. It's inevitable. It's a nuisance. But you have to sort of not give that much importance. And I know that there are concerns in the West and elsewhere that both are nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed powers.

So there should be more dialogue, more discussions. Some of our diplomats have also advocated this. But Prime Minister Modi and his cabinet and his government and his national security advisor have decided that talks and terror will not go hand in hand. So until Pakistan gives a guarantee of abjuring violence and showing credible proof that the terrorist organizations will be reined in,

and not allowed to act freely as they've been doing or they will not be launched from their territory. Till then, we will not talk.

Other people have counseled India that, you know, you must talk even if there are no breakthroughs. You must keep the options open. Until General Asim Bajwa was the army chief, there was a back channel operating between India and Pakistan because he was aware that Pakistan needs to move away from the policy of using terror as a state policy or a state instrument. But Asim Munir is seen as a more radical, more hardline person

army chief and because he's facing so much of opposition and turmoil within he needs to then sort of create the further turmoil with India or get sort of get India drawn into a conflict so at this point I don't see any rapprochement happening really Jim so a lot of us the first

response we became aware of from India was this issue over the water sharing treaty that you discussed. Explain to us a little bit, what is the history in the context of this politics of water between India and Pakistan? How important is this treaty to each side? And what does it mean that right now it's suspended?

Well, this treaty was negotiated for nine years between 1951 and 1960 and concluded and signed between the two countries, facilitated by the World Bank that time, but just facilitated, not mediated.

in 1960 and that time India being a larger country, India being also sort of recipient of water from the Himalayas in two water systems. So there are a group of eastern rivers and there are a group of western rivers under the Indus River which is a big river coming from Tibet.

or in China now, which sort of propels all these rivers into the provinces of Punjab and Sindh in Pakistan. 80% of Pakistan's agriculture economy depends on irrigation from irrigation canals and headworks that have been built on these water systems or on these rivers which come from India. Now, under the treaty, Pakistan got 80%

of the share of the water to be used for whatever reasons at that time, whether the Indian

negotiators were not good enough or they were generous or India's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, according to documents available, wanted to buy goodwill from Pakistan and said, okay, you give them that. So Western rivers, entire water of three Western rivers, Chinab, Jhelum and Indus were given to Pakistan. The Eastern rivers in the Indian Punjab, Satlaj, Ravi and Bias,

Those three rivers where entire rights were with India, but they carried only 20% of the water.

And then the clauses of the treaty were such that India, if India wanted to build any canals, any headworks, any dams, then it needed to get Pakistan's permission. After Pakistan inspected and Pakistan gave permission, then you could do it. So Pakistan in these last 60 years has always delayed permissions or not given permissions. So India and Punjab has been left high and dry most of the time.

Situation has changed since then in terms of population increase in India, the crop pattern in India and also in Pakistan, certainly. So India decided that it needs to get out of this treaty. The only way to get out of this treaty was to send a notice to Pakistan, which was sent in 2018 first, that we want to scrap this treaty. You can go to arbitrage and the settlement, a legal settlement can happen only through arbitration, international arbitration.

and both sides have to again finally agree it's a very unusual treaty there is no exit clause there is no clause where you can say for these reasons we will exit unless there is a war

So, when the first thing that the attack happened in Pahalgam, India said we were anyway moving towards trying to get out of the treaty or scrapping the treaty, walking out of the treaty, let's do this first. So, now India does, so the compulsion there was that India had to share all the hydrological data on the

on a regular basis, frequently, weekly, monthly, tell Pakistan that we are releasing water or so much water is coming after the monsoon. All that India had to do. Today they are under no obligation. And that creates panic in Pakistan. Also, if India stops the water for a while and then releases again, there are dangers of floods occurring in Pakistan or the silt flooding.

which is accumulated on the Indian side going into the agricultural fields in Pakistan, which sort of affects the crop patterns and also the economy, the agricultural economy there. So that's a weapon, certainly. People have also spoken about the possibility of China using...

similar tactics against India because China is the upper riparian as far as India is concerned. On the Indus water, on the Yarlung-Sangpo, which is a river which turns into Brahmaputra in India's northeast region,

But the difference there is there is no treaty between India and China on the rivers, river water sharing. As it is, China has weaponized the water and the hydrological data it doesn't share with India. And 80% of the flow in Indian rivers in India's northeast

comes from monsoon rains and not from the glacial melt in Tibet. So it's not such a problem for India. They have calculated this and said, okay, we can take this risk of using the Indus Water Treaty or scrapping the Indus Water Treaty as a weapon against Pakistan. Otherwise, it just doesn't listen to military strikes. The deterrence is short-lived.

It doesn't get you the result that you want. And you don't want to get into a full-fledged war because India has much to lose given that it's a rising economy. Its status is higher than Pakistan and its population is higher than Pakistan. That's the current situation. Yeah, as you describe, India really is in a

ascendancy right now with pressures on Chinese economy. Clearly, Trump likes Modi and wants to do more with India. There's discussion of some for a free trade agreement between US and India. It seems like a great time for India. Are you concerned that this tension with Pakistan could drag this down?

We are concerned. Many of us are concerned. And that is why if you see the last two statements from India, three statements that have come out after this crisis or after this incident and the episode of attacks on each other, India has...

emphasizing that we need to distinguish between a full-fledged conflict and what India has done as a pinpointed attack or a strike on the terrorist camps. And the world is more or less listening to India's reasoning. And this stems from the fact that India does not want to get into... India has much to lose, let me say it this way. India has much to lose because Pakistan has...

Nothing to lose in a way. So it is desperate. And India doesn't want to give that chance of being bogged down or being dragged down, like you mentioned, in this conflict. So let's get you out of here on this exit question. You wrote a book about Modi's security policy, right?

How does this fit into, as you would call it, the Modi way? Is this consistent with what you expect out of Nandramodi? Or does this surprise you, this response? No, it doesn't surprise me. In fact, I've just put it on my website, an excerpt from that book.

which actually underpins his philosophy of security. So this was in 2017 when I had a chance to sit down with National Security Advisor Rajit Doval to understand what Modi's philosophy is and how he's executing the policy. Because they were new that time. They were just three years into the government. And I wanted to understand because by that time he had done two or three unusual things and taken risks,

in terms of attacking Pakistani, I mean, Pakistan-based terrorist camps in Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir, in Myanmar, and a couple of other stuff that he had done. So that's how I started exploring the possibility. So he explained to me that Modi's philosophy is that if it concerns the national interest, then it is above everything else. I'm not going to look at what political...

gain I am going to get out of this, a political advantage I am going to get out of this. He is also very clear in his mind that when it comes to risk-taking, he is willing to take the risk for protecting the country, its internal situation, internal turmoil if there is one, if there is insurgency. And he is willing to sort of go the distance, go to places where others haven't gone. So just to give you an example,

the terrorist headquarters which have been targeted in this particular incident on 7th May

That option was given by the Indian Air Force to Dr. Manmohan Singh, the then Prime Minister in 2008, post the Mumbai attack. And I'm saying this from personal experience because the then Air Chief told me himself, and now of course it is in Shiv Shankar Menon, the former National Security Advisor's book called Choices, this incident has been mentioned, that he had given within 24 hours the option to hit Bhawalpur, which is the...

Headquarter of Lashkar-e-Taiba. And... Sorry, the... The Jaish-e-Mohammad. And that time, Dr. Manmohan Singh said, no, I will not risk a war because we were... The economy was rising, we were doing well. And...

Sushant K. Menon writes in his book that I was all in favor of the attack or the strike just to send a message that we can hit you wherever you want. But Dr. Manmohan Singh, he says in retrospect after eight or nine years when he wrote that book that he was right. That was Dr. Manmohan Singh's philosophy. Modi's philosophy is that if somebody hits you, you have to first hit that person

country or that entity. Only then you start negotiating. So one line that he had given me that time, Mr. Doval, that on the China crisis which had happened in 2017, the Doklam crisis as we call it,

was that be resolute on the border, but reasonable in diplomacy. And I think even this incident shows that he's hit back because that's what people expect from him now. But he's willing to go off-ramp by saying that this was precise, this is targeted, we don't want to escalate, we have no desire to escalate. But if he hits us again, we will hit back. That's been his philosophy and I think he's consistent with that.

All right. Well, Nitin, besides reading your book, if people want to keep up with what you're putting out on the current situation and other things, where should they go? Where should they follow you? Well, I have three websites, but I'll just give you one because the American audience or the international audience should look at our website called Strat.com.

as in strategic, stratnewsglobal.com or Strat News Global YouTube channel, which sort of covers international relations, foreign policy, strategic issues, deep technology, the whole works, except pure defense, which is like manufacturing or policies, which is our original website called Bharat Shakti. Bharat is India, Indian original name in Sanskrit, and Shakti is strength.

So that website I started first and the YouTube channel in 2015. But Strat News Global or SNG was started in 2020. So it's been five years for that. They can go there, look at our work. We do it from an Indian point of view, largely look at the neighborhood very closely, but also international relations and also how India behaves internationally.

with the rest of the world. So they're welcome to come and sort of look at it, join our debates, discussions, and send us their comments. But thanks for this opportunity. Oh, well, we thank you. This has been a fantastic overview and I think has really helped orient us and our audience to what's really going on. So Niten Gokhali, we thank you very much for joining us and we will certainly want to have you back.

And once again, we want to thank our sponsor, our group Asia, a strategic advisory firm that specializes in the Indo-Pacific. They apply unmatched expertise and experience to help clients navigate the world's most complex and dynamic markets. And Jim, I think that there's probably little in the world right now that is more complex and dynamic than this area between India and Pakistan. So much going on.

But Jim Caruso, of course, is a senior advisor with Power Group, and you can visit them at powergroupasia.com. Jim, I, for one, I think needed this explanation. I, you know, again, India, Pakistan is one of those things that's always on the bingo card somewhere. And you just kind of always know that it could erupt at any time. And then you always kind of feel surprised when it does because you've been watching other things.

A lot of Americans forget that India and Pakistan were one country until partition in 1947 when millions and millions of people changed where they lived to go into either the Muslim majority Pakistan or the Hindu majority India. And it was traumatic. It's traumatic to this day. I also want to make another point that was clear here.

India and Pakistan are fitted by geography to always be neighbors and share water and resources and try to get along. And if they don't, they spend resources and time and opportunities dealing with all this sort of stuff. The U.S. has been so fortunate in its history to have friends by and large and allies as our neighbors. And sometimes we take that for granted.

I think another thing we take for granted, you talk about India and Pakistan being nuclear powers. And of course, they weren't supposed to be right. We had this nonproliferation treaty. And India and Pakistan have been a couple of the actually very few states that have broken out after the treaty was signed. Originally, of course, there were just the five nuclear powers that now make up the Security Council.

And so, you know, the fact that they did break out was a sore point for quite a bit of time. But I think the thing I would bring out is we are also very fortunate that actually, for the most part, nonproliferation has not created more of these situations where we have to sit and think about whether or not a border war will turn nuclear, which is a terrifying thought. And one of those things that if we are not careful and we don't,

take care to reassure allies about U.S. support, there are other countries now considering going nuclear. You know, you think of some of these countries in East Asia and other places that

If they start to doubt whether the U.S. extended deterrence really applies to them or really will be seen through or really will deter, they may have to make another choice. And again, once you start really letting that run, then what stops basically everybody going to get whatever they can get? And all of a sudden there is no nonproliferation regime.

Well, you already heard about Poland going, looking to France to sign some sort of defense treaty to shelter under France's nuclear umbrella, such as it is. And it's a small step from that to saying maybe we need our own. No, you're absolutely right, Ray. No. All right. That's it. With that merry thought, tell us a story that'll make me feel better.

Well, I'll tell you a story about a war that I was part of. Yeah. But at least a fun story. So when I deployed to Iraq in 2004, as I may have mentioned before on these podcasts, we kind of ended up in this very odd location. Even though it was 2004 and there was definitely a hot fight going on, we were in a place in the southern part of Iraq, an air base called Talil.

And the, for some reason, the, the, the,

The insurgents had not really discovered us. We were not facing the same kinds of shelling that was happening in other places. And so we were actually in a fairly relaxed state. We were not walking around armed wherever we went, which is normal now in places like Iraq and certainly up until we left in Afghanistan. But at the time, we just sort of walked around in a fairly relaxed state because nobody was shelling us.

And so we just kind of took care of business every day. Well, one day, one of the things that we would do is amazingly on the base of the base where Tallulah was, was situated, there was a pyramid where they call it Ziggurat, right? There's this Ziggurat on the base and people would go down there and they would learn about this Ziggurat. There would be an Iraqi guy who would actually give little tours and

And even at this very place, he even claimed, and I don't have any reason to doubt him except for it was so amazing, that the place where the ziggurat was situated was actually ancient Ur, which is where Abraham was born. And he had various reasons why he believed this was true and would kind of go through them all.

And so it was a pretty neat little tour. Well, so one day my squadron, I was the squadron commander, my squadron decided they wanted to organize a tour on, you know, kind of one of the, one of the times when, you know, we would tend to try to give people part of Sunday off since we weren't too busy.

Uh, you know, we, it wasn't like a, a, uh, intense situation there. And so they would, they'd organize this tour where a bunch of the, the, my, uh, squadron would get on the bus and go down to the ziggurat and get the tour. And again, we were not walking around armed, but my superintendent comes into my office and says, Hey, you know, I was not going, I personally was not going on the tour. So he says, Hey boss, I think we ought to at least take a couple of weapons with us. When we go down there, it's kind of close to the perimeter.

I'm like, yeah, okay, just make sure that they're in responsible hands and those kinds of things. And so they go down and they come back and within an hour, all of a sudden on the intranet, which was what, you know, kind of the little website that all of us would go to on the base,

All of a sudden, there are all these pictures of my troops at the ziggurat with weapons, right? Standing there with their M16s and their M9s and looking like they're the defenders of the ziggurat or something. And they're, you know... All of a sudden... And now I'm getting messages from my boss. What the hell is going... I felt like I was played. I was like, okay, all right. So the reason for the weapons...

Maybe that's really what this... I believe the superintendent really did think it was for protection, but it ended up biting me in the end. So I learned my lesson there with the Defenders of the Ziggurat. Well, I hope you went back to your barracks and had a nice ziggurat.

I think that I'm just going to let that dad joke stand and bid farewell to somebody who doesn't know anything about dad jokes, which is our producer, Ian Ellis Jones, who with IEJ Media produces our podcasts. And we want you to make sure you follow him on his X channel, at Ian Ellis Jones, as he continues to get lots and lots of attention as he does his reporting on conflicts just like this one.

And if you enjoyed this episode, make sure you go look at some of our other ones. We do occasionally, we'll do India, South Asia focused episodes. Like our last one is episode 68. Why should we care about U.S.-India relations as Trump 2.0 era dawns? So that was a great one. We want to make sure you also know that on YouTube, you can follow us, youtube.com at IP podcast.

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