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

>> Elizabeth Economy: Welcome to China Considered, a podcast that brings fresh insight and informed discussion to one of the most consequential issues of our time, how China is changing and changing the world. I'm Liz Economy Hargrove, Senior Fellow and Co Director of the Program on us, China and the World at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

Today I'm joined by my friend and colleague Sumit Ganguly. Sumit is a Senior Fellow here at the Hoover Institution. He's also one of the world's leading experts on India as well as on the India Pakistan relationship. We saw recently the outbreak of four days of deadly fighting between India and Pakistan in early to mid May that ended with a US brokered ceasefire.

China seemed to step in a bit, but didn't seem to have an actual game plan for how to resolve the situation. I want to talk about the conflict itself and how China and the United States fit in. But first, I think this is a conflict that very few people, including myself, quite frankly, really understand.

Can you give us, Sumit, a little bit of historical background? Well, first maybe just tell us what exactly happened and then perhaps we can talk a little bit about the history leading up to this because it's certainly not the first time that the two countries have had a challenging interaction.

So maybe just what happened in this instance.
>> Sumit Ganguly: In this instance what happened is towards late April, when it is quite pleasant in Kashmir, when spring has come to Kashmir, which is an extraordinarily beautiful part of the world, some people have referred to it as the Switzerland of Asia.

There were substantial numbers of picnickers just outside the the summer capital of the Indian controlled portion of the disputed state of Jammu and Kashmir. The dispute goes back to 1947, from the time of the creation of India and Pakistan and over which India and Pakistan have fought three wars.

And while these mostly Indian and a handful of foreign picnickers just outside the summer capital Srinagar of the Indian administered portion of Kashmir were enjoying themselves and having food and drink, quite abruptly a group of terrorists attacked. These picnickers, separated women and children and then segregated Hindus and Muslims.

And they asked the Hindus to recite certain verses of the Quran which any Muslim would know, but most Hindus don't. And that's how they managed to segregate the men and then proceeded to shoot the men in cold blood. It was an absolutely gruesome, cynical and pitiless massacre and 26 tourists were killed.

A number of locals who were Muslims actually took it upon themselves to shield as many people as they could and carry them away from the reach of the terrorists. Obviously there was a colossal failure in terms of intelligence because the terrorists traversed an area of 150 miles from what is called the Line of Control, which is the de facto international border between India and, and Pakistan in the disputed region of Kashmir.

So the fact that they were able to travel that far into Kashmir, Indian controlled Kashmir, reveals two things. One, clearly there was an intelligence failure and very possibly some connivance from disaffected Kashmiris, because how do you go 150 miles in a heavily militarized area without some shelter, some support from the local population?

In the wake of this attack, Prime Minister Modi, who is a Hindu nationalist, made it abundantly clear that he was going to make Pakistan pay a price for the attack. He announced that these terrorists had been supported by Pakistan, an allegation that Pakistan obviously denies. But it has denied similar accusations in the past when there has been fairly clear cut evidence.

A Pakistan based group called the Resistance Front took responsibility for this attack. And for about a week or so nothing happened on the Indo Pakistani border, though vigilance by the two militaries were dramatically increased. Shortly thereafter, India launched a massive missile strike not only into the disputed areas of Kashmir, but into Pakistan proper.

Furthermore, since the first time since 1971, it also used air power to strike targets within Pakistan, including at an air base which is widely believed to have Pakistan's nuclear command authority. And that I thought was a fairly bold and one could even argue brazen move on the part of India.

The Pakistanis, for their part, retaliated and, and the numbers vary, but the claims go from three to five Indian warplanes were shot down. It is fascinating. I heard the Indian Air Chief Marshal on a television channel where he said, in response to a question from an Indian reporter about the allegations of the planes being shot down, his phraseology was wonderful.

He said, in combat there are always losses. However, all our pilots have returned home safely. Which means that he's conceding some planes were shot down, but they managed to bail out over Indian territory. So technically he's right on both counts.
>> Elizabeth Economy: So I'm guessing from the way that you describe the massive intelligence failure, you're talking about a failure of intelligence on the Indian side.

Is there any cooperation, has there ever been any cooperation between the Pakistani intelligence and the Indian intelligence such that you would think, you know, maybe, you know, if this were truly not in the interest of the Pakistani government and there was no, you know, support. And it doesn't sound like Prime Minister Modi has provided any evidence that the Pakistani government has actually supported.

Supported this. Could there have been sort of some kind of intelligence sharing that could have stopped this from happening, or is that just really not. There's not even that kind of discussion going on.
>> Sumit Ganguly: No. Unlike in the Cold War, when even at the height of the Cold War, the US cooperated with the Soviet Union on a whole range of issues, including, I was just discussing with a colleague the other day over lunch that there was a major agreement on the avoidance of accidents at sea, which held throughout the course.

Cold War. And there was the hotline that was inaugurated after the Cuban Missile Crisis and there were times when a flock of Canadian geese set off a nuclear alert. You know, our colleague here at Stanford, Scott Sagan, has written about these kinds of episodes. And there was a conscious effort on the part of both the US and the Soviet Union to avoid inadvertent escalation, to avoid inadvertent conflict.

There were a series of confidence building measures that were put in place in the 1990s. However, all those have completely frayed over the last two decades. And most particularly after swarming terrorist attack in November 2018, which there is incontrovertible evidence that the group that attacked the city of Bombay had links with the Inter Services Intelligence Directorate of Pakistan.

So whatever little cooperation existed after that has basically simply evaporated.
>> Elizabeth Economy: So one of the reasons that I think the rest of the world became so concerned, not only because of the, you know, sort of senseless loss of life, was because both Pakistan and India are nuclear powers.

And there was, of course, a concern that somehow, you know, this might escalate. You never want to see this kind of conflict in any case, but when you have two nuclear powers with, as you've described, very little sort of political diplomatic engagement that would, you know, enable them to de escalate on their own, you know, this caused quite, quite, I think, a lot of concern globally.

I mean, do you think that there was ever really a risk of some kind of use of nuclear weapons? Could it have escalated, you know, had the United States not stepped in or other nations not stepped in? Is there, Was that a sort of a realistic proposition?
>> Sumit Ganguly: When two countries are implacably at odds and possess nuclear weapons and have fought four wars and endured multiple crises, one would be, it would be extremely sort of Pollyannish to suggest, no, there's no danger of nuclear escalation.

Again, the literature on political science and international relations is replete with discussions of inadvertent escalation. In fact, Barry Posen at MIT wrote an entire book of how a conventional conflict in Europe could escalate to the nuclear level. So that prospect, that shadow was always present. But both sides had compelling incentives not to resort to nuclear weapons or even engage in real nuclear saber rattling because India, nor Pakistan, India nor Pakistan want to be the country that breaks the post Hiroshima nuclear taboo.

That's number one. And second, given the density of populations on both sides of the border, a nuclear exchange would be just devastating. During the height of the Cold War, there were studies done of a simple 1 kiloton airburst over Charlottesville and over Leningrad. This is all in the unclassified domain, mind you, these are both fairly industrial cities in industrialized countries.

The devastation and the human suffering that it would have cost is simply mind boggling to the point. As Sir Michael Howard, the great British military historians once said, perhaps this the survivors will envy the dead.
>> Elizabeth Economy: That is a very powerful statement. So what is at the heart of the conflict?

Actually you mentioned they fought four wars. This has been going on since 1947, establishment of Pakistan. Why, why and why can it not be resolved? I mean those are sound like simplistic questions but I think it's important to understand what's at the heart of all of this.
>> Sumit Ganguly: It's anything but simplistic.

I mean I think this is the critical issue. I've had perfectly intelligent people say there must be vital minerals in Kashmir. And I said well if there are, I certainly am not aware nor have India or Pakistan ever claimed that there have been. There are vital rare minerals in Kashmir.

No, it is not so much about say oil deposits or rare earths and the like. It is much more about the following. It has to do with the time when India and Pakistan were created from the breakup of the British colonial empire from what was called British India.

At that time there were two distinct nationalist movements. One for the creation of Pakistan, which said that the Muslims of South Asia need a homeland because once the British leave a predominantly Hindu population will marginalize and maltreat Muslims and consequently we need our homeland. India on the other hand was built on the principle of secular civic nationalism.

That was the nature of the Indian nationalist movement, that regardless of your ethnicity or linguistic background, your religious background, you can thrive under the aegis of a secular democratic plural state. And the commitment to this was quite genuine. It was not a cosmetic commitment. And Kashmir became an issue because it was a so called princely state.

Now there were 561 others which were nominally independent as long as they recognized Britain as the paramount power. But Lord Mountbatten, the last British Viceroy said well with us leaving the doctrine of paramount sea lapse lapses, so you have a choice of either joining India or Pakistan. And if you're predominantly Muslim and in an adjacent area then you will go to Pakistan and if you're, and if you're predominantly Hindu you will go, go to India.

There were a handful of anomalies where for example there was the state called Hyderabad deep inside India where the monarch was Muslim, the population predominantly Hindu and he wanted a Berlin corridor and India said, dream on. That's not going to happen.
>> Elizabeth Economy: Right.
>> Sumit Ganguly: You're deep inside the Indian territory.

You're going to join us. And it's to Prime Minister Nehru's credit that there was a princely ruler within Pakistan who wanted to join India. And Nehru said, I'm terribly sorry, I'd like to have you. But again, there's this problem. You're nowhere near the border. Kashmir posed a peculiar problem.

It had a Hindu monarch who was quite autocratic, who had mistreated his Muslim peasantry very badly. But the, it had a predominantly Muslim population and it abated both India and Pakistan. And there was a contradiction in British policy. On the one hand, predominantly Muslim areas would go to Pakistan, but the monarchs also had the final word.

So this is an inherent tension here and the monarch in this case, Maharaja Hari Singh, didn't want to join either India or Pakistan. He didn't want to join India because he didn't want to give up his vast landed estates and there would be land reform in India. He didn't want to join Pakistan because he had treated his Muslim subjects badly and he thought he could have this Switzerland of Asia and thrive on tourism and apples and apricots.

Fruits grow in abundance in Kashmir. I've been there as a tourist and I mean you literally stop by a highway and you can shake a tree and you can get a harvest of apricots.
>> Elizabeth Economy: Sounds amazing.
>> Sumit Ganguly: It's an amazing place. So he thought he could thrive on this.

And when the Pakistanis forced his hand in that, they sent in troops disguised as disgruntled tribals and attacked his realm. And very soon they had reached the borders of, not the borders, the outskirts of Srinagar, the capital where the maharaja was. And in a panic he appealed to India.

India agreed to provide assistance if two conditions were met. One, he would have to sign the instrument of accession legality. But Nehru, being a democrat with a small D, said I will only accept this if a man called Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah, who is the leader of the largest popular organization in the state which incorporates both Hindus and Muslims, only if Abdullah grants his imprimatur to the accession so legitimacy.

And Abdullah said, I do not wish to live in a country founded on religion and furthermore, this is my homeland. And so yes, once he got that from Abdullah, he accepts the instrument of accession, sends in troops, but not before Pakistan has carved out one third of the state and India two thirds of the state.

And it's pretty much remained the same. There have been virtually no territorial adjustments, despite three wars and multiple crises. Today it is not about the identities of these two states. Pakistan lost more than half of its territory in 1971 when in a war with India. And why did it break away the East Pakistan, which is Bangladesh today, largely on the basis of linguistic nationalism, because Pakistan had imposed a one language formula which was unacceptable to the Bengali population in East Pakistan and ultimately led to linguistic subnationalism and then a military crackdown and then Indian intervention leading to the creation of Bangladesh.

So if religion alone could not make Pakistan cohere, clearly that could not be the basis of, of nation building. By the same token, one would be hard pressed to say with a straight face that India today is a secular state.
>> Elizabeth Economy: Okay, that was a tour de force.

>> Sumit Ganguly: Thank you.
>> Elizabeth Economy: Thank you. Shamit, I think you just took, I don't know how many books you've written, maybe 20 or more, and gave us the best, the best narrative and tutorial through many of them. No doubt. That was just superb. So let me ask you then, now let's zoom out a little bit and talk about how this conflict has played into or played out in a broader geostrategic space.

So one of the narratives that has come out of this conflict has been around the military hardware. That was used by India and used by Pakistan. And Pakistan of course was relying to some extent on Chinese military equipment. Whereas India, I think had some Western equipment, maybe some French, maybe some American.

And I think a lot of media commentators basically said Pakistan emerged as the more successful in this dog fight. Is that your assessment? Does it tell us something about the state of play of Chinese, you know, military equipment? That should surprise us.
>> Sumit Ganguly: Prima facie that seems to be the case, however, I talked to a colleague of ours who will remain unnamed because I don't have permission to quote him, explained to me that yes, if those five planes were downed, that's a serious setback.

But apparently Western militaries, when they carry out air sorties like this and penetration into someone else's adversaries airspace also have an entire suite of planes accompanying the fighters with electronic jamming equipment, which makes it exceedingly difficult for an adversary's aircraft A to intercept them and B, also to protect them from incoming missiles.

He said, I honestly don't know if the Indian air force has that capability. The last time India used air Power was 1999, but it was carefully confined to airspace with Indian airspace with firing missiles into Pakistani controlled territory in Kashmir, the heartland of Pakistan, was not attacked this time.

The planes flew into the Pakistani heartland. So yes, the Chinese, I think it's called the JC17 Thunder, obviously is a capable aircraft, but I think its capabilities might be exaggerated owing to the lack of this envelope that the Indian Air force may not have had to protect their fighter planes.

But nevertheless this will bear considerable scrutiny. I can imagine Jane's Defense Weekly going haywire in the next few weeks, carefully scrutinizing every skirmish, air skirmish, and dog fight.
>> Elizabeth Economy: Right. And presumably they'll have a better sense over time about exactly what capabilities the Indians did bring to. Did bring to the fight, did bring to bear.

>> Sumit Ganguly: Yes.
>> Elizabeth Economy: And what about the broader sort of geostrategic landscape in terms of how, I mean, not only China and the United States, but Russia might play into all of this? What are the interests, as you would see them, of the great powers in. In this conflict?

I mean, it's a little bit complicated. Right, because India has for a long time been very, you know, closely aligned with Russia. It is now a much stronger. Become a much stronger partner of the United States, has its own territorial conflict with China that has recently, you know, quieted down.

And Pakistan, for its part, I think, continues to get some military equipment from the United States, nonetheless has become much more closely tied to China. How do you understand the kind of geostrategic gamesmanship around all of this?
>> Sumit Ganguly: Yeah, a lot of this will become clearer in the next weeks and months ahead.

But since a MiG 29 was shot down, and it is also believed that a Russian Sukhoi 30, which is a fairly sophisticated aircraft, was shot down, though we don't have independent confirmation thereof, we do know that the MiG was shot down, the MiG 29 was shot down. However, the Russian S400 surface to air missiles apparently performed extremely well, even based upon, say, accounts in the Financial Times or by Reuters, which don't have a dog in this fight.

So I suspect that the Indians will now think long and hard about their continued reliance on Russian military technology, particularly aviation technology, and will fret about Chinese capabilities along its northern borders, which it has been beefing up lately. But now I think the Indians will take the Chinese, the People's Liberation Army, Air Force, much more seriously, because there was a time a couple of decades ago when the Indians had superior aircraft, mostly Western, purchased from abroad, but just qualitatively superior aircraft.

But now, with the Chinese building bases in Tibet and with the performance of these aircraft that the Pakistanis used from China, it'll give the Indians pause about a lot of their Russian and Soviet equipment. And obviously Western militaries will carefully analyze how, say, the Indian Raphael performed. Not the Indian, but the French Rafael, which the Indians had recently bought, performed, which was part of the mix in these dogfights and this recent thaw that you referred to with China, the Indians will have to give it considerable thought because the thaw, as I have argued, is merely a pause.

It's not something that. It does not mean that the central border dispute has somehow miraculously been shelved or Put aside, it's merely a pause as China deals with, you know, economic disruption, which was happening anyway. The, the tariff war with the United States having other fish to fry like Taiwan and various other bottlenecks in the Chinese economy behooved China to try and sort of settle the border with India.

But the, the centrality of the dispute just hasn't gone away. And consequently the Indians will have to think long and hard about how it deals with China and an adversary that is basically in hawk to China. Between cpec, the, the China Pakistan Economic Corridor.
>> Elizabeth Economy: Yeah.
>> Sumit Ganguly: And its deep reliance on Chinese weaponry and an implacable adversary.

The Indians will have to do some serious recalculation and hope that like previous administrations, despite the mercurial nature of the Trump administration, that it will proved to be at least somewhat steadfast.
>> Elizabeth Economy: Yeah, I mean, I do think President Trump has seemed to relate well to Prime Minister Modi.

>> Sumit Ganguly: So far.
>> Elizabeth Economy: So far. And, you know, certainly in the first Trump administration, I think the quad, you know, India, the United States, Australia and Japan, that relationship was actually bolstered, you know, in contrast to the relationship between the United States and the European, our European allies.

For I think, a set of reasons, some of which have to do with sort of China. I think the United States actually placed, the Trump administration placed a higher priority on strengthening our relations with our allies and partners in Asia and India. It was an important, I think a very important component of that effort.

And I imagine that that will continue. I think if we look at the early visits of, you know, Secretary Hexseth and meetings with Secretary Rubio and, you know, former National Security Adviser Waltz, a lot of importance was placed on the countries in the Indo Pacific and the relationship with the United States.

So, I mean, I take your point about the mercurial nature of the, the president and the administration writ large, but I do think we've seen at least some initial signs of continuity from the first Trump administration. Bode well. And I mean, it hasn't materialized, but I think early on there was the sense that India might be one of the first countries to end up doing a trade deal with the United States.

I don't know if you have any insight into where that stands. I haven't heard much about it recently.
>> Sumit Ganguly: Everything you have said is correct up to this point. Trump has significantly muddied the waters in India by offering to mediate an end to the conflict. This is the last thing the Indians want to hear.

They have a staunch opposition to third party mediation. And this goes back to their unhappy experience at the United nations in 1947, 48, when they took the case, the Kashmir case, to the United nations, not as, not invoking the inherent right of self defense, but as a breach of international peace and security.

And they made fundamentally legalistic arguments, not political arguments. And Pakistan turned the whole issue on its head, playing the victim that it's really we who are much smaller, who are the victims of Indian aggression. And completely dispensed with the legal arguments. And the Indians kept hammering away at the legal arguments and they basically lost.

And they've never forgotten that experience. And consequently, they remain extremely hostile to the idea of third party intervention. And Rubio, Secretary of State Marco Rubio muddied the waters even further by saying, we can meet in a neutral place to discuss this. And this just raised the hackles of the Indians.

And a good friend of mine was saying that I think now the trade deal is in abeyance. The Indians are so angry with Trump and Rubio, even though they are not publicly stating this, but they are livid. And making a trade deal at this point would, there would be the audience costs in India would be much too high.

>> Elizabeth Economy: That is fascinating. I mean, it helps explain, I think, why when the de escalation took place and Pakistan said, yes, thank you to the United States for intervening, and India remained silent. And then, you know, President Trump, I mean, talk about muddying the waters. I think maybe worse than that.

Apparently he said something about, yes, I promised, you know, trade or you're going to get no trade. And that's what brought them, what brought the deal together. So I guess he probably brought two things together that made India extremely upset. The threat of, you know, no trade and the fact that the United States interceded in the conflict in a way that India did not appreciate.

Let me just ask you on that front, then, you know, whether or not you think India transmitted that to the Trump administration in advance of the Trump administration's efforts. So did they go into it knowing that this was not welcomed by India, or did they go into it not realizing that?

Because I think that says two very different things about the administration, the U.S. administration.
>> Sumit Ganguly: The tragic part is that there is no ambassador in New Delhi. There's just a DCM who's a career Foreign Service officer. And dcms, as you know, have limited authority, particularly in the present administration, which is skeptical of the State Department to begin with.

Second, there is no Assistant Secretary for State for south and Central Asia. The person is still awaiting confirmation hearings, let alone confirmation. There is a Senior Director for South Asia on the nsc, but there is no NSC director. Secretary Rubio is wearing that hat.
>> Elizabeth Economy: Right.
>> Sumit Ganguly: Trump also made a statement which revealed his extraordinary ignorance of the region, which has all the Indians laughing with various memes on social media, namely that the Indians and Pakistanis have been fighting each other for thousands of years.

>> Elizabeth Economy: Dear.
>> Sumit Ganguly: Need I say more? There was no India or Pakistan.
>> Elizabeth Economy: Right.
>> Sumit Ganguly: At present political formations until the 14th and 15th of August 1947.
>> Elizabeth Economy: Yeah, you need, you need not say anymore, Shamit, but what I need to say is thank you very much and it sounds like there is a an excellent opening for an ambassador, US Ambassador to India that you could fill and that maybe we would be well served by having you or certainly someone of your caliber and deep expertise helping to helping everyone understand both India and the complex dynamics in the region and how best the US And India can work together.

Because it sounds like this is not a problem that's going away and US Needs your kind of expertise to be able to navigate it, I think in a useful way moving forward. So thank you for taking the time to speak with all of us and help us understand this really complicated and but fascinating set of issues.

>> Sumit Ganguly: Thank you for this opportunity and particularly for the time. Because normally in a conventional radio interview, one has to explain all this in less than 10 minutes and one can barely scratch the surface. Unlike in this podcast where you have given me ample opportunity to carefully delineate the complexity of this issue.

>> Elizabeth Economy: Well, you did it in a really fascinating way, so I'm sure that all of our listeners are going to benefit from hearing you. If you enjoyed this podcast and want to hear more reasoned discourse and debate on China, I encourage you to subscribe to China Considered via the Hoover Institution website, YouTube channel, or podcast platform of your choice.

On our next episode of China Considered, we will explore a different geopolitical conundrum and we will hear from former US ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, who will share his thoughts on the Russia-China relationship.