Angry Planet - How the U.S. got caught between two nuclear neighbors

Episode Date: August 11, 2016

It's a situation where the United States has interesting choices to make. India and Pakistan are often at each other's throats. Both want U.S. support. Both are allies of necessity for the United States. Both have nuclear weapons.This week on War College we look at a delicate balancing act, where diplomatic failure by the United States could have deadly repercussions for millions.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast? Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. The opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the participants, not of Reuters' News. This is the kind of scenario that certainly here in Washington, policymakers do think about and consider to be probably as one of the most likely ways you could see two nuclear powers, actually go to war in the near future.

It's a situation where the United States has interesting choices to make. India and Pakistan are often at each other's throats. Both want U.S. support. Both are allies of necessity for the U.S. And both have nuclear weapons. This week on War College, we look at a delicate balancing act where diplomatic failure by the U.S. could have deadly repercussions for millions. You're listening to War College, a weekly discussion of a world in conflict focusing on the stories behind the front lines.

Here's your host, Jason Fields. Hello and welcome to War College. I'm Jason Fields with Reuters. And I'm Matthew Galt with Wars Boren. Today we're talking with Daniel Markey. He's a senior research professor at Johns Hopkins University and an expert on Pakistan and India. So Daniel, thank you so much for joining us. That's my pleasure.

So in a way, we were bound to come around to India and Pakistan. Matt and I have been talking with people about various flashpoints around the world, places like the South China Sea, the Middle East, over and over again, and along with Eastern Europe. So we have not talked, though, about India and Pakistan, where there's a history of conflict and neighbors that have nuclear weapons. So Daniel, can you just tell us a little bit about what makes the situation so dangerous there? Sure. I mean, here you've got two countries that have gone to war multiple times over their history, really born out of the British Empire, partition in 1947. Both of them continue to, in many ways, see the other as a real threat. Pakistan sees India's sort of a dominant neighbor, hegemonic power in the neighborhood that would like to call the shots for Pakistan as well.

India sees Pakistan as a promoter of regional terrorism, of violence inside of India and elsewhere in Afghanistan as a barrier to India's regional aspirations and specifically to its access to Central Asia. So they continue to have hostilities and are likely to into the future. and both of them, over the past couple of decades, have become nuclear-armed powers, which has injected a new degree of threat to, of escalation to anything that happens between them. And then as if that weren't enough, they both have a contested territory, that is the former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, of which each owns pieces of, or actually administers pieces of, and claims all of.

And so when you put all of these things together, you have a clear recipe for a potential disaster. In recent years, what you've seen is the repeated threat of war sparked by most likely sort of Pakistan-based terrorist organization launching an attack inside of India and India choosing to launch retaliatory strikes into Pakistan. And this is the kind of scenario that certainly here in Washington policymakers do think about and consider to be, if not necessarily likely, at least quite plausible. And the sort of thing that probably is one of the most likely ways you could see two nuclear powers actually go to war in the near future. Has anything like that happened yet?

Have any Pakistan-based terrorist organizations launched attacks in India? Oh, absolutely. And they do on a regular basis at a low level, if you consider cross-border infiltration into Indian, parts of Kashmir, if you consider the November 2008 attack that took place in Mumbai that was launched by Pakistan-based group Lashkar-aiba, which killed 166 people, including six Americans. Going back to 2001-2002, December of that year, so we had our 9-11. Well, India suffered a really nearly catastrophic attack by Pakistan-based terrorists on its parliament. So this is, I wouldn't say routine, but this is the sort of thing that happens with some regularity.

And each time there's been a question as to how exactly India will respond. And how have they been responding so far? By and large, the Indian response has been more restrained than many other states might react. India has yet, in the past couple of decades, to respond with outright attacks on Pakistani territory. In 2001, 2002, for instance, there was a mass mobilization of both sides, on both sides of the border. And in 2008, you saw India press right up to the border. There were concerns in Pakistan that you might see punitive strikes across the border. In more recent years, you've seen shelling resume across what's called the line of control

that bounds the Indian part of Kashmir from the Pakistani part of Kashmir. You've seen shelling across that border. In some cases, has resulted in civilian casualties. But you haven't yet seen India, at least since about 1999, when you saw the Cargill war or crisis, depending on how you define it. Since then, you haven't actually seen a spike in violence that would amount to a real war. So can we talk a little bit about Kashmir? because that is probably the ultimate flashpoint, right? I mean, population is largely Muslim?

Is that correct? Am I remembering right? Right. So the thing about Kashmir, I'd make two points right off the bat. One is, you know, in some ways you can say it's the flashpoint. It's kind of like talking about, say, Jerusalem in the Middle East conflict. You can talk about it as being the center of many of the conflicts between the different parties. But in other ways, also like Jerusalem, it's not the,

from my perspective, it's not the conflict. There's a broader conflict. There are bigger questions about the hostility between India and Pakistan. And so even if Kashmir were somehow resolved, that wouldn't necessarily resolve the wider issue. So resolving it doesn't solve everything. And it's not the cause of all of the concerns. Beyond that, in terms of understanding the conflict within Kashmir, you have multiple different populations. But the population of Muslims, and particularly in area around Shrinagar is the one where you've seen the greatest challenge to the Indian state. That is, you have a Muslim majority in that part of Kashmir that has not historically fully been eager to accept Indian rule. And in some cases, the people of that area have

pushed for greater autonomy. In some ways, they've sought independence. And in some instances, some of them suggest that they'd be better off as a part of Pakistan. So that that's a That's probably the heart of the political contest in Kashmir. Does the U.S. have a side that it particularly favors in this conflict? Well, the United States has, over the years, effectively come down with some diplomatic language that it uses whenever it talks about the Kashmir issue or dispute. It tends to talk about how it wants to see a resolution to the dispute on terms that are acceptable to India, to Pakistan, and to the people of Kashmir themselves. So basically the answer is

the United States doesn't much care how the issue is solved, but would like to see it solved, and, you know, has no particular dog in the fight over who gets what, as long as everybody were somehow marginally happy. And the U.S. relationship here is very interesting one as well, right? I mean, in that we have a military relationship with both India and Pakistan. We have trade relationships with both India and Pakistan, right? Correct. And what's emerged really in the, say, aftermath of 9-11 is that the United States has tried to pursue independent and decent working relationships with both India and Pakistan. So it's not just military relations. I mean, we have a full spectrum of diplomatic relations with both sides. And in shorthand, this has been

often referred to as a strategy of de-hyphenation. That is, we want to de-hyphenate the Indo-Pakistani or India-Pakistan conflict. We want to deal with India on its terms. We want to deal with Pakistan on its terms. And both the Bush administration and the Obama administration have struggled to do this, because, of course, neither India nor Pakistan can possibly see our relationships, that is, U.S. relations with the other, and in terms other than in a hyphenated fashion. So it's a tough agenda. but it's probably the right one because what we've wanted to do with Pakistan has had a lot to do with a war in Afghanistan,

with counterterrorism agenda and so on. What we wanted to do with India has a lot to do with regional and global geopolitics in many ways related to China. These two things are not necessarily similar in many ways they're quite distinct. And so it's been right to try to pursue both simultaneously. Is ever any tension there?

Has anyone ever kind of tried to push America into choosing a side? Yeah, both India and Pakistan would love to get us to pick sides, as long as it's their side. Both of them, and particularly Pakistan, have at different times thought that it might be useful to have the United States weigh in on their side in one way or another. So Pakistan tends to come to the United States seeking assistance on Kashmir-related diplomacy. I think there are some in Pakistan who believed that the United States would force India as the bigger power to be magnanimous in a settlement with Pakistan. And so they've hoped that by suggesting all of the risks associated with India-Pakistan crisis and conflict, they can get Washington to weigh in

and push the Indians to kind of move toward a better deal that would suit Pakistan's interests. On the other side, India has, I think, gotten increasingly savvy at France. framing its disputes with Pakistan in terms that Americans really understand, that is, being victims of terrorism, recognizing the sort of Islamist terrorist aspect to their fight with Pakistan, to playing up Pakistan as a state sponsor of terrorism, and in doing so to suggest that India is, of course, America's natural partner. So both sides certainly work to lobby us. And this This is in some ways an argument for why the United States ought to stay out of a direct mediating role between India and Pakistan on issues like Kashmir.

Because what tends to happen and what's happened on the occasions when Washington has tried it is that both sides tend to want to play us and do a lot less to talk to one another. And when we stand back from direct diplomatic mediation, in some cases, the Indians and the Pakistanis tend to actually talk to each other directly more. And so I'd say the consensus view in Washington right now is more facilitation, less mediation. That is, we're happy to be helpful if we can. But you guys really need to talk about these issues yourselves. So it seems like the more often we get involved, we become the thing that they're fighting over instead of actually talking to each other? Yeah, they want to play us against the other side. Think about sides to a

triangle, the two sides playing against the third. And we don't need to be in that role. It hasn't worked especially well. You know, there are some people, though, who think that, you know, because the United States is not the only outside power with an interest in seeing a resolution to the India-Pakistan dispute. And increasingly, China is sometimes seen as an outside player that actually would benefit from stability in South Asia and less potential for violence or even war between India and Pakistan, that if you were to get the United States and China involved in more of almost a quadrilateral dialogue, that you might actually get enough outside pressure to see India and Pakistan move toward more realistic settlement. I'm still skeptical about that, but I think it's worth at least entertaining.

Well, it's been interesting also over the last 20 years or so watching how relations have warmed and cooled between India and Pakistan. in. And I've often wondered exactly what triggers one or the other when Narendra Modi, who is the current prime minister, was sworn in, didn't his Pakistani counterpart actually show up for the ceremony, or at least was invited? Well, so, yes, Noir-Sherif did show up for the inaugural ceremony. This was hailed as a positive step, pretty much by everybody, and it was. Unfortunately, it wasn't followed by much in the way of substance. And part of the reason for that, I think, is widely recognized, is that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and, in fact, the rest of the civilian government in Pakistan, for practical purposes, does not own either defense policy or foreign policy, and

really doesn't own Kashmir policy or India policy. It's the military that owns it. And what you haven't seen in Pakistan is a military leadership that's actually on board with a settlement with India or even advancing the prospects of the settlement. And unfortunately, what I perceive, at least over the past, say, six months or so, is a Pakistan that is remarkably wedded to what I see as pretty old-fashioned views about India and about Kashmir is, in fact, retreating on these issues from any kind of a progress or a breakthrough with India. And it's disappointing because in, you know, in the mid-200, early-year,

In 2000s you saw then the head of Pakistan's military, that is President Musharraf, who was also the president, actually pushing forward on a diplomatic agenda with India that looked like it got pretty far in terms of willing to make concessions and willing to make concessions that the Indians were willing to talk about. And now you see a Pakistani military that's talking about things that they hadn't been talking about since the mid-80s and 90s, having a plebiscite, sort of requiring a kind of requiring this to be brought, that is Kashmir to be brought to, an international mediation, and talking about India in very hostile and negative ways. It leads you to wonder whether, you know,

we're really making any progress at all. And from what I can tell, I think the answer is no. You just, Daniel, you just touched on something I want you to elaborate on a little bit, if you can. The role of the Pakistani military in Pakistan's policy decisions, if you could explain that a little bit more to us? Yeah, of course. So the Pakistani military has almost at every point in Pakistan's history been the dominant political actor in the country. It is the most powerful national institution. It has nearly always, except for brief periods in the 1970s, you might argue it had a couple of other periods where it's ceded more authority to the civilians, but by and large, it's been able to set its own budgets, run itself, force civilians

to make decisions about its leaders that are acceptable to it as an institution. It's defended its prerogatives. It owns parts of the Pakistani economy, parts of its industry. So it is the powerful institution. And sometimes here in the United States, people have heard about the Pakistani Intelligence Service, the ISI. Sometimes it's referred to here as a rogue agency or an out-of-control agency or running its own agenda. The reality is the ISI is also a part of the military, and is very much a part of the military.

It is not a rogue from the military. And many of those who staff the ISI are military officers, in fact. So you put the ISI and the Army and the Navy and the Air Force and so on together is one package and you have a very powerful entity, to which most civilians, including the current government, government have to kowtow. They have to find space where the army will allow them to run things. And that space has gotten more and more constrained over the period that the current prime minister, that is Nooshiref, has been in office, to the point that one would say that he owns some degree of control over policy related to the domestic economy and some degree of other

kind of purely domestic-related projects, that is infrastructure, power, that kind of thing, where the Army has chosen to stay out. But in almost every other area, the Army dominates, and that's likely to continue to be the case. Well, if we could talk about the ISI for a moment, there are actually really two strands that would be good to get to. But the ISI is something that people may or may not know that ISI has been at least blamed for helping Taliban in Afghanistan, and even had some attachment to al-Qaeda, or at least there's... Historically, absolutely, yes. So, I mean, we're talking about a group that I know exactly what you're talking about.

Daniel, when you talk about our reporting, reporting by the federal government here in the United States, often says that it's a rogue agency, or at least sort of hints that way. And so it's interesting to hear that, you know, at least that, you know, at least that. that's not your view. So that puts the Pakistani government directly opposed in the case like the Taliban or the al-Qaeda to U.S. interests. So I just if you could, I mean, I know that it's a very complex situation. But is it as simple as political expediency that the United States treats Pakistan as, you know, almost, I mean, as a regular country and has relations on a number different fronts? Or is it actually something it just seems like it's such a awkward position

for the U.S. to be put in? Absolutely, yeah. Well, this is the heart of the matter. And, you know, to start by putting it in sort of simple terms, there are a lot of countries. I can think about Saudi Arabia and others with whom we have sharp differences of opinion, even deep, fundamental differences of interest, and yet we still treat as friends and partners in other areas. And And I think that's the only way that you can possibly begin to understand the nature of our relationship with Pakistan. This isn't to justify it or to excuse it, but to suggest that in certain areas, we agree with the Pakistanis and we benefit from a cooperative relationship. And in other areas, we completely disagree with them. And in some of those areas, it's gotten to the point at times where they have literally been working with,

that's sponsoring, giving safe haven to individuals and groups who have killed U.S. citizens, U.S. forces in Afghanistan. So we are both with them and against them and both simultaneously. I guess the way to try to get to a little bit more through a little more of the complexity is to suggest that, you know, really it's historically rooted. After 9-11, we were looking for a way back into Afghanistan. We were hoping that there would be opportunities to partner with Pakistan, both specifically in the fight against al-Qaeda, and then more generally in the war effort in Afghanistan.

And I think the view in Washington was, yes, of course, we knew that the Pakistanis had been more or less on the side of the Taliban. We knew that they had done all too little in the fight against al-Qaeda, and we were hoping to kind of bring them along in a positive way through inducements, some coercion, that is, immediately after a 9-11, effectively threatening them, either they're with us or they're against us. They chose to be with us. We got partial with us. We got some help in some very important ways, rounding up some of the top al-Qaeda leaders responsible for 9-11, college Sheikh Mohammed and others. We got some, a lot less help. Taliban dispersing through Afghanistan into

Pakistan's tribal areas, other parts of al-Qaeda doing the same. And of course, Osama bin Laden end up in Pakistan. So this is the signal example of ways that Pakistan has been less helpful to us than we would like. And these differences persist. So to make a long story short, you know, we do things one day we will send a drone into Pakistani airspace, kill the chief of the Taliban, and the Pakistanis will complain. And then weeks later, we'll send a drone into Pakistani airspace and kill a militant who is currently at war with the state of Pakistan, and the Pakistanis won't complain. We're with them and against them. They're with us and against us. It's ugly. It's messy. I think the only thing that would be worse than this is there are

probably two things. One for us to lie to ourselves about what this reality is, to try to make it simpler than it really is. It really is this ugly. It really is this messy, this gray. This is not black and white. And the other thing that would probably be worse is if we made them solely enemies. If by our actions we chose to forego some of the narrow benefits of working with them and treated them as pure adversaries, that would probably end up being more costly to us than the current messy state of affairs that we already have. And how does the nuclear situation feature into that? But when you talk about Pakistan nuclear arsenal, also the concern about where those warheads are going to end up.

More so than any conversation I can ever hear since the fall of the Soviet Union, where that was a major concern, was that, you know, where would the weapons end up. So how does that complicate the relationship? How unhappy is it is the United States that Pakistan has the bomb? Right. You know, and how is the U.S. trying to deal with the fact that Pakistan has the bomb? Well, you know, we spent a couple of decades, basically, from the 70s through the 90s, hoping to keep the Pakistanis from getting a nuclear capability. We've now reached a stage where, you know, we're well past that.

They have nuclear arsenal, an expanding nuclear arsenal, which includes small tactical nuclear warheads, which many policymakers in Washington are particularly worried about their potential to be used on the battlefield, the potential that you would lose control of them, the possibility that they would get into the wrong hands. And you have, as you put it, you know, you have the wider concern about the Pakistani nuclear program. Even some amount of radiological material could easily create a dirty bomb, that kind of thing. This is a real nightmare type situation. And that takes me back to the point that I was making earlier, that, you know, worse than the Pakistan of today, which is sometimes our friend and sometime our enemy would be the Pakistan of tomorrow, entirely our enemy,

and looking to use its nuclear arsenal all to bad purposes. In terms of our thinking on its safety and security, it's hard to be terribly confident, but one thing we know is the Pakistanis are quite worried about the safety and security of their nuclear program, principally because they don't want us to steal it, and they don't want the Indians to steal it. And the current Pakistani military, I would submit, would really not like to see these capabilities fall into even more extreme hands. That is, people who we'd really identify as terrorists or jihadists, people who would oppose the state of Pakistan, the more modern perspective of the military as nationalistic and often anti-Western and certainly anti-Indian as it is. there is still a distinction between that worldview and the sort of Al-Qaeda worldview.

So they have a strong interest in maintaining the safety and security of their program. They've invested in all kinds of personnel and equipment to try to secure it, and they claim that they're doing a good job. I mean, it's hard for us to judge. Say it's hard to have great confidence, but their incentive structure for securing their program in some ways is the right one. Yeah, there was just one other sort of corollary that I'd like to ask is, are we, is the United States, I should say, I mean, anywhere near is worried about India's nuclear arsenal? I mean, we're, right. I mean, and the reason is because India doesn't have a history of onward proliferation that Pakistan does. I mean, if we remember, the AQCon proliferation network sent plans, bluepcial, physical, middle, that, that does.

necessary for building nuclear capability to places like Libya, to Iran, North Korea. So Pakistan has already done these things, and so that makes us even more skeptical when they suggest that it could never happen again. India, on the other hand, has never done these things. And generally, I think what draws the United States to India is our assessment, possibly a bit naive, but our broad assessment, that as a big, pluralistic, democratic and in some ways basically liberal state, they have an interest in securing their nuclear capability from the same kinds of threats that we would see as threats. So we're broadly in agreement on the types of groups that are dangerous, so we're less worried about what India

might do. People, though, are sort of more technically inclined on the nuclear issue than I am, do worry about India's ability, just the basic level ability to secure its nuclear facilities, to make sure that it's personal, and what they know about is not spread. And so there are some reasons to be worried. It's just a different kind of threat. I guess the last point would be simply, you know, Pakistan is a country where you've got nuclear arsenal in close proximity to literally some of the world's most sophisticated

terrorists. And India is a big country where you've got a nuclear arsenal in less close proximity to those kinds of groups. And so the threat is just simply not quite at the same level. Narendra Modi is a really interesting character. Instead of the secular Congress party that started off Indian history largely, there's now, he's what's known as a Hindu nationalist. And at one point, he was actually banned from traveling to the United States

because of an incident that happened in the state that he governed. It was a dispute over a temple and hundreds of people died, if I remember right. Yeah, Gujarat violence 2002. He was the chief minister, and it's widely seen as, at the very least, being in terms of bringing communal violence down in the aftermath incidents between Hindus and Muslims, and possibly his role was worse than that.

The thing that's happened is that he's been increasingly associated, and he has associated himself, with a reformist agenda, a kind of a pro-business modernization that was wildly popular in the last Indian national election, and is really the reason why he's in office today, not for his connections to Hindu chauvinism and nationalism, and groups like the R.S.S., which is a kind of a cotter-based, pro-Hindu chauvinist organization that's national in scope in which he's a member of, which he came out of, but it's not why, ultimately, why he's in the prime ministership today. And especially in the months, weeks and months after Narendra Modi actually won the election, there was a great deal of concern in Pakistan about what this would mean for the relationship.

He's widely seen as likely to be more hawkish, bellwage about Pakistan during the national election campaign was pretty harsh. So this raised a lot of concerns in Pakistan. You know, what would happen the next time there was some kind of dispute. Would he really fly off the handle, that sort of thing? I know that didn't really happen. He's reacted more harshly in terms of his rhetoric. But when it comes to actual military action, he hasn't done all that much more thessers. And in some ways, now maybe I'm a little bit more sympathetic to the Indian inside. But I think that India, when he came into office, had a strategic need to reassert its deterrent against Pakistan. That is, India needed to demonstrate to Pakistan that if there was

another attack on India, that it would respond harshly. And I think that meant to deliver very effectively by Narendra Modi. And my hope is that it was principally as a strategic move, as a deterrent move rather than some deeply felt animus against Pakistan. And as you mentioned earlier, one of the first things he did when he was inaugurated was he invited all of the heads of state from around the region, including the Prime Minister of Pakistan, to his inaugural. And that was seen as a policy. And he's made a number of other steps, including a stop in Pakistan, you know,

sort of it with the Prime Minister, that suggests that he's open to a dialogue if only Pakistan could possibly see its way through to seeking an opening as well. Well, so I guess a chance of a more peaceful border. Well, I've thought a little bit about this. I mean, you know, the tendency between India and Pakistan, at least, is kind of a tit-for-tat arms race. So if India's going to have drones for surveillance over time, Pakistan will too. And then you have the potential, I think, assuming that the political and diplomatic relationship between the two countries doesn't mature, the potential for a different avenue for cross-border escalation. So no longer would it necessarily be a war started by a Pocan-based terrorist pulling off.

But you could see one side strike the other side's drones and then use drones to attack forces and then you begin to see an escalation path that way. So, yeah, maybe a good news story in the relative near term, that is India's ability to curtail infiltration. But time, it's the politics, gets back to the politics. Any of these technologies can be used in ways that have escalatory potential as well. Well, on that cheerful note, Daniel, I want to thank you very much for joining us today and taking us through some pretty difficult territory. Yes, thank you so much. Yeah, my pleasure.

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