Angry Planet - India and Pakistan: Nuclear Neighbors on the Brink

Episode Date: May 10, 2025

Listen to this episode commercial free at https://angryplanetpod.comRecorded 5/7/25India and Pakistan have been unhappy neighbors since 1947 and Britain’s decolonization of the subcontinent. They’ve fought four wars and there have been countless skirmishes. As Indian jets streak over Pakistani skies and that Muslim nation threatens retaliation, it’s unclear if this is war or just another blip between nations that plain don’t like each other.Joining us is Sushant Singh, a man with a background that includes academic, journalist and 20-year veteran in the Indian army. He’s written an article on the situation in Foreign Affairs, and brings us up to date.The state of play on the morning of May 7thThe Pahalgam attack‘The Switzerland of India’Matthew almost gets everyone into a lot of troubleHow Pakistan creates instability in KashmirThe entire history of the conflict between India and Pakistan in about five minutesChina’s looming presence‘These are non-escaltory strikes’Comparing the militariesGetting into the nuclear optionsPakistan’s tactical nuclear arsenalThe incredible monetary cost of uncertain missile defenseWe go out on a happy note for onceMore than 20 killed after gunmen open fire on tourists in Indian-administered KashmirSupport 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. Hello there, Angry Planet listeners, Matthew here. Just a quick note up at the top. Did you know that Angry Planet is almost entirely listener supported? It's true.

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Again, that's at angryplanetpod.com. Please go ahead and sign up, and without further ado, here is the show. If I was a conspiracy theorist, I would say that Jason was already aware that Indians were going to do it, and that's why you schedule the talk for today. Well, you shouldn't be surprised.

I'm actually not a, you know, I'm more of a clairvoyant than anything else. Yeah, Calcula, I think it's a great quality to have. Anyway, thank you so much for doing this with us. And I guess maybe we should start off by saying, I hope you're going to stay safe. Are you, where are you right now? So I'm in India. I'm in Delhi, India. Welcome to another conversation.

about conflict on an extremely angry planet that just keeps getting angrier. I'm Jason Fields. I'm Matthew Galt. And today we are talking about the, well, it's hard to say, but one of the angriest places on the planet. At least right now. We're talking, at least right now this very minute. We are talking about what's happening between India and Pakistan. And we are worried that they might be on the very brink of war as we record this. So joining us today to take us through the history of this conflict and where we are now is Sushan Singh, author of a terrific article in Foreign Affairs, which is titled India and Pakistan, are perilously close to the brink, which means that you too, Mr. Jers Singh, were clairvoyant.

Would you mind introducing yourself to us? Thank you so much, Matthew. Thank you, Sam, Jason. It's lovely to be, lovely to be on your show. I am a lecturer at Yale University in Salvation Studies and Political Science. I'm a former military officer who served for 20 years in the Indian Army, including many stints in Jammu and Kashmir. I was also a journalist. I was a deputy of an Indian newspaper and I'm currently also a consulting editor with the Caravan magazine in India.

It's a long-form magazine. That is fantastic. That is an amazing resume. I have been a journalist a long time and that's about it. I got nothing else. What aspect this, man. Jason, I'm one of those guys who, you know, dip his finger too many pies. Would you mind starting off? Can we talk about what's happening right now as of about 10 a.m. on a Wednesday.

That's Eastern Standard. 10 a.m. on a Wednesday in the United States, but not... That's right. Eastern daylight. Anyway, yes. Yeah. So, you know, as of now, what has happened is around 17 to 18 hours ago. You know, India targeted nine places inside Pakistan, which it said were terror camps or places where terrorists were being sent to India from. These were essentially mosques or Mothersh, which are Islamic seminaries.

And these places were just not only inside Pakistani Kashmir, but also inside Pakistani mainland, the heartland of Pakistan. in Pakistani Punjab. One of the places that was targeted was Muridke, which is just outside Lahore. Lahore, as you know, is one of the biggest cities of South Asia. And for Indians to go and target them through precision-guided munition, whether

from aircraft or from ground-based platforms, is something which has not been attempted, which has not been done in this region where both India and Pakistan are nuclear-capable states, both possess nuclear weapons in that sense.

It has been a very busy night. It has been a very tough night. The Pakistanis have claimed that they have shot down five Indian aircraft, fighter jets, which were flying on the Indian side, but they have taken them down. The Indian side has been silent about their losses. They have neither accepted them nor denied them. Newspapers like the New York Times and agencies like the Reuters are either claiming two, at least two or three fighter jets

that have crashed or have been brought down on the Indian side. we don't know for sure what those jets are and how did they come down. That's where the situation stands as of now. Well, that's fairly terrifying. How did we get here? What precipitated this? So, you know, the immediate trigger was an incident which took place on 22nd of April where a tourist site in Indian Kashmir,

and Indian Kashmir, as you know, is very popular with Indian tourists. historically has been, it is a beautiful place just like Switzerland. And this particular site in a place called Pahelgam was known as many Switzerland where a lot of Indian tourists used to visit. And on 22nd of April, five gunmen, militants, terrorists, whichever word you want to use, as by your political persuasion, came and identified male Hindu tourists and shot them in cold blood. There were no security personal present at the tourist site, essentially because, because the Indian state had believed that no militant, no armed militant would target the economic lifeline of Kashmir, which is tourism. And also people believe that having gunmen in selfies and pictures and reels doesn't look great for a narrative where you believe normalcy has returned to Kashmir. So all in all, 26 people were killed, including a couple of locals, a local Muslim boy.

who was trying to save lives of lives of others. Women and children were spared and it was a horrifying incident. So many civilians tourists dying on a single day in a single episode has not happened for decades in India and in Kashmir. After that incident

happened, Mr. Mood, Prime Minister Indram Modi and his government said that they would take revenge for it. They would target Pakistan. They blame Pakistan for it. Although they have not formally presented any evidence about it, And after nearly 14 days, we have had this scenario where these nine places inside Pakistan,

which I believe to be terror camps of various terror groups, whether it is Dijeshah, Mohamed, Lashkar-a-Torba, and so on, have been targeted. There's so much background to get to here. We have the overall tensions between India and Pakistan and where they originate from. I think a lot of people aren't really that familiar with the overall tensions. And then, of course, we also have to talk about Kashmir, which is, last few years, has been a huge, huge issue. And Narendra Modi in particular has really cracked down on the territory. But Matthew, what were you going to say? Can you tell us a little bit more about the attackers?

You know, at the beginning of that, that you framed them in such a way that what you, what you, what you, what you believe about them and their motivations depends on your political persuasion, whether or not they're terrorists or freedom fighters. What do we know about the group that actually did the killing? And you also said that there's no evidence that they are directly connected or being ordered by the government of Pakistan. Yeah. So let me clarify this. I didn't say they were their freedom fighters. I said they were militants or gunmen or terrorists. You know, and because this is something which is very controversial in India. you know, India, the Indian government, Mr. Modi's government,

had targeted the BBC for not calling them terrorists and for calling them armed gunmen. So that's why I was very careful with my choice of words at that point. As far as the group which is behind these killings, you know, a very shadowy kind of group called the Resistance Front, which not many people have heard of and which really we don't know who's running that group. Nobody has ever come out publicly with that group claimed responsibility for it. But as massive pushback came from local Kashmiris itself, that group then withdrew its claim, said, you know, no, no, we wrongly claimed it. We didn't do it. It was that kind of a massive pushback from the Kashmiris as to why these killings were done at that point in time.

As per media reports and we only have media reports to go by, there were five killers, three. of them were non-Kashmiris, essentially coming from Pakistan, and two of them were local Kashmiris. And those five men, young men, were behind the death of those 26 men. As far as the Pakistani hand is concerned, you know, this is a slightly nuanced thing. One of the things is to obviously say that the Pakistani government or the Pakistani army chief or the Pakistani intelligence chief has directly passed orders to these five men saying, you guys go and kill, you know, 26 or whatever, killed Indian tourists in Pahelga. That would be like, you know, level 100, 100.

But what people must realize is that the Pakistani security establishment has historically backed these militant groups. In fact, it has created most of the militant groups which operate inside Kashmir. It has backed those groups. It has provided them training. It has provided them support. A lot of young Kashmiri men go and train themselves to become, to handle well. to handle IEDs inside

Pakistan or Pakistani-Pakistani Kashmir. So there is an enabling environment that Pakistan has historically created and that enabling environment plus the kind of logistics support, the military support, the moral support, the diplomatic support,

the political support that Pakistan provides sustains this kind of armed militancy inside Kashmir. So if you see it in that manner, then the Pakistani finger or the shadow of Pakistan, you know, hangs over every single terror act or one of these things where either a large number of security personnel or civilians are killed inside Kashmir.

But if you are looking at very direct fingerprints where I say that the Pakistani army chief, Asim Muni, directly passed orders to these, to these gunmen to go and kill people. That would be very hard to do. So, why? I mean, what is behind this conflict? I mean, why would this group do this? Jason, that would require a whole podcast by itself a few hours. Oh, no, we actually have a bit of time.

That is, we really do. And I think people need to understand. Yeah, so Jason, there are many layers to this conflict. This conflict essentially emerged out of, like many other places and globally, out of when the when colonialism ended. And South Asia, the Indian subcontinent was one of the first places

where British colonial rule ended anywhere in the world outside of Europe, outside of Ireland. 1947, after the Second World War is when the British left India. When the British left India, they divided India into two states, India and Pakistan. Some of the princely states, there were more than 600 princely states, which were not directly under the British rule,

but were kind of semi-autonomous in a sense. These princely states had a choice to either join India or join Pakistan and in theory also had a choice and option to remain independent. Kashmir was one of the biggest states in India at that point in time. It was a Muslim majority state run by a Hindu king, which made it up, you know, kind of a very typical kind of a thing, and it was geographically located at a place where it was both close to India and to Pakistan. The king at that point in time in Kashmir wanted to,

to be independent. He thought of himself as running a Switzerland kind of a thing. He didn't want to join either India or Pakistan. Now, as you know, Pakistan was formed as a homeland for Muslims of South Asia, whereas India was formed at the time as a secular country where people of all persuasion could stay. India still has 14% Muslims, India has Christian Sikhs, all kinds of people, whereas Pakistan is 99. Something something percent Muslim at that point in time. Kashmir being Muslim majority, Pakistan was very keen that Kashmir becomes part of Pakistan, because it's a Muslim majority region, and that logically should come to us because we are for all Muslims of South Asia. For India, it was extremely important that Kashmir comes to India because that allows India to showcase its secularism,

that you can have a Muslim majority region, which is also part of India. At that point in time, the Hindu king, and now the controversy is because it's a Hindu king, the most popular Muslim leader was also pro-India called Sheikh Abdullah at that point in time, because he was a progressive, almost proto-communist kind of a leader, who didn't want to go with the Islamists. So he wanted to join India. With the king also being there and the local most popular Muslim leader also wanting to join India, they chose to join India after Pakistan sent something called the tribals to try and capture Kashmir and try and push Kashmir. Then the Indian army walked into Kashmir after the king signed the agreement with India.

And there was a fighting between the Indian and the Pakistani army in 1948. Unless until India took the case to the United Nations, when there was a ceasefire sign. after year. One third of Kashmir then got to Pakistan and two thirds of Kashmir remained with India. A part of that princely state on the other side is with China because it borders China's Tibet province and the Xinjiang province. But broadly speaking, the most beautiful part of Kashmir, the most fertile part of Kashmir, the Kashmir valley is largely with India. Since then the crisis has stayed in Kashmir. Of course, India has misandled Kashmir. to a great extent. It did not deal with it properly.

There have been large number of political grievances which have not been resolved. There have been a lot of other issues that have emerged out of Kashmir, the way India has dealt with Kashmiri leaders, with Kashmiri politicians and the whole idea whether India wants the Kashmiri people or the Kashmiri land or wants them both. So there was a lot of these issues which were

taking place. There was a lot of discontent in Kashmir, which was already there. And once the Soviet Union, walked out of Afghanistan in which Pakistan played a very important role and learned from the CIA how to conduct an insurgency which could defeat a superpower at that point in time. Once the Soviet Union walked out of Afghanistan, Pakistan turned its tactics towards Kashmir. And in the late 1980s, 87, 88, 89, 90 onwards, militancy really went up in Kashmir, supported fully by Pakistan. There were years close to the year 2000 at the turn of the century

when more than 3,000, 4,000 people were being killed every year. It was almost like what you saw in Iraq and Afghanistan. I served in Kashmir in the early 90s. It was not like what it is now. And so the militancy increased, the Indian security presence increased. India tried to ensure that the militants or the armed insurgency does not have an upper hand. And meanwhile, there were some democratic processes, the processes which were on. Till the time in 2014, Mr. Modi, who's a Hindu nationalist leader, very different from what his predecessors historically have been came, and made it pretty clear that as a Hindu first kind of an ideology, he's not going to accept any of this, you know, that we need to win over Muslims and we need to take care of the Kashmiris.

That has been almost an indirect message or almost a direct message from his ministers, but a more subtle message from him that has come. In 2019, he took away some of the special provisions that Kashmir had historically had since 1948 when it decided to merge with India, when it chose to come with India. And that caused a lot of anguish, a lot of anger. For more than 100 days, there was no internet in Kashmir. There was a large number of security personnel. There was a lot of arrests. And the very high-handed nature of the Indian state in Kashmir, even in the recent years, has caused a lot of turmoil, caused a lot of anger. anguish. Although tourism has increased because violence has come down, Pakistan has its own

sets of problems. So violence has come down, tourism has increased, but political grievances have not been resolved. And Pakistan still cover its Kashmir. Pakistani army chief just a few days, a week or so prior to the Pheelgam terror attack where 26 Indians were killed. He went on and said that Kashmir is our jagulah vain and we will make sure that Kashmir comes to us. So Pakistan still covets Kashmir. Indians don't want to give us. Indians don't want to give or Kashmir at any cost. And because of this history, the whole Hindu-Muslim angle, the land angle, the idea of the two countries, the founding ideologies of these two countries, the security challenge, the strategic challenge, all that comes into play. There are so many layers. There is the

layer of this whole water resources that are being shared between the two countries. There are just too many layers and it is very, very difficult to unpeel those layers or to resolve them or to align them and and resolve them in a very simple manner. Okay, you said that was complex. I just want to quickly say that was incredibly complex. Well, it was also very efficiently done. Yes. What you just did there. Thank you for that. Can I throw another complex layer in here then? And as I'm wondering about it. This is something that we've covered on the show before. What's China doing? right now during all of this.

China is negotiating with the United States over tariffs. That's what China is doing. So not looking at Kashmir at all then right now. No, no. So China has a very serious strategic interest in Pakistani Kashmir. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, which is the showpiece BRI project of Xi Jinping, passes through Pakistani Kashmir, the part of the Pakistani-Kashmir. the part of Kashmir, which Pakistan administers,

China has very important strategic interest in that region. It is through that region that Pakistan and China can formally trade. That is the main lifeline that they have, which passes through that region, and China is invested there. Moreover, China has also invested. China has also been very aggressive on the other side of Kashmir, what is known as Eastern Ladakh, where in 2020, Indian and Chinese soldiers,

clashed, you know, 20 Indian soldiers and four Chinese soldiers died, and there was, there had been an ongoing standoff between the two, between the, between the Indian and Chinese, Chinese, Chinese armies since then. Now, that place is barely 200 miles from where the India-Pakistan line of control or in Kashmir lies. So, you know, on one side you have Pakistan, on other side, you have China, and on the northern part, the Chinese and the Pakistanis have colluded, collaborated, and are working. So China has a strategic interest in the, in the region, and China also has economic interest in the region by being invested in Pakistani Kashmir. But even more than this, the big Chinese interest is that Pakistan has been very,

very close to China since the late 1950s. If you were to maybe other than North Korea or maybe even more than North Korea, China and Pakistan has been one protege which China has had. And China at no cost would want Pakistan to suffer or to be harmed. Even during this crisis, the Chinese statements have been very sympathetic to Pakistan, have been kind of supportive of the Pakistani stance, and have not really gone out in India's favor. To give you an example, the Indian Foreign Minister today has been dialing all the members of the UN Security Council, and it has only dialed 13 of the 15 members.

The two members, whom he has not dialed, are Pakistan, which is a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council currently, and China, which is a permanent member of the Security Council. So that's where it's stayed at this point. And Pakistan, Pakistan is a very, very complex country in and of itself, right? I mean, it's torn between strong Islamist forces and the military, which is, is the military more secular? Is that accurate to say? Or is it just that they're the military and their own thing? So, Jason, I would characterize the military as not as not secular, but is more professional.

Let's put in a country which is largely dysfunctional. Military is the most professional institution. And people will say, oh, because they have taken away all the resources, that's why they can afford to stay professional. The Pakistani Army, Stephen Cohen has a great book on Pakistan Army. He was a scholar, researcher who spent a lot of time in Pakistan. Pakistani Army took away non-secular Islamic path under General Ziaulhak in the late 1970. and the 1980s and the 1980s, and hasn't recovered since then. In fact, the term for a lot of officers who were recruited at that point in time is an

Urdu phrase called Zia Bharti, that the people who were recruited during Zia time, recruits of Zia, Zia Bharti. Those people are now at the highest levels of the Pakistani military. And those people are seen as being very, you know, very Islamist, very religious, you know, very fundamental in a certain sense. but because it's a professional military because they're officers at end courses in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia,

globally everywhere. So they are very suave, they are very professional, they can talk all the languages, they can do everything. So it's not like you're not dealing with mullahs in that sense. You're not dealing with some religious preachers. You're not dealing with the Taliban. You're dealing with very smart-looking, swab, English-speaking people.

I served with them in the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Kodewa many years ago, maybe 20 years back. So they're like you and me in that sense, but there is a strong ideological component to the military. It reached a stage in the 1980s and even earlier, where the Pakistani army started officially saying that they exist not just to defend the physical frontiers of the country,

but to also defend the ideological frontiers of Pakistan. And the ideological frontiers in that sense, because Pakistan was created as a country for the Muslims of the subcontinent and as an kind of Islamic country, then it becomes imperative that they are being driven by that ideology. It is unfortunate, but if you see the way they have dealt in Afghanistan, the way they have dealt with a lot of other problems, this has been one of the dominant themes in the Pakistanian military.

In the 80s and 90s, the support from Saudi Arabia and post the oil boom, the rise of Saudi Arabia, and the kind of Wahhab Islam that Saudi Arabia exported to countries like Pakistan also created a narrative where Saudi Arabia's global success or other economic success was seen as a success of a very conservative streak of Islam and not as a success of the oil boom that had taken place. A lot of Pakistanis misplaced that success to be thinking that Saudis are succeeding because they are so conservative, so rigid,

rather than seeing they were succeeding because they had gold, that's not gold with oil. And can we just ask, just for the contrast, what is, what are the motivations of the Indian military? Is there anything, I mean, you've mentioned very strongly that India was created as supposed to be a secular, multi-ethnic, multi-religious nation? What kind of power does the Indian military have inside of the, India and what sort of force is it?

Yeah. So India in contrast has had, and I am not saying this because I'm a former military officer who served for 20 years in the Indian Army. But India historically has been, the Indian military has been part of a very democratic setup where, because there's a great book actually by my Yale colleague, Stephen Wilkinson, called Army and Nation, that why Pakistan took a path where military coups happened and India to continue to remain democracy. So there are three reasons. the party that led the freedom struggle for India independence movement against the colonial rulers in India. The Congress party was a very diverse party. It had very clear ideas about how it is going to govern India once India becomes independent. And one of the pillars of that

was that how is it going to deal with the military. It had observed Europe during the 1930s and 40s and was very, very of militarization. India's first prime minister, Prime Minister Nehru undertook massive steps to make sure that military standing in post-colonial India came down, both socially and economically and their power was distributed amongst various senior officers rather than under a single commander-in-chief. And then also India's diversity, which had large number of languages and large number of religions and ethnicities, and by choosing the – recruiting the army from all these ethnicities by giving them kind of unofficial quotas and making sure that people from all kinds of languages, religion,

ethnicities are part of the army. You created an army which was a professional, which was very secular, which was very secular, which did not try to disturb India's democracy at any point in time. India has never had a military coup. India has never had military rule in its country, unlike Pakistan where half the time it has been ruled by the military. So India's military has been an integral part of democracy, and that has meant that the political leadership takes full control

over the Indian military. Indian military is a powerful institution, but it is almost a powerful institution to the extent within its own operational domain. It doesn't have a political veto or a say over the politics of the country or the foreign policy of the country in any way. For many of my colleagues, former colleagues, current colleagues, it's not a great thing. They would want the Indian military to have a bigger say in the state of affairs, particularly in the strategic, domain, but I'm of the view that the way the things are where political leadership has to and must take responsibility for all the decisions, whereas other institutions like the military

or the diplomats do what they're told to do to the best of their abilities through all the tools that are available to them is a better way of functioning in a place like South Asia. Thank you. Matthew, I apologize for going that deeply in the weeds. No? No, I need a swir a we're a weedy show. Jason, you know this. I do. I do. Can you tell us about the leaders of each country? And can you start with Pakistan?

Because that's the one I know the least. Who is the president? And how long has he been in charge? What's he like? Yeah, so Pakistan has a president, but he's a titler in nature. He's somebody called Assephali Zardari. He was married to Benazir Bhutto. He's the widower of Benazir Bhutto.

Benazir Bhutto is that famous Pakistani leader who killed by suicide bombers, who fought against military dictatorship inside Pakistan, but precedent doesn't have any power in Pakistan. The power in Pakistan, political power in Pakistan was the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister of Pakistan is a gentleman called Shahabash Sharif. For many years, for a couple of decades, he was the chief minister,

governor-equalant of Pakistan's biggest province, Punjab, and has only become a prime minister a couple of years ago. To become the Prime Minister of Pakistan, he agreed to play a very subservient, and showed to the Pakistani military, which controls the levers of power inside Pakistan. Pakistan's most popular political leader is a former cricketer called Imran Khan, who has been put behind bars because he fell out with the Pakistani military. All the Pakistani military brought him to power. So even the last elections that were held in Pakistan a couple of years

ago were highly disputed when Imran was and his party were barred from contesting election, but his candidates still contested as independents and won a large number of seats, but then he was charged with corruption and other issues and put behind bars. But the most powerful person and the most powerful institution in Pakistan is the Pakistani army and the Pakistani army chief of the gentleman called General Assam Munir. General Asim Munir, as I said, was commissioned during the ZIA years and is seen as a very conservative person as a very, as not a very flamboyant kind of a person or somebody who's outgoing and who's willing to think big.

All the people who have met him, whom I have spoken to, I have not met General Asim Munir, but people who have met him and who I have spoken to paint a very, you know, rigid, a very sober kind of a picture of his where he, you know, you won't see him smiling or you won't see him back slapping. He's someone seen as, as, as, as, as, almost a humorless kind of a kind of a kind of a kind of a figure. So most powerful person is, is General Assam Munir. And the political leadership is with, with the shabash, whereas the most popular leader is behind bars, Imran Khan is behind bars. Let's talk about Modi then and where he, like, how do you think he's handling this crisis and will this change? Do you think any of this will change people's perception of him in the country? And I know it's a large country with a lot of different people and a lot of different viewpoints. So, you know, I'm generalizing a little bit or a lot, I guess. I wish I knew. So Matthew, the crisis is still playing out. You know, the thing is, you know,

to give an answer at this point in time, how Mr. Modi would be left at the end of the crisis is very difficult to answer. So my view about how Mr. Modi is handling the crisis is very different from what a lot of other people, my own countrymen and analysts feed. My view is that any country as a matter of statecraft should have a large number of options of dealing with an adversary. These options should include of course both carrot and stick

and should be in various domains like economic domain, diplomatic domain, informational domain, people to people domain. So you can choose then options. I can give you a carrot on trade and I can take you a stick on something. What has happened over the last 10 years under Mr. Modi, particularly under the last 7 to 8 years,

is that he has removed all the other options of the table. diplomatic ties with Pakistan have been proversially cut off, there is no trade with Pakistan, there is no diplomatic engagement with Pakistan, there is no people-to-people engagement with Pakistan. So you have boxed yourself into a very limited kind of an option where the only arrow in your quiver is the military option.

And because you've undertaken two earlier military strikes, one in 2016 and one in 2019, now you need to do more than that. So which further reduces the window in within which you are operating. And at the same time, you are very conscious that you don't want to escalate and go to war because India is a very poor country.

India wants to have high economic growth. India cannot afford to go to war. You also cannot afford to go to war because Pakistan is a nuclear weapon state. So you want to control the escalation letter at the same time. Now, that makes it very difficult. You are in a window where you want to hit Pakistan. You don't have any other options. You box yourself in.

And at that point in time, you are scared of an escalation. So it's a very tough situation within which he's dealing. So even if you see today's strikes, Mr. Modi's government has been emphasizing again and again both publicly and globally that these are non-escalatory strikes, these are precise strikes, they were on

non-military targets, and the use of the word non-escalatory is like as one of my colleagues Hartozbul was saying that you know, this is like almost pleading when telling the world that this is non-escalatory, please don't think that this escalatory. It's like they're repeating it again and again.

So because they boxed themselves in. What I would have ideally wanted as a larger panoply of options, you know, know, have all kinds of options on the table, give some incentives, give some punishment, and then deal with it. So that allows you to flexibility to do much more. And I think that's where Mr. Modi has missed a couple of tricks. But perhaps this kind of, you know, very strong men kind of tactics where he can go out and

say that, I don't know if you guys are aware, Mr. Modi claims that he has a 56-inch chess size. He publicly claims that. And he claims himself to be this very macho kind of a figure, very manly kind of a figure. So for him to show that, demonstrate this kind of sense. strength where he can supposedly act in a very bold manner is very rewarding for him politically at one level. Not only amongst his core supporters, but also nationalism, as you know, is such a potent thing.

People love the idea that we are going to go and hit Pakistan and do this and do that. You know, we have hit Muritke, we have Bud Bahawalpur, we have done this. So it works for him at one level. But at a strategic level, if you look at the longer term, in the longer arc of things, every time you are reducing your options and boxing yourself further and further in and increasing the risk of escalation between two nuclear powers. How effective is or are the militaries against each other? I would assume since India's population is much larger, perhaps the Indian military is larger,

but that could be completely wrong. I'm just wondering, yeah, how effective are these forces? So Jason, you were right, the Indian military is much more. bigger than Pakistani military. Just to give you a simple figure, the whole of Pakistani defense budget is lesser than what the Indian military spends on pensions for its soldiers. Okay. Okay. So. You know, but of course, a lot of people will say that these are formal figures. Pakistani military had a lot of other commercial interests, a lot of other money,

which probably flows through some other channels which we are not aware of, which is not reflected in the books. But even then, that's the level of difference. Pakistani economy is around one-tenth of its size of India's economy. But the problem is that the Indian military has to deal with a two-front threat at the same time. It has a challenge on the China border and it has a challenge on the Pakistan border at the same time. And because China and Pakistan are so closely aligned with each other, there is a risk of a collusive threat that India has to face. And that puts great pressure on the Indian military.

So the local balance, you know, if you were to focus only, on the Pakistan border is not overwhelmingly in India's favor. The two sides India and Pakistan are evenly balanced when it comes to India-Pakistan border itself because of what India has to divert towards China. In 2020, in the summer of 2020, when the India-China border crisis took place, India actually moved a large number of forces away from Pakistan border and reoriented them towards China because that had become a much bigger threat in India thought that it was pretty weak on that border.

But that clearly meant that India's commitment on the Pakistan border had reduced. So militarily, in an nutshell, India and Pakistan are evenly, more or less, evenly balanced within that particular theatre, within that particular domain,

even though India is a much bigger country, but India has much bigger challenge coming from China, which is an economy five times India's size, which has a military, much bigger, much more technically, technologically advanced. much more powerful than what India can produce. No, you looked like you had a question, Jason.

I was going to take us to nukes. Oh, well, actually, that's where I was, so Matthew, please. All right, so both countries have around like 200, a little bit less than 200. It's my understanding, based on like our best guesses. How does nuclear weapons change things? And I'm also curious about like what nuclear posturing or signaling looks like. in both countries. It's like I understand like what Russia does and what America does

and how they kind of talk to each other with vague nuclear threats. Does anything like that happen here at all? Does that Sabre ever get rattled? Yeah, absolutely. So there are two different things here. India and China are the only two countries which have a no first use policy when it comes to nuclear weapons. They say we will not be the first ones to use the nuclear weapons.

It will be a second stride, which we will do once somebody has used a nuclear weapon or a chemical weapons. Of course, Pakistani say that this is all bullshit to put it politely, because if you're going to you, if you violate your own policy, who's going to do anything? If you're going to fire nuclear

weapons on us. And there's been a lot of debate by people like Rupin Narang and others from MIT who have said that, you know, is India trying to change its policy or is India just trying to win brownie points globally by saying this? But in theory, India has a India has a no first use policy

and India has a second strike capability where it has nuclear parts, submarines, SSBNs from which it can fire, aircraft delivered, ground-based platforms and all three modes of delivery are available to are available to India to deliver nuclear weapons. India does not have tactical nuclear weapons. India only has strategic delivery of nuclear weapons.

In contrast, Pakistan has tactical nuclear weapons and Pakistan has a first-use policy in that sense. Their official policy is that if certain red lines are crossed by India, and although those red lines are never specified, but red lines essentially, what I have spoken to people, red lines would be like, you know, if Pakistani military is completely destroyed, or Pakistan is cut into half by the Indian military through an operation,

or if Pakistani economy is brought to its knees, that would be a red line on which Pakistan, would use its nuclear weapons against India. That is what has been the constant threat. But the effect of the two countries going nuclear in the 1990s, 1998 has essentially been that there's been a conventional stability. There has been no conventional war in that sense between the two countries because of this overhang of nuclear weapons.

So nuclear weapons, in a sense, have stabilized the subcontinent to a degree. But what it also meant is that Pakistan could then conduct sub-conventional warfare, knowing fully will that India can't really escalate conventionally and hurt them or punish them. So it has acted in both manner. It has stabilized the region, but it has also allowed a lot of subconventional warfare to take place. To put it in another way, because Jason raised that question about the disparities between India and Pakistan. So there is a gap between India and Pakistan, which is massive. How does Pakistan bridge that gap?

Pakistan essentially bridges that gap in three ways. One is by using sub-conventional means. Secondary is by having nuclear weapons. And thirdly is by having friends and allies. Earlier it was the United States. Now it is China. Earlier it was Saudi Arabia. You know, now it is Turkey.

So, you know, it tries to build up that power by doing all these things to essentially match up to India and fill up that gap. Nuclear weapons are an important, important part of filling that gap. More and more as the gap between India and Pakistan is increasing, in terms of conventional military power, in terms of economic power, in terms of diplomatic heft, in terms of their geopolitical positioning, their global reputations, Pakistan becomes more dependent on its nuclear weapons than what a healthy country should be or a healthy region should be. That is what we should worry us. People like you, Matthew, and people like you, Jason,

should be worried about the fact that Pakistan's dependency on nuclear weapons will keep on increasing as it becomes weaker relatively to India. To add to this very complex set of things, Pakistan is also economically in a weak spot. It is dependent on IMF loans. It is dependent on essentially, cannot survive without IMF loans anymore.

It is, as I said, politically pretty fragile, contested. There are a big insurgencies inside Pakistan in provinces like Balochistan and Kaaba Pakhtunwa. You know, that causes a lot of problems and to have a nuclear weapon states which is in that kind of a situation is not really the most healthy scenario.

From the Indians, you don't hear nuclear sabbatling. Indians don't talk about their nuclear weapons or their nuclear or their nuclear power because they don't, probably they don't feel they need to use it against Pakistan. Although some of Mr. Modi's comments after 2019

were that we have not kept our nuclear weapons for a festival or for as firecrackers, we would be more than happy to use them. So that was the first time an Indian leader had actually casually mentioned nuclear weapon in the manner that Mr. Moody had mentioned after 2019. But more often than not, India's nuclear weapons are more in the background than in the forefront. In case of Pakistan, they are more at the forefront and showcased as almost a military tool.

One more thing which I forgot to mention, that Pakistan is the only country where its military is in control of the nuclear weapons. no other nuclear weapons state in anywhere, whether it is North Korea, whether it is India, China. Everywhere, it is the civilian leadership which controls nuclear weapons. Pakistan is the only country where its military controls nuclear weapons. That completely changes their dynamics because then they become military weapons rather than strategic weapons. Well, that sounds safe. Now I have all these questions about... Very safe.

If you are living in India, then you would realize Jason how safe it is. I have all these questions about like what can be. command and control looks like there, and what we know about who orders what and what buttons get pressed. But I imagine a lot of that's just not known, right? You probably won't know until the aftermath of a nuclear strike. Yeah, when none of us would be alive to actually talk about it. It would be probably too late to know by then.

So in the Indian case, there is a formal structure through which the political leadership that Mr. Modi would have to decide, and then his national security advisor would have the operational team under him, which would control and operate it through the strategic forces command. So there is a whole gamut of scheme of things which are regularly tested and played out. Similarly, Pakistan has a structure under something called the National Security Council in which the Pakistani military leadership and the Pakistani political leadership are adequately represented. They also have the structures which were monitored and approved by the United States. And those structures have been practiced because there was a lot of concern at one point

in time about the safety of Pakistani New Yorks once the jihadi groups were rising inside Pakistan and Afghanistan was in all kinds of trouble. So a lot of work has gone inside Pakistan to make the nuclear weapons safe. And those kind of questions are no longer asked whether Pakistani nuclear weapons are safe or how are they going to be deployed. So there are well-established processes, procedures, safeguards, checks and balances on both sides. The only challenge which are constantly hear from some Indian commentators and from some Western commentators is that because Pakistan has TNWs or tactical nuclear weapons, they would have to be given to battlefield commanders, which means that the direct control

of the political leadership or the talk military leadership is not going to be there. And, you know, one odd rogue commander, you know, who decides to act crazy or or feels that he needs to be the guy who needs to target someone could really cause a major crisis. Because India has very clearly said that a nuclear weapon is a nuclear weapon, whether it is tactical or strategic. It doesn't matter to us. We will treat them all the same. One may be a battlefield weapon, another may be a larger strategic weapon targeted at population centers or command and control centers. One thing that strikes me as being even more terrifying is when, Matthew, you may correct me,

But I think that the United States, or the President of the United States, has something like 11 minutes to decide whether or not to launch a strategic strike back at whoever launches a strategic strike at us. I'm going to guess that that's a shorter period of time just because of the distances involved. What? Oh, no, you hold up two fingers. That doesn't seem good. Yeah, yeah, two minutes, two minutes. Essentially two minutes at max, maybe three. That's like, depending on what part of India it is coming to.

Oh my God. These are, these are... US is a big country, and you're talking about Russia or Earth-wise Soviet Union firing from across the pond and traveling a long distance. We are talking about two contiguous countries. It is like two neighboring states in the United States fighting neutral weapons at each other. It is that kind of closeness, yeah. A few minutes, a couple of minutes.

That's what you have. That's not good. So there is no way you can actually stop it. You can respond to it. So there will have to be a second strike in that sense. What it actually means in practical terms is that more often than not, it would have to be a second strike capability unless you have a way in which you can stop them by creating a kind of a missile shield. And as you guys know, missile shields are not always 100% effective. Then they bring their old complications because people try to bypass them by having other kinds of devices, you know, which is, we can go down that train.

Yeah. So it's completely crazy. I would say that being, saying that weapon or a weapon or a. Sorry, let me retake that. I would say that missile shields, it is generous to say that they're not 100% effective. Especially in a large country

like India or the United States, they're probably less than 50%. Hopefully we never have to find, run the numbers, and actually find out. Well, I do, too, but, you know, say for important cities like Washington, D.C. or

Delhi or New York or Bombay, they would be effective. But what I was trying to hint is that once you start saying that I'm going to put up a missile shield on Delhi or Bombay, you then encourage your adversary to start using MIRVs or some other things. And that, you know, the whole thing, it's a mess. You know, you are going down a very, very dark tunnel in that sense. The United States is about to go down that dark tunnel. Well, I mean, the other thing is that this is incredibly complex technology. I mean, super advanced, and it's also incredibly expensive.

I mean, each, I think if I remember, right, each Israeli interceptor to take down a missile cost something like $700,000. I mean, or maybe, you know, an arrow three, which is supposed to travel longer distances and failed, I would point out against the Houthis just this week, is more like a million dollars or more. So, I mean, people, building this is not a simple thing, even if you want to, and then further to stabilize everything. Yeah. The country is not Israel who has a benefactor like the United States to pay for so much of this stuff. So I was curious about, and this is old, can you tell me about what the tactical nuclear weapons actually are? When we say tactical nuclear weapons, do you have any idea? of the yield size and like how small.

I'm looking that Jeffrey Lewis wrote something like 10 years ago that they were, that Pakistan was developing like Davy Crockett style, uh, nuclear weapons, which is in the year 2025 really insane to me. You know, Matthew, I wish I knew the answer to your question because there's,

as you said, there's a lot of chatter around, a lot of stuff. Uh, but a lot of, lot of that stuff has, not happen. A lot of alarming stuff has been spoken about Pakistani TNWs. But what I understand is that some rocket

fired mechanisms, if not Davy style, maybe some other style, that have been kind of artillery plus, kind of rocket plus kind of stuff. The miniaturized thing has been created. The specific years, etc., I'm not too sure about

at this point in time. I've not even studied them in recent years to be aware of them. I'm sure the data is available somewhere publicly. as to what the eels are and what weapon systems are they using to fire those TNWs? No, just we don't have all that much time left. And I wanted to ask something just a little different about the conflict or tensions with China. I mean, because we've mentioned them several times.

And since we have you, this is, I mean, and you're a valuable resource. I just want to understand a little bit about. the other conflict that, or potential conflict that's facing India. Yeah, so India and China, again, there is a border dispute which is long existing between India and China. India and China went to war in 1962 over it, a short border war, with China won, you know, handsomely, defeated India, defeated India, captured a lot of territory which it has not, some of it was vacated in eastern Indian state of Arnautal Pradesh, but a lot of it in Ladakh, in Ladakh,

in the erstwhile, Jamo and Kashmir, in Kashmir, the state continues to be with China. The border between the two countries is not delineated, not marked, not agreed upon,

and off and on in the last 15 to 20 years, particularly after the 2000 economic crisis where China thought that it has arrived, there have been a lot of clashes on the border off and on 2013, 2014, 2017,

2020. There have been major crises between India and China, China on the border. These are usually small disputes where two patrols come face to face and then they clash and then people get injured or something else happens or the Chinese walk in and stay at some place and do not go away and Indians want to throw them out. That kind of stuff has been happening off and on and in 2020 as I said the crisis completely got out of hand where people died without any weapons being used. I mean to say without any rifles or anything being

used, people just thrashing themselves with clubs and stones and pushing themselves off of of the cliffs into fast-flowing, very cold rivers. 2020 Indian soldiers, four Chinese soldiers died, and the deployments and the face-offs have continued since the deployment is still on. There are more than 50,000 Indian soldiers, and I believe around 30,000 additional Chinese soldiers are still deployed in Ladakh across each other. The Indians see Chinese as a strategic challenge,

and Indians are also aware of the fact that China has supported Pakistan constantly over the last 60 or years, putting India under tremendous pressure. And over the last 20 years, the Indians have been also worried about the fact that they see China and Pakistan as a collusive threat, something called a true front challenge that they worry about, which they believe they are not capable of handling efficiently at any point in time and would not want to deal with that challenge. The usual Indian way of dealing with China has been to find diplomatic means. of engaging with China and resolving the issues in some manner. And that is a strategy which has been

followed by Mr. Modi in recent years. He has not taken on China in any significant manner, even though Quad was established along with the United States, Japan and Australia. But Quad has not been securitized because India was the only country, as the Biden administration said, which did not want to securitize God. It has been very very very very of provoking China. Mr. Modi particularly has been very, very conscious that it doesn't want to provoke China in any manner and not earn China's wrath. So the idea has been, can we diplomatically manage China while we focus on Pakistan or while we deal with Pakistan? But that doesn't always succeed because there is some of the other crisis which takes place on the border which posits India and China against each other. Now, the big complication

is that China is also India's biggest trading partner, just like in the case of the United States. and India really, and the trade is highly imbalanced in China's favor. I think it's almost 80-20. 80% of the trade is Chinese imports to India. And these are all non-energy imports. China doesn't export energy, as you guys know. And India exports a lot of energy from Saudi Arabia, U.S., Russia, etc., etc. So that is a huge challenge because Indian industry, Indian producers,

the iPhones that are being assembled in India and supplied to the United States are essentially being assembled in India based out of components that are coming out of China. So for solar sales, solar plants, pharmaceuticals, everything, the raw material and the subassembly products are all coming from China. So India's trade dependency on China is a vulnerability while this strategic challenge, the challenge in the Indian Ocean region and the crisis on the border makes it a huge problem along with the threat of a collusive relationship with Pakistan, which India has to confront. And China, I guess we thought we were going to get our iPhones around the tariffs. And I guess this is a nice way of skirting them. So, Matthew, you have anything else? Just more of a final thought than anything else.

And this is one of those things where I could be putting my foot in my mouth extremely because we are in the middle of this thing. We don't know how stuff is going to play out. But talking to you and kind of watching it play out over the last 48 hours, it does remind me a little bit of some of what has happened between Israel and Iran, where something happens. And then one of the other countries needs to feel like they have conducted a strike. And so they send some missiles over. maybe they get shot down, maybe they hit some targets. And then the leader gets to say, like, we got revenge for X, Y, or Z.

Because in reality, like, Israel has nuclear weapons. Israel and Iran don't actually want an all-out war. The way that you kind of described what's happening here or what has happened very recently, it sounds similar. Like, there is, it is not as if people are not dying and there is not a real conflict. and even absent Modi's non-military options, it does seem like no one wants this thing to get completely out of hand, right?

Yeah, completely agree with you, Matthew. The escalation is what neither side wants, but it also needs to do something, demonstrate something which assuages the feelings of the citizens of both the country. So, you know, that's the kind of a win-win where we're using your domestic media, national media. You show a kind of a success which satisfies your people but also doesn't provoke the other side to escalate. And that has been the way in which, like you, Matthew, I hope that the things get resolved in that manner where both sides can claim a win and find a ramp off-off very quickly, find an off-ramp very quickly where they can de-escalate.

and the things don't get out of hand. That would be the ideal scenario. Both sides can claim win and quickly get out of this. If that doesn't happen. And so you guys know better than me. There are things in conflicts, accidents happen, other things happen and things can go completely out of hand. So what I really worry about is a thing missing a target,

hitting somewhere else and you certainly have, you know, young children or women or a hospital, you know, or even 40, 50, 60 soldiers dying, and then the other side is compelled to respond. why you want to avoid these kind of even, you know, stage-managed choreographed activities, if I were to put them in that manner, even though they may not be really choreographed or stage-managed in that sense. But why you want to avoid them is because there's always a risk associated with these things

of accidental escalation, of things getting out of hand, where you just don't know what it is going to lead to after that, especially in a kind of an environment where, as we discussed, there are nuclear weapons all over the place. Mr. Syshant Singh, I just want to thank you for taking us through this horrible scenario. And let's just, I guess we'll hope that this is largely performative over the next coming days rather than the more serious. You know, this episode didn't end quite as depressingly as most of our episodes. Yeah, we ended on an upnote. Maybe it won't turn into an actual full-out war. That's an upnote for us.

say you know. Fingers cross Jason and Matthew. I really hope that you guys are right and I don't want to be depressive. I really want that crisis should blow over very quickly. And thank you so much for having me on the show. It was wonderful talking to you guys and I look forward to talking to you sometime again in happier times.

Thank you so much. That's all for this episode of Angry Planet. As always, Angry Planet is me. Matthew Galt, Jason Fields and Kevin O'Dell is created by myself and Jason Fields. If you would like early commercial free access to the show, go to angry planetpod.com, $9 a month. You'll also get some bonus episodes. There's a good one. It's all about a specific department that's going to be probably destroyed within the Pentagon that is not getting a lot of news coverage.

So go and check it out. We will be back again soon with another conversation about conflict on an angry planet. Stay safe until now.