Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 5/9/25 Joseph Solis-Mullen on What’s Happening Between India and Pakistan

Episode Date: May 11, 2025

Scott brings professor and Libertarian Institute Fellow Joseph Solis-Mullen to talk about the recent violence that broke out between India and Pakistan. Solis-Mullen puts the dispute over the northern region of Kashmir into context before he and Scott dig into the specific events that led to this Indian military operation and Pakistani response. They then zoom out and examine where this all might be heading within the broader global geopolitical dynamic of the day.    Discussed on the show: The National Debt and You: What it Is, How it Works, and Why it Matters by Joseph Solis-Mullen “Our Real National Security Budget” (Spoils of War) “The Kashmir Powder Keg” (Libertarian Institute) Joseph Solis-Mullen is a political scientist and economist at The Libertarian Institute and a professor of politics and history at SAU. He is the author of The National Debt and You and The Fake China Threat and Its Very Real Danger. Follow him on Twitter @solis_mullen and find his work at his website.  This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Roberts and Roberts Brokerage Incorporated; Moon Does Artisan Coffee; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; Libertas Bella; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, and author of Provote, how Washington started the new Cold War with Russia and the catastrophe in Ukraine. Sign up for the podcast feed at Scotthorton.org or Scott Horton Show.com. I've got more than 6,000 interviews in the archive. for you there going back to 2003 and follow me on all the video sites and x at scott horton show hey you guys on the line i've got joseph solace mullin and he is a professor at spring harbor university in michigan and he's a fellow at the libertarian institute where he writes

really great stuff and uh we published his books two of them already right welcome the show how are you doing i'm good scott thanks are you thanks for having me on uh very happy to have you You know, I have your book here, and I plead busy as hell. It's not my fault. I haven't read it yet. I published it, but I haven't read the latest one on the national debt. You want to tell us about it for just a minute? And then I promise we're going to catch up on that.

Sure, no problem. It's just a primer on what the national debt is and how it works. And then, you know, why it matters, which is, of course, why the book is subtitled the way it is. But I basically just wanted to explain to people the mechanics of how the national that works, what it actually is, and why it's not going anywhere, basically. And my case for basically a default as soon as possible. That is, of course, not what's happening. We're going in the opposite direction, despite what you may hear about the Department of Government Efficiency's efforts, which I hear those votes were canceled anyway. The problems are structural. It's a trillion

dollar military budget. It's huge entitlement outlays. Until those things get seriously, cut. The deficit is only going to persist. It's actually going to grow, which means the debt is going to continue to grow. And very soon, interest on the outstanding debt is going to completely overwhelm all other categories of government expense. So it's a book that explains how that came to be. And some of it's kind of boring stuff about like treasury auctions, primary brokers and dealers and who holds the debt and what different maturities mean and so i just wanted to give the public something to kind of demystify an issue that i think should be front and center but is almost never and when it is it's usually just a political football so yeah so it already made

news that the interest on the debt every year is more than the military budget which the official one I mean, the unofficial one is really $1.7 trillion as a good old, not hard tongue. Not a story. There's three great guys on the Pentagon budget. Hard tongue, a story, and I want to say Spinney, but that's not right. It's not him. It's a, I used to be smart. anyway Andrew Coburn wrote it up at his substack 1.7 trillion Andrew Coburn and and the great expert who I like and am accidentally terribly disrespecting here whose name I'm forgetting he shows all his work too it's on the tip of my tongue I swear to God but he shows all of his work about all the money spent and you know the care and feeding of the nukes and the VA and all the other things in there that are involved 1.7 trillion here but anyway the

official budget is right around a trillion and the interest on the debt every year is more than that and that is already absurdity and kind of raised alarms even among regular people in you know establishment media and government circles that wow that doesn't sound right so how long will it be before it's the biggest portion of the budget and is it at that point that everybody says wait a minute why do we have to do this this is crazy got people slaving away to pay the income tax just to pay the interest on the debt, all the money you pay your whole life long, just to pay the interest on the debt to some sovereign government bondholders somewhere? Seems to me like they ought to get screwed those bondholders, man, rather than the taxpayers. You had it, no, you, you make several

great points. First of all, the actual military budget is closer to two trillion dollars, but it won't be long. I mean, probably by the end of the decade. And a lot of this is one, one reason I don't like predicting the future is that it may turn out to be wrong, you know, anything could happen. But it is a reasonable forecast to say that two trillion dollar deficits are going to continue to be the norm in Washington, that in fact they will probably grow slightly over the next decade. And if that happens by 2035, it should easily be the single largest expenditure on behalf of the U.S. government. And I know you had Jeff, Jeff Diced on several weeks ago, and he and I have long been in agreement that, of course, all those bondholders should get haircut. If you were lending

the federal government money, of course you should be getting a haircut. The federal government has made no effort at all to keep its fiscal house in order. And if you are the whole, because I have a degree in financial economics as well, and I remember one of the first things, they teach you in finance is that U.S. Treasuries are, for the purpose of portfolio construction, considered a risk-free asset, quote-unquote, risk-free. Just look at how profligate the government is. They make no effort to have any sense of fiscal propriety.

And so the whole system is based on this notion that the one thing that is risk-free is being managed by an entity that is completely profligate. So it's, you know, imagine, you know, buying the bonds of a corporation, even though they were just hemorrhaging money, you know, not keeping their books right. And then they default. And you take a haircut on your investment.

Everyone would say that's reasonable. For some reason, when it comes to the government, people are like, oh, oh, my goodness, no way. And the thing is, is the U.S. government takes in plenty, plenty of money in tax revenue right now. So it's not as though people say, oh, well, the borrowing costs would shoot up. I don't care. I don't care if the borrowing costs shoot up. I don't want the government borrowing any money. I don't really want the government doing any taxing either, but like one thing at a time, I suppose.

You know, wean them off the credit card, get them off the deficit spending. A default would raise interest rates tremendously on the U.S. government, and that, in my opinion, would be great. It would force them to finance what they want to do via taxes, which is what they should have to do. But, of course, this all goes back to fights in the 1890s when they were trying to build up a military and Congress didn't want to do it because they didn't want to go back to their constituents and say, I'm going to literally raise taxes on you. And so that's why the Federal Reserve was such a godsend because now you could just tax them quietly through inflation. Right.

So. All right. Well, two things. First of all, of course, Winslow Wheeler is the great expert whose name I was forgetting there. I'm very sorry about that. But everybody can look up Andrew Coburn's piece, our real national security budget,

$2 trillion. Here we come. That's at Spoils of War, his substack there. And Winslow Wheeler shows this work. There's a PDF at the bottom of the thing that shows everything. So anyway, the real reason I have you on here is to find out whether all this is irrelevant because we're all going to die in a thermonuclear war because once India and Pakistan start nuking each other, then China's going to jump in. And then you know Donald Trump's going to start talking tough. And then America's going to fight a general nuclear war with Russia and China and humanity will cease to exist.

The giant insects and dinosaurs and stuff will come back. I mean, potentially. So what a great piece you wrote for us at the Institute. Why am I not surprised that you know so much about this? I mean, you're like a regular Eric Margulies here with your depth of knowledge, maybe even deeper on the historical stuff. The cashmere powder keg, I don't know if he saw it hilariously, Donald Trump said, well, you know, they've been fighting over this stuff over there for 1,500 years.

Like, well, you know, since World War II, but whatever, man. Anyway, the cashmere powder keg by you, Joseph Solis Mullin at the Libertarian Institute. You go way back to way back then. The end of the World Wars and, well, the last time around, and the British retreat from the greater Indian subcontinent. And then what happened? Go ahead. Please take us through. Well, yeah, I think it might be helpful to kind of provide a little bit of.

the background here for people simply because yes, provide a lot of it. I like the whole story's great. So go ahead. Take your time.

Okay. I will. I'm just going to go through this then. Because yes, you're right. It does. It starts after World War II because the British

are going to leave India. And for reasons that I'm, I'm not going to get lost in the weeds here. Basically, the British India is going to be split into what I'm going to call two states. It's a little bit more complicated than that, but let's just stick with two states.

one is Pakistan one is India now right up the north if you pull up a map or whatever your listeners are doing right now if they're not driving maybe they can pull up a map and see sort of the tip of India there there was a princely state and and basically what happened is when the British left all these little princely states that hadn't been directly administered as part of British India these were kind of like their puppets their clients who were allowed to stay in power so long as they served the British Raj effectively. So what you had is this large princely state up there in the north. And basically the Hindu Maharaja said, I don't want to be part of India or Pakistan. I want to choose option C, our independence. Now, this was considered

totally fine. He signed an agreement with Pakistan to basically maintain the status quo. But what happens is that a Pashtun tribal militia with the backing of Pakistan's army very quickly soon after in 1947. So right after partition, which was terribly violent, around a million people get killed in the ethno-religious violence there. They invade Kashmir in an effort to force its accession to Pakistan. Because the thing is, even though it was ruled by a Hindu prince, the population was and is largely Muslim. And so the idea here was Pakistan was for the Muslim population, India was for the Hindu population. I'm oversimplifying a little bit. So faced with this invasion and with no military capacity to defend the state, Maharaja Harising, he appeals to India for military assistance.

And New Delhi agrees to defend him only after they formally accede to India. And so he signs an accession to India. and basically the deal is they get autonomy. So India is going to have the government in New Delhi is going to have control over defense, foreign affairs, but there's going to be basically a local self-rule, right? And the major Muslim religious leader in Kashmir at the time was for this.

He was basically, he was the head of what was called the National Conference, and he supported this move. He was basically a secular leader who distrusted sort of the feudal, tribal religious structure in Pakistan, and he thought that India's kind of secularist democratic path would be better aligned with his movement's goals and with development. And so he actually winds up getting appointed to head the interim government in Kashmir. One of the things that India pledged, though, as part of this deal, was that once peace was restored, the people of Jamu and Kashmir would be allowed to vote in a plebiscite to confirm the accession. This was never held,

though. And the reason given was that Pakistan, Pakistan's military and proxies, they continued to control and occupy about a third of the area. And that, that, that continued to this day. They basically signed an agreement to end this war over this, 47, 48. India was in, in possession of two thirds, Jammu and Kashmir. That's the area that we're talking about today, the area that was attacked two and a half weeks ago so they control two-thirds of that former princely state which is called today jammu and kashmir and pakistan occupies the other third azad jammu so that's that's basically what was going on there um there would be multiple conflicts over this though uh for example in 65 uh there was a there was a the second sign uh the second indo-pacistan war um which basically started uh

with Operation Gibraltar, which was basically the Pakistani military was helping to infiltrate fighters across the border of Kashmir. And so fighting broke out. This happened again in the 1990s during the cargo war. So there's been repeated conflicts over this. And then, of course, Indian Pakistan fought again when Bangladesh broke away, not to overcomplicate this too much, but just to kind of make the listener understand why there's so much bad blood. Pakistan originally was two parts. There was East Pakistan and West Pakistan. So the state that we today call Pakistan, that was actually West Pakistan.

And then on the other side of India, if you pull up a map, you'll see Bangladesh. That was East Pakistan. Well, there was basically an independence movement there, which the Indian state supported. And so that was all tied in in the 1970, 71 war. and so it's it's a little bit uh it's a little bit of a complicated history here but no they haven't been fighting over for for 1500 years and nixon and kissinger took pakistan side in that one right do what uh nixon yeah nixon and kissinger took pakistan side in that right they did they did they this was actually one of the one of the many uh sort of shameful moments of post

uh world war two american foreign policy is there was so there was a genocide that was being carried out. Basically, when it looked like the independence movement was going to gain the upper hand on the government in East Pakistan, the military and paramilitary group started killing hundreds of thousands of people. And at the time, Nixon and Kissinger's priority was to open with China to balance the Soviet Union. And Pakistan was the conduit by which they were doing that. And so Kissinger basically ignoring, ignoring what the diplomats on the ground were telling because the diplomats on the ground, people can look up the Archer Blood telegram where he essentially said that U.S. policy here is morally bankrupt. He was promptly disciplined and reassigned after that.

But Kissinger just told Islamabad, just do what you need to do and do it quickly and continues to supply them with arms and with diplomatic cover internationally. So yes, a very shameful moment in U.S. foreign policy history there. Regrettably one of many. But yes, it's true. Nixon and Kissinger did take Pakistan side. Hey, by the way, I'm sorry to interrupt, but just for the Bangladeshi fans of the show,

Fools Arrind has now been published by two different groups in Bangladesh, like within a week of each other. And one of the guys translated Fools Aaron and enough already, both. So if you're Bangladeshi, keep an eye out. Anyway, go ahead. No, that's really cool. Yeah, so, well, let's see. So that's those are the major wars.

So then there was the Cargill War, which was in 99. That was a similar situation there. But maybe I should speak to, because that was again where there were insurgents coming across the border with Pakistani help and assistance and actual Pakistani troops. Maybe I should talk a little bit about how it was that you started. to get an insurgency in Kashmir because that's how I was going to say is enter the bin Ladenites who are oftentimes controlled by precisely yeah that's precisely it is initially as I said there was resistance to joining India but but it wasn't violent it was just a a political difference of opinion it was a minority opinion however eventually there will start to be a lot of violence in the 1980s

and it will have a lot to do with the bin Ladenites next door. So, okay, in 1987, this was a big turning point. So political disillusionment and electoral fraud in 1987. So a coalition of opposition parties, the Muslim United Front, which had a strong base among the young and religiously inclined Kashmiris, ran against the ruling national conference. These were the secularist Muslims aligned with New Delhi. They were aligned with India's National Congress Party.

so despite a lot of support the elections were pretty blatantly rigged in favor of the ruling party this radicalizes many of the youths who join some of whom start to join armed insurgent groups now Islamist ideology starts to quickly infiltrate and you can stop me if you've heard this one before initially a small group of secularist freedom fighters are eventually sort of squeezed out by a radical fundamentalist Hold it, hold it right there. I've heard this before. Backed by a U.S. backed by a U.S. client state.

So, of course, they start pouring in the Afghan jihad against the Soviets in the 1980s. There's a bajillion weapons floating around. It all spreads into Kashmir. Pakistan's inner services intelligence, the ISI, starts supporting these militant groups in Kashmir. So the secular nationalists,

people like the Jammu and Kashmir liberation front, the JKLF, they get squeezed out by the early 1990s. So very quickly, we're talking about from the late 80s, 87, 88, 89, all of a sudden by the early 1990s, the insurgency is almost entirely Islamist in its orientation, groups like Hezbo Mujahideen, Jamati Islami, and then there would be later groups. Pakistan, of course, loved this. Pakistan saw this as an opportunity to bleed India.

It provided weapons, training, sanctuary across the border. Again, stop me if you've heard this one. So, this, of course, leads to the Indian government responding with very heavy-handed military crackdowns, deploying hundreds of thousands of troops, starting to do all those things that, you know, counterinsurgency always resorts to, going all the way back to, you know, our earliest examples of this kind of warfare, arbitrary detentions, extrajudicial killings, torture, disappearances, this alienates the Kashmiris further and feeds the insurgency. And groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch documented very widespread abuses by Indian security services during the 1990s.

So it really, it made the situation much worse. There was already a lot of high unemployment and economic stagnation in the area. If you pull up a map of the region, you'll see that it's topographically, a very challenging area. It's, you know, geography isn't necessarily destiny, but it does play a very strong role in what type of economy and prosperity you're going. to have in an area. It was always going to be challenging, even if you didn't have a lot of ethnic tension and bloodshed, which, of course, they have. So a lot of young men find, you know, an income and employment and purpose in in the military. So, yeah, that's that's sort of where that came from. And it has continued. So in other words, the point being that the, I guess what

you're saying is dating back from the time before. for partition and everything, it was already a Muslim province ruled by a Hindu prince. And then, so that's essentially been the status quo this whole time is the Indians claiming on to what was historically by title theirs, but which is actually inhabited by people who would more naturally go with Pakistan or they would just as soon have independence. India is very interesting. I teach a class on India. And one thing that I spend a lot of time talking about is our modern notions of like homogeneous ethnolinguistically homogenous nation states is a very recent construct that just doesn't work with a lot of the complex societies in places like Africa or the Indian subcontinent, which have very complex identity dynamics.

And Europe, Europe was actually quite similar. It's just that we've kind of forgotten because these differences were eradicated over the course of the modern period. So if you go back to, you know, the place that we call France in 1,200, you've got about seven or eight different languages. You've got lots of different religious minority groups, you know, sometimes fighting and stuff. You know, you have sometimes their lord is a different religion and there were fights over that. the idea that you have to be ruled by someone who speaks your language and is your race or ethnicity, like, you know, that's just kind of very, very new. And there was really not a huge problem.

Like, conquest regimes were perfectly regular as part of the Indian experience. I mean, there had originally been Hindu, various Hindu people there who were conquered by a Muslim overlord. and so the Muslims ruled the Indians and then gradually populations moved around interbred converted you know regimes were toppled oh now now a Hindu is ruling all these Muslims and it's like it's it wasn't like a big deal I mean obviously violence is part of state acquisition it always has been but no it wasn't it was not a huge deal really it's and there's tons of great books on like from voting to violence like democratization and nationalist nationalism breeding conflict as these complex identities that maybe had a lot of different vectors that they were attaching to, maybe like clan, religion, ethnicity, language, all these different things moving in different directions, cross-cutting each other, all of a sudden you started to get them being solidified and saying, no, this is the important identitarian mark.

It's either you're a Muslim or you're a Hindu. And if you're a Muslim, you go here. And if you're a Hindu, you go here. And it's a lot of times, you know, these nationalist elites who want power. And this is a way to, to gather support for themselves. This was a big part of what drove violence in the former Yugoslavia, which I know you've written a lot about. It was these elites who wanted power and these ex-communist elites. And so they seized upon nationalism, ethno-nationalism, as being, I'm the defender. of Serbs or I'm the defender of Croats or whatever the case may be. So really trying to hype up these differences is something that nationalist demagogues want to do. And I think it's something too that the current party in India very much plays to. This is the BJP. This is Narendra Modi's party. One thing that I think is interesting is you had this gradual loss of power by the Indian and National Congress Party, which was the Independence Party, the party of Gandhi and Nehru. These were the ones who wanted more of a secularist, pluralist state, who didn't want it to be

specifically a place for, you know, India for Hindus, you know, in fact, it's a Hindu nationalist who murders Gandhi because he thinks that he is too accommodating to Muslims. Well, the party that is Hindutva, which is like the Hindu nationalist, that's the BJP, That's the party that came to power with Narendra Modi. And there's been a real upsurge in violent clashes. And, you know, this isn't to pin all the blame on, you know, the Hindus or anything like that. You know, as I said, it was the Pakistanis who invaded this area multiple times. But, you know, and the other thing is I know there's going to be listeners who are like, well, what about that and what about this?

It's like, yes, of course. You can always point to, well, this was a retaliation for that and that was a retaliation for that and just keep going back, back, back, back, tip for tat. You know, I'm just trying to paint with broad brushstrokes here, so people have some sense of what's going on. And this admittedly, very complicated, multi-layered, and multi-decade conflict. Yeah. Hey, guys, I've had a lot of great webmasters over the years, but the team at Expanddesigns.com have by far been the most competent and reliable. Harley Abbott and his team have made great sites for the show and the Institute, and they keep them running well, suggesting and making improvements all along. make a deal with expanddesigns.com for your new business or news site. They will take care of you.

Use the promo code Scott and save $500. That's expanddesigns.com. Man, I wish I was in school so I could drop out and sign up for Tom Woods' Liberty classroom instead. Tom has done such a great job on putting together a classical curriculum for everyone from junior high schoolers on up through the postgraduate level. And it's all very reasonably priced. Just make you click through from the link in the right margin at scothorton dot org tom woods this liberty classroom real history real economics real education hey all here's how you can support those who support this show and stay awake while you're doing things moondose artisan coffees moondose artisan coffees dot com get it starbuck supports the war party moondos is with us and it's really good get to scott horton's show

blend just click the link in the right hand margin at scott horton dot org all right so recently pakistani presumably lashkaritaiba you know latt or similar group launched an attack killed some indian tourists in cashmere yeah correct and then so the first big question is did i s i do it and then the second big question is please explain the history of all of the attacks back and forth ever since then. I read there's a giant, they call it a dog fight, but they stayed on their side of the borders and just shot missiles at each other back and forth.

Yeah. These fighter bombers or fighter jets. So anyway, go ahead and tackle all that, please. Yeah, so, yes, there have been numerous attacks. Lashkar-Y Taiba, as you said, you know, this was a founded in Pakistan. It's, you know, involved in a lot of cross-border terror going all the way back to the late 1990s. They were the ones who conducted that horrible, that horrible Mumbai attack in 2008.

And it should be noted that while these groups have obvious ties to the ISI, to the point where, like, there's pictures of them. There's pictures of them together, you know, contacts between the groups. I'm sorry. I don't know if we said, but that for the audience, that's. Pakistani inter-services intelligence, which is their CIA. Right. Yes. And, you know, these, they, they're well documented, you know,

Jayishi Muhammad, al-Badar. I mean, these groups have contacts. There's regular pictures of them meeting high-level leadership at funerals recently. There was like a member of the ISI at the funeral representing the government and they're like one of the terrorist leaders there, you know. So, and some, and these groups take credit for these attacks. the Pakistani government always says, hey, we had nothing to do with it. You know, 2016, 2019, Palama, they always say we had nothing to do with it.

We're being unjustly blamed. The same thing, recently the attack on the 22nd in Palgam were 26 tourists were killed, 25 of them were Indian. I believe one of them was Nepalese, but yes, terrible attack. This one was particularly heinous because usually these terrible. groups try to target the police or military or paramilitary or other government institutions or representatives of Indian control and state power. This was an attack on a soft target, a civilian target here. So yes, there was a lot of pressure on Modi to respond.

They did. They launched Operation Sundur. and they struck inside Pakistan. So this had happened back in 2019. They had made some strikes on what they said were terrorist training facilities in Pakistan right across the border. That was the first time that that had happened, though, since the 1970, 71 war. So these are not good trend lines that we're seeing here. We had a long period where there was sort of an attempt to keep,

to keep any kind of violence below the level of, like, actively attacking across the borders. But 2019, that was the first time that happened. It happened again a few days ago. As you mentioned, then the Pakistanis responded. They wound up having, as you said, I don't know how to describe it. Not really a dog fight, but like you said, there were drones and fighters and exchanging fire. And so there's also been other actions that have been taken, for example, the Indus Water Treaty, which had been in place,

golly, since before you and I were born, because Pakistan's agriculture is very heavily reliant on the east-west-running Indus River. So there's the Indus River, which flows from about the center of India there, flows into Pakistan. The Ganges flows the other way. So that treaty had been in place through thick and through thin in order to ensure water access there. and the Indian government has suspended that treaty at this point.

Not sure what their next move is going to be there because obviously I don't think it would be a good thing for the Indian government to cause some kind of like drought-induced famine in eastern Pakistan because that kind of, that's going to cause displacement and that's probably going to cause major problems on its western border, you know, where Kashmir and Jammu are, for example. examples. I don't know that they would want to do that, but they have suspended it. India has said that if Pakistan continues to respond, then they're going to respond back. And it just doesn't seem like there's anyone who's going to have good leverage to try and settle this thing down. China obviously doesn't really want a war between the two of them, but they love the two of them at each other's throats, obviously. Washington has very, very minimal leverage there. And J.D. Vance has said, and I don't know if this is the administration's official policy or not. I Trump said something about Marco Rubio is looking into it or something. But J.D. Vance

said, yeah, we have nothing to do with it. That's not our problem. So it's a very dangerous situation. Anytime I'm asked about where in the world am I most concerned about, I almost always reach for India, Pakistan. simply because they hate each other so much and there's so much bad blood. And there have been so many incidents of the conflict going hot. I mean, if you pull up a list of like India, Pakistan, you know, wars, armed conflicts, and you're going to get like 20 or 30 of them. I mean, that's like one every several years since the states were created. And these guys have nuclear weapons.

And they've already shown since they got nuclear weapons that they're willing to still fight about things. and you know if neither side is willing to de-escalate i mean there's no question india's conventional military power is far superior to pakistan's um and golly it's it's just such a scary situation there pakistan state structure obviously is highly unstable it's pakistan has a has a bazillion problems the state is bankrupt living on on the i mf is trying to work with them uh you know there's all that internal political instability there after what happened with the charge against Imran Khan and arresting him and basically they're going to try and lock him in prison for the rest of his life, I'm sure. So the new government there in

Islamabad is already feeling a lot of pressure. And of course, Modi is under a lot of pressure to be strong as well. Yeah. So let's talk about that. There's so much here. So let's focus on the domestic politics. But first of all, in Pakistan. Help me because I think I didn't dream this. I saw some headlines, but I didn't read it. I think I must have closed the tab or something. But there was some new news. Wasn't there, Joseph, about America's role in ousting Imran Khan? Oh, that was, yeah, yeah, that was, was it Dave DeCamp who reported that for us?

Or was it Kyle? Yeah, I remember reading that when that happened. I mean, it was so obvious, right? Even when it happened, you knew that Washington had at least been consulted. And, you know, you're never going to, you're never going to, in today's world, I don't think, get Washington saying, go ahead and overthrow that guy. You know, they're going to subtly signal that, you know, if steps need to be taken to secure something, that's going to be fine, you know. They're going to look to make sure that Washington isn't going to be too terribly upset about that. But, yeah, Washington was not pleased with Imran Khan, and we're very pleased to see him go.

uh and then the lawfare came out it started with um they said that he had been improperly accepting gifts and so that was three years and then once he was in prison they cooked up this um oh what did they say it was like state i'd have to look it up it was like he was sharing state secrets or something they slapped another 10 years on it on him and then uh and then they filed to incite after he do you remember he got kidnapped basically he had he had been arrested and had to stand trial and a bunch of military forces like broken and kidnapped him I think this was back in like 2023

if my memory serves and so it's and so his supporters he was very popular leader his supporters started rioting and attacking places And so he was accused of inciting that. And so, like I said, they're probably going to lock him up for the rest of his life.

So that's, that's what happened there. Yeah. And then was that just because he had been so strident and refusing to allow an American drone base there for killing Afghans with? Oh, yeah. He was, he was not, he was not compliant enough with, with the United States. The United States has a very close relationship with the Pakistani military. And for those of you don't know this, there's a coup in Pakistan about every 10 years. the military just steps in and takes over.

The civilian government is very weak. It's basically the military runs the place, and they have very close relationship with the United States going back a long way. And so anyone who's not going to play ball with the United States' security priorities in that region is always going to be playing with fire there. I'm not saying that they're entirely compliant

with what Washington wants, but it's more going to be stuff like what was going on in Afghanistan. Well, and I think you say in your article, that I mean this has made the overall political situation in Pakistan that much less stable here they are facing the Indians and you know I learned I can't remember what it stands for anymore but I tripped out when I learned that Pakistan is actually an acronym for Punjab and this and that in Balakistan whereas like it's four or five major regions forcibly held together and with a nuclear stockpile and including the federally administered tribal territories

where the, you know, Tariqi Taliban rules and there's kooks everywhere. Yeah. Yeah. So there's separatist groups to the south. There's regular attacks there. You hear about those in the news sometimes because they tend to attack like Chinese infrastructure projects down there. Yeah, it's a mess.

it's a i mean all states are like kind of fake right like they're just they're kind there's lines on a map that were drawn but pakistan is super fake um and yeah it's held together entirely by force and it's wildly unstable and then you know by the way and people never talk about this but they should you heard it here you can go look it up but the CIA sat there and watched as aq con stole all his weapons designs from oh man i'm sorry i forget the name of the company now in in Belgium and they watched him walk out of there well let's see where he goes

with it well he goes he ends up proliferating this technology first of all you know founding Pakistan's nuclear weapons program and then proliferating the technology to Iran Libya and North Korea although I don't think the North Koreans did much with what

they got from him nor did the Libyans the Iranian sure did I mean their original centrifuge program was based on AQCon stuff that they got from Pakistan on the black market. And then the Reagan administration looked the other way when they were developing the atom bomb in the 80s because they're helping us fight the Mujahideen war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan next door.

And then I don't know the exact timeline on India's nuclear weapons program if they were ahead or behind Pakistan on that. But it was almost being developed in parallel. The Indians started first, but the Pakistanis were always right there. In fact, I believe they conducted their nuclear tests in the same year. Yeah, they did in 1998. And nobody cared because it was the same week as the flop of a finale of the Jerry Seinfeld show. But meanwhile, India and Pakistan were testing their nuclear bombs.

And I'll never forget this one Pakistani general telling the TV camera, you tell those Indians, we're not afraid of their atom bombs. You know, like being macho about it has anything to do with. whether an atom bomb can kill you or not. No, it's scary. And again, the United States, oh boy, it's so funny. Because on the one hand, I'm like, yes, don't do anything.

Just stop, stop doing stuff. Because everything you do backfires, makes things worse. But I am tempted to say, please put forth some diplomatic effort here. Like, stop arming and funding. proxy forces all over the world stop doing that but for heaven's sake like diplomatically please try to facilitate conversations in a number of these incidents it was the united states that stepped in and played the role of mediator um you know it's it's hard to say just how much purchase they would have here and again maybe purchase isn't the right word like i i don't necessarily mean

that washington should try to force them to do anything but just bringing them together trying to help them de-escalate, find off-ramps for them basically, because you and I have had many conversations where we are of the opinion, public choice theory, baby, foreign policy is largely a function of domestic policy. You have got to give these leaders off-ramps that are going to keep them secure in their power domestically. They're never going to make a decision that compromises themselves politically, because history is littered with people who did that, and and then lost power at home. Yeah.

So that's absolutely critical. I don't know. You know, I didn't go to college, so I don't know like how much value they put on face in their little algorithm. But yeah, these guys aren't going to back down in a way that doesn't still make them look like the tough guy who won somehow, you know?

Yeah. In the United States, you know, at least half of what they wanted. Yeah, and if the United States is going to do anything in the world, it should try to provide off ramps for conflicts like these. Which, by the way, you know, I thought it was notable. and, you know, I don't know how meaningful.

I guess ultimately it wasn't meaningful enough, but the Indians, after their initial raid, said, listen, we didn't hit any military targets. We only hit these cooks at their house, and you know it. So don't freak out. This was a de-escalatory air raid they called it, which, you know, come on. But they were sort of,

leaving the Pakistanis an off-ramp there. Like, look, we're not trying to go to war with you, but we're not going to sit here and let these cooks do this stuff. Yeah, no, I absolutely agree with you. I thought that India, when they hit them, they said exactly that. They said, look, we are not trying to escalate this. We view this as over now. We hit the terrorists' camps, but, you know,

there were a lot of civilian casualties. It was super unpopular in Pakistan. how dare those Indians do that to us. They hate each other, like super hate each other. And I hate speaking about people in generalities because, you know, you go out in the world and you meet this person and that person. And there's just a diversity of opinions.

But speaking in terms of generalities, Indians and Pakistanis just don't like each other at all and are very suspicious of each other. And there's been a lot of fighting and killing. And there's a lot of nationalist propaganda on either side, part of which is put out by the regime, by the state media. because having someone that your population hates and fears nearby helps solidify the state in its power.

And that is, of course, the number one goal of all states. Longhorns versus Aggies. It works, man. It works. People join upsides in this stuff. Yeah, you need someone to hate. And so it's, it's, yeah, I, so I wasn't surprised that the Pakistanis did not take that off-ramp because it would have made the government, which is very weak. The government of Shabash Sharif is very weak. They're the ones who took over after they basically just, you know, cooed Khan out of power there. So they have very little

legitimacy, very little love. The country is broke. I mean, there's been all sorts of natural disasters in Pakistan, too, over the last couple of years, like flooding and different things like that. And so there's all sorts of problems going on in Pakistan. Terrorist attacks in the South, problems to the Northwest. So there's just, there's no end of problems there and the government is pretty incapable of solving any of them. I mean, all governments are bad at solving problems. The Pakistani government, though, is especially bad at solving problems. Well, you know, you talk about in your article how the Indians are going to always kind of look askance at the United States because even though we pretend to be

allies with both, we, you know, I guess flip back and forth. I guess now you'd think that we favor India more because they're the ones who are adversaries with China. We're trying to hem them in and China backs Pakistan. But there's enough flipping back and forth there for both sides to be real skeptical of American leadership. And that's the thing is that it just seems so obvious that if America wasn't an empire but held all of its power and reserve, but just wanted to host peace conferences all day where we made no promises of any aid or interference on our own behalf, but just you can borrow our wood-paneled rooms to sit in and talk. And we've got expert diplomats here who can help bridge the gap.

You know, a lot of the times when people are in an argument, a third person can just see the compromise that neither side is willing to say out loud or it can't quite get their head around but is obvious to somebody else. We could do all that all day. A limited constitutional republic that hosts peace conferences all the time. There's a cool reputation. for the USA to have instead sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't yeah and instead but like even now if jady vant said hey you know me my wife's indian and so i care about this and we're going to

intervene now and do something about it well that would just raise all kinds of questions about america's dog in the fight because america's the world empire and we have interest in pakistan we have interest still in afghanistan and wherever else so yeah and the the indians the indians mistrust the United States because the United States took past the inside basically forever because the Indians refused to align with the first world during the Cold War. They were one of the preeminent third world non-aligned countries and in fact they got their military hardware from the Soviets. So that was a huge strike against them in Washington's eyes. So for most of the Cold War, the United States didn't start having cool relations with New Delhi until really

the 90s when the when the pentagon and the state department were starting to kind of look around like so where's our next enemy going to be China maybe and so they started trying to butter up the Indians for the future and that's uh I think it's called the one two three agreement in the early 90s under George W. Bush where they helped the Indians along with the nuclear program basically gave them a boost you know start trying to get into buy American equipment you know just kind of prepping and then getting them in the quad and doing other things like that so So, but the Indians remember, and the Indians aren't stupid. The reason they didn't want to join the Cold War is because they didn't want to be someone else's dupes.

They wanted to be their own country, to be a neutral state. And they've, they've really tried to keep Washington at arm's length in terms of its attempt to encircle and contain China. New Delhi has its own beef with China, but it doesn't want to be the running dog for Washington, you know. All right, so. Now what? I mean Everybody's going to chill out because what are you going to do? Have a nuclear war or? Yeah, we're going to have a nuclear war.

You know, they've fought each other multiple times. You know, the fighting since they've had nuclear weapons stayed below the nuclear threshold. I honestly don't know. Like I said, I don't like making predictions about the future because they may be wrong. I'm very nervous about this. This is my number one least favorite spot in the world because they have. nuclear weapons and they hate each other and the internal domestic politics are very, very divisive and very driven by distrust and dislike and...

Well, and there's this intractable argument over this massive territory of Kashmir. Yeah, they both claim it. They both claim that the other side illegally occupies the territory. Yeah. And the Kashmiris, you know, some of them want independence, some of them want to join with India. Some of them probably would rather be part of Pakistan. I mean, it's a huge mess. It's a huge

mess. And there's tons of weapons and terrorism and China even claims part of it, right? Yeah. Is it part? Yeah, you know, I think there's like a little part of it maybe that is part of the India-China border dispute there.

I'd have to look on a map. It's very close to that region right there along the Himalayas there. Yeah. But China doesn't really get involved in this particular issue and now i'm sorry for keeping you over time here but so um you talked about how you know the government in pakistan is really weak they might need a war to shore things up war being the health of the state and all unless you get nuked off the face of the

earth then you're not so much but so what about modi he's a pretty strong strong man in power in India, he could afford to leave it at that in a way that maybe is more difficult for the Pakistanis? Is that a proper reading on it? But he is a very right-wing nationalist kind of a guy, so he might just want to escalate anyway, or what? That's the thing is. So you're absolutely right. Modi is by far the stronger ruler between two. It's not even close. That being said, you're also right that he is a very hard for hindu nationalist it was actually him who revoked um the autonomous status or semi-autonomous status of uh jimu and cashmere back in 2019 after he won that last election and had that nice mandate he revoked article 370 which his supporters would say was

like oh of course he could do that but like i've pretty much every constant every legal scholar who i've who's familiar with the matter says that nope that was extra constitutional unconstitutional he couldn't do that so basically they took away uh jemu and kashmir's right to make its own laws locally and that they're now governed by the actual constitution out of new deli and that they're basically just one of the states of india now so he has has come he he he's very much the strong hindu nationalist yes he has the political capital that he could take a hit and back down he I just don't know that he would want to. I don't think ideologically he has any interest in that.

I think he views India as being completely in the right. They were attacked once again, again. Like, this is not to, like, pick sides. I'm standing here trying to call balls and strikes. It's not the Indian terrorist sneaking into Pakistani-controlled areas and blowing stuff up. That's not what's happening. Shooting up people. That's not what's happening.

It is Pakistani-backed militants with, relationships with the ISI who are coming into Indian controlled territory and blowing stuff up and shooting people up and attacking a territory that's controlled by the Indian government. And so, you know, I just don't know that he's going to want to, honestly. You know, it's obviously very nerve-wracking with both of them having nuclear weapons. But you're right. I don't think that the Pakistani government has the clout to back down. I mean, the military could just step in and take power if the civilian government got into trouble.

They've done that time and time again. Modi, like you said, Modi could take the hit. Does he want to? Probably not. I mean, no political leader likes to. And certainly not. I mean, just imagine after 9-11 if George W. Bush had, you know, said, we're not going to. I mean, he got his licks in, right?

Yeah, he did get his licks in. It's just ideologically, though, like he really wants that incorporated in there. He wants the violence to stop. Golly, it's a tough one. I don't know. I don't know. I think you're absolutely right. He could be the one to do it.

I don't think he wants a war, you know, over there. I mean, that's going to be very destabilized to the region. It's going to cost a lot of money. It's going to derail economic activity over there. Has there been any news about what the chikoms are saying here? Oh, they want de-escalation. I mean, the Chinese. are actually, like, super content with this.

Are they engaging in any diplomacy at all? Or, oh, no. Not really. I mean, they're, you know, just the standard stuff. I mean, and India is not going to let them broker the agreement. Right. Honestly, the power that would be in the best position to play peacemaker here would probably be the Russians, honestly.

Simply because neither side has any reason to hate them or mistrust them. and you know they they both get you know really good stuff for them but yeah china's not going to be acceptable uh Washington's probably not going to be acceptable um so yeah and like I said well Lavrov's basically competent but he's also very busy you know yeah yeah I mean and the questions are are very and that's not going to happen anyway Washington would probably try to prevent Moscow from doing anything to diffuse the crisis because that would, you know, we don't let anyone do anything, right? Just like when Washington threw a huge pit because Beijing was trying to get the Iranians and the Saudis together to get along, right? And Washington was like,

hey, stop doing that. Yeah, we need that civil war to continue. Yeah. Only Washington is allowed to, you know, do that kind of stuff in Washington's eyes. So. Yeah, it's a bad situation, and I, gosh, I really wish that there could be some better coordination among the powers to, again, just try and facilitate an off ramp for these powers to just buy time. Because, you know, these are, these are, these are pretty intractable problems. If you read the article, if you, if you read into the history, like, there's, there's no obvious solution to this problem at all. it's it's just kind of going to be there and the best that can happen is for the water to stay below the boiling point

and that requires some restraint that requires uh requires the courage to make political decisions that are maybe not the easy ones so yeah all right man well I'll let you go

if we don't all die in a thermo nuclear war, and that'd be funny if there was a thermonuclear war and it didn't start in the holy land or even in Russia, Ukraine, but it all just started here and then China jumped in and then America and Russia and then God, I wonder about all the South Americans and everybody else who'd starve from the nuclear winter, you know? Anyway, that's what's on my mind. Joseph Solis Mullen, he is the author of the fake China Threat, published by the Libertarian Institute, and the National Debt, and you also published by the Libertarian Institute. And he is a fellow at the Libertarian Institute and writes there very regularly.

This article is called the Kashmir Powderkeg at Libertarian Institute.org. Thank you very much again for your time, dude. Thank you, Scott. And hey, everybody, sign up for my substack. at Scott Horton Show.com and paid subscribers get the audiobook of Provoked. I'm publishing it in pieces there. Thanks for listening to Scott Horton Show, which can be heard on APS Radio News at Scott Horton.org, Scott Horton Show.com, and the Libertarian Institute at libertarian institute.org.