India, Pakistan; on the brink of war
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00:00All right, Alexander, let's talk about the escalation between India and Pakistan.
00:07Modi is saying that he is going to retaliate in an aggressive way towards Pakistan, or
00:17at least the terrorist groups inside of Pakistan after the terrorist attack that did happen
00:22in Kashmir, leaving 20, 26, 27 people dead.
00:28And it does seem like Modi is being put in a position where he will have to respond to
00:40this terrorist attack.
00:41Of course, India has already put the Indus Water Treaty, they've suspended it, they put
00:49it on pause.
00:50They've expelled many diplomats and government officials from India as well.
00:55Um, Pakistan has shut down trade and transportation links to India and Pakistan has, uh, has also
01:05threatened India with, uh, with using nuclear weapons.
01:09The defense minister said, all of our nuclear weapons are pointed at you, India, if you
01:13retaliate, uh, towards us.
01:16Of course, the defense minister also, in an interview with Sky News, said that this might
01:22have been some sort of, uh, of a false flag.
01:25And, um, and that, uh, Pakistan has been, um, has been up to, to many dirty, dirty works
01:33over the many decades, which seemed to me as, as the defense minister trying to perhaps find
01:39an off-ramp with India by shifting the, uh, the, uh, the, the blame of, uh, of this onto, onto false
01:47flags and stuff like that.
01:49And then saying, uh, Mayor Cooper, we've, we've done many bad things in the, in the past.
01:53I mean, it was an interesting statement from the defense minister to make, but anyway, um,
01:57Modi, it looks like Modi is, is preparing a response to, to this terrorist attack.
02:03And it looks like he has the support of the people, uh, the Indian people behind him as
02:09well.
02:09Uh, what are your thoughts on this?
02:11Well, I think this is an incredibly dangerous situation and one which could very easily spiral
02:15out of control.
02:16Now, India and Pakistan have fought several wars against each other.
02:21They've never, however, gone into an outright war situation since they each acquired nuclear
02:30weapons, which they did, you know, 20, 30 years ago, they've each got substantial nuclear
02:36arsenals.
02:37Um, but they have had many clashes since then.
02:43And there's been at least one conflict.
02:47I believe it was the one in Cargill, some, about dead 15, 20 years ago, when there was
02:54concerns that, you know, we were actually quite close to a nuclear exchange.
02:59So, you know, this is a dangerous, very, very dangerous situation.
03:03Now, this hasn't come out of nowhere.
03:05And I think a lot of, you know, we need to look at each country.
03:09First of all, Modi, prime minister of India, he has one power in India on a nationalist ticket.
03:21It's, I think, hardly disputed that he's very much looks to support from the Hindu community
03:31within India.
03:34There are longstanding tensions between Hindus and Muslims within India itself.
03:40These go back, well, a very, very long time.
03:45So, a situation where there's a terrorist attack, Hindus are killed, it looks as if Islamic terrorists
03:55were involved, is going to put him in a position where really he cannot afford not to react.
04:03He has to react.
04:04He has to take a very, very strong line.
04:07Now, going over to the other side, to Pakistan, all this about, you know, all kinds of things
04:14that Pakistan did in the past, I'm afraid the reality is, and I don't think, again, this
04:19is something that anybody is going to really argue about, Pakistan has had a very, very long
04:25history of supporting radical Islamic movements in Kashmir, in Afghanistan, in all sorts of other
04:35places.
04:37As we all know, a very, very prominent Islamist leader was in Pakistan until the Americans
04:49finally caught up with him.
04:51I'm not going to say more because we know how sensitive that whole thing is.
04:55But the point I'm trying to say is that there is a very long, very long and undisputed history
05:02of Pakistan being involved with these kind of groups.
05:09And they do commit, sometimes, extreme acts of violence, not different from the one that
05:15we have just seen.
05:17So when the Pakistanis say that they weren't involved, the trouble is they have been involved
05:25in the past, and it's very easy to understand why Modi and his electoral constituency will
05:39assume that Pakistan was involved in this.
05:44I'm not, by the way, I haven't investigated this.
05:47I'm not talking to anybody.
05:49I don't know for a fact that Pakistan was involved.
05:53All I am saying is it's completely understandable why Modi and the people around him might think
06:00that Pakistan was involved.
06:02Pakistan also has had a very, very long conflict with India over the status of Kashmir, which
06:12has never been resolved either.
06:14And I'm not going to go into the history of that on this programme either, just to say
06:19there has already been wars between Pakistan and India over the status of Kashmir.
06:25So we have all of this going on.
06:27Now, the other thing to say is that there is a longstanding political crisis in Pakistan.
06:37The former Prime Minister Imran Khan is in prison.
06:40A lot of his supporters are very, very unhappy about this.
06:43The economy of Pakistan is in great difficulties.
06:47There's very high inflation.
06:49So there's social tensions, there's economic tensions.
06:53The government is fragile or feels itself to be at least under pressure.
07:01There's a perception that the United States, which was historically Pakistan's great ally and
07:07friend, has been tilting increasingly in India's favour over the last 20 years because it sees
07:14India as a counterbalance against China.
07:17So you can imagine, you can understand why things in Pakistan might be very tense and why
07:24that might cause some people in Pakistan.
07:27Pakistan, I'm not saying this has happened again, I want to stress this, but they might be saying,
07:31well, look, we're in this situation with India.
07:36Perhaps what we need is a situation, a kind of controlled crisis with India, which will consolidate
07:43society within Pakistan, behind the military so that we can, to some extent at least, mitigate
07:52these particular crises that we have.
07:54And even if that is not true, in a condition of crisis within a country, various players within
08:03that country potentially can start to make decisions on their own, which have not been
08:09agreed, but which have not been agreed throughout the entire political system.
08:14So, one way or the other, we are in a situation where India, it's understandable why they think
08:24Pakistan was involved.
08:26They're making threats against Pakistan.
08:28Pakistan is going to respond to those threats.
08:31It's not going to simply allow India to either breach Pakistani airspace or territory, launch
08:41attacks against people that the Indians say are terrorists.
08:46They're not going to allow that to happen.
08:48And then, of course, on top of that, we have the Indus River issue.
08:53Now, this goes back to 1960.
08:55The Indus is an enormous river, enormously historic.
08:59It provides water to both India and Pakistan.
09:03Apparently, Pakistan is very Pakistani agriculture.
09:08And remember, it's still a very rural country in many places, is very dependent on water from
09:15the Indus.
09:17Now, throughout all the various conflicts between India and Pakistan, the Indians have never interfered
09:24with the flow of water into Pakistan through the Indus.
09:28There was an agreement in 1960 that basically sorted the fact that the Indus would be shared between these two countries in that way.
09:43Now, very dangerously, I think, Modi is now saying that that treaty is suspended.
09:50And there is suggestions that India might start to take action to stop the flow of water to Pakistan via the Indus River.
10:02And, of course, if that happens, it is an existential crisis for Pakistan.
10:06I mean, if Pakistan is not receiving water in that way, then on top of all the other economic and social problems, you will have a potential catastrophe.
10:18I mean, desertification, possible famine, all kinds of humanitarian crises, one piling on top of the other.
10:28So, you can understand that for Pakistan, this is an existential issue.
10:34And they're saying if the Indians take this step, then as far as they are concerned, that would be an act of war.
10:41And Pakistan would be at war with India.
10:45Now, two things.
10:47Firstly, I don't think that the technology exists to stop the flow of water on this kind of scale from India to Pakistan.
10:59I mean, I've read various discussions about this.
11:02But, I mean, I don't think that India is really in a position to act on these threats.
11:10So, why threaten to do something that the other side, Pakistan, is going to see as existentially dangerous if you can't follow through with it anyway?
11:23So, I think Modi was mistaken to threaten this.
11:28I think it's escalated the situation to extraordinary levels.
11:32But secondly, Pakistan, on its side, has had a policy of being prepared to use nuclear weapons first, and they're now threatening to do so.
11:46And that, again, is going to exacerbate this crisis to an extraordinary degree and is potentially, I mean, unbelievably dangerous.
11:57Because if India perceives that there's a real possibility of Pakistan using nuclear weapons against India, then logically and understandably, India might decide to use its nuclear arsenal against Pakistan.
12:15So, it's very easy to see how this thing could get out of control.
12:19As I said, we've had clashes in the past.
12:21It's usually up to now been possible to bring this situation under control.
12:29But this looks like a particularly dangerous incident.
12:34And I think everybody who's following it needs to be very worried.
12:41Imran Khan was someone who was repairing relations with India, Pakistan and India, right?
12:49Yes, absolutely.
12:50He was, well, he was, I mean, lots of criticisms of him.
12:55People say that, you know, he's overrated.
12:58But he wanted, as far as one can tell, to distance Pakistan from its past.
13:08He wanted to establish a more civilian type of government in Pakistan.
13:13He wanted to reduce the role of the military there.
13:16He wanted good, or at least better relations with India.
13:19And, of course, he wanted good relations with Russia.
13:23So, the American embassy wasn't happy about that.
13:26The military weren't happy about that.
13:29All kinds of stakeholders within Pakistan, a very complicated political system in Pakistan, weren't happy about it.
13:36And, as I said, the result is that he's in prison.
13:38So, you're quite right.
13:42I think a lot of this current crisis is traceable back to that decision, basically to remove Imran Khan from the premiership through what, as far as I'm concerned, has all the looks, look, of a parliamentary coup.
14:00And then to conduct lawfare against him and to imprison him.
14:05By the way, I want to stress, as is often the case with these kind of scandals, I'm not suggesting that Imran Khan is, you know, absolutely innocent of all the things he's accused of.
14:19But if you're talking about corruption in Pakistan, then, I mean, corruption is not just widespread at the highest levels of the Pakistani system.
14:30It is universal, as is universally acknowledged.
14:33Does this jeopardize BRICS in any way, given India and China, the tensions between those two powers, given China's growing investment and support with Pakistan?
14:53Potentially, yes.
14:55I mean, the friendship between Pakistan and China goes back to the 1960s.
15:01India and China had been very good friends in the 50s.
15:05Then they fell out massively over issues of the border.
15:10And there was actually a war between China and India in 1962, which China won.
15:17That left China in control of large stretches of territory, which India claims is its own.
15:23And there have been tensions between China and India ever since.
15:26India then forged close relations with the Soviet Union, which was, of course, at that time, China's adversary.
15:38And China balanced those by building up a strong relationship with Pakistan.
15:44China has never shown any hint of wanting to sacrifice its relationship with Pakistan ever since, because as far as China is concerned, Pakistan has been a consistently reliable ally.
16:00Also, I think at a deeper level, the Chinese probably calculate that they need Pakistan to be friendly to themselves because they don't want a hostile government in Pakistan that might start supporting Islamist groups within China itself.
16:21So there is this very strong relationship between China and Pakistan, which makes India obviously extremely uneasy.
16:32And if we start moving towards an outright conflict, then I can very easily see that this could cause enormous strains within the BRICS.
16:41We're not there yet, but we are moving slowly in that direction or maybe even quickly in that direction.
16:48What do you see as a possible off-ramp here?
16:51I mentioned the defense minister's statements, which were interesting statements coming from the Pakistani defense minister admitting that Pakistan was doing all kinds of terrible things for many decades.
17:06What do you think is a possible off-ramp to this crisis?
17:11Well, I think that firstly, the two sides need to start calming the situation by stopping, stop making these threats against each other.
17:26So first of all, I think Pakistan should tell India that they're prepared to cooperate with India to investigate this terrorist incident.
17:34Now, you know, they can do that and then, as has happened, I believe, before, going forward, they might walk it back.
17:43I don't know, but at least it would de-escalate the problem now.
17:49India could reciprocate by, except, you know, by ending the suspension of the Indian River, the Indus River Agreement.
17:59And Pakistan could say that it's not looking to use nuclear weapons against India.
18:06I think if something like that happens, the situation could ease.
18:12Can Pakistan give this terrorist group to India or something?
18:16I mean, I don't know, because there's this terrorist group, I forgot their name,
18:21that was behind this terrorist attack that has safety, that has received, that is in Pakistan.
18:30And is there a way for Pakistan to somehow allow India to hit this terrorist group or something like that?
18:41Yeah, absolutely. What Pakistan could, in theory, do is that they could start taking action against this group themselves,
18:51because we could see how dangerous it was.
18:53They could tell the Indians, look, we are not going to obviously allow you to attack this group on our territory.
19:00I mean, that is an infringement of our sovereignty, and we have to resist it.
19:04But we will take action ourselves, and they could tell the Indians what that action was,
19:10and they could start, you know, rounding up these people and doing those kind of things.
19:14Of course, again, and this is where, by the way, sponsorship of terrorist groups,
19:19why it is an incredibly bad idea, because those terrorist groups could then turn against the Pakistani government itself.
19:28And they do have some support within Pakistani society, and it could create a further set of problems for Pakistan.
19:39But I would have thought that avoiding war with India, potentially a nuclear war, ought to be the priority at this time.
19:48So I think the Indian and Pakistani foreign ministers should meet,
19:53and I think there should be some attempt to move this thing forward.
19:57And I think, by the way, and I'm not trying to be even-handed at all.
20:04I'm simply saying that I think Modi also should at least try, make bigger efforts
20:11to maintain some kind of long-term dialogue with Pakistan than he has done up to now.
20:19Because one of the reasons, I suspect, why this has happened is because in the absence of dialogue,
20:27and Modi has shown little interest in dialogue with Pakistan,
20:31the Pakistanis feel increasingly isolated, and with India growing more powerful literally every day,
20:38perhaps more threatened.
20:39And in India's own interests, talking to the Pakistanis in a way that might diffuse these tensions
20:50and ease these worries that they're being boxed into a corner could prevent incidents like the one we've just seen,
20:59and with all the consequences that we now have to worry about.
21:05Yeah.
21:06I mean, it just seems to me that India is much more powerful than Pakistan.
21:11But it's the nuclear component for Pakistan that acts as a deterrence.
21:15Exactly.
21:16But, of course, the very fact that Pakistan is the much weaker party makes it more likely to use nuclear weapons in a crisis.
21:25By definition.
21:27Right.
21:27Okay.
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