 Good afternoon, and welcome back to India and China at sea So the first session this afternoon Where we're going to have a permit pal Chowdhury as I mentioned foreign minister foreign minister would be foreign minister Foreign editor Hindustan times and As I think everyone already knows an excellent and articulate speaker on Indian foreign policy and he he's going to be I think fairly directly addressing Lee Cordeners question earlier about you know why Why this Conference has been looking at the India-China Relationship primarily through the lens of competition rather than cooperation, and I think Primate will give some excellent context to or explanation for that and In in response to a promise presentation We have a professor JD Yuan from University of Sydney who is Among his many qualifications is an excellent book on India-China Security relations which I that came out about a decade a decade or so ago But I think it remains in many respects Just as as valid as the day was written So what I'll do is I'll basically speak about how I see the evolution of India's India's Indian Ocean strategy and policy since the previous government under Manman Singh the up a government in which ran from 2004 2014 and how it's evolved if you wish since then and the key differences between the two and at the heart of it is what has been as what David's mentioned was the debate about how to tackle China or how to try to relate to China and Basically then give some some thoughts about where we might be going in the future on this These the Manman Singh government was especially in its second term highly dysfunctional It was a government that had more or less internally collapsed because of various scandals and because of a battle between the party leader So near Gandhi and the prime minister and In the second term where we saw the first term was really a big really largely about the Indo US nuclear deal I mean it really consumed all the oxygen in the air and was Transformational in terms of what it did between India and the United States The second term we saw Manman Singh as I said at this point his government began to start began falling apart And he had a foreign policy team, which to many ways I would argue did not reflect his own point of view He had a national security advisor who was the person who really led the foreign policy shift Shankar Menon Amanda in speaking former foreign secretary And he had a defense minister aka Anthony who was definitely not his choice was appointed by Sonya Gandhi And who was a left-leaning very anti-American? Defense minister was appointed in in place Anthony the defense minister was basically driven by a very clear Policy which was don't get too close to the Americans because you lose votes on the left in India Which would be crucial for the election that the Sun that the Congress government saw coming in 2014 But he was also driven by another bigger game Which was that she didn't want Sonya Gandhi didn't want a scandal in defense because a scan defense acquisition Scandal the so-called Boffers gun scandal had destroyed her husband's Rajiv Gandhi's government earlier And she didn't want to repeat performance on that front Anthony who didn't really was honest, but didn't actually know anything or understand defense at all Solution to this was not to buy anything or do anything and for basically five years. India had no defense policy whatsoever We bought no weapons for five years and So his his was a very clear policy don't do anything And so the result was our defense policy in effect froze and it stayed in stasis for almost that entire period Menon came in In theoretically inherited the huge spike in in the US relations that had taken place during the Bush administration Bush was one India was one of the few countries in the world where Bush had a record Approval rating over 75% and it was when Obama's elected actually US approval ratings in India fell by 15 percentage points This was not a country that particularly cared or was unhappy that Obama was elected and Which was not unhappy when Bush left it was it was very much a relationship driven by Bush Because of for various reasons we can go into but at the heart of it was an understanding between Bush and Singh that The what Bush called a balance of power for freedom in Asia had to be preserved and that the rise of China While it was not necessarily an existential threat to this but the nature of maintaining democracy in Asia For Bush and for Singh was that the US India relationship had to be transformed and they did this Menon inherited this policy, but he inherited an Obama presidency and Obama's month Obama in effect By the so-called g2 policy or for not an official policy But an attempt to reach out to China and develop an accommodation with China regarding larger global issues and Asia in general Was seen by the Indian side as an effective An end or an undermining of that original understanding that they had with the Bush administration They also found Obama to be much more transactional than Bush was who was actually much more strategic in his thinking than Obama was Obama's basic was that okay if we're going to give you if you even if my predecessor was the one who gave you this deal Then you got to buy x number of things from me Anyway, the relationship began to fall apart after Obama was elected and by so by 20 By 2009 in Menon had concluded in 2010 Menon concluded that in fact the in the US Relationship had been a Bush India relationship and there wasn't really no basis For thinking that there was been a fundamental change in the US relationship Menon basically didn't trust the United States to be a stable stable strategic partner Didn't and there were other issues that they had with the United States particularly Obama's decision that he wanted to pull out of Afghanistan At all costs which meant that India and the US effectively were at loggerheads loggerheads in Afghanistan, but as Menon was very clear in his private conversations I don't actually see what is a strategic basis of this relationship if we're not agreeing on China or not agreeing on Pakistan then what's left That didn't mean he necessarily Trusted China either He was very clear that China was not a country that he particularly or anybody in India could trust at the senior level But he has believed that since America was not to be trusted Therefore some sort of accommodation had to be reached between India and China I'll give him a quote that he gave in 2013 He said quote and it's in the paper that I don't was distributed to everybody On on my India on India's at ocean policy But it said they and he said in the inconstancy in stated policy and US actions towards the Asia Pacific over the last two Years does not inspire confidence. We must not be drawn into choosing sides and this is obvious referenced to China He also made the argument that ultimately in the long run It was going to be China that mattered in Asia and not the United States Because quote the balance of interest is also in China's favor She will be ready to pay a price to get her way which the United States and other extra regional powers would not And so so fundamentally he saw that over the long run It would be America leaving Asia and he saw and everything that Obama did in his view fed into this Into the sense of an America that was effectively in retreat So an Indian Ocean part of this was his rejection Complete rejection of the idea both at the Indo-Pacific as a strategic concept because in his view that was effectively a code word for Chinese containment And an attempt to build it bring in countries like Japan and and link India to America's Western Pacific strategy And he very publicly refuted this there's no such thing as the Indo-Pacific and He publicly refuted the idea that there was anything there was anything like maritime rivalry between China and India of any variety So this is essentially a concoction of think tanks and academics He also even so he also argued that China's maritime expansion into the Indian Ocean the submarines and so on that began to appear Was he said that's that's just a normal state of affairs He called it the new norm that if Indian ships going into the Pacific Chinese ships going Indian Ocean So this is not a matter of concern. It's just a natural progress of two countries two rising countries He said the solution therefore To at best to all of this was just a need to develop a regional a pest Preferably a regional architecture that that allowed all sides to sit at the same chart But it also meant a degree of Lee as I said reaching out to China and an attempt to any attempted very hard to create Some sort of a dialogue and come to a similar if you wish his own little g2 policy between China and India So he What was the key problem that he faced though the three problems that the policy completely failed because China was not interested and Between 2013 and 2014 There was an attempt on almost all fronts under men and and a passively under Anthony to try to come to some term Some sort of an accommodation of China and China rejected it all throughout doing that entire period We saw absolutely no forward movement. In fact, I would go further from 2012 onwards We tried India tried repeatedly to try this Menon saw the Indian Ocean and the maritime area as Being the area where he could most likely succeed in coming to some accommodation with China He accepted that the border dispute was so simply too difficult to solve. It was a manager It was a management issue, but it was relatively quiet He didn't have any problems with it, but he didn't expect to be able to solve that that required a degree of political Capital, which definitely the his government did not have He knew that there was never going to be any agreement between China and India on Pakistan And there were a lot of other smaller areas where he saw that would be either too difficult But he actually saw the maritime area as the area of greatest convergence Whether it was SLO C's and so on. He said this is the place we can come to some sort of an understanding with China And he tried repeatedly so he offered China a maritime dialogue between the two countries and China would basically said we're not interested in talking to you So for almost two to three years the Indian government under him tried to come to some sort of understanding on the maritime issues Hold some sort of a dialogue some agreement nothing happened That Beijing was simply especially in the last two years of the Hu Jinta regime. Beijing was simply uninterested Then Xi Jinping comes to power and we I think we could see men and trying at this point again Okay, this is at least we have now have a Chinese leader who potentially is Stronger than at least and who is not so good so obsessed with the succession struggles It didn't make any difference She was as in death disinterested as he was and she's first state visitor I think as David mentioned to India was marred by a major border border clash between India and China And again and whatever little was left of men and Credibility within the only his own government was effectively dead after that incident happened Men and himself bitterly complained to us in private that China had shown itself to be an Aussie called an quote autistic superpower Because he simply could not understand why it was so difficult for China to understand that what he thought was a clear area of mutual interest Between the two and I would argue that the final blow to this school of thinking inch in India Was the announcement of one belt one road? Because fundamentally what it was is that you had a board you had until now a border dispute and you had a maritime policy Which were not linked with each other and in the view of the Indian strategic community Especially at the highest level China had an effect brought these two together That the one belt one road Thanks to the China-Pakistan economic corridor and what was planned in Southeast Asia Effectively brought the entire border infrastructure of the north and linked it with a maritime policy a connectivity policy at this point these two policies basically began to be seen as merging into one as far as India was concerned and Menons continuing inability and I should add another thing that we began to do is began to ask China for a dialogue on the one belt one road Explained to us was the Indian argue. What exactly are you planning here? How much is economic? How much is strategic? We're not necessarily opposed to this idea, but you need to give us some transparency again Total silence from Beijing. There's still to this date not been any Attempt or or interest on but part of China to explain to India What exactly the one belt one road at least in the in the closed-door government to government level? So when the government that government fell in 2014 and none the Modi came to power It was very unclear as to what none of the Modi's actual views on China were Privately when we talked to them him Remember he was a man who lived he had been a state government chief minister all his political life He'd never served in Delhi as a minister or in any position in the central government He really saw Foreign policy largely in it through an economic prism. It was basically about trade and investment and as a chief minister He'd had a perfectly good relationship with Chinese business and he saw that To some degree, I think I can just his view was I can just expand this onto the central government level and his view was at Xi Jinping Interested as has been previously mentioned about trying to increase Chinese investment into India Would therefore be more or less agreeable to what he had in mind He was also I should add suspicious of the United States Partly because of the because the United States had issued a visa ban on Modi After anti Muslim riots and when he was chief minister in Gujarat in 2002 He had virtually no interaction with the United States for for almost 10 years He saw the Obama administration which had continued to criticize him in some form or another on human rights issues as being inimically hostile And therefore his campaign advisers I remember told me when he was after he was soon after he was elected He says we don't really expect it ever to be an Obama and will de-summit This is not going to happen. This will be as he said and they told me in New York New Delhi relationship I need to be trade and investment, but there'll be nothing else and we may have to wait until the next US president to get this relationship going So what happens to that vision that broad instinct that he came to power with Within just about a year and I would again say that this is an example of how China sometimes Well, maybe they're not interested but it's interesting example of how China can't get it wrong That policy been completely reversed. So I said she made a state visit It resulted in a major border incident, which is a great embarrassment to Modi They struggled to find areas of convergence and While there was a sense at 2014 and within the Indian side that we have some sort of an understanding with she about Changing the relationship and making it more focused on less on the disputes and more on the economics and the trade He was she was really what China was found to be a hardgoing to get the Chinese to talk almost anything Continuing differences unwillingness to talk about one belt one road on Maritime on almost anything that mattered to China And on top of that in the same month that he met she he then went to to eventually did meet Obama in Washington I remember I met him just after the announcement for the Obama summit and I said I thought you were never going to meet Obama So Modi looked a little embarrassed and he says well I was never going to ask for a summit But as it is Obama rang me up and said why don't you come and meet me and a little difficult to tell the president of the United States To his face. No, I'm not going to come and see you but as it is the summit went very well and Obama made it very clear that America had not only made a mistake on the visa but more importantly that all of Everything that Modi's domestic agenda was about which included renewable energy should make it very clear one thing They really bonded on is climate change in India. It is the right wing, which is the party of climate change The BJP is the party that supports renewable energy and his believes that climate change is a major crime A problem for the country. It is a left that argues. It's a Western problem. Let them solve it So in effect you are by September at the end of by October November Modi is looking at it and saying actually my original assumptions on foreign policy were wrong The US and China game is actually quite different and through December He actually began to call in people like Menon and others in the Indian All our China experts one by one and sometimes in clusters and asked them basically What do you think I need to do about China and the broad two broad schools? One was the Menon school, which was basically the US cannot be trusted. It is simply now a country that it no longer has the The stability Strategic stability to maintain to become dependable in Asia So we need to work out something with China no matter how How much we have difficulties with them and another school which basically said no actually if you look at the record When we have been close to the United States as for example doing a Bush administration We have found that the Chinese are a lot more agreeable On almost everything so the game should be even if you don't want to ally with America play the US card A lot of things we can get from the United States in the meantime So even if you play it for only 10 or 20 years, it's still worth it But Chinese take it a lot more seriously and we'll find them much more agreeable Eventually I think by Jan and then when Modi and Obama met again in January 2015 Modi, Obama's you know came when you know came as as the first American chief guest for Republic Day They issued a joint for the first time the two countries issued a joint strategic vision on the Asia Pacific in Indian Ocean region Now in many ways, there's nothing all that exciting about the document when you went through it You realize it actually just incorporated language that America and India had agreed on earlier and various other Forums and meetings, but the point was that it was all put together and it was put together at Modi's request And you can does a New York Times article describing how Modi met and told Obama I'm having problems with China and Obama said I don't disagree or so am I and How do you want to address it and Modi said why do we issue a joint statement together and the American reaction was We've been trying to get you for 20 years to do this and now you're now you're ready We're more than happy. We'll do it right now and they basically sat down that often and began to draft to put that together So you start to see and if you look at that document it puts in that we support in class We support the rule of law so on and so forth that specifically doesn't mention China specifically anywhere But it's very clear who this document is aimed at and So you now start to see the Indian Ocean strategy of India at this point Which at that point as I said was still very unclear begins to come in focus because India if once you've got the big picture here You've got the US and China relationship Going in that in that context then the Indian Ocean fits immediately fits into place And you get an idea where the Indian Ocean was not just about the US China game Of course there are other aspects to it and and I think where Indian Ocean begins to fit in with Modi is that it? Combines the following one it fits in with his larger geopolitical vision of a relationship between US and China It fits in with his neighborhood policy Modi has been very clear and both in public and private that he is particularly Distressed at the fact that India's smaller neighbors i.e. Pakistan and China are on a different league But Bangladesh and Nepal countries that he sees as culturally close to India Don't like India and he has been since day one He has been very very bothered by this and has sought very hard to put this in put them back Put those relations in particular on to a certain new long-term rapprochement with India Now it happens to fit in that part of the number of these countries notably Sri Lanka Maldives and if you want extended a bit Mauritius And Bangladesh are very much part of of the Indian Ocean game that any Indian Ocean policy that India would play Second his interest in the Indian diaspora, which has been a big big part of his his party's campaign overseas It's a scene as part of fits into the larger should be the Hindu nationalist Ideology that sees areas and the children of India quote-unquote of of Indic civilization is something that has to be Have to be encouraged to be part and closer of India And of course as a large Indian diaspora in eastern Africa and almost all the island states of the Indian Ocean and to some degree in Southeast Asia And I should throw in Australia now as well and Then of course you have the issue of needing to counter both Chinese naval influence and fill in a vacuum that is being created by the slow withdrawal of US if not US power but of US interest in using that power in the Indian Ocean Indian Ocean area and Down the flip side was that this is not Modi's as much as a foreign ministry and the intelligence services Was the looking at China their view came in and then again as once Modi opens up the barrier To to the to the non-menon school of thinking it did this all then start to fit in Into a larger into this larger picture Which was that basically when we later looked at China their argument was simple The decision of the National People's Congress calling for China to become a full-fledged maritime power Meant that in their view China was very clearly signaling its interest to become to move its to expand its power at some point Or another slowly into the Indian Ocean And as has been mentioned the one belt one road program was seen as it gained another game changer for the Indian side that not only would it Tightly and bring the Indo-China-Sino-Pakistan relationship much closer together It would effectively as I said bring the the border and the boundary dispute that they had with India would be effectively now connected to a much larger national regional and and continental grid And Why is a China-Pakistan relationship important this because in India's view and I'm very clear and when I look at the Notes that I've seen in previous briefings in the past year They see that meaning that China will now give they've always given a bit But they're now given even more cover to Pakistan in Pakistan's should we say use of terrorism and other other black ops against India And that China would effectively block India's rise on the global Under globe on globe various global platforms If they saw this as a zero-sum game regarding India and Pakistan and a perfect example of that recently was India's bid to join the nuclear Suppliers group where China in effect in its private conversation So yeah, actually we don't have a problem with you and then suddenly came out against us But basically their argument is we don't we'd have a problem with you It's that if we allow you in without letting Pakistan in that slams the door for Pakistan And that on almost every front where India and China have gotten into squabbles on the multilateral level China's response has been you know, the Pakistanis will be really unhappy and This has now become a constant theme at this level of the relationship And then finally India was very nervous or very unnerved should we say At the collapse of ASEAN that in the South China Sea ASEAN's incredibly weak resistance in fact zero resistance To China's China's moves was was really caught the Indian system by surprise I mean as you know it always been seen as the core of Asian regional architecture Defense cooperation And not only the lack of US support for at least about the first two and a half years of this dispute But the fact that asian was almost completely incapable of responding to Chinese pressure and that you know three or four Three or four Southeast Asian countries immediately succumbed and basically said we're with Beijing forget about everything else So we don't care about this quote Southeast Asian unity business And then when India's own strongest allies in Southeast Asia notably Singapore For example countries of the Thomas were very clear. They said ASEAN is a disaster now It's I remember the Singaporeans gave us a briefing saying that this is now very the hollow shell as an organization It doesn't really matter anymore So for them, this is a sign that this that Fact there was a there was actually somebody and how very senior people in the government actually told me they said We can almost see the economic corridor Being in many ways a version of what China is doing in terms of land reclamation in the South China Sea using Concrete and cement to change the very nature of the legitimacy of your political control over disputed territory And for example, if they build the economic corridor, we will actually see Pakistan's claim on Kashmir to be only strengthened And in a manner that means that China would effectively have to support Pakistan on this and remember China's actually been very careful to stay out Of the Kashmir dispute historically they've always said Pakistan may be our all-weather friend, but it's a buy this is a bilateral dispute between two countries that we're not involved in So for them that was this was issue say a South China Sea was a metaphor for something that was happening happening on the other side on on the China-Pakistan economic corridor So they still tried there was still an attempt again to continue to try to develop a consultative process with China As I've mentioned the one attempts to talk about the one Beltran road attempts to talk about Maritime policy China did eventually concede a maritime dialogue. We've now actually just have been able to hold one It wasn't very successful But at least that dialogue has process has begun One Belt one Road zero interest by China in talking with us and But I've said this has been count more than less countered by the fact that China has been very very focused on Basically saying that Pakistan And the Pakistan's Chinese argument at least when I've talked to their analysts and academics and in the track-two dialogues I'm part of Pakistan Chinese have basically said that look you have to understand. It's not just that Pakistan is a close friend It's also the fact that Pakistan is a highly unstable country and in our view as America's withdrawal from Afghanistan means that American aid and and and arms to Pakistan slowly decline For us because of what we're facing in Xinjiang Pakistan must somehow be stabilized and the only way we can see how to do that is effectively to dump huge amounts of money In it and in a matter of China is very good at which is large infrastructure projects Hence the CPC it also happens to gel of course with Xi Jinping's and his desire to externalize demand for for infrastructure Development in terms of cement and 50% of the economic corridor is just power generation equipment And so companies like Shanghai Electric and Dongfeng which are desperately need places to sell their equipment this corridor Is would be a big boom? But that's so China so I said India has been trying to reach out to China still had no Virtually knows your real impact at all And the sense now in India when I talk to our diplomats that the initial hope that 2014 Which was she coming to power Would mean that we would be able to in fact a lot of them used to say that Hu Jintao and Manlun Singh are very similar in many ways both of them politically very weak and unable to to push through policy She and Modi are much more on the same sort of plane We assume therefore given that she's own interest in economic External markets that we would be able to develop that sort of relationship with him That's more or less dead that we've given up by about 2015 might say about by the summer of 2015 the sense in the government was that no She doesn't really have any larger idea of how to handle this and in fact if anything has become extraordinarily obsessed with both the One Belt One Road the economic corridor of Pakistan and therefore with Pakistan itself So India's response overall has been I'll think that I'm going to list for what I see four key elements of their Indian Ocean Response to China one is island diplomacy Modi has visited now Mauritius Seychelles and Sri Lanka And the only reason he hasn't visited the Maldives is because the present president of the Maldives is seen as a stooge of Saudi Arabia But the Cases Seychelles for example, these are it's an island that we haven't had an Indian Prime Minister go for almost over 20 years And in each of them though, he's driven a hard bargain. He says we can give you enormous economic access investment Largely through the Indian private sector But in return you have to come to a much closer military relationship with us and what's been surprising I think for the Indian side is a lot of the island nations have been completely agreeable I mean Seychelles basically said well We've been waiting 20 years for you to show up with this offer because we've been signaling for a long time that We're interested and you basically would turn your back to us So in Seychelles has given us assumption island, which it dominates the northern interest in Mozambique channels I just do build whatever you want on it doesn't matter to us Mauritius allows us to now develop the Agalas Islands Plus we now effectively in my view control the Mauritian Navy is now basically a subset of the Indian Navy Indian Navy officers if we're presumed be very happy to be deployed in Mauritius a very nice place Sri Lanka we have now very close to I think interoperability with their Navy. It's a very good military relationship even though the political relationship is on and off and Even Mozambique has given us a listening. I'm sorry Mozambique Madagascar has given us a listening post even though we haven't yet visited the island yet And I'll just add that besides the island side is a littoral diplomacy side, which is very focused on Africa As I said asian is shambles right now But Modi is now visited. We had an Indo-Africa summit Last year and what was surprising. I think again for the Indian side was that we invited 54 out of the 55 African states you have a choice of Morocco and Western Sahara. You can't get both So we opted for Morocco and therefore lost Western Sahara every single one of them sent a delegation It was the biggest one in fact the second biggest multilateral summit India's ever hosted And given that they limit previously we'd never gotten more than about 20 African leaders African delegation The Indian system is actually quite horrified That these in some cases there was no government in that country, but they still somehow dug up somebody and sent it Guinea-Bissau central african republic surprised us Libya's president was actually being held hostage by some militia group and he still got one of his ministers to show up Um But there was really a we actually ran out of hotel rooms. It was an enormous problem Especially in the king of morocco showed up with a delegation of 450 people He took one entire hotel by two hotels by himself Um, but anyway the uh, so the net result though is that we realized that particularly what was different now with Africa Was a lot of them wanted security. They said we want a military relationship with you. We've had the economic We have the trade we have the diaspora. We have all that but we really want is a military relationship So we signed in that summit alone if I remember correctly 14 military relationships with african 14 different african countries A lot more wanted than we just didn't have the time or effort ability to to actually put them together Um And modi made his first major african tour. He visited four african states, kenya Tanzania and mozambique in south africa all of which were indian ocean Littoral states and all of which we deepened the military side of that relationship besides the obvious Normal trade economics and so on And within that one country and i'm going to stress this country because I think it's often missed is mozambique mozambique is now india's huge With my view it's it's the closest thing to an experiment By the indian system to see if they can actually develop A incredibly strong almost an alliance with an african state We now train the we will now we've been training with mozambique and navy for a very long time But we have now agreed to trade the intelligence services trained in army We 25 of india's entire fdi into africa A lot of it, most of its private sector Is now in one country mozambique, which is about I think there'll be about four billion dollars And the indian government has committed our state-owned oil and gas companies to invest six billion dollars more Into this one country making mozambique one of the largest recipients of indian fdi in the world And on almost every front we are now dealing with on farming healthcare education Internet services india's now expanding dramatically whatever they can in mozambique not easy It's not a not the most stable of nations, but it's a country that we're now effectively saying okay This is going to be the equivalent of like a like a giant aircraft carrier on the on the southern southwestern indian ocean And again, what is interesting for us is that the mozambique has been more or less Very recipient to this idea. They have been across the board supportive of engaging with india on almost every front And almost a lot of these proposals are coming from them train our intelligence services fine. That's it's good And so india is now basically experimenting. Can we as a nation because we've never done it before being able to develop this enormously multi-sectoral multi-level relationship with one large african state on the indian ocean The other part of part of this another part of the second part of this this indian ocean strategy is the multilateral side So india is trying very hard to resurrect the iora the indian ocean regional agreement association Which has been largely defunct and as you know indonesia india and australia have been the successive shares of the iora And we're trying to see whether this can be developed into a genuine indian ocean agreement BIM stack the bay of bengal organization, which now incorporates countries that have nothing to do with the bay of bengal like nepal Is also now going to be is being resurrected as a much larger and more powerful institution Replacing in many ways the original sarc country which sarc organization, which never got anywhere because of india and pakistan disputes The indian ocean naval symposium The blue economy plans, which still remain largely on paper and mosam Mosam is just the sanskrit hindi word for monsoon the word monsoon is a corruption of it But basically that's an attempt to use india's cultural influence and a lot of these in the indian ocean area To massively increase our soft diplomatic influence in these countries A simple example is for example that srilanka when we would have problems with the government One of the things we had asked them is there any way we can build up public support? And they said well, we're a buddhist nation and sure you are the home of the buddha where can you think of something so We found if you've been to srilanka, you'll know that the temple of the tooth Which has a supposedly the tooth of the buddha versus it's a tooth about this big buddha was very big person Um, uh, the is the same most sacred Most sacred site in srilanka. Well indian government dug around and they found actually we have large chunks of the buddhist skeleton lying all over india Among other things he has about 50 ribs And and about 900 teeth And he must have been bald by the time he died because he plucked a lot of hair out So the but anyway, so we began we just assembled large chunks of his skeleton and sent them To to srilanka and said okay do for the first time I think I think over a hundred years because I think the british did one small tour But otherwise this is the first time we ever sent the remnants of the buddha overseas definitely independent india has never done it And uh, it was needless to say an enormous success My friends in srilanka said the problem was really the huge battle that broke out among the srilanka elite As to who was going to greet the aircraft When this enormous amount of of holy relics showed up And it was they they did a tour of the country in which the president prime minister actually led it on foot Barefoot in front of almost everywhere that it went and an estimated 30 percent of the buddhist population showed up to to show now me and mar is yelling at us. Well the hell is why not here because the um Their their greatest buddhist the temple Is just six hairs of the buddha and gain compared to the amount of amount of forensic material we have on him. It's quite quite small So the so all of this we're now slowly putting together Can we use this in ways that we have never bothered to do so before to build up that network of influence in the indian ocean That india really hadn't done it and remember going going back to the south china sea Indian side looked at the south china sea and said it was the amazing ease with which china was able to just take over This the sea and and basically overrun Littoral influence in that area Can we if in effect build up some sort of indian influence that could resist that sometime 10 20 30 years down the line It's too it's the ocean it's not even a sea so it's much much more difficult But again if we can get all of these things together it'll make it much more difficult For china to be able or any other country to play that kind of a role The third part of this is the the defense relationship of two specific countries. I've mentioned in my previous way us and japan Using the us to slowly build up a military capacity And fill in the vacuums that the us is leaving behind and then again the partner that's most active and this is the us itself Very very eager to come in To the ash carvers come met his our defense minister eight times And I said he's trying to come in one more time and the indian side is now accepted if you wish And the foreign secretary told us we have depended on the us to carry the burden of security in asia The limitation of the us are now apparent So we accept that this is now going to be the new norm that we should understand that america will not play this game Any more or limited amounts But america is very happy to allow us to move into that space and do whatever they can to help us Japan is the other country I've mentioned again It's part of bringing them into a larger balance of payments a balance of power issue in india But also solving our balance of payments problem with their exports And again there for the us a game is can we make japan we fully supporting abe's attempts to normalize japan And make it a normal military state Which is one reason indian systems are irritated when you guys didn't buy japanese submarines Because we see buying Japanese arms as part of that that strategy and we're now negotiating to buy the us to see planes But to be fair japan is a very difficult country to buy from And then finally the connectivity the last element of that policy It was mentioned by rory that the china india talks about having many belts and many roads That's true. But the real game for india is not to try to match china and infrastructure, which we have no capacity to do But can we build the connectivity with india and the immediate neighbors goes back to that neighborhood policy So banghadesh Myanmar the indian northeast has been now the focus of almost all of the projects We're trying to build with our aid program to build a power grid Road transit and our diplomacy has been focused on getting banghadesh to agree to this because banghadesh has been very hostile So the land border agreement was signed under modi and the next step is to tease the water agreement Once those are done banghadesh should basically will start to open up as already begun opening up A lot of this to us and one of the reasons why this is a little more credible than most other indian such plans Is it's being financed by japan? Japan has come in and said we want to be partners to this And we're prepared to pay for all of it. So don't worry. The money is not an issue You just need you need to do the diplomacy side and you need to start getting all of the Planning and getting the local population. We're bad at that. We'll finance And the bay of bengal, which is why bimstech is important as a further extension building the so-called sagarmela projects building the ports coastal Infrastructure in the bay of bengal, which india has actually done a terrible job of we focused almost everything on the western side And now we can do that I'll just give a final quote By gang by the foreign secretary and his rice and a hill speech a few couple of years ago Quote connectivity today has become a yardstick to measure influence And has emerged as a theater of present-day geopolitics and it goes back to this whole idea that you can change Geopolitical reality now by building infrastructures a very clear lesson We've learned from china and we now need to respond at least to some degree in doing exactly the same thing. Thank you Thanks very much And i'd like to come back a little bit later To Test you on Where you think things are likely to go in terms of the india china relationship in pakistan and cpec What's where what does the future hold for that? But in the meantime if I could Ask um professor jing dong yuan from university of sydney to respond to some of parameters comments All right, uh, thanks very much. I'd like me Thank the national security college and also australia india Institute for the invitation for this very Interesting conference now. I've been doing china indian relations for over 15 years Uh over these not not, you know Solely on china indian doing all other uh matters as well But one of the experience i've i've got is if I go to china I talk to chinese analysts And about china indian relation And there was all these all indians fall, you know, we were trying to do this and that But you talk indian analysts. There was all this chinese fall So after 15 years, I still don't know, you know, who's fall. I mean, certainly One cannot what do you call the tango right? So this must be Both of them bear both, you know responsibilities and you know For for some of the faults And then they are also can't cooperate and to generate opportunities So what am I going to do is that basically I'm going to focus on sort of a four key points The first one I already in my intervention earlier is about china's indian ocean strategy very much informed By china's dependence on energy So indian ocean is becoming very very critical. It's not what china You know desire to do is what china has to do right? It's because energy supply raw materials trade lines and you know ceilings Of communication very very important for china, especially When you hear about the talks by Out of great power and certainly in the think tanks world about you know, how you can Actually strangle china, you know in a protracted Conflict to set up a blockade That worries china So that is very You know important reason for china. So in 2004 President Hu Jintao actually told the PLA people's liberation army is basically you have a new historical Mission, right? So that mission is to Follow china's interest. You can no longer just be confined to Brown water or even green water. You have to look beyond You know to developing a sort of blue navy blue water navy Because china's slots and all these important interests Now about 12 years later It's not only about resources All energy supplies trade It is also about Expanding chinese business interest All over the world today about five million chinese working all over the world I mean in africa alone two million chinese working So you have to protect chinese lives chinese asset, right? So so the mission is only going to to grow over time So that's the sort of the larger picture The second point I want to make is if you look at china-india Competition or perception or misperception Or maybe possible cooperation with regard to indian ocean You have to put this into the broader domestic international context, right? I agree with primate that both hujintiao and momen sing Are more of a moderate low-key leaders, right? So they're they're not that appear to be Assertive you know strong and and active But they still care very much about the domestic agendas and priorities That is economic development, right? So that's the key So if you look at during their overlapping of course not exactly matching who And then sing but they overlap quite a bit is the economic ties and trade between these two countries Had a growing significantly All right But now of course the the trade has reached to a plateau. I mean over the last few years stagnant That has a number of other reasons to explain and also In the first decade and certainly 2000-2009 or certainly, uh, maybe 2004-2014 during Sinks tenure There's a lot going on between india and the united states the nuclear deal and certainly the next step in defense Cooperation space and everything else But china initially was was quite worried in the early phase of us indian cooperation, but eventually Uh, if you look at china during the bush administration Actually after 9 11 There you know, it's a lot of cooperation, you know global war anti terrorism. They both try to Stabilize across straight relations and and try to Manage the north korean nuclear issue. So there's a lot of cooperation going on now moving forward to 2012 Xi Jinping came into power in then 2014 Moody came into power I mean initially, I think again, I mean the broader international environment for china has certainly changed because the global financial prices Now china emerged as the second largest economy Uh, and then chinese leadership and and china as a whole it became a more sort of a confident And the foreign policy became a more sort of assertive More sort of a firm and then and so forth But if you look at chinese leaderships, uh, at least from what they do As a as a signal of what their foreign policy or diplomacy priority is Primarily kuchang when he became the premier in 2013, you know, uh, first he picked india as one of his first countries to visit and 2014 Xi Jinping went to uh, india and moody came to china in 2015 So in three years, you have top leaders, uh, you know exchange your visit If you go back like one or two decades It's almost a decade. You will you will have one top leader a visit, right? So last time chinese president, uh, jiang zemin visited india was 1996 10 years later, ho jingtao went to india. So 10 years uh, but this time around is much shorter so so both Certainly the chinese top leader, uh, express or demonstrate that sort of willingness to To engage china. So sometimes I find it very sort of puzzling if if china often ignores india and I often, you know, ask chinese analysts, why do you Gave the impression that you you ignore india, right? india's rising power now today india has a very shiny growth rate, you know record 7.5 And if like look at the demographic trend, you know, everything india will be moving up very rapidly Up the ladder there so that's One of the issues or the question I I often want to you know to ask want to get the answer to But both Xi Jinping and moody are very active both And a very strong leader. But again, if you look at their domestic agenda, still very strong domestic priorities For Xi Jinping is a china dream The 2100 So it's a very much economically driven agenda Even one bell and road is more of to extend, you know, how to Release the pressure or the over capacity and then to just build up infrastructure Make all these connections belt and road and to extend china's economic connections and then to Basically to recover some of the last market You know, as a result of the gfc of 2008 moody as well making india, right? So it's a very strong Desire to turn india to pay to pay more attention in manufacturing. It was not just office floor I remember 2002 when chinese premier dream g visit India he basically said well, here's if the india serves the the office and then china's the world factory and then we If we cooperate we pretty much, you know, oh everything in the world, you know, it's a very good Good match there But these two strong leaders, of course and and both Growing sort of confidence pride nationalism also informed the leaders to pursuing very strong foreign policy And but I think of course both are strong, but they are both very pragmatic Again to to respond to the you know, some Chinese necklaces of india, you know, why china was not engaging india If you look at china's Priorities or preoccupation or china's problems over the last four years It's all the way in the east. So south china see japan united states pivot So a lot of effort and energy Are actually Toward the east so it would be quite amazing Quite fallacies for china to Again to sort of deliberately Caused the relationship with india to go sour, you know, why would you do that? Right? So you want to You know stabilize Indian ocean So that's the sort of the second Largest sort of the the broader context, right? thirdly, I think is Given what we heard and given the a lot of the problems between india and china I can identify some of those may come or because of this lack of strategic trust right, of course history There is some responsibility that the war in the past Pakistan is a major factor there And china the fact that china becomes more and more Stronger and then the chinese assertive foreign policy in south china sea Certainly sends a strong signal to to india there so all of these creates A level of suspicion And concerns in india. All right, so you have this Come so in my years of research. I often tell my students if you I mean there are five Words that pretty much summarize sign of indian relations by five T's, you know the english like letter T territorial dispute Tibet threat perception Triangles, you know china india pakistan and increasingly now China us and india, you know triangles and trade even this is a positive Accident because a lot of trade deficit. So that also creates Becomes a problem now today. I will add another eye. It's an indian notion. So it's a P You know T's and I So these pretty much summarize china indian relation that they lead to A number of m's right, so it's misunderstanding misapprehension That may lead to miscalculation And Miscommunication so all of the m's so it's basically further You know caused the problem to even You know more severe now one of the questions I want to ask is Of course, we have multiple increasingly more Not just to government. There are multiple players So you have foreign ministry types. You have the military types You have the think tanks and then you have media All right So how do they you know, what are the stakes for them and how do they Perceive the problems and the opportunity and then how do they Engage in the discussion in the internal discussion or public discourse and you know like media So I find very little sort of a Certainly, I would like to see more positive, you know coverage in in the media And in that regards sometimes of course global times projects very negative image in there now related to the mistrust or lack of trust is Some of the incidents that cited by you David you know prior to President Xi's visit and some other incident not only in China India, but also you as China, you know many times your important leader like Defense Secretary Bob Gates visited before he he was to to meet the president who when China test flight this j-20 or stealth fighter So why would those kind of things occur? If you think about it, here's the important summit meeting Why would you have those kind of incidents to pass a a shadow? I mean the only two explanation you can you can give is one is deliberate, you know to send a message This is what I can do and can get away with But that's it's kind of hard to believe increasingly as China becomes a a stronger and stronger A power and needs to have more soft power, you know a better smart Dequamacy the second there would be some what I argue a party state relations or the party military relations so sometimes The control civilian control of the military may not be That tight now finally I would of the close After all these very pessimistic Sure Description is China-Indian relations today is very much institutionalized. You have Top leader meetings. You have all sorts of channels of interactions And both China-Indian are also in a lots of multilateral institutions They forms in in different sort of Memberships of BRICS and G20 and all that so there are ways to you know coordinate and talk and and engage in dialogue so all these the Sort of the negatives could be managed if not completely removed Thank you very much JD Giving us a I suppose a little bit more of an optimistic view. I suppose or at least a view What Around miscommunication or misapprehensions as as you put it Just before we take a few questions if I could just Get two minutes answer from primate Baluchastan CPEC How's that going to play out? well, as I said earlier the Indians have realized I've come to the view that Um This is now become a major obsession with Shijin being in particular That he has to get this to succeed and We Chinese on the other hand at least what I'm reading and hearing are increasingly nervous And the more they look at places like Baluchastan, they wonder how are they going to end the security in that area They've also been might be sold the pot by the Pakistanis which is that oh all of the problems in Baluchastan are being handled by India Or India's behind it all So we've had a very bizarre situation China coming to us to the Indian side and say you have to endorse The economic corridor and you said absolutely not it goes to Kashmir How can we endorse something that reclaims our own? And the Chinese said we know what that means. That means you're going to cause lots of problems and the Indian side Will be set publicly in fact at Tsinghua University gave a speech He said you go ahead and build your one bill one rule. We're not going to how can we stop it And we may actually support bits and pieces of it. We can use those same ports like everybody else but Don't expect us to endorse something that we're automatically Pakistan will use to then use a bit of disputes against us This has now become ironically one of the biggest problems between India and China because the Chinese now come and have Couple of the conclusion this means that the security costs For the corridor are going to rise So the Indians have said they have flipped it and said okay. Well, if that's what you believe then we'll use it against you You give enough problems on the NSG or various other places Well, then we're going to sit down and actually make a noise about that which is not what you didn't before And this is effectively now being used by India to pressure China Into pressure in Pakistan on various issues And I talked to Chinese the Pakistani military officers. They said that actually the biggest Reason that we're reluctant to take you give you more trouble on the line of control in other areas Is because Beijing starts to flip out see what is wrong with you? You could get into a crisis with India then how can we build a corridor and the security there was an article I think in Shinwa Agency which said that the Chinese are now getting nervous because the Security cost of the economic corridor that bill keeps rising Now in my view Baluchistan if anybody knows about which is done. It's it's almost as crazy as the gun has done So I met the former military advisor to the governor of Baluchistan once the lieutenant colonel In the Pakistani army and I used to study also I said so you were in a relatively quiet period He said yes, I was I said so how many problems were you facing said I had 14 separate insurgencies Islands fighting in Baluchistan at that point and that was considered a pretty low-key period. It was peaceful Um at any given time or half the population of rebellion and killing each other and any foreigner is just taken away and kidnapped and held for ransom And you know those is in the years that sent back to people for for payment purposes So I don't see what and whatever China does I'm going to face an enormous security problem But India is just exploiting it right now playing on these Chinese fears and trying to extract very certain things out of China Thank you That's an optimistic scenario Questions Pakistan's nuclear weapons and what sort of reaction do you think China or my sort of assistance might China be able to give in this sensitive area I haven't heard anything about Chinese specifically on nuclear safety What they are definitely concerned about is just the broader stability of Pakistan In our closed door sessions with the Chinese they have been very clear that the They see a direct link with the instability of the AFPAC area and what they're experiencing in Xinjiang I've talked to the American State Department by the U.S. Embassy in Beijing and it has a very good counter-terrorism They've been very clear that they said the number of incidents with muslim problems in China has been rising quite quite rapidly including Incidents that are not reported And they said the Chinese are now nervous because it's no longer just a leader It's now spreading into the three at least three other muslim groups money, which are by kehan Decent and therefore very difficult for them to track I think the way is the other group that is now becoming radicalized quite rapidly muslim populations And the Chinese simply in effect anything Chinese might be or aggravating it by forcing them to eat pork and doing other strange things If I don't see how that helps for them so So the Chinese now have this big fear that if Pakistan starts to grow down a tube Then what happens to them in Xinjiang let alone their credibility since this is theoretically they're great There's you know all other trend Will be basically go for a toss nuclear safety The Chinese don't at least I've never talked to me about it But by sense of that they just see this as part of just a subset of this larger issue And for them the heart of it is that This is where I think India and China would disagree on this India's basic argument is that the problem in Pakistan Is the Pakistan military And as long as Pakistan is not allowed to become a normal functioning democracy You will perpetually have a military that will support and allow The various versions of Islamic militancy to play because they will need it against either because they need it against India Or because they need to be in their other games in Afghanistan The Indian system has been none of the democratic leaders of Pakistan are a problem as far as India is concerned It's actually a very good relationship Great relationship They find that they get along perfectly well for them The Chinese response of basically, you know, Pakistan is simply so unstable It's very similar to the old American life that we have to deal with only the only stable institutional left is the military So we have to keep them holding them up and the Indian side is well That's because they undermine all of the other institutions and make themselves the For on the India nuclear safety issue India is concerned about Pakistan's nuclear safety Is that where there's India? So we don't expect us to do very well, but The definition of what is a Safe Pakistani can almost be defined by who Pakistan puts to guard their nuclear safety establishments The Indian intelligence, as Rungar showed me once, he said look When they began the Pakistanis began to get nervous about the loyalty of Baluchis Or Pashtuns, they took all of their guards who are those ethnic origins away from the nuclear institutions Then they got scared about the Shia because they were repressing them so horribly So they took all the Shia out then they got nervous about the Sindhis and they took them out Now it's effectively you have to be a northern Pakistani landowning class a Chalgari if you wish And of Sunni origins and from an army family from northern Bengal, but even southern Punjab anymore To be allowed to to to garden nuclear safety establishment So that it's not shrinking. I mean they now reduce themselves about 20 of their population And it continues on this bait. They won't have anybody left except the 10 people in their army Hello, I'm Gerard Oaks. I'm with Foreign Affairs and Trade Pramit, I just wanted to ask you You spoke about Indian outreach to countries like Mauritius and Madagascar and Seychelles Wedged in between them of course is the French in Reunion and they're a significant naval power So I just wondered how the Indians and the French get on and whether they've been brought into this conversation about China at all We get along we buy a lot of our weapons from them We just you know, as you know, we just bought the Rafale 36 Rafale aircraft, which will effectively be our airborne nuclear deterrent And replace the aging mirages that we'll be phasing out and like you we bought we bought scorpion submarines that we bought about 15 or years ago And so we have always seen France as the interim solution to buying Russian or buying American And when our relationship with America was not so good, we used and we had we didn't want to we diversify away from Stuff we used to buy French But and we do work closely with their with their Indian Ocean Their Indian Ocean would on the military side were very close to them Especially in places like Seychelles, which is effectively an Anglo They've tried to help us in Madagascar, but Madagascar the Madagascar government is more highly unstable And even they've struggled but they've been very clear that wherever we've gone in Africa The French have been very happy to open doors for us has to be fair of portuguese and other european countries But it's a limit the French don't really have that much capacity anymore and particularly in the past five years Their defense budget has been slashed And their presence in the Indian Ocean is increasingly residual And wherever we can we've basically Moved into places like Seychelles and Mauritius definitely we've now taken over a lot of the French space In that area, which is France is happy to hand over because they just don't have it's just costing too much To hold up so we guess we cooperate very well with the French but my Instinct is that as the relationship of America is now taking off And I think we're buying more and more American equipment The French our French game will effectively now start to to die off There are clusters of european Purchases we'll probably buy the sob grip and it probably emerges our Front our basic donkey work fighter over the next 20 years Partly because we'll buy the entire company and we'll just transfer the entire assembly line and we move to india so But France is is important to us, but France's own strategic picture in asia It's a lost european country that really has one is is is now shrinking Maybe if we could take two questions Uh, thank you michael from the national security college Are you speaking stems to the blue bell? I'm as MB in a number of island nations which india's looking to strengthen its relationship with Is india looking at all to strengthen its relationship with indonesia on the other side of the indian ocean and Uh, uh country which controls areas of the maca straits, which are obviously important in India's sort of movement into pacification or even the south chancy region. Thank you Paul milder from defat one for permit. Uh, well for both We we mentioned ash kata a couple of times and his enthusiasm. I think in the last Press conference they did with uh parakea He actually said he wanted this the the us india relationship to be the defining relationship of this century Which seemed like an extraordinary thing to say. Um, I'd be interested in your thoughts on the magnitude of that Um, so yes indonesia, um You know indonesia, I suppose we may have the same problem. We found it very difficult to keep them interested Um, su harto was simply not interested in maritime naval anything And he saw, you know, he drove in many ways indonesia was at the heart of of asian success in those days You know in conjunction with singapore So we struggled with him, uh, and I think we more or less gave up and there was a surge I think in about the mid 2000s Oblity may remember where indonesia was actually our number one naval Naval exercise partner in the world and there was just a huge number of the indonesian military we find is actually quite Okay with working with us and very interesting, but indonesia civilian governments will switch on and off and We've really struggled to maintain any steady relationship in indonesia. It's never hostile I mean, it's because hostile if you go back to sukarno, but uh, it's never been hostile But they just really don't strategic thinking that incorporates the indian ocean and china for indonesia The military are very sinophobic, but the the civilian leadership really find it hard to focus on this Jokowi at least has now publicly called for a return to a maritime Policy, but again, we've so so far not been able to get any real traction from him And I've had frustrated indian diplomats say to me. He said it's still like he's the mayor jacarta He still hasn't thought beyond this One day you'll think about sumatra and then it will be on a step to start thinking about india But we really struggled so singapore in comparison, which is a country really had a long and steady relationship You know has been our primary interlocutor for southeast asia for a long while indonesia We don't have a problem, but it's it's been difficult. Malaysia has genuinely been hostile full stop So we really all given up on working with them Carter gates, you know bob gates are the same thing bob gates when he left He told I think he told the carter if I remember I think ash told me this He said, you know ash, it's only india is the only real story that we have to finish Um and it goes back. I think to getting going to go back to when the bush administration was was negotiating a nuclear deal Uh, I remember I was in washington for 18 months and I remember working everybody from joe biden and to To hillary clinton I'd meet them all these people and they all said the same thing They said, you know And it that bush one of the reasons. There was such a bi bipartisan consensus and supporting the india us nuclear deal Was one that there was no hostility to india. Nobody disliked india everybody from your you can push on almost everybody Nobody really dislikes you The non proliferationists didn't like the fact that the nuclear deal was that the relationship was being built on a nuclear issue But otherwise they didn't have a problem with the relationship But they really fundamentally saw that bringing that they had an opportunity to bring india into a larger western Oriented security architecture And a relationship that they felt was absolutely essential for and as I said as bipartisan I never met anybody in the american system who who didn't disagree with this basic argument And that in many ways, I remember clinton's the democratic party said that the guy who began this they would argue I remember richard holbrook said the man who began this is john f kennedy He was the closest to your country till bush arrived And the only reason it didn't work was because he was assassinated and then we got sucked into vietnam But it's always been in the back of america's minds and henry kissinger and i won't discuss this and he says fundamentally Nobody in the american system can believe that democracy will ever be an enemy of our country He says textbook international relations that argue differently But he says there is simply nobody who does not believe that you should be on our side So when you come eventually knocking and saying we're interested the whole system gets excited because this is the opportunity we had Carter ash Carter has been part of i've been part of the aspen Institutes of india and america dialogue for 10 years now So being head by joe mine nick berms kissinger and carter has been bothered with it for 10 years and he's been just He's just he's kurt campbell is another one who yells loudly at the top of his voice to every indian audience He meets don't you understand that we are destined destined to be strategic allies And he does this everywhere he goes in india and just yells and shouts and says the same thing But i say i said it's bipartisan. I can't find anybody who doesn't believe this to be the case in america Yes, i agree Everything you said in a purely bilateral context But it's important to know What is this relationship for means? Two democracies consolidating their relationship their share same values. They have similar security concerns. That's all fine But once you move The next step. I think there are Quite a bit of sort of expectations But it misplaced expectations So for instance, the united states in japan for that matter In 2006 and seven they wanted to develop a sort of the arch of democracy So once china Or some other third party Becomes the target And then i think at least as i understand india so a very you know strong emphasize on foreign policy independence Probably will see how that will serve indians interest Rather than how that will serve us india relationship Uh, so i think that's the there's the critical difference there. So i'm beginning to worry about a lot of those talks about security partnership in asia pacific australia japan japan india and all so they all seem to have this Sort of a great expectation. So we're security buddies So if china does something to you and to you and to you and then we expect you and you will come to our existence That's not the case. Yeah, let me use that to that. It's still national interest rather than i mean these are Yeah, there's no question of an alliance. In fact, i don't the americans are interested in alliance and everybody forgets that in 1962 At the height of the sino-indian war Uh, we asked for an alliance with america and they refused John cannot galbraith in his memoirs. He says the america indians have asked for a full-flow military alliance I have recommended to kennedy to say no It is not in america's interest to get into A alliance with a country this large and those days are over by 1962 the americans already concluded And i'm not too sure that actually signed any major treaty of many major Uh military alliance since 1960s. I mean the eisenhower period was the peak and after that they basically said We don't want to get involved. Uh, they find that the other other country tends to use america for other purposes There's nothing to do with america's interest What i would argue that the sophisticated american strategic view And this is the kissingers and and and so william parry's and bob gates his argument is that We have to build up india as a nation I give an anecdote. I met nick burns when he was deputy secretary. I said, why are you supporting the nuclear deal? And he said because you have made the fundamental decision Or that you are going to be a democracy whatever happens 50 years from now whether india succeeds or not I can't predict but you have made the fundamental decision that you will be a democracy for the next 50 years China has no idea what its political system will be 50 years until chinese leadership doesn't even know they accept that It's not going to work that well. We have to change. We don't know what we'll be So for america, it's very clear your democracy. You're going to be Safe now the sophisticated american argument is basically let india be india. Let it be independent sovereignty conscious I remember doing the nuclear deal a lot of bush guys said Really, our only hope is that you'll be about as close to us as digole was in france. I mean that's about closer You'll be ornery difficult to work with but fundamentally you're not going to be a threat to the united states But what we do expect is that because you will also be ornery and independent your relationship with china will be terrible Right, I mean all the countries that america has a problem with you are going to just get into awful spats with them And that's fine That will provide the balance that we want. You don't have to be an alliance and an ally anymore You just have to be yourself and that's but just be a very powerful version of that and that's good enough for us Thank you very much, and I think we'll end it with that and thank you very much. Um, primate pal chowdhury and professor jing dong