 Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome. My name is Bill Burns, and I'm the president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. For more than three decades as a diplomat, I was an avid consumer of the think-tocracy. Over the past 18 months here at Carnegie, my respect for the value of good think-tank work has only increased. And that's in part because, like all of you, I realize that policy research and analysis is an art as much as it is a science. It requires the wisdom to separate the consequential from the superficial, the foresight to focus on the right question, the imagination to come up with new approaches to familiar problems, the discipline to bring precision and dispassion to inherently complex and highly charged issues, and just as importantly the serendipity of good timing. In Not War Not Peace, George and Toby exemplify the highest form of such artistry and the very best of what an institution like Carnegie can contribute. The book tackles a significant challenge for regional and global order. It sheds a bright light on one of the most intractable dilemmas of the India-Pakistan rivalry. Bringing to bear their decades of experience in the region as researchers and policy hands, Toby and George offer a clinical and thorough examination of the pros, cons, risks, and practicalities of available strategies to deal with the threat of terrorism. They have framed this issue with their characteristic flare and creativity, embracing its complexity without pulling any punches on the brute facts and their implications. And for better or worse, they have a gift for timing. Their book was published on the eve of last month's terrible attack on the Indian Army base in Uri and India's carefully calibrated response. Like all good artists, George and Toby keep interest in company and we're fortunate to have two of their colleagues here with us today to offer their views and reactions to the book and to the events of the past few weeks. Aparna Pandey is the director of the Hudson Institute's initiative on the future of India and South Asia and a leading expert on Pakistan's foreign policy. Ambassador Robin Raifel is most importantly my longtime friend and colleague. She also happens to be an extraordinary diplomat. Few know more about Pakistan and US policy toward the region and few have done more to shape it. So I hope you'll join me in congratulating George and Toby on their latest hit. I hope you'll each buy at least two copies of their book and I hope you'll all join me in giving a very warm welcome to our panelists. Thank you. Thanks very much, Bill. I appreciate having you here to kick off our discussion in our book launch and thanks obviously to Aparna and Robin for joining us. I'm gonna start. My name is Toby Dalton. I'm the co-director of the nuclear policy program here at Carnegie. I'll talk a little bit about the book and then hand it off to George to sort of extend the analysis to include why it is important to the United States in general and including at this particular time. Now as Bill mentioned, our timing for this book has been good. Unfortunately, timely, one might say. The worst fear of any author is to write something that is overtaken by events or out of date by the time it's released. And I will admit that I had some of those fears as we were waiting for this book to be written and published. But this is obviously not something that we only started to think about in the last month. And in fact, our thinking about this issue traces back to the 2013 timeframe when in a series of visits to India and to Pakistan we recognized that the situation that had prevailed for some time in which India had for a variety of reasons opted not to respond militarily to terrorism from across the border, was starting to change, that the political context was changing and that the emotional context was changing. And that was even before Prime Minister Narendra Modi was elected into office in May of 2014, partly on a platform of promising a more robust military response to future acts of terrorism that were deemed to come from Pakistan. So we started to think about that and our interest and concerns about this issue have only grown, which then when the attack on Uri happened on September 18th, it wasn't exactly the scenario that we had hypothesized in the book, but the context in which it played out in Indian politics and in particular on Indian TV really spoke to how the situation had changed in important ways over the last several years. The challenge as we saw it for India is how to motivate Pakistan to do more to prevent cross-border terrorism and we chose the word motivate very carefully in part because motivation can take many different forms and can take positive forms, it can also take negative forms, but the basic objective of Indian policy should be to encourage, motivate in some cases, coerce pressure Pakistan to control the groups that have been blamed for conducting attacks in India and to control the violence in Pakistan that emanates from the state, which is, as we point out in the book, a basic attribute of sovereignty that you control the legitimate means of violence. As we started to think about and assess the Indian discourse, we tried to come up with what we thought were criteria that any Indian government would have to satisfy as it weighed its options for responding to probable future attacks and to consider the motivational challenge that we set out. And those criteria essentially were one that any response would have to satisfy the domestic political demand for punishment to teach Pakistan a lesson in the parlance of many Indians, two that it would have to create longer-term effects in Pakistan that would motivate the government there to do more to tackle terrorism that comes from Pakistan into India, third that it should be done in a way that deters escalation such that Pakistan might feel compelled to respond to whatever the Indian response would be. And then finally that it would allow India to terminate that particular exchange, if you will, on terms that didn't leave it materially worse off than the instigating attack. Now, as we thought about that, we realized that the challenges to the Indian government in formulating a response are essentially unprecedented in the nuclear age, that no governments before have faced an adversary that has nuclear weapons and in which non-state actors are a potential catalyst of conflict. There's nothing in international relations theory or nuclear deterrence theory that accounts for non-state actors as a catalyst. There's nothing in counterterrorism policy thinking and theory about how you deal with that in a nuclearized environment in which an adversary is seeking to affect your behavior through nuclear deterrence. So this is really a difficult challenge, a challenge in which we don't fortunately or unfortunately have a lot of history to draw on to think through it. So as we looked at the discourse in India as people, you know, experts and analysts and officials and military officers wrestled with this problem, it was easily discernible that most of the options under discussion were military options, coercive options, the use of hard power. And so we chose four of those options to be the options that we analyzed in the book. And briefly, those options were using the army in some way either across the LOC or in a broader ground campaign to either directly go after terrorist groups or to seek to punish the Pakistan army. Second option would be to use air power, so a slightly different, perhaps less provocative platform could be done either using standoff capabilities or over the line of control or the border. Third, to use covert means either to directly go after terrorist groups that are blamed for the attacks in India or to seek to sow some discord or crisis chaos in Pakistan. For example, as many Pakistanis point out, the belief that India is behind much of the activity in Balochistan. And then fourth, changes to India's nuclear posture that would make conventional military options more credible in an environment in which Pakistan has developed so-called tactical nuclear weapons and has postured them in a way that, in theory, lowers the threshold for nuclear use such that Indian army options in particular have become a little bit unimaginable. Now, as a Pakistani colleague quipped to me the other day, you didn't actually imagine an option in which the Indian army, you know, said or asserted that had done surgical strikes but actually lied about it. It's like, well, okay, that's a fair criticism. We couldn't imagine every conceivable circumstance notwithstanding what you believe about the so-called surgical strikes. But as we looked at these options, our analysis showed that there are some real tensions, particularly as you look at the four criteria that I laid out. The first of these is that for any option to have the kind of strategic effect to either deter Pakistan from allowing future terrorist attacks or actually to compel a change in behavior that it would actually seek to demobilize or pacify groups like LET or Jaish that have carried out attacks in the past, those kind of options also come with very significant risks of escalation. So if you do send the Indian army across the border, which might actually, you know, bring about some change in behavior, that necessarily comes with a very significant escalation risk. The second tension that emerged is that if you think about the long-term motivational challenge from an institutional capacity point of view in Pakistan, you need to have institutions there that are charged with law and order and have the means to be able to demobilize or pacify the groups that have carried out attacks in India. For better or for worse, the institution that has that capability in Pakistan now and for the foreseeable future is the Pakistan Army. And so if you think about options that would either defeat or significantly embarrass the Pakistan Army, you're also then reducing its potential capacity to deal with the groups that you want to stop from attacking them. And then a third challenge, as we thought about it, and this adheres particularly to thinking about covert options, which have gained a lot more currency in Indian thinking recently, is that there's a significant tension between having short-term effects, but then also the longer-term effects that are actually more likely to bring about motivation. And in particular, as is obvious for a covert action, you can't claim credit for it. You're not going to be able to use that kind of option to assuage demands from the domestic political audience for retribution. And it's going to take probably a long time for covert operations to have the kind of effect in Pakistan that would actually bring about changes in behavior. So some real tensions in the four coercive options that we've looked at. Great. Thank you. Thanks, Toby. I'm picking up on another chapter, which we wrote to address alternatives to military action that Toby talked about, and that is the possibility of nonviolent compelence towards Pakistan. And the idea, the strategic idea behind that is that one wants to play on an adversary's relative weakness and bypass its strength. And you want to develop and exploit relatively risk and cost-free options to the extent you can without prejudicing your coercive possibilities. And so when we thought about the case that we're looking at here, the Pakistani security establishment's relative vulnerability is its difficulty in maintaining order, prosperity and democratic legitimacy. The establishment may be stronger than any civilian party or group, but it's still quite vulnerable in those attributes. And yet what that security establishment most prefers is threats that reinforce its centrality, which would be military threats. So in a sense, it welcomes military threats from India, because then they get to say, this is why we're here. This threat is why Pakistan had to be created. This is why we need all the resources that we take in Pakistan. So it struck us that India could gain more competitive advantage by concentrating on strategies, capabilities and activities that could bring nonviolent political, economic and moral pressure to bear on Pakistan. None of that precludes developing military capabilities, but it's talking about an additional kind of capacity to develop. Now Prime Minister Modi and his government, we would, I would argue, having increasingly actually pursued this logic after Uri, but even before it. So you saw it in a noteworthy way when he visited the UAE in August of 2015 and got a joint statement with the government of the UAE that was very clearly and directly criticizing any state that supports terror and demanding all such states to do everything they can to curtail terror. It was clearly directed at Pakistan, and it was interpreted that way in Pakistan. That's quite a shift for a major Sunni state in the Gulf, where Pakistan has had good relations. We see it continued in that the crown prince of Abu Dhabi is now going to be the honored guest at the Republic Day events next January. This is kind of following the logic that we've talked about in the book. You could see it in the Prime Minister's speech on Independence Day when he invoked the kind of the people and the suffering of the people in Balochistan and Gilgit, kind of widening the kind of discourse in the competition. Now clearly this was in part a repost against what was happening in the Kashmir Valley, and I'll talk a little bit more about that, but the logic of mounting political and moral pressure I think is quite compelling. And then you saw it immediately after the Uri attack. And so the ways in which India went out and mobilized international opinion, such that at the UN General Assembly when Pakistan's whole thrust before the Uri attack and then during was to try to raise Kashmir at the UN General Assembly because of the repression that had been going on the last few months and the violence, that basically went for not at the UN. So even China, the all-weather friend, basically didn't invoke Kashmir. And a number of other states that might have been counted on to do that didn't. And there were other attributes of kind of a non-military pressure that were being brought to bear them. And indeed, as Don reported last week, this was noted within the Pakistani establishment. So the report that basically the civilians of foreign ministry reporting in a meeting with the army, including the ISI, that look, we've been isolated. We're suffering from this, which is objectively true, but then became a scandal kind of further revealing these vulnerabilities in Pakistan. So they put the writer, the reporter, Cyril Ahmeda, who reported this story on the exit control list, although I think he's coming off, it was announced. So go after the messenger who's conveying actually the truth that anybody could recognize that Pakistan is subject to isolation because of its failure to try to control these groups that operate on its territory. Now in the book, we go through a bunch of other kinds of ways that India could bring this nonviolent pressure to bear on Pakistan. And so I urge people to read that and consider that. The point is, though, that we're not pretending that such efforts would be decisive or that they would substitute for developing military capabilities and military policy, but rather that they could be a very important complement that would widen the range of your options, play to India's strength and be much less risky and potentially costly than doing things another way. Now let me turn to our broader conclusion, which is related. And that is that India's capacity to mobilize nonviolent pressure, the kind of pressure that I just talked about, as well as to otherwise coerce Pakistan will be limited if two other related needs aren't met. And these are analytic points. One concerns conditions in the Kashmir Valley, which have been difficult at least since 1989, 1990, and it's become more acute in the last year, especially since July. The point, and again it's an analytic point, is that as long as that kind of activity and that kind of repression is felt to be necessary or is happening, whether it's necessary or not, it is harder for India to get Pakistan to change its behavior, number one. It's also harder to get the international community to bring all of the pressure it could bring on Pakistan because there's a natural temptation with other countries when you bring pressure to bear to say, yes, we understand that Pakistan's been supporting terrorism and this is entirely wrong, it's self-defeating for Pakistan, it's dangerous to the rest of the world, etc. But in order for us to lean on them, it would be easier or we would need something to say about what's being done for the Kashmir Valley and the people in the Valley, and that there's a political process to address those grievances, and moreover that there's a process, a sustained diplomacy to deal with Pakistan's interests there. And so as an analytic point, the hand is much weaker if those issues aren't being addressed. This is all the more true, it's just a fact of life because Pakistan is next door. So Pakistan has the means to foment and encourage and facilitate ongoing disruption, including violence in the Valley. And it's also correct to say this is arguably not in the interest of the Kashmiris themselves and many Kashmiri Muslims will say that, but it doesn't make the fact go away. So even if the Kashmiri Muslims are hostages and Pakistan's got a gun to their head, that's a reality. And if you care about the Kashmiris, you have to address that reality. And if you want the international community to care about the issue and motivate Pakistan, they recognize that that's an issue as well. And so there's got to be some process to deal over time with this as a bargaining problem. And that's furthered because many of the states, including in Europe, that one would want to do more to isolate Pakistan actually depend on the Pakistani intelligence services to monitor the diaspora. So if you're a European country X and you have a couple hundred thousand Pakistani citizens or guests living in your country, and they're going back and forth to Pakistan, and given the frequency of involvement with terrorism or violence that goes on there, you want to know what those people are doing and whether it's safe for them to come back or they have to be monitored. And in order to do that, you need the cooperation of the Pakistani intelligence services. So a number of countries that otherwise might be motivated to isolate Pakistan or cut off assistance to it actually have an equity there in cooperation with the institution. And so you have to give them a better basis for being able to say, we can lean horror because there's a process underway to deal with Kashmiri grievances. And I offer all of that as an analytic set of observations. There's not a judgment behind it. And finally, I would say again, an analytic point, India alone can't restore genuine efforts to reach a mutual accommodation with Kashmiris in the Valley or with Pakistan. Obviously, the Pakistani security establishment has to want that to happen too. And there's plenty of evidence in recent years that whenever there's an effort to do that, it gets sabotaged by acts of violence emanating from Pakistan, which may suggest to some that some in the military actually don't want a diplomatic process to go forward. So again, analytically, one recognizes that multiple actors have to come into alignment to make this go forward. And that's one reason why the conclusion of the book is rather pessimistic. We see that there's actually little interest in both governments amongst the people who really matter to move forward towards a longer term address and resolution of the challenge. And yet at the same time, there's enough balance at three levels of kind of military competition, nuclear, conventional, and subconventional. There's enough balance that neither one can win militarily. So neither side can get the other to capitulate to its demands. And there's no clear solution then without some form of bargaining. So what we have now is an unstable equilibrium where there's an interest that at least to preserve that unstable equilibrium will require a careful manipulation of coercive threats, mindful of the analysis that Toby laid out about options that would be potentially very destabilizing, mounting of nonviolent pressure, and then some form of bargaining. And without that, our view would be that the risk of destabilizing acts that would rupture the equilibrium could be quite severe. That's the basic pessimistic conclusion. So then why should any of this matter to the US, to the US government, to others? And we have a couple of concluding thoughts on that. One is that the US has a lot of reason to want to avoid a war that could emanate from acts of terrorism in the region. And these should be obvious and don't require recapitulation here. There's another interest, which is that in many ways the challenge that India faces as the target of terrorism, for the most part, are similar to challenges that the US faces, at least if not in the homeland than in other places where we have equities in the Middle East. And also in dealing with hybrid warfare, other kinds of mixed level violence, insurgency, where the role of states is difficult to attribute and is purposefully ambiguous. That challenge is something that's more widely shared. So thinking through ways to address that or how India might address that can help shed light on what we might do. And that's said in a way to suggest as we do in the book that the US hasn't been an exact model of success, nor has Israel, which is increasingly in India, is seen as a model of a hard state whose policies and capabilities are some that India should emulate. And when you look at it, actually Israel hasn't solved these problems at all. As Shashankar Menon says in his new book, they have to keep mowing the grass. And so that can become a strategy, which is you don't solve the problem, you don't pull up the grass and pave or whatever the right metaphor is, you just keep going back and mowing it. And so we think analyzing other options could help shed light there. And then finally, there is a concern that goes under address here that if a conflict does erupt, and I'm talking about something over the line of control, what's been going on in the last three weeks is kind of below the level that we wrote about an address, because if it stays there, we think it's quite well manageable. But something that erupts beyond that. So for example, if there's an attack in the Indian heartland that kills a lot of civilians, that would be quite escalatory in our view and could require an Indian or motivate an Indian response outside of Pakistan occupied Kashmir. Once that kind of thing happens and if it escalates, the US has great equities. Pakistan if it's not faring well in such a conflict has lots of incentive to mobilize nuclear assets. And if it's faring well, if it's holding India back, then India has lots of incentive to increase the military activity because it can't afford to tie. It's got to be seen to prevail. So you get a dynamic where there's likelihood of escalation. Pakistan sends nuclear signals. Now imagine you're the president of the United States and your government's been spending tens of millions of dollars over the years exactly to know where Pakistan's nuclear capabilities are and to monitor them. And so if you detect this kind of mobilization, then what do you do? You tell the Indians? And what if they say, okay, fine, what do you want us to do about it? We don't have capabilities to interdict that. Will you do it? I don't know what the right answer is, but it becomes a very difficult challenge in conversation. If you haven't detected the mobilization, then you've got another problem which is that all the effort and money that's been spent precisely to be able to do this has gone apparently for naught. It's a situation that you can imagine and where you're totally damned whatever you do in all likelihood. And one that's very difficult to talk about, especially openly. But in our view gives also the US a very great interest in trying to do things and encourage thinking and action that we would reduce the risk. First of all of the terrorist acts that would instigate the conflict, but reduce the risk of responses that would be most escalatory. So I'm going to move it to that. Robin, would you like to start? Certainly. First of all, thanks to Carnegie and thanks to you all for inviting me. It really is a pleasure to be here with such an imminent group, particularly these two authors. I really do want to compliment George and Toby on this very comprehensive look at India's options to dissuade Pakistan from the continued use of proxies and cross-border attacks. Much has been written about this topic, but it really is useful to have it all in one volume and also useful to listen to the two of you talk about it because it's complicated, but I think you'll all agree that if you listen carefully you could follow the very sophisticated and complicated line of analysis. And I also particularly admire your ability to draw out your Indian interlocutors in such a way that what emerged in the book was a very candid and insightful picture of the possibilities and the limitations, as you've described, of the institutions of the Indian state when it tries to deal with the provocations from Pakistan. I thought that was super and all these detailed notes and quotes are well worth looking at extremely carefully. Of course it wasn't surprising to me, I have to say and probably to many of us in this room, that you conclude that India at this point really has no good military options to deter Pakistan. Whether it's ground forces or airstrikes or changing the nuclear doctrine or covert options, as you read through the book you conclude, as George and Toby described, that there really isn't a good option there. There are limitations in the current capability of India's military forces and of course there's the risk of escalation as you described. And there's no guarantee that any of these options will change Pakistan's perception and Pakistan's behavior and no guarantee that India will be better off when the dust settles. So I think you made that very, that case very clear. And even the less risky non-military option of isolating Pakistan diplomatically has its limits. You described the problems for the Europeans, but also for the U.S. for the Chinese. There are other important interests in Pakistan which constrain our ability and the ability of others to walk away all together as frustrated as we all might become at various points. At the same time, of course, Pakistan's long-term policy of using cross-border attacks as a way to maintain pressure on India to engage on various issues including Kashmir hasn't worked either. So they're kind of in the same position. And in fact, it appears to have finally pushed, as you've described, the Indian government into a more hawkish stance as witnessed by the response to this recent attack in Uri. So where does this leave us? I think logic and the process of elimination brings us back to the basics here. There really is a need for India and Pakistan to resolve the long-standing underlying issues between them, Kashmir. I know we've all put issues like Kashmir on the too hard to solve list for a long time and with very good reason. But I think the situation is evolving in ways that just could, and I'm going to be a little half-full here rather than half-empty as George, that could help both sides to finally face up to the fact that they really do need to resolve these issues in their own interest. I hesitate to use that term, their own interest, because I think countries really don't like us telling them what their interests are and I can appreciate that. But I think in this case it's pretty clear. For India, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to fulfill its ambitions on the global stage with Pakistan and Kashmir and all these underlying issues acting like an albatross around their neck. And the current unrest in Kashmir, which has abated at times and I think lulled us all into thinking that maybe it would resolve itself somehow, is again very much in the headlines. And today, I think with the social media and the issues of Islam and Islamic identity in high relief everywhere, the situation there is not likely to settle down very soon or settle down completely. And Pakistan, for its part, must normalize relations with India if it wants to move beyond its current economic stagnation. Even if the energy shortages are reduced dramatically in the next couple of years as the government is now claiming, experts say that the growth rate could only increase by a couple of percent a year from where it is now at three or four percent. I'm not quite sure where it is now. But in any case, this isn't enough to absorb the millions of new entrants into the labor market and to provide the resources necessary to finance urgently needed infrastructure for education, for health, roads, power, and so on. So bottom line is that Pakistan needs to trade with India to unleash its own economic potential. And the trade routes to Central Asia, which they're working on, are all well and good, but simply not enough. For the U.S. and Pakistan's neighbors, as George pointed out, there really is an urgent need to ensure that tensions between India and Pakistan do not accidentally put them on the brink of a nuclear confrontation or start a proxy war on the other side in Afghanistan, which would inevitably cause the seemingly endless conflict there to drag on. Now these motivations, economic and India's desire to emerge on the world stage, have been here for some time. So the real question is what's different now? I would argue that for Pakistan, having succeeded to a large degree in ridding FATA, Federal Administrative Tribal areas, and Karachi of al-Qaeda elements, TTP, and other foreign groups, they now have more military and political bandwidth, should they choose to use it, to consider how to deal with other groups like the Heqani Network, LET, Jaisa Muhammad, and others. Pakistan has consistently argued in recent years that these groups are also a threat, like the TTP and al-Qaeda and so on, but of a lower priority. Well I think it's time now and there is an opportunity to move them up in the queue and get some focus on these groups as well. And as George pointed out, there seems to be an internal debate heating up in Pakistan, if one can believe these reports that there was a meeting in Islamabad last week and there were blunt exchanges between civilian and military authorities on how Pakistan needs to speed up the process of implementing their national action plan against extremism. The civilians were reportedly, and I think probably quite true, given my experience in Pakistan, that it was really important now for Pakistan to move against these groups because of the damaging and increasingly damaging effects of international isolation. And the military, true to form, was reportedly arguing for a more cautious approach. In India, Modi's strong response to the early incident and his announcement of surgical strikes and his altogether more confident and hawkish and very public posture, first of all has already gotten Pakistan's attention so that they realize it's no longer business as usual. But there's also the possibility that this could create space for India to do two things. One, to build up its own military defenses and capability to minimize the effect of any future attack. There was a very good article in Foreign Affairs recently by Samir Lawani explaining what they could do so that next time, God forbid, there's another similar attack that you wouldn't end up with 18 dead Indian soldiers. But it also will help them buy some time to take necessary steps to ease the tensions in Kashmir, as George has described. As for the U.S., in the region, we have been heavily preoccupied with Afghanistan in recent years and I think we've let into Pakistan issues, including Kashmir, sort of slipped to the back burner. But I would argue this might be a good time to recalibrate. With the continuing debate going on over the end game in Afghanistan, with a new administration in sight, it's worth remembering again that Afghanistan is vulnerable to becoming a proxy battleground for India and Pakistan absent a broader improvement in Indo-Pac relations. This would complicate the already vastly complicated political and military situation in Afghanistan and make it more difficult for us to achieve one of our key foreign policy goals, which is to turn the military and other reins over to the Afghans more fully. So we've got an incentive both on the threat of a nuclear exchange and on the other border with Afghanistan. So to conclude, I would argue that the more all the parties can do to help India and Pakistan seize this potential political window of opportunity to resume a meaningful dialogue on all of the issues between them, including Kashmir, or the more anyone else can do to help create that opportunity, the better we all will be. Thank you. I guess I'm the only person actually from India or Pakistan in this panel on a book about India and Pakistan. That reminds me of an observation by a friend that among the many other characteristics of American exceptionalism is the belief that Idaho must never be discussed without including people from Idaho, but discussion of foreign countries is maybe best discussed without being tainted by the foreigner. Let me start by thanking George and Toby. I'm happy to discuss Idaho with anybody. Let me start by thanking George and Toby for inviting me to be part of this panel. I would also like to compliment both of you. You have written a useful and eminently readable book. It's a must read for people not only in Delhi, but also in DC and Islamabad. As you laid out in your book, the in your talk, the book analyzes the options that are open to Indian policymakers on how they can motivate Pakistan to give up its policy of using terrorism as a lever of security and foreign policy. The primary focus of your book is on options open to India to change Pakistan's policy and some of the scenarios that may result from India following any of the five options you discuss in detail. All five options are well-aid out and while they are not new, what is new is your take on each of them and the elaborate detail with which you explain each of these options. There are those in DC who believe that the solution to Pakistan's policy of supporting cross-border terrorism is to come up with new policies to incentivize Pakistan, whether from US or from India. There are others who believe that the solution is not coming up with new policies for India to pursue. India alone may not be able to change Pakistan's behavior. This is because Pakistan tends to think of itself as indispensable to the world. Too important for the rest of the world to ignore and so maybe unless the rest of the world is actually willing to join India, Pakistan may continue to play the games it is right now. Let me share an aspect that in my humble opinion is inadequately considered by both the authors and many others. There are certain characteristics unique to the Pakistani state which make it difficult for the proposed policies for India from coercion to compelence to deterrence to have the desired impact that you seek. First it is important to remember Pakistan is a contrived ideological state not a historic nation state. We have dealt with ideological states such as the communist and fascist ones but they were all nations before adopting a totalitarian ideology. So Russia adopted communism. Italy and Spain became fascist. Germany was taken over by national socialists. It was still easy for both citizens of those states and foreign interlocutors to visualize dealing with the state without the adopted ideology. In Pakistan's case its ideology defines its nationhood. Pakistanis have a hard time defining themselves as a nation except in opposition to India through the prism of the ideology. I would refer you to surveys conducted by British Council Pakistan which show that for most Pakistanis their primary identity is either ethnic or religious with being Pakistani a second in case of Punjabis and a third in case of other ethnic groups. A state that derives its legitimacy from competition with another is unlikely to be coerced compelled or deterred in the same way as nations that could imagine themselves without competing with others. So in the case the Soviet Union nuclear weapons were an instrument of power in the hands of the Soviets who were primarily Russians occupying what they termed their near abroad. Russia fell threatened and threatened in return. It could however be persuaded to look at security options. In Pakistan the psychological need for imaginary threats from India will not go away as a result of India's policies. Pakistan needs to threaten India and feel threatened by it to maintain its national identity that makes normal policy options ineffective. My second point relates to something briefly referred to by George the Pakistani military and here I'm borrowing the words of one of your former colleagues Ambassador Hakani that most countries raise a military to defend the country whereas Pakistan inherited a large military that defines Pakistan's national interest through the prism of its institutional interests and you mentioned this. The military's institutional interests require that Pakistan continue to attract international attention through terrorism and nuclear weapons. Nothing short of the fear of the unraveling of Pakistan or the prospect of global isolation will make the military rethink its fundamental worldview. India has to remain the enemy Kashmir must continue to be the Cassus Belai. Nuclear arms must be brandished to mobilize Pakistani nationalism and to keep India at bay. The world must be persuaded to remain engaged with Pakistan on Pakistan's terms without changing Pakistani behavior. The reluctance to understand the Pakistani military's mindset and worldview as the core issue in India-Pakistan relations will lead to a problem in dealing with or using any of the five options that you lay out. The third and final character to the Pakistani state relates to the India-Pakistan relationship. In your book you say the condition of no war is unsustainable if no peace is at the core of either state's policy. We must look for an answer to the question who gains quibono by a no war no peace status. I believe it's the Pakistani security establishment. Since there is no war the Pakistani military doesn't need to fight but the permanent state of conflict no peace keeps the military preeminent in the country and outside. Maybe and in conclusion I'd like to say we need to come to terms with that reality and wait for the internal dynamics of Pakistan to play out. Instead of complex interaction maybe India just needs to wait patiently for Pakistan to feel the pain of slowly growing international isolation or collapse under the weight of its own policies. Changing Pakistan's behavior involves changing the fundamental nature of the Pakistani state and expecting India to do that alone may be a bridge too far. Thank you. Okay so we're going to open it to discussion question. Most of you know the drill. You raise your hand. Please identify yourself and if there's an affiliation and be polite and mindful and all of that kind of stuff. Let's start right where you are there. Start with this gentleman and then the guy with the red or orange armband there just. This is Nasir Hafiz from South Asia Studies in John Hopkins University. I was going to congratulate both the authors for the wonderful book but since I come from Pakistan so I expect that there should be another book also in the following what should be the options for Pakistan to dissuade India. So I think we are living in a very interesting time and an interesting time of narratives where the facts and fictions are so merged together that it is very difficult to find out what really actually happens. So I find there is a problem of both diagnostics and descriptions. So if you associate all the policies based on assumptions that something has happened and without challenging what actually has happened without investigating substantially what actually has happened then you fall into prayer to the that assumption. So I have suggest that we need to first also look at to the basic assumption which has been at the core of the study because I find that you know intelligence led policy making which is restricted to confidentiality and not sharing information enough for resolving the basic core problems will lead both the countries into into a long-term perpetual confrontation. The question which I want to ask is that I think the the benefits of cooperation versus the risk of competition has to be put together before both the government and I think what what the intelligence or the the academic world can do is that I think there's a lot of opportunity in the area the economic corridor which is coming from China and linking the other I think it can provide us excellent opportunity for India to connect the same corridor and go to the Central Asia. What stops both the countries to come and sit together and talk? I think the incentive for Pakistan to change the fundamental identity of its its nationhood lies in the resolution of the Kashmir issue which is the core interest. How can you ask a country sorry sir how can you ask country to give up its core national interest for any petty economic gains so I think I agree with Robin Raffer when she said that this is an opportunity. Thank you this gentleman back there we're going to take a number because I don't know the the guy in the the tall young guy everybody's young compared to me now but the guy with the red armband raise your arm I can see your red little arm thing that guy thank you. Thank you we we're speaking about India Pakistan and and the United States as if they're all monoliths I would agree that Pakistan acts as a monolith. Would you would you have to repeat the whole thing but you could stand up and you could say who you are and then. I'm Jay I'm with the Hindu American Foundation. We so the United States and India are not monoliths per se because they have a very robust political partisan you know democracy whereas Pakistan operates through the prism of its military so do you see any discrepancy between political partisanship and how they would address this issue in the United States and in India. And how about this gentleman there Chelsea and then okay and then we'll respond to this one round and then if I've missed any ladies like Wayne and if I haven't that's kind of a prompt. Hi Dave Ramos from Indus Latin Adventures. I want to echo like Ashley Tellis wrote an opinion column where he said US policy towards Pakistan was not going to fundamentally change till there's a significant terrorist attack on US soil which you know forces a reset. Of course in Orlando New York New Jersey San Bernardino there have been links to Pakistan so what does it take given former secretary Bill Perry's nuclear nightmare of Pakistani loose nukes being detonated in Washington DC. I mean so what's the kind of in the spectrum of events what event does it take for a reset. Thank you. Actually let's take one more because I don't want to forget that I invited no no you're absolutely right but I can forget so we're not going to forget. I'm Priyali I'm a former journalist from India and a student of Pakistan. It's now it's a follow-up to your question actually so this one's for Toby. What can the US do to ensure that the nukes in Pakistan do not actually fall into the hands of the terrorists given the fact that when the nukes kept away from the Indian border and more in the Taliban region now to have been instances of since we talk about the fact that India should also have a strong response do you think that Modi's decision on surgical strikes is a good decision given the fact that Pakistan says that it can respond to conventional military strikes by India with nuclear strikes. Thank you. So what you guys want to do that we'll we'll just start and kind of everybody jump in if you need to. On the on the first comment we've heard a lot of what you seem to be saying about you know kind of evidence and everything else and while it's very important to investigate things I think on a number of instances whether it's 1947-1965 the Kargil conflict the 2001 attack on the Lok Sabha the Mumbai attack there's clear evidence that that ties this to groups that have operated in Pakistan with at least the toleration of the Pakistan and some of those it was clear that they were actually trained and operated there so I don't know that that's an effective line of argument it doesn't get one very far where you were going about kind of kind of building joint interests and the possibility of economic corridor in my not so humble opinion that deserves a lot more analysis and discussion including in the U.S. I mean we talk about a little bit in the book I mean there's this tendency in the U.S. to say oh my god we have to keep China out of the region and this is actually a card that Pakistan plays in the U.S. is look if you don't you know provide us what we need if you don't stay friendly with us you know the Chinese will do more to my mind a you know China being more invested and more involved in Pakistan is a good thing for everybody except maybe China and so and so that's why we ought to encourage uh but but and I can elaborate on that but um but they're too smart actually to do that and so then that makes it a bluff of Pakistan that you can call us fine go to China and and let's get China in there what does China want more than anything stability uh what's their one of their greatest worries terrorism uh Muslim you know Islamist terrorism uh from from we hear so I mean if you kind of look at their interests and how they're aligned I would agree that we you know ought to encourage it by the way the more you talk to Pakistani businessman about being with China the less they like it and and you know builds more attention um on on the issue about Jay's question uh about partisanship I wasn't quite sure I understood it quite properly but I would say in Toby alluded to this on Indian television after the Uri attack and stuff that the combination of competitive party politics and social media whether it's in the United States or India or elsewhere is a very makes the conduct of reasonable foreign policy much much harder number one well I think people in Pakistan would also say that notwithstanding the limitations you know on on kind of the the the domestic system they have there it there's also enough competition there that that it also makes it difficult now it's easier for the ISI to control journalists and and kill some evidently uh and and and threaten others but but all the way around clearly by the way it affects the U.S. conduct of policy towards India and for example Kashmir the the mobilization of the Indian diaspora and American politics which is a great thing and which is the American way and it's perfectly legal but campaign contributions into American elected that really matters and it starts to have influence and the India caucus in Congress that affects the range of things that a U.S. administration will feel it can say and do regarding South Asia so so so yeah well I don't think there's an answer to it but I think I think your point is is well made um and then everybody else I'll show them a second but I did the one about uh you know it won't change until there's an attack on U.S. soil I and I read actually speech which is another story and we we we love to argue with each other um the it didn't answer the so what in other words so so then what would we do another and this goes to Aparna's point is uh so what are you going to do like and what are you going to do that will actually change what the Pakistani military does and what it supports so I'm perfectly willing to stipulate that yes if there's another attack and it comes from Pakistan the U.S. will be more motivated to do something what that is and whether it'll solve a problem is partly what we try to analyze in in the book and it's not clear um that there is like a thing to do then that would that would solve the problem the other questions or any just two comments one is uh when you're talking about CPEC and the economic relations and building ties if I mean if Pakistan and India really want to sort of build a economic relationship uh two things one Pakistan should grant India more more stable nation status and to allow transit trade through Afghanistan that would help uh economic relations but but in that in both cases um Pakistan needs to do more than India does I'm not saying India doesn't need to do anything India does but the foot is I mean it's more on Pakistan side um the last question which was asked of me directly um I have just three comments once these strikes are not new all of us know that from the 1990s India has and so as Pakistan both sides have been doing it uh the fact the Indian government actually publicly spoke about it that is new uh most of the time people knew it but you never actually talked about it so I mean these will continue I don't I don't think anybody believes this is the last time India is doing it uh the first or the last um I do believe that the chest thumping about it doesn't really help it because it then demands that Pakistan has to have a response and either deny it which it's doing right now or say that it's sort of it never happened um so it's better if you don't actually talk about it it sends a better message uh if it happens but you don't publicly talk about it so that's my take yeah I I would agree I don't think that modus response is either good or bad my point was that I thought it possibly opened up an opportunity in the sense that I think it startled Pakistan it was a change in the rhetoric and a change in the actual response uh and and that can help drag everybody out of a rut you know Pakistan's in a rut India's in a rut you know somebody attacks there's a response and it it never goes anywhere um hopefully but I think it mixing it up you can you can make something positive out of that potentially um on the economic corridor I think we the United States has now sort of rethought our original uh concern about that and um you know I I agree with George it's a good thing uh I think sometimes people forget that many of those projects are actually private sector projects there's only 10 11 billion of that 46 as I understand that that will actually be loans on the books of the government of Pakistan um and you know I think everyone expects it'll be slow and stops and starts and and all but it is a good idea and I agree that it's something that ultimately India and Pakistan China and beyond can all participate in and certainly you know one of the the most favored nation the NDMA as they call it Pakistan to grant to India is a good idea it had been promised it got derailed um and you know to reiterate what I said in my remarks more trade uh to the eastern side is essential for Pakistan they really need economic normalization I think that's all in the mix and then I'd make one comment while I'm while I'm at it about what you said upon on on the identity of the Pakistan state um you know it's certainly true that that's where it started but I think there's been a lot of evolution and when you go to Pakistan as a private citizen and aren't solely involved with the ministry's external affairs or the military and either country you really do get a different picture I'm not sure I have total confidence in in many surveys because a lot of times you have surveys with where Pakistani say I'm Pakistani first as time has gone by so I and business people are are much less um uh interested in Pakistan's relations with the US or India or whatever they're they're interested in the economic facts of the day and in many ways Pakistan's economy is is bustling uh business people are uh you know are excited about their prospects and of course business people really want trade with India they want that border open so they don't have to send goods through Dubai and receive goods through Dubai and go to that extra expense so I just think there's more uh in Pakistan society more elements than the than the old uh identities uh which were definitely there at the beginning yeah let me make three quick points and um let me pick up just on that last one you know there was a a question that sort of alluded to a cost benefit analysis and one of the things that has changed is that the military in Pakistan has become a significant economic actor and so its interests are not just in its uh security orientation but also the importance of its role in the economy uh as a way to sustain uh its its institutional interest so that opens up a different optic on this um let me make one sort of rejoinder to robin's point about the you know is the indian surgical strikes if they took place as the indian government says they did um you know is that good or bad I think that the problem isn't so much how they took place or didn't take place but in how much partisanship has come on the tail end of that and sort of raising expectations now amongst at least a certain population in India that after the next attack it's going to have to be more and so you see this sort of escalatory pressure not just potentially on Pakistan but also in India and that's that's problematic particularly if you take the hypothetical scenario that George laid out which is not an attack on a military facility but something more like the Mumbai attack that's that's on the civilians on the specific question about nuclear weapons and what can the U.S. do to protect those I think it's um you know this is a bit of a boogeyman issue in in some ways uh in that yes there have been attacks on Pakistan military facilities that may or may not have nuclear weapons as far as I'm aware those attacks were not on those facility because they had nuclear weapons but because they're approximate uh uh areas where the militant groups are operating um but it does raise the question about you know the the long-term direction of the Pakistani nuclear program and the extent to which it's growing in material terms in the numbers of delivery vehicles missiles etc um that that compounds the security problem in important ways and so there's there's kind of a supply side and a demand side question Pakistan has done a lot to protect its nuclear assets uh it I think the the Zarbiyaz operations against TTP has probably addressed some of the potential terrorist threat to nuclear weapons and yet with the growth of nuclear weapons um it's not a time for complacency and I think in that regard there's concern here uh that with the focus in Pakistan on growing the nuclear program as it is uh that security is taking a vaccine uh and so that that is is concerned what can the U.S. do about it and I think there there are tensions in U.S. policy in this regard on the one hand I think that that you know you see from the congress for instance uh an interest in trying to increase pressure um because of support for the Haqqani group on the other hand and as George suggested you know taking more pressure tactics can also jeopardize cooperation in other areas and I think this is one where if there is some breakdown and trust between the two governments um you know to the extent that the U.S. could help Pakistan on this issue uh if you can see that that may become harder in that environment okay um that are the usual suspects uh all right there's there's a lady and a journalist in the back uh that's Seema uh and then we've got uh in the middle right here there's two gentlemen there yeah keep you're right in the middle about five feet away from your right hand there's a guy with his hand up yeah right there right oh there's two Zia and the guy in front of Zia uh let me make it simpler all right there you go all right so start with Seema yeah um Seema Sirui I'm a columnist for Indian newspapers I wanted to ask George and Robin in particular um you know you talk about resolving Kashmir uh wanted to know what gives you confidence that even if Kashmir were resolved um as Pakistan keeps saying it should be that there would be peace uh because I mean there's been much scholarship on the motivations of the Pakistani army that the reason for uh you know reasons for its existence are to keep the pot boiling and now they've started to link it to peace in Afghanistan so I just wanted to know because Pakistan army's previous sort of statements about they don't support terrorism they don't sponsor terrorism have been proven to be absolutely false all right these two here so my name is Ben Schwartz and I'm asking this question in my capacity as a former State Department and Defense Department official who worked on Pakistan and that is really for any of the panelists um is it in you know the United States' interest for India to have a more capable low intensity uh conflict type of military capability because in the past and I wouldn't say this was US policy as quantified as such but there was a narrative that it was better for India not necessarily to have a capability to escalate because something that say started with 18 casualties on one side could ultimately mean nuclear war and so as much as we felt sympathy for India we just didn't think it was a good thing for them to have that capability because my suspicion is is that the political conditions have changed today and as again somebody that worked in the system policy doesn't always adapt as rapidly as the political conditions do and right behind him there you go ZME and from Princeton um I had a question about time in these problems and solutions that you've been talking about I mean upon I said just let them stew and see if change comes all by itself and then there are the various compelence coercive strategies that you've talked about the role of trade all of these happen on different timescales and so one of the questions I have is about what timescale matters in making judgments about this and I ask this because a lot of what we've seen going on in the last 15 years with regard to Pakistan's use of proxies and so on and being able to get away with it to the extent it has has been about US reliance on Pakistan because of US interests nothing to do with Pakistani capabilities or Indian capabilities with regarding to compel our course Pakistan it has to do with that the US has a bigger interest in Pakistan so it's willing to set this to one side and so I'd like you to talk about the role of time for the United States and for Pakistan and for India in making these judgments about motivations one one one more I want to make sure I'm not missing any ladies there's like 20 guys there you have two on the panel so you have two on the panel it takes a little pressure all right so come forward here this gentleman right here we'll try to get everybody I have no idea what thank you my name is Sid Ravi Shankar I'm a student at Johns Hopkins Sice here so my question is so you've written a book about India's options and Uri happened which is a great case study but my question is whether this is a typical attack or what can we draw from it because a month from now there is the chief of army staff potential transition in Pakistan there is a lot of tension on who appoints the on on how much influence the civilian government or the military government gets in appointing the successor to general Sharif so has this succession how has it changed the dynamics of what might happen during a mid-term say Uri attack and has this constrained Pakistan or has it opened up more options I'm going to try to address Seema's question which was a great question and we get all the time with resolving Kashmir what difference would it make would there be peace I think there's a great argument to be made for reasons that Aparna talked about that there there wouldn't be peace that the Pakistani military would would keep pushing and so on my response though is so what one if if there's progress even if it doesn't result but if even he'll get peace but if India is actually making progress and and put on the table offers that the rest of the world feels like these are practical and and and good offers it greatly changes the leverage situation it greatly adds to India's leverage and others leverage because then if it doesn't lead to progress or Pakistan doesn't reciprocate or war violence keeps emanating people say it's clear now that Kashmir wasn't the issue that the issue is the Pakistani military and this has been this is now plain to see so it adds India's leverage first of all but secondly if you resolve the Kashmir issue and it doesn't end the conflict at least for the Kashmiris life is better and there's eight million souls there who've been living for 30 odd years now 40 percent of whom are reportedly suffering depression and other things so from a human interest standpoint as well as from an Indian political standpoint by the way it seems to me you know if you can resolve Kashmir that's like you know a big day for celebration even if it doesn't resolve all the other things they never hear that said in India by the way because I don't think I mean one of the things that seems to unite like a lot of the discourse in Pakistan and India is that no one cares about the Kashmiris it's it's all about something something else just add on to that one to George's point about the Kashmiris much of this India could do unilaterally to make life better for the Kashmiris I know the Kashmiris constantly complain about the checkpoints the militarization and I think many of the since Kashmir is relatively isolated from the rest of India there's kind of an old-fashioned view on the part of the police and security forces there and they tend to get abusive and we all know what that's about in many countries of the world so you've got that problem you have lack of economic opportunity lack of mobility and all the rest of it things which India could unilaterally tackle which would make a big difference because then you wouldn't have this voice of the Kashmiri people that chime into this dispute all the time on a couple of the other points I'd simply say it's not entirely clear to me I have to say that the raison d'etre of the Pakistani military is to fight with the with India or to keep the pot boiling with India when you talk to younger officers mid-grade officers in Pakistan who spent their entire careers in the west you know fighting the TTP and so on the the India problem is not central to their thinking because it isn't central to their experience so I think you have a generational evolution that's coming here that can can shift the focus a bit in terms of this this idea that the Pakistan military exists to get resources so that it can fight the Indians at some point I just I don't think that's that's as accurate now as it might once have been just two points one I have a slightly different take on Kashmir I believe that Kashmir is actually a symptom of the problem and not a problem the problem is a lack of trust between the two establishments and even if you resolve Kashmir and there have been attempts united the last us attempt was 62 63 during president Kennedy when the Swarank Singh and India under Nehru actually was willing to give a certain amount of territory Pakistan wasn't willing to accept anything but all of Kashmir so I believe that Kashmir resolving Kashmir will not solve the problem it's a different thing that I do believe India has there's a lot India needs to do in Kashmir but that is separate from resolving the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan second thing I sort of I mean yes the Pakistan military is taking a lot of action on the western front Zarbayas and many of the others but I do recall this was a few years ago when they actually started and sort of operations in the Fata area in one case many of their soldiers actually surrendered to the militants the first time now and in order to convince the soldiers the Pakistan army actually released pamphlets saying that most of the militants are Indians even releasing stories about the fact that most of the men were not circumscribed and therefore they had to be Hindus they couldn't be Muslims so there was an attempt to bring in the India factor if only to convince the soldiers that there is an India sort of aspect to it and therefore you must fight the militants I guess there's a little lot that said on Kashmir I'll not say anything more there on the question about the Indian low intensity conflict military capability it was you know interesting as we had the discussions with various mostly former Indian military officers over the last several years you know the the bureaucratic politics of that question in India are serious and you know the military in particularly in its procurement you know the services tend to preference big expensive weapons platforms most of which are not suited to this kind of conflict and we've seen now over the last several weeks articles in Indian news about procurements that would give Indian troops additional capabilities to carry out more of the sorts of surgical strikes that were were claimed not expensive procurements not big weapon systems but better night vision equipment you know things like that and yet those procurements have essentially languished in the on the desks of you know bureaucrats in the Ministry of Defense so it kind of raises a question about yes you can see that an additional capability like this for India makes a lot of sense to build up a special operations capability and yet the the political and bureaucratic will to make that happen have thus far been a little bit lacking but it does raise an interesting question and we explored a little bit in the book that to the extent that you see this sort of stalemate across three levels of conflict the strategic nuclear conventional and now also you know to the extent that India might develop more low intensity conflict capability or do more to support groups in Pakistan that create trouble for the Pakistan government that does actually create some symmetry there that could conversely allow for bargaining which isn't to say that that's good for people on Balochistan or good for Pakistanis in general but you could foresee that that could be something that results the questions you asked about time you know I think that as a partner suggested to the extent that there's questions about the you know what is Pakistani identity how much is national interest defined by institutional interests and how enduring is that there are elements of this problem that are timeless that said as far as the US interest is concerned you know the the bureaucratic aspect of this and the the dominance of this issue largely from the Pentagon's point of view of of needing to sustain and take care of the US military presence in Afghanistan that has changed and yet it seems like most of the discussion is toward sustaining a presence there that is at least the the size that it is now if not larger in order to be able to support a transition to a stable Afghan government and through a peace process so that suggests that there is a fairly significant constraint on US sort of policy options if you will that is going to last for some period of time lastly on the question about lessons from Uri I think it's you know this is a question that has already gotten a lot of debate particularly in India in the sort of strategic commentariat and I think a little bit it's it's too soon to tell in part because there are the contest of narratives is still very active and so what happened there you know there's there's very few established facts and so what lessons Pakistan might derive from that and what effects it might have on Pakistani behavior and similarly in India I think it's just it's too too soon to tell let me quick I want to jump in on Zia's and it will take another rapid round but on the time issue Zia I think one issue is anything that significant military capability will take a long time to acquire and develop and then in India double it and and so and and yet the things that I was talking about that are kind of nonviolent actions whether it's diplomacy developing other kinds of pressure that can be done very very quickly and so it seems to me there are a number of things that are just worth doing because they're relatively low cost they're relatively risk free and you could do them right away so so I would focus on those and then the other stuff that's longer termed by definition you can't really speed it up that that much more so there's always going to be a gap between when you would have the military capability to do these other things because it's just going to take a long time to acquire it but quickly let's go let's go right across here and then yeah these these guys here just because it's quick thank you so much for writing this book and organizing this discussion I'm Tuneer Mukherjee from CSIS I had the question about is it beneficial for India that Pakistan has a military establishment in charge because in my lifetime the most peaceful time between India and Pakistan was when President Musharraf was in charge of Pakistan there were cricket matches there were summits in Agra there was considerable amount of peace and the moment that turned and the first PPP government came in we had something like the Mumbai attacks and since then there has not been like there's been a civilian turnover in Pakistan but is it something that we see in India that I see it that you know Musharraf was one of the guy who controlled Pakistan had the civilian and the military establishment under his control so that was my thanks there's a gentleman right here oh Raul Osmani I'm a visiting scholar with the size here in DC my question is more on the geopolitics of that region especially with the recent news that you also refer to procurement of military it was news in India that Russia is signing a deal $5 billion with India in Goa to buy a S-400 missile so that's something I thought will change the dynamic of geopolitics and how that my question is affect the original aspect of like Russia relation with Pakistan India relation with regards to Kashmir and also recently President Putin I think of Russia met with Prime Minister Modi and they discussed on how they can together bring stability in Afghanistan so I'm wondering how this afford because I mean for the US it's stability in Afghanistan is a US interest and for India the same thing for Russia so how that could help bring stability or bringing Pakistan into this process to help the peace great question and Nisar quickly yeah and if people have to leak I think we're over time so people have to leave go ahead you're not rude if you leave we won't be offended I'm being rude we're continuing thank you very much George this is a Dr. Nisar with the Pakistan American League and a couple of observations and a question as the partner mentioned that Pakistan the Christian lies in confrontation with India that is questionable and rather without any foundation Pakistan is a reality Pakistan is a nation and she should know that the maps of the world kept changing throughout the history of mankind if this if you look at the number of flags which were there before you and no 50 years ago and look at the number today so that is really an argument which he gave the other argument she gave was that Pakistan inherited a very powerful military if Pakistan had inherited a very powerful military then the issue of Kashmir should have been resolved in 47-48 Pakistan did not inherit the powerful military and my question is that since Pakistan is really paying a price through the nose and fighting in North Zirustan and fighting insurgency in Brugistan and even in North Zirustan U.S. is a partner with Pakistan I am yet to understand that if you give this reason that Kashmir even if this issue is solved then the thing will not change we should understand that these people have lived together together for centuries now they need to live learn to live together as neighbors and core issue is the Kashmir issue and I think Kashmir issue should be addressed and as George mentioned about nine violent options and nonviolent option the best option is how to achieve peace it costs minimum price and war cost maximum price thank you thank you I'm right behind you learn more than to yeah uh Marvin I'll I can I'm Marvin Weinbaum I'm the least Institute I want to have you considered what could be a paradoxical effect the increase in pressure on Pakistan pairing with threats and tension may very well be exactly what benefits the very extremist groups that India and others hope to see suppressed because what it does is it gives them in a sense greater legitimacy it makes it more difficult then for the authorities in Pakistan to take the kind of action against them after all they say we're really what ultimately as jihadis ultimately are an important arm of Pakistan's policy against India the um I'll short on that one the we do in the book we talk about it in in in a slightly different way Marvin but but how some especially military action by India could have the opposite of the intended effect by spurring recruitment and making it actually more difficult for Pakistan to try to curtail the operations of these guys and so so yes I mean in a sensible way now whether and how you know political and international pressure does that I think is is is more difficult I mean one would guess but more difficult to to hazard but but but but in terms of you know kind of robust Indian threats and military action yeah our senses that actually fuels the the story of the militants and and recruiting makes it more more difficult very quickly and other people should jump in on you know whether it's good for India to have the military in charge in Pakistan that's certainly not the view the common view in India I don't know what the right answer is but but that certainly isn't the common view in India and I think for many people in Pakistan that's not the view either so so whether it would be good or you know or not you know there's the issue about you know what what ultimately do people in Pakistan want but I think you can argue it historically both ways but others should probably thought more about it the Russia thing and the air defense I mean that's first of all it's largely business secondly Russia and India have always had a very close military supply relationship that was India's primary partner and supporter and Russia will always do what it can to maintain whatever share of that market it can including by going to Pakistan and offering to sell things in Pakistan to get the Indians attention back you know to you know don't don't don't forget us the air defense you know if and when that actually went through I mean you know just on the Pakistani side of the equation you know just drive the Pakistanis to do whatever is necessary to defeat the air defense so if it's more missiles or cruise missiles or whatever that could beat that given system that's what'll that's what'll what'll happen now whether it affects China how it affects China I don't I don't know but I would see that as business as usual and not that's strategically a big element of of of change no your answer your question about mashara if I think it it's been easy at various points for Indians as well as many Pakistanis to fall into what I think is kind of a trap that the trains run on time and things are better and more organized under a military regime which to a degree is true but what people forget is that when you have a military regime the very civilian institutions whose weakness enabled the military to take over in the first place are further atrophied and that is a real problem when your ultimate goal is to have a civilian government that's terrible and effective so I think that's an important point there so I actually think that it's not a good idea to have military governments and hopefully in the near term anyway there won't be others just one I thought I heard you say on Afghanistan about stability and I just wanted to make one comment about stability in Afghanistan which I think is that it's really in everybody's interest India wants it the United States certainly wants it Pakistan wants it you know I think this idea that goes about that Pakistan's interest is to stir trouble in Afghanistan I don't think that's true they want stability but you know they want stability where there's a representative government that that isn't contrary to their interests in Kabul and so on and so forth which United States government wants as well so I think it's important to bear that all in mind just two points your question about the military I echo Ambassador Eiffel's comments I like to add to it it doesn't benefit India but this is something which you're too young for it but during Ayub's time in Zia's time there was a supposed stability and they were too young for Ayub's time yes absolutely Ayub and Zia partly Zia I won't say a little bit how old I am but Zia I remember a bit but there were cricket matches and there was a lot of dialogue between the two countries Zia even traveled to India but that did not change how the military looked at India and what the relationship was it also as Ambassador Eiffel said actually demeaned and weakened the civil institutions secondly it benefits the military if the civilians if civilians when they are in power are unable to build ties with India because then it reinforces how important the military is if the civilians were able to resolve issues with India the military's importance lessons in Pakistan second point actually Pakistan did inherit a very strong military and its book published by Carnegie which provides you the facts which is that 33 percent of British India's military came to Pakistan 20 percent of its population and about 17 percent of its resources so facts do demonstrate that Pakistan inherited a much larger military population wise than India did that's all thank you we have had a very thorough discussion and it's a discussion that could continue for for much longer than we have time for thank you very much for coming my thanks to Aparna and Robin for some great comments and for participating we'll see you again here at some point in the future thank you