 Good morning. Welcome and thank you for joining us for this, what I believe is a very important, very timely event. My name is George Moose. I have the privilege and the honor of serving as the chair of the board of directors of the United States Institute of Peace. And we are gathered here this morning to launch the Institute's new senior study group report, Enhancing Strategic Stability in Southern Asia. That report is now available on the USIP website at USIP.org. Now, certainly while the Russian invasion of Ukraine has dominated the news and the thinking of policymakers all over the world, there certainly is no shortage of other potential conflict regions around the world. South Asia has the unfortunate distinction of being the world's only region where three nuclear arm states share contested and frequently violent borders, is also where two nuclear powers, India and Pakistan, have in the past launched airstrikes on each other's territories. Meanwhile, China's presence in the region manifested in part through sharpening border tensions with India and a deepening strategic partnership with Pakistan is also reshaping the strategic balance in the region, as is the deepening US partnership with India. In early March of this year, an errant missile launched by India struck Pakistani territory. The region and the world were exceedingly fortunate that there were no casualties and that the incident did not escalate. But that incident highlighted, once again, the potential for unexpected crisis in the region. The implications of the shifts of regional power dynamics for the potential onset of conflict and for the ability of the United States to manage any crises that may emerge from the region demand our urgent and serious attention. Beginning last summer, USIP's South Asia and China programs convened a group of senior experts to consider these challenges. The group was comprised of noted analysts and practitioners with experience working on both regional security dynamics and global nuclear security. In the following months, the group met in seven plenary sessions. Their report, released today, summarizes the group's findings and examines US policy options. Importantly, it identifies priority recommendations for the resolution or mitigation of core disputes, the enhancement of regional strategic stability, and the management of potential future crises. To discuss the issues in greater detail, we are pleased to have with us the three co-chairs of the study group, as well as two of the group's members. Joining us on the panel today are study group co-chairs Dr. Dan Marking, a senior advisor here at USIP's South Asia program, Vikram Singh, also a senior advisor at USIP's Asia program, and Dr. Andrew Scobell, a USIP Distinguished Fellow with the China program. We are also pleased to be joined by two study group members, Lynn Rustin, who is the vice president of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, and Yun Sun, the co-director of the China program at the Stimson Center. Our program today will begin with a moderated panel discussion, and we will then allow time for questions from the audience here and online. For those of you who are joining us online, please use the question box on the event web page or the hashtag SAsiaStrategicStability. That's SAsiaStrategicStability, all one word. The team here will relay those questions to us. We are looking forward to a discussion that illuminates the shifts in the strategic balance in Southern Asia. We are also looking to highlight opportunities and priorities for the United States, for other regional powers, and other partners to forestall conflict in the region. And finally, we hope to identify measures that could be prepared in advance to ensure that whatever crises or event might emerge does not erupt or escalate further and risking a regional conflict in the possibility of approaching that nuclear threshold. So with that, let's begin the discussion. Might I begin with you, Dan? Please. And I wonder if you could just very briefly summarize the key takeaways from the report that's being released today. Absolutely. And I'm excited to do that. I also just wanted to briefly say a quick word of thank you to fellow co-chairs, of course, who've joined us. Other members, some are here today and others who couldn't make it, but really put a lot of effort into this. Our executive directors, Tamana Selucadine and Jennifer Statz, the rest of our USIP team, and especially Colin Cookman, who put in a tremendous amount of effort to make this really come together. So without them, none of this would have been possible. The report is, I think, very timely, as you pointed out. It does a number of things, and I think it does them well. First, it identifies the nature of a problem. A problem that, in some ways, is consistent. That is, we see nuclear powers India, Pakistan, China. They didn't just become nuclear powers this past year. That's been true for some time. But we see an evolution, both in terms of the capabilities that they bring to bear, more and more and different types of weapons and technologies that we found worrisome. And perhaps even more important than that, we've seen an evolution in the nature of their relationships and also their relationships with the United States. We can get into the details, but a lot of that has led us to be quite concerned that the deteriorating relationship, particularly between India and China and India and Pakistan, leads to possibilities for even the potential of nuclear use in the region that are very worrisome to us. So we wanted to highlight that and bring that to the attention of policymakers. The report does two other things. Again, I think, well, it identifies a framework for assessing these problems. So the framework is essentially, what are the core and underlying disputes? That's question number one. What are the nature of the capabilities and changing capabilities, particularly, relevant to nuclear use? And what are the crisis scenario concerns that we may have? So thinking in a sense about long-term underlying problems, nuclear specific problems, and short-term crisis problems. And then the last thing it does is it identifies a series of what we think are realistic policies that the United States should undertake in the near term. After having thought about some of the options, we kind of lay out a number of priority recommendations. And just very briefly, one or two of them, we look at the limited capabilities of the United States to bring peace in this region. But we still suggest that there are opportunities to seize narrow tactical, sort of limited near term chances to promote peace and dialogue between India and Pakistan, India and China, that's not being done. We look at economic incentives and disincentives that might be brought to bear to improve our ability to deter China from coercive behavior in the region. And in terms of crisis management, we think very seriously about preparing U.S. officials to better manage these crises that we think are likely to crop up again and again in the near term. Thanks very much, actually. That segues nicely, I think, to a question I have for you, Len, which is that you have vast experience working on non-proliferation and nuclear risk reduction issues. Across the world, have a sense of what those mechanisms are that contribute to risk reduction. I just wonder, what is the state of play with respect to efforts in the region to limit the proliferation of nuclear weapons related to delivery systems, for example, in Southern Asia? And particularly, describe what the U.S. role has been or might be in this regard. Sure, thank you very much, Ambassador Moose. And it was a pleasure to be part of the working group, so I appreciate that. So speaking from an American perspective in terms of non-proliferation, and I'll define that broadly in terms of nuclear risks, nuclear competition. First, we have China, which has a relatively small arsenal right now compared to that of the United States and Russia, but is projected to grow significantly up to 700 deployed warheads within the next five years and possibly as many as 1,000 by the end of the decade. That would be a significant expansion, which is something that obviously the United States is concerned about. President Biden and Xi have committed to a strategic stability dialogue, but there's no evidence yet that that has taken place. So that's one factor. It's really hard to talk about this issue set in the region without veering a little bit north to look at North Korea, because obviously North Korea's nuclear and missile threat is significant in the present day for our allies in the region and potentially for the United States, and it's also really important to factor into that that it is a driver. How we and our allies are responding in terms of defense and deterrence toward North Korea, which is essential, is also a driver though of China's potential nuclear growth. And so the report does an excellent job talking about how all the interconnections between states and the regions and how they're impacting each other. Looking to at India and Pakistan, clearly the US priority right now is building the broader strategic relationship and defense cooperation with India. And as the report points out, that may make us less able to act as a neutral mediator in the event of a conflict either between India and China or India and Pakistan. And I think what that also means is that although the Biden administration is certainly putting more emphasis on nonproliferation as a national security priority, possibly than the last administration, I think the reality is that it's actually getting undervalued across the board in many relationships as we, and I'll take India as an example as we really focus on our strategic partnership. I think, and I'll end with Aukus as an example of that or with the deal with Australia, where again, I think the nonproliferation complications of that deal were maybe under considered at the time and now there's an effort having made the commitment to do the deal to kind of make it as proliferation resistant as possible and it's a problem not so much because of Australia which has a stellar nonproliferation record but because of the precedent it will set for other countries. And so I think this, you know, a theme of this report is how we're maybe not as well prepared and positioned as we could be to help prevent crises, manage them should they occur and certainly keep them from going nuclear and so I think the report has a lot of good recommendations in that regard to help maybe do some rebalancing as we form our policies with countries like India and others that are emphasizing, I think other important priorities but it'll be not a good situation if we're seeing a conflict in the region with the potential to escalate to nuclear and we haven't thought about what we could have done to head that off. Clearly a lot there about the implications of our own deepening relationship with India and how that affects the calculations of the other players in the region. There's a lot there to impact and maybe we can come back to it later but I wanted to come back to something down you said earlier talked about the deterioration in relationships between and among the states in the region and you and I wonder with that, certainly we have seen over the past several years a significant deterioration in the relationship between China and India and I wonder if you would share with us your thoughts on how this deterioration and bilateral relationships is affecting sort of the broader strategic stability in the region and what is driving this development from the vantage point from the perspective of China and are there opportunities or possibilities here to do something to halt or even redirect that downward slide in relations. Thank you Ambassador Moes, those are terrific questions and I think for our report it looks into some of the issues and made really substantive recommendations in this regard. I would say that between China and India there are two angles to look at the strategic stability implications from the deterioration of their relations. The first one is between China and India. The other one is China versus India Pakistan Dynamics what role China would play. In terms of the first angle in the Chinese perspective the strategic stability issue was not something between China and India which is why China has consistently rejected the idea of N7 because China does not want to honor India as a peer in terms of the nuclear power status. Could you just say, what is that? N7 is nuclear seven so P5, the five nuclear powers on the UN Security Council plus India and Pakistan. So that idea had been circulated for a while but the Chinese are like well we're not going to accept India as a peer and therefore a grouping of N7 would in the Chinese mind confer India that legitimacy and that status. So but for China it seems the perception about a potential nuclear event between China and India is extremely small almost negligible. Ask any analyst in the South Asia circle in China nobody believes it and whenever we Americans raise the idea well what about the possibility and the Chinese just laugh at us. I think there are three reasons for this attitude. The first one is both China and India have the no first use principle. So from their perspective well we're not going to use it first they're not going to use it first so nobody uses it first and there's not going to be a nuclear interaction. And secondly since the vast gap of national power between China and India also plays a role because for the Chinese they can use overwhelming conventional forces to achieve what they achieve their desire to go. So there's no need to touch the nuclear piece of the potential. And then from the Indian perspective at least in the Chinese view the Indians realize that their nuclear arsenal also has a pretty large gap from what the Chinese have. So if India does not really have the advantage with the point of using it. I think that's the second logic. And the third logic is for the Chinese the nuclear arsenal is almost exclusively reserved for deterrence against the United States. So using it against other countries or even including nuclear powers is quite unimaginable in the Chinese policy lexicon and I haven't seen an incredible analysis in the Chinese strategic community that even talks about the possibility. We know that in China there's a debate on going as for whether China should give up the no first use principle or make it conditional. And what do they mean by condition? It means that no first use for any country except the United States. Basically single United States out. But all those discussions do not touch upon other countries except United States. And last but not least of course we know that last year President Biden and President Xi in their discussion in a virtual summit they talk about the possibility of having a strategic stability dialogue between the two countries but now the Chinese are back peddling from it. So now what we misunderstood we saw he meant a strategic security dialogue instead of a strategic stability dialogue which has a very clear connotation. So some of the track tools with the Chinese have been canceled or postponed because they are not willing to touch upon this issue. That's the first angle between China and India. The second angle is what role China plays between India and Pakistan. And I think that's where our report really plays a significant role contributing to the discourse and the discussion because since 2020 well basically since Trump administration in the Chinese view South Asia is morphing towards a bipolar world a bipolar region with China with China and Pakistan on one side and US India on the other side. And what that means is that when there is a potential confrontation or escalation of prices between India and Pakistan China is not neutral. And the China will put itself squarely on the side of Pakistan and whatever calculations that they make or whatever role constructive roles that we will ask China to play they're going to look at from the angle as for what does that do for us? How does that benefit China? And if China is putting pressure on Pakistan in order to mitigate Pakistan's freedom of oppression vis-a-vis India the Chinese will think what does that do in terms of the strategic layout or the strategic balance of power in South Asia and how that will affect the China's relationship with Pakistan and in the long run affect the China's ability to compete and use leverage against the United States. So I think in that sense the deterioration of relations between China and India has contributed tremendously against a potential role for China to play to manage or to play a constructive role in a South Asia strategic stability or a nuclear event. Thank you. Yes, of course we were mindful that a few months ago we thought the Russian invasion of Ukraine was also illogical and did not make a lot of sense. So as I'm listening to you tease out the Chinese rationale for why nuclear weapons would never figure in a conflict with India I'm cautioned at recent experience. But if I might now return to you and stay with China for a bit because clearly China looms large in American thinking about strategic stability in the region and indeed I just would welcome your thoughts about how this heightened competition now between the US and China has perhaps implications for us made the challenges of preventing or managing a crisis in South Asia more difficult? Good for Andrew. For Andrew. Thank you. Yeah, sorry. Thanks so much. Actually my answer I think will dovetail nicely with what Yun had to say. To state the obvious US-China relations are not in a good place right now and honestly I don't see them improving significantly any time soon. So that complicates things along the lines that Yun was saying. Elevated great power competition between US and China puts a global geopolitical overlay on an already fragile condition of strategic stability in the regional context. I think although Islamabad, New Delhi almost certainly don't think of themselves as client states or proxy states of Beijing and Washington respectively, China and I think China and the US are increasingly seeing Southern Asian developments through the prism of what Beijing calls block politics. And what this means is as Yun was saying is that Beijing increasingly sees New Delhi as a quasi ally of Washington and Washington increasingly sees Islamabad as a de facto ally of Beijing. So just as Yun was saying, just as China is not a disinterested or not a neutral player in this, the perception of multiple parties is that neither is the United States. Yeah, and this is again one of those concerning trends as Yun was saying, increasingly the trend seems to be to towards a bifurcation of the region into an alignment of US and India on one side of that equation, China, Pakistan, and the other, which is different from the past, is it not, Vikram? And I wondered if you would speak to us a little bit more. Let's start with just talking about the India-Pakistan relationship, which is over the last several years we've witnessed efforts to create to build bridges between India and Pakistan. We've also seen major tensions, notably sparked by events in Kashmir and terrorist attacks. Tell us how this now, how these trends are impacting on. You know, so one of the really interesting things through this project was that it was basically, you're looking at a set of dynamics where the realities between these three players have been dramatically changing, really in the past decade, decade and a half, but the strategic stability debate is kind of frozen in time. It didn't really move along with the changes. So between India and Pakistan, the big changes really going back to 2008 and the terrorist attacks in Mumbai are that India shifted to a posture of having kinetic responses up to Pakistani territory and then into Pakistani territory as a means to deter Pakistan-backed extremists from attacks in India. So trying to indicate that there would be punitive measures and then Pakistan similarly decided that its stance would be to also conduct limited retaliation, both basically have now taken kind of an escalate to de-escalate stance if they have a crisis. Previously we didn't see that prior to the most recent flare-ups, Balakot, Pulwama, those crises. Prior to that it was more likely that they would try to ramp down tensions without escalating and certainly without escalating to the point that we saw where they were shooting down aircraft, where they were actually conducting strikes into one another's actual territory beyond the borders of contested Kashmir. So that shifted and then at the same time, a little bit after China and India dynamics shifted from one of sort of very much win-win cooperation, we're going to have a frozen conflict that we acknowledge is frozen with mechanisms. People forget often that China and India have pretty sophisticated mechanisms for consultations and de-escalation of tensions along the borders. Those all then failed after the Golan incident and radically shifted Indian strategic thought vis-a-vis China to one of China really being much more of a strategic threat. And that means that whereas in the past, outside powers, United States, China and others would kind of all call for de-escalation in the event of India-Pakistan crisis, we'd basically end up on the same page. Even if this was not coordinated through extensive discussions and planning, we were going to be on the same page. That is now seriously in doubt. And the dynamic for India looking at its neighborhood has gone from one where it didn't expect, it where people would talk about the risk of what if we have a two-front confrontation with China and Pakistan. To that being almost assumed as a possibility that India has to plan for and think about its forced posture and think about how it would manage swinging forces between two theaters. What if China decides to take advantage of a Pakistan-India flare-up or Pakistan decides to take advantage of a China-India flare-up. What might happen there has grown as a concern for India. Now notably, when India and China came to blows over Golan, Pakistan did not take advantage of that. And in fact, shortly thereafter, Pakistan and India renewed the C-spire along the line of control and have kept things more stable rather than seeing things get more unstable. But there is an absolute lack of strategic engagement among the three powers about how they would manage escalation. And there is a great deal, much more uncertainty now than there has been in the past. If you go back prior to the last decade, much more uncertainty into how crises might spiral. I think what we've seen in Russia and Ukraine actually gives us a reason to think hard about the unthinkable. And that's a lot of what we were doing in this report. Let me follow up with you, Lynn, if I might, on that question, which is because we just recently saw, even since the report was pretty much finalized, an incident in which a missile being tested, I gather, from India struck Pakistan territory. And indeed, India and Pakistan appear to have responded to that in a pretty responsible, restrained way. And I just wonder what that tells us, according to Vikram's point about, the preparedness of both sides to manage what the mechanism, what the communication structures are that might facilitate, might help them manage these kinds of incidents. Certainly in this case, the response was one that led to a de-escalation. But could you share your thoughts more broadly about the state of and the status of preparedness for conflict? Sure, I mean, that's a very good example of how an escalation could happen. And it's terrible that it happened. It's fortunate that when it did, it was a time of pretty much total peace, no conflict, no elevated tensions between India and Pakistan. But a missile being test-launched landed in Pakistan. Now, by all reports, the communications between the two countries about it wasn't good. India was very slow in saying that this had happened and explaining why it happened and that it was not intended and all, but Pakistan was restrained in its response. But it's a very good example of how something unintended can be misunderstood and lead to an escalation. And you could imagine in a different environment that could have come out very badly. Also, they were fortunate it didn't kill any people. And how do you see in the wake of that any evidence of a concern, precisely about the ability to respond to this? I don't know. And maybe Vikram follows more closely whether there's been any follow-up to improve mechanisms. I mean, the Indian Pakistanis have discussed it. But I think Lynn hits the crux. It landed in an empty field, didn't hurt anybody. It didn't land in a population center or near strategic installation. And I think the Pakistanis, seeing where it was headed, took a responsible path. But there was not immediate communication between the two, as far as we know, to say, hey, this was an accidental launch. Don't freak out. That didn't happen. On the back end, the Indians came out, publicly said what happened, have taken actions to both discipline people that were negligent in this case and to have an investigation. The question now is, will they share the outcome of that investigation with the Pakistanis? Will they use this as a reason to establish some kind of mechanism where they say, you know what? If something like that happens in the future, we want to be able to proactively communicate. And I hope they will. But we don't really know if that's happened yet. And they've been relatively, there's a level of just as Yun was describing the Chinese kind of laugh and say, oh, that'll never happen with India. Across all three, there is a level of comp, just sort of, there's sag line about that this isn't going to be a major problem. And I think that through the course of this discussion, we all felt there was a pretty big consensus that, you know, that's a problem. It shouldn't be this relaxed about how things could get out of hand. And I do want to get you in this. Let me add a little bit to the complexity of all of this. Because as you know well, consecutive US administrations have invested very heavily in deepening our strategic partnership with India. But the report also highlights that this engagement may still need to be coupled with a crisis management role to be defined that requires better lines of communication with everybody in the region, notably including India's rivals. And I wonder, in your view, do China and Pakistan see the US as having the capability, the credibility to be a mediator, a facilitator to de-escalate future crises given the changing nature of our relationship with India? And how should US policymakers be thinking of this? How should we be trying to balance our understandable desire for a closer relationship with India on the one hand, but with the need to manage the potential for conflict throughout the region? Yeah, this is a really important question. I just had one additional point on this cruise missile accidental launch. One of the specific things that the report does identify as a recommendation, and that others have recommended as well, is that India and Pakistan do have a series of agreements on pre-notification of missile tests. Now, that wouldn't have really come into play here, because this was an accident. But if you are in the business of testing missiles in India and Pakistan, certain types of missiles, you'll tell the other side ahead of time. Well, cruise missiles are not on the list. So this particular type of missile wouldn't actually be on there. So we're recommending, among other things, that this should be changed. This seems like a fairly straightforward low hanging fruit, as you might say. In terms of the things that the United States can do or how well it's positioned to manage crises in the future, to your question, part of the challenge we have, among other things, is that because our relationship with Pakistan has deteriorated, one could see in that less influence, less leverage in the midst of a crisis, and less trust on the Pakistani side. The same would be true in our relationship with China. With India, one would anticipate that because we have an improved relationship and a strategic partnership that we talk about a great deal, which is bipartisan and has a lot of oomph behind it here in Washington, that we would have a great deal of influence. What we've found, unfortunately, is that our influence in these sorts of circumstances is less than we would like, that we don't even have our phone calls returned. In 2019, there were periods that were gaps in communication that were worrisome when India and Pakistan were going toe to toe. So our leverage with India has not improved a great deal necessarily. Our leverage with Pakistan may have deteriorated. This all makes us worried. Two recommendations related to that. One that we should be, as we do continue, we hope to improve relations with India. We should have the technical means and the trust built into our system that would enable better information sharing. One of the things that we'd like to be able to do is we have pretty good eyes on some of the territory that we're talking about here. We have information that may be useful to help India avoid unnecessary escalation or anticipate moves, either by Pakistan or China, to the extent that we can be helpful in a crisis. This is the kind of information we'd like to be able to share. And the other recommendation has to do with communications. It's not just our communication with India as a partner, but communications between all of the players are far less robust than they should be, given the stakes. So hotlines, risk reduction centers, and other things are also proposed by the report, because these are the kinds of things that we have tried to build over the years with the Russians, and before that with the Soviet Union, which we think could be helpful in the midst of a crisis. You touched on Russia, and I wanted to come back there, because Russia's invasion of Ukraine, of course, occurred as you were wrapping up the report. But clearly, that event, that unprovoked invasion, is having repercussions across the world. I wonder, you and if I might turn to you and ask to what extent that the Russian invasion is factoring into Chinese thinking, generally about its risk tolerance in this environment. Is it just conceivable that witnessing Russia's, very disruptive, irresponsible behavior in Ukraine is causing China to be more cautious or prudent about how it perceives the potentials for risk elsewhere, and notably, of course, in southern Asia? Curious to know what you're thinking as well. Thank you, Ambassador. That question has been debated and asked, and discussed in the, yeah, it's an ongoing situation, and the, because the war is not over, right? So the Chinese are still learning the lessons. I understand that the PLA is analyzing each campaign, each operation quite closely, and the most important lessons that you draw is about if you don't have to fight a war, please don't fight a war. So translating that to China's contingency planning on Taiwan, if China had a plan to invade Taiwan, I would say that plan has been postponed for at least a number of years, because there are these new factors that they're trying to absorb and assimilate. In terms of the risk tolerance, I would say that China has become more cautious out of the war in Ukraine because the war just offers so many unexpected aspects that Chinese anticipated that Russia would wing in one week. I think a lot of us did, but then they just watched in pain that this war drags on and Russia being bled out, and they worry about the potential nuclear escalation by Russia, I think a lot of us are worried about that potential scenario, and they just think that in terms of the unexpected aspect, when they look at Taiwan that, well, what if the local resistance is stronger than we saw, what if the Western non-military deterrence is stronger than we saw, and the cause that China has to put up with before China develops that 1,000 nuclear warheads is going to be unbearable for China. So I will say that the war in Ukraine has created a lot of uncertainty and a lot of debates in China as for what this means, but then coming to South Asia, while it has not been the most salient focal point for the Chinese deliberation in the policy community, but I think one issue that the Chinese do take away from it is what Dan just mentioned, that in terms of the US influence over India, there seems to be a limit to it, that India will try to maintain a strategic autonomy and on key issues, maybe not on China, but on other issues, there are differences between China and India, and I think that has been perceived as relatively reassuring for the Chinese policy community, knowing that there are gaps and there are disharmony between India and the United States, not necessarily directly translating the implication for China's relationship with Pakistan, but I think there is one issue that does affect the China's potential future interaction with India, which is the availability of Russian weapons to India, because we know that Russia faced with a shortage of semiconductor chips, and their ability to produce as much arms for weapons sales is going to be potentially mitigated, so what does that mean for India, which is the largest client of Russian-made arms, and how does that translate into the stability of the power balance and the power equilibrium between China and India in terms of their border disputes? I think that's an intriguing question, and just related to that, because Russia, by the end of this war, is going to be so significantly weakened, right? So between China and Russia, that's going to create a pretty large imbalance of that relationship, and what kind of policy library China has over Russia in terms of Russia's future alignment choices, and Russia's save weapons sales to India, so that also raises an intriguing question, and I think deserves more deliberation down the road. Well, thank you for adding yet another layer of complexity on top of an already complex message, and Andrew, I was indeed indeed going to go to you and get your take on this. So building on what you were just saying, I think the caveat is it's too early to tell because the war is ongoing, and it's too early to tell what lessons China and the Chinese military are learning from Ukraine, but I think I'd be wary of thinking they're drawing the lessons we think they're drawing, or we hope they're drawing from this, and so on the side of the mistakes or the unanticipated problems, unexpected problems that the Russian military is having, I think that Chinese conclusion is likely that they didn't prepare properly, and we're gonna prepare properly, and part of it is we would call it morale building or indoctrination, the Chinese would call it political work, so you've got to make, prepare your troops for the conflict, and pretty clearly the Russians didn't do a very good job of that, but another more relevant issue or potential lesson that China's learning and more relevant to Southern Asia is, I think it may reassure China, unfortunately, that the chances of nuclear escalation they don't need to worry about it because Russia's made these threats, it's clearly on the table, but we still haven't, we haven't yet to see that happen and probably, well, fingers crossed it won't happen, but China taking the lesson from, well, we don't need, it just reinforces the assumptions that we've already heard that China's making about the potential for a nuclear confrontation or conflict in Southern Asia, so I fear they're gonna take just the lessons they're taking from Ukraine will just reinforce assumptions, a priori assumptions they've made and not force a rethink. What are you thinking? So they're drawing lessons opposite from the ones that we're drawing about the rest, potentially. Maybe also what we want. I think one really important question, certainly something I imagine the Indians are thinking about is, let's say the Chinese decide the hardest of their periphery problems, which is Taiwan, they would maybe wait a while to see if they can't work the political warfare angle, use other means to weaken the Taiwan's ability to resist the eventual absorption by the mainland and things like that, but what does it mean for the Senkakus, the South China Sea, or the high Himalaya, so our natural predation is there, they clearly chose a misadventure from our standpoint, but a signal with the Gawan incident. Our assessment in this group and others has been that this was not some sort of just accident by the PLA, this was not some adventurism, this was a push, a test. What it's resulted in is a good learning for the PLA, they can see what the Indian response has been, but we sort of have a situation now where there's 60-ish thousand troops on each side of that border, eye to eye, and forward deployed, and what seems like it will be a permanent stationing, not a temporary thing that's getting walked back from, and so the new variable here is Russia as the reliable partner of India, whether it wants to be or not, it won't be the same reliable partner it was, for no other reason, just because it will have to recapitalize its own military and it will be under sanctions that make it difficult for it to build the things that exports and it might be hard to be a customer because you might end up violating sanctions. There's three layers of why it would be difficult to rely on Russia, and for India that's every, that's over 7,000 tanks of Russian, that is all of their armored personnel carriers, that is most of their missile systems are Russian origin and it's their SSNs and SSBNs, their nuclear and nuclear missile submarines are also Russian origin, even though the SSBNs are her indigenous, but it was Russian help to get them there. So what does that do for India's thinking about its ability to withstand or to keep going, to keep in the fight if there's a crisis? And once again, I think as the Chinese are discounting the level of concern that might arise in India, if it doesn't have, it's the depth of conventional capabilities that it has long relied on, and if it hasn't built its triad up to the point that it feels it is really reliable, survivable, it has an undersea leg of its nuclear capabilities that it feels sure will deter Beijing from any, from certain moves. That coupled with China deciding, okay, maybe we're not gonna do Taiwan, but should we push a little harder up here where it's a little easier? Again, very unpredictable scenarios can unfold along those lines. Yeah, I'm reminded that one part of the problem of a disequilibrium in forces and balance of forces is that going back to the logic that you described, the Chinese logic of as to why nuclear war and with India's discounted, it could be just the opposite, precisely because if the Indians do not have the ability to respond in a conventional way, which is being diminished by virtue of the degrading of Russia's ability to play a role here, it could prompt India to respond more quickly to respond by resort to nuclear weapons. But Dan, you touched on this earlier, the role that we could possibly play. We saw, for example, in the Ukraine conflict, the way in which we very, I think, very skillfully used information and intelligence to inform the world about what was actually happening in Ukraine, and in this case, it didn't have the result that we had hoped it would be to, which was to dissuade the Russians from actually intervening, but it did give credibility to our understanding what Russian intentions were. And I think, so the question would be, to what extent might that same kind of use of deployment of information, communications, et cetera, be a useful contribution in a way to helping all the parties understand what really is going on, what the others are thinking and planning and doing, so that that knowledge might inform some greater restraint on their part? It's a really interesting question, and particularly because what we saw in Ukraine in the lead-up to the Ukraine war, Russia's invasion, steps taken by the United States to share intelligence, sort of breakthrough change, I think, in terms of US policy, the willingness to provide the types of information that I think in prior administrations would have been kept within the intelligence community and not provided, certainly not publicly, and you're right, it didn't keep the Russians from invading, but I think it did shape American and broader global public perceptions of what was unfolding. And though, again, maybe our primary target might have been Moscow, our secondary target being our allies, I think it worked very effectively there. So could we, the United States, say in a looming crisis between India and Pakistan or India and China, use similar tools to share what we see unfolding on the ground, maybe even in the midst of a crisis as we see one thing happening and perhaps being mischaracterized by one of the players? Would it be useful for us to provide that information more publicly? It's not as straightforward as you might think because you might imagine that transparency leads to stability. Unfortunately, we have seen circumstances that may lead us to think that it could conceivably even be counterproductive. So in the 2019 India-Pakistan crisis, there were various points at which either India or Pakistan, I think in retrospect, were characterizing events in ways that clearly played to their political advantages at home and portrayed the events as unfolding in ways that looked like victories. And in a sense, that wasn't so bad because by portraying the event as a victory, you could step away from the brink and you could bring the crisis to a swifter conclusion. Now, the downside to that is that, and one thing that we've worried about in this report, is that the lessons learned from that crisis then may be very wrong lessons because both sides, in this case India and Pakistan, believed and told their people that they were victorious and very capable, that their strategies were very effective. And so there will now, we anticipate, be pressures to undertake similar and perhaps even more aggressive steps the next time there's a crisis. So maybe it was useful in the near term that there be this kind of veil of ignorance over the region so that people could declare victory and go home. The longer term implications of that may be dangerous. So coming back to the basic question, it is a live question for US policymakers going forward, how much information they should share publicly in ways that maybe in the past we wouldn't have considered. And I think it's something that has been, because it's new, we need to go at it again internally and externally and continue to have research on this because this is something that's changing quickly. And I just say that's also where the recommendation and the report on wargaming and scenario exercising for the US government on this makes a lot of sense because otherwise it's really hard to just make those judgments unless you've kind of thought through what might the various reactions and impacts be of what you choose to share. And so that's one of the recommendations that I think is relatively easy to implement and would pay high dividends. I wanna talk to, why don't you all, we're gonna, a few more minutes here before we start taking audience questions, and I wanna talk about the N7 and how you all visualize and vision its role given the lack of US bilateral influence, certainly with China and with Pakistan and not as much as we would hope India. What are the other mechanisms? But before we get there, I wanna layer yet another complication on top of this because we know that in the past, terrorist activity, terrorism, has played a significant role particularly in the India-Pakistan relationship. We now are in a situation having pulled out of Afghanistan, we have far less visibility on what's going on there, certainly to what extent we had any quote control even less. We have at the same time, Vikram, this, how to describe it, growing Hindu nationalist sentiment in India which is sparking increased resentment, grievance on the part of Muslim communities. One can see many ways in which those two things could come together. And I just wonder how concerned should we be that a terrorist incident could be the spark that triggers a larger, wider conflict, one that could escalate. I think the nationalism, Hindu nationalism in India and sort of it's mirror image inside Pakistan feed exactly what Dan was talking about. This escalate to de-escalate, we're gonna be tough, we're going to respond forcefully on both sides. It plays well to the domestic audience and the conventional wisdom is that the most likely means for a crisis to erupt between India and Pakistan is a terrorist attack that India ascribes to Pakistan-backed or Pakistan-based militants, right? And I think that as you mentioned Afghanistan, there's no doubt that the collapse of Afghanistan, the revival of the Taliban is increasing. There's a debate about how much, but it is increasing the sanctuary and the freedom of action for groups from TPP, the Teraki Taliban Pakistan that's mainly focused on Pakistan right now to LET, which has broader ambitions in Kashmir to ISIS and al-Qaeda, which have both articulated that India is sort of on their list of priorities going forward. So you see a growing risk profile and I think that that is a dangerous brew, strong nationalist governments that need to and should take strong counter-terrorism actions, but they will feel compelled to respond forcefully and then you enter a potential escalation cycle. I would feel more comfortable with that if there were really known, well-established communications mechanisms to manage that kind of escalation in both, in India and Pakistan bilaterally and then potentially in an ideal world with other allies and partners, right? I mean, one of the things Dan talks about a lot is like, hey, as we're deepening this partnership, part of it should be risk reduction and conflict management, crisis management discussions. I believe those should have been happening before, but certainly as we deepen partnerships, that kind of open dialogue is potentially really life-saving. It could help prevent a crisis sparked by a terrorist incident from getting out of hand. Well, then let me just turn to you then and if you would talk to us about, given your perspective on how risk reduction has been practiced and- Sure, and let me- And just talk to us a little bit about the thinking in the report about the N7 and the role it might play. Okay, I will. Let me just add on first to Vikram because to draw the linkage between the growing terrorism risk in the region and safety and security of Pakistan's nuclear weapons and materials. Now they have, Pakistan has done a lot over the years to improve its internal practices in terms of the safety and security of its materials and in fact in an index that the NTI does, my organization, every couple of years, they got the score for like most improved on security and safety, partly for some regulatory structure they put in place, but it's still a country that's a great risk of leadership disruptions and leadership chains, as well as internal terrorist threat and insider threat, which is one of the biggest concerns in terms of the weapons and materials. And so that's something we can't take our eye off of and I don't think that US cooperation in this area with Pakistan is as robust as it used to be because our relationship is deteriorated overall, but the risk is there and I can link that directly to the kind of things that the US government should continue to be exercising and practicing and thinking about what would we do if that's a set of circumstances we should stay prepared for. In terms of the N7 idea, which I think we give great credit to our colleague, Michael Crapon, for it's the idea of gathering both the P5, recognized nuclear powers under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, as well as India and Pakistan into a dialogue about nuclear risk reduction, strategic stability. I personally, I think of this as a very important and aspirational idea, but probably not something that can come to bear in the next couple of years. It is something that certainly could be pursued in a track two environment and should be, and maybe it can on some subset of the issues you might talk about. I think right now we're in an unfortunate circumstance where US-Russian strategic stability dialogue is for obvious reasons in abeyance and it's critical to get that back on track. We're seeing right now in real time what the risks are and we have the only remaining treaty between us that's gonna expire in a few years. And then we've talked a couple times to the commitment or at least interest on the US part in terms of trying to have a deeper dialogue with China. And of course this goes back to when I was in the Obama administration, it's not new, but to have a more sustained dialogue bilaterally with China about risk reduction management. And now we have a lot of questions about the projection of their nuclear force, where they're going with it, what is their doctrine, what are their threat perceptions that are driving that. I think there's a lot to talk about. Traditionally they've not wanted to because they feel that they're in a position of disadvantage because their force is so much smaller. But I don't, that conversation has to be had. It's hard for me to see how we then move to an N7 before we've deepened that bilateral dialogue. But it may be that we can on discrete issues. At NTI we worry a lot about the intersection between cyber capabilities and nuclear systems and the risk of miscalculation and accident and that that kind of interference can have. And maybe there's, it's a very sensitive area to talk about, but it also may be one where it's possible to talk about that or other technologies, you know, hypersonics and that kind of thing. Yeah, that's another area we haven't had a chance to get into as a whole question of technology and cyber and all of this. But I just to close this out before we, maybe before we open the floor to the audience, but to you and Andrew, following up on what Lynn has just said about what's possible, what do you think is possible in terms of engaging China in a more serious discussion of strategic stability in the region. You said, you touched on this in your opening comments, but I want to return to it because, you know, as one is surveying the landscape here, dare I say it seems that the prospects for a dialogue with China on some of these things is better than it might be with others. And clearly that relationship is key, but just if you would share with us and with the audience your thoughts about how we might, how the US might approach this idea of a deepening dialogue with China on these issues. Andrew, go ahead. Go for it. I'll outline the challenges, and then Yun can come up with the solutions. But I think the, coming from this, having focused more on the Korean Peninsula, you know, so there's a nuclear challenge where there's been the potential and somewhat realized for US-China cooperation, right? And so there's a, in a sense, it's not a completely negative example. There's some positives there. But going back to what was said earlier that I think the potential for cooperation between the US and China, whether it's on the Korean Peninsula or South Asia, is really largely dependent on the overall climate of US-China relations. And when they're not in a good place, that's really, really hard. So, but that said, if you look in the example of the Korean Peninsula and the standing up of the six-party talks, that, why did China do that? And China really stepped outside of its comfort zone on that one. That was unprecedented for China to take ownership of that, host it. They were taking a risk, but why did they take that risk, a calculated risk? Well, the US encouraged it, supported it, but China was also really worried about what would happen if it didn't do something. So I'm not saying we should use Southern Asia as a laboratory to test things out, but I think if we monitor the situation carefully, we might be able to notice and leverage the findings of the report. We might be able to identify opportunities or when things present themselves, situations present themselves, sees them to seek to engage or bring China more in as a constructive partner. All right. Now, over to you. Over to you. Well, between US and China, there had been a track two dialogue on nuclear issues and that was ongoing for about 20 years. Until the, in 2018, there was a Department of Justice indictment of the PLA General Li Xiangfu, who is responsible of the General Ammunition Department. And then the Chinese took great offense of that and then they were like, we're not going to approve this dialogue anymore. And then COVID happened and we're not going to have this dialogue, at least not in person. So I feel that it raises a question for the United States as well. Are we happy or are we going to be satisfied with a track two, knowing that the Chinese were not engaged in a track one official dialogue on this topic because the door to track two dialogue about the strategic stability issues is still open. And the Chinese partner, the organization CIF is China Foundation for International Strategic Studies, they're still ready. They still want to engage, but only on a track two level because for the official level, my understanding is strategic force in China is still very reluctant to open their books. And they don't want to engage in this talk because they feel vulnerable, they feel that we're inferior and we are being asked to provide more transparency and we are already disadvantage to begin with. So I think strategic force is a pretty big obstacle to move this dialogue forward on our official track. But on the Chinese side, there's also something else I would say technical that people don't quite realize which is the military reform that the PLA has conducted. What it has led to a result is that so for the Central Military Commission, there is a Department of International Cooperation. So this type of dialogues are supposed to be coordinated by this Department of International Cooperation but their bureaucratic ranking or their military ranking is no longer as high as for example, the PLA Chief of Staff used to be. So before the Chinese, I feel that internally straightened out this bureaucratic ranking issue and have designated people and offices to manage this type of dialogues. I feel that asking the Chinese to present a dialogue track is going to be bureaucratically infeasible, at least on the Chinese side. And the good news is that Shangri-La Dialogue will be happening in person next month. So I understand the two defense ministers will finally have their in-person meeting and we will see whether anything could come out of that. And last but not least, I think the Korean Peninsula and Six-Party Talks is a pretty good example where when the US reaches out to China and they really ask for China's assistance to play a constructive role and also at the same time, I would say that let the Chinese play issue linkage a little bit because the Chinese will not do what the US asks to unless they see a favorable end game for their interest. I think the Chinese will be willing to cooperate. In fact, even today, I think one of the top issues the Chinese policy analyst is running around and ask is that, is there still any issues that the US really need the Chinese cooperation? Because if there is, then let's bargain, let's talk about your US-Taiwan fact sheet. So I think that's really the Chinese mentality. So if there is a crisis scenario and we do perceive that the Chinese cooperation is indispensable, then I think there is a window and space for negotiation, but with a very clear sober understanding that the Chinese will not be doing us a favor. They will be looking for a bargain. I could easily imagine, given all the uncertainties we're dealing with at the moment, being a good diplomat, being able to craft a message for China that says, yes, we do indeed need your assistance of figuring out how we together are going to manage the risks that we both experience at the moment given nuclear threats. We had promised the audience that we would open the floor and I'm gonna do my best to, we have this new sophisticated system. It used to be that they just handed the moderator cards and now we have this. So here's, this is a good question for all of us. In the Southern Asia arms race, each country is looking to their more powerful rival and trying to catch up. This is a problem we're just talking about. Are there any opportunities for more powerful countries, US, China, to help reassure their allies in the Pakistan and to encourage sustained dialogue between among all four countries? I think I'm gonna start with you and then I'm gonna turn to Dan. Sure, I'm glad that question was asked. A big part of our deliberations in this report was about the sort of cascading, it's called security dynamics that you see. So China is building to deter the United States. Thousand warheads is aimed at that. India is building to deter China. Submarine nuclear capabilities for a triad are for that. Pakistan is looking, seeking a minimum credible deterrent when it faces India. That results in some very big disequilibrium because as China builds to match US power that for it leads India to say, wow, we better step up our game and then it cascades down to Pakistan. It has in fact forced posture, forced structure and doctrine. So Pakistan at the end of that chain and we have a little piece of the report that talks about the scale of spending and it is orders of magnitude as you go up the chain. So at the bottom there, Pakistan has a doctrinal impact which includes Pakistan not having a no first use policy which both India and China have includes Pakistan having a doctrine that includes the use of tactical nuclear weapons as something that is actively there. That's a part of its deterrents posture vis-a-vis India. So I think that this is a really interesting question. It depends on how much the two outside power, the bigger powers in this case, China and the United States, how much they embrace this notion that we have picked sides and there is this dyad now where it's China, Pakistan, India, United States. In a world in which that's pretty overt, then I think the ally has an ability to offer a bit of an umbrella and that could be stabilizing in that world. But we're in this really complicated interregnum where we're not allies with India and we're not going to be and China, they may have whatever highest mountains and all that stuff with Pakistan but it's not really, it doesn't have the makings, doesn't have the trappings of a really binding alliance commitment. And in that atmosphere, I think that it is less likely. In the best of times, allies' commitments to one another can be strong but they're not definitive. They're not always, rock solid is not always that solid. So right now in this interregnum, I don't think there's much scope for reassurance. I think each country is going to continue to make its own judgments about what it needs to deter its bigger rival and manage its smaller one if it's China or India sitting in the middle. Well, yes, that one struck me because I think one of the things just factoring into this, we're talking about the levels of spending here. And by the way, to the extent that we're all spending money on arms openings, we're spending less on money on a lot of other things that we ought to be paying attention to, climate change. But we have also, the US also has to be mindful of how its own actions, our own policies, our own nuclear strategies, what the implications of those are for the thinking, let's go down the list, Russia, China, India, Pakistan. What would you, Dan, caution American policy makers here as we're thinking about how we might, first and foremost, do no harm in terms of contributing to miscalculation but help hopefully contribute to. Sure, sure. Yeah, I'd like to hear what Lynn has to say on this in part because at the global level, I think that's really an area of her expertise. But I would say reinforcing some of what Vikram has said and one of the conversations that maybe was most interesting to me as this report came together is whether the United States in its actions perhaps meant to be stabilizing and reassuring in the region and by its own heft, as you point out, I mean our own nuclear arsenal, our own military capabilities, whether we have the potential to ourselves be destabilizing intentionally or unintentionally, largely unintentionally, we'd like to think. But particularly with respect to our support to India, we had some very interesting conversations but what lines we would want to cross or not cross in terms of supporting India's own nuclear developments. Now you'll see the report actually ends up being, I think, fairly conservative on this point. That is, there are not a lot of things that we can and should do directly to assist India's nuclear developments because most of them would likely be, first of all, not really accepted by India at this moment. So that's a practical consideration but also more strategically could be provocative, particularly to China in ways that would be unhelpful. So that's something to worry about. One other quick point that I don't wanna let slide is a number of members of the group when thinking about reassurance and when thinking about longer term prospects for peace would come back around to things that are sort of more fundamental about economic development, about opportunities for actually creating, in a sense, constituencies who favor peace between these states and for recognizing that they actually have benefits to certainly stability if not arriving at a lasting peace and a means to address the underlying reasons why these hostilities persist. And so we make at least some basic recommendations there in the report as well that I wouldn't wanna let slide. No, that's a very, and open the lens and recognize that if you want peace you have to give people a stake. Exactly. And of course we've seen that in the past with efforts between India and Pakistan. But sadly, it seemed to have been aborted or come to naught. I think both India and Pakistan have a view that eventually the other will come to its senses and decide that, right? So for India, it's like Pakistan's economy is half that of Bangladesh per capita now. Won't they wake up and say we want peace with settled things and we can get on with it? And Pakistan also says, won't India decide like, hey, why are we letting this legacy problem be such a drag on us to reduce as India's overall? They're both sort of waiting for each other in that way. Lynn, Dan suggested you want to also jump in on that previous question about US. Sure. Well, I think the bottom line for me is not in the United States national security interest for any additional countries to be acquiring nuclear weapons or for the countries that currently have them to be expanding their nuclear arsenals. And yet the trends are going in the wrong direction globally. And so the only way to start, and this does kind of come around in the N7 eventually, but we are gonna have to somehow coming out of this crisis with Russia get back on the track of maintaining regulation and limitations and hopefully further reductions on our nuclear systems. But that of course is complicated now by the expectations about China's arsenal because that's gonna directly affect what are the limits we can live with? You've already got some analysts out there. And by the way, Ukraine is a little bit of a Rorschach test. People in the theological nuclear policy community, people look at the crisis and it reinforces what they believe. So there are those who are already looking at that crisis. I'm not one of them who say that we should be getting out of the New START Treaty right now and deploying more weapons. I don't think that's the right answer. And in some ways what Russia's done in Ukraine has kind of turned deterrence on its head because they're basically using the umbrella of nuclear weapons to freely attack a non-nuclear weapons state and keep the United States and NATO out. But that wouldn't be any different if we have 500 or 1,000 more weapons or three different types of nuclear silicones or whatever that we don't have now. I mean, it's kind of insensitive to the numbers. So anyway, I'm losing the train here but the point is we need to, it's not gonna be in our interest for interest and this was an issue of some, I'd say debate and then report drafting. To in any way, I think reinforce the nuclear programs of India and of course not of Pakistan either. And we shouldn't be supporting it and we ought to ideally be encouraging both of those countries to be moving away from not doubling down on their nuclear arsenals although clearly that's not happening right now. One of the really powerful things that came out of this was a sense that the new era of geo-strategic competition has kind of left arms control and non-proliferation as neglected stepchildren of the underpinnings of global stability and that what we were looking at here has applicability in many other contexts where either initiatives have not worked yet like North Korea or you have a breakdown like between Russia and the United States and that fundamental point being that you would want these nuclear powers to engage in discussion so that they manage and seek to reduce their dependence on nuclear weapons, seek to have confidence building steps to manage and move towards a global, towards the decrease. I do think that our own modernization agenda driven largely by China and Russia and hypersonics and other technological changes makes that harder for the United States to advocate for. We're being pressed to go in the opposite direction by the evolution of technology here. I see some of the questions here would like us to get a little bit more into the practicalities here. What are the things, practical things that can be done and I think two levels. One, in the region, we sort of touched on this earlier, improving information communication, creating the kinds of structures, mechanisms, protocols that we've seen in other parts of the world that have helped manage crises and prevent escalation or contribute to de-escalation and then the second part of that is right here at home, what is it, what's the report's advice and council recommendation to American policy makers about what we ought to be doing now to better position and prepare ourselves to play to the extent that we can. I'm monitoring it all. Shall I start with you Dan? Yeah, just to reiterate, Vikram, I think earlier mentioned gaming and preparatory exercises. Look, a lot of this is, you would think would be relatively easy. Some of it is in fact being done, which is wonderful. More of it could be done. One of the things about the report and I think this conversation has really made this clear is this is an evolving situation so it's not a one and done. You don't do the game and figure out what you think is gonna happen and then you're done. This is a repeating thing. And for US policy makers, particularly those based in any of these three countries who are working back here in Washington, all of them need, as they come into their various positions of authority, need to play the games again. Effectively, need to get these briefings, need to have these conversations, need to walk through what we found to be worrisome in part because it is so complicated, because there's so many moving pieces and players. And so when it's not just an old fashioned, what we think of now as old fashioned, India-Pakistan crisis, but it's an India potentially two front crisis that gets further complicated by mistakes or accidents, how do you play that out? So that's one line of thinking. Another very different one had to do with leveraging non-military tools of influence in the region. And so we had some interesting conversations about the types of groupings that may come together to help, say, reinforce deterrence messages against China for taking provocative actions, or reinforce messaging to Pakistan about not supporting terrorist organizations. Some of these are more in the realm of financial or economic tools that we would like to see explored further. So for instance, in the 2020 crisis between India and China, India attempted to signal to China its displeasure about what was happening by banning certain Chinese web applications from Indian markets by keeping Chinese companies out of certain competitions for Indian projects. India alone will have a very difficult time leveraging its much smaller economy against China. But India, working together with partners and allies, including potentially through the Quad, would have a far greater heft. And we'd like to see more of that being done. And are there any thoughts you have taking away from the report, things that stuck you as being helpful, useful, things that we ought to be either trying to do in the region, doing here at home, to better position ourselves? Yes, but further to one of the themes, I don't think, and unlikely to get immediate payoffs. So we've got to, like with the N7, I think we've got to persist with that. It's not going to, China's, as we've discussed, not immediately receptive to that, but we've got to chip away at these things. And suggesting, some recommendations, as Dan mentioned, on trying to shape or influence or deter or dissuade China from using non-military instruments. And yet, not to be a naysayer, but I think we also need to be open to the possibility that non-military instruments may not have the intended effect we want, because for example, go back to Ukraine, that raises in China's minds, Chinese minds fears of food insecurity and questions about energy security. And so signaling, doing the things that sound like a good idea that we think will be made deter or dissuade China may have the opposite effect. And so I like to say this trite saying that deterrence is in the eye of the beholder. And so what we, what someone trying to deter and other thinks is a pretty clear message that will de-escalate or may have the opposite effect. And this sort of goes back to Dan's point earlier, yes, and Lynn, please. One thing is to add on to what Dan was saying, I thought one of the interesting recommendations from the report in terms of some of the exercising and pre-planning was in recognizing that we may not be able to play the kind of neutral arbiter role that we have in the past to do some planning with allies or other countries in the region or the Middle East who might be better positioned to play that role, but do some pre-discussions with them in terms of crisis planning and risk management. Yeah, it was interesting to see how say the UAE or the UK may be able to play roles that as sort of in a sense potentially less powerful than the United States clearly, but perhaps as honest brokers or perceived as acceptable conduits of information at the very least by regional players where we are perceived as increasingly biased. I'm mindful, of course, we have a big summit going on here in Washington right now, ASEAN. To what extent we were talking earlier about getting other actors involved. Is there some utility here or would this be counterproductive to the effort to try to, for example, influence China's thinking about what's going on in the region and the potential risk? I did get a chance to talk to some of the ASEAN folks in town over the week and the question in the region is about China predominantly. How to keep a good economic relationship with China and how to stave off any bad actions China might take vis-a-vis, especially countries in maritime Southeast Asia who face challenges from China and their EZs. Mainly concerns about sustainability, mainly concerns about food and economic coercion and things like that. So obviously none of them want to see military conflict. I do think when Southeast Asian nations are unified in calling for stability and constructive engagement that can have some impact. But mostly what they're looking to in this configuration is for India and the United States to be partners that help them with managing the downside parts of China without turning it into some kind of a conflict. So interestingly that is a bit of an arc of potential cooperation. The Quad is interesting because for ASEAN nations, the Quad is potentially a competitor, sort of a forum that maybe US and India see this as a way to get things done that they can't do with ASEAN because ASEAN is a consensus-driven organization. But I think on balance there is a welcoming and a view that it's stabilizing to have countries that are more or less the democracies and the big powers of the region working together on a constructive agenda. So I think the ASEAN countries, they value that. It's not about the Quad's not a military-focused grouping, it's about what can we do constructively in the region to kind of compete with China. And in that sense there's maybe some benefits where they can benefit from China and benefit from what the US, Japan, Australia, and India bring together. But they would mostly just like to see the risk of conflict diminish. And so I think those governments would all welcome any kind of confidence-building measures you can see in the Southern Asia strategic stability context. So I'm mindful we have just a couple of minutes left and I want to give an opportunity for any of you to sort of share your final thoughts, the things you would wish the audience to take away from this conversation. So, briefly. Yeah, I can kick it off. I would just say, we've talked about so many parts of the report, but one piece of it that we haven't touched upon is that it has two and a half, in a sense, capsule case studies. Looks at the 2019 crisis between India and Pakistan. Looks at the 2020 crisis between India and China. And looks at the potential in a box of nuclear terrorist events and connections to Afghanistan. I think for anybody who's thinking about these issues, these are the three areas where most of our minds are drawn in terms of thinking about lessons. And thinking, and so if you want to understand what US policymakers are thinking about when they address these kinds of problems, these are the case studies you need to look at. They're very concise and I would commend them to all readers. Terrific, thanks for reminding us. Lynn, any final thoughts? I'll pass to my colleagues. Okay, Niren, what should Secretary Austin be saying in his coming in? Oh, boy. There's nothing he doesn't already know. Well, how would you advise him? I would say that because of the overall context of the great power competition was strategic competition with China, and the thing that we want China to do is going to be an uphill battle. And the thing that we want to come in China to do is going to be an uphill battle. It's going to be hard. The Chinese will look at every issue through the lens and the prism of US-China strategic competition and think about how it would ban strength in China's hands. So countries like North Korea, like Pakistan, are being hoarded as strategic leverage for future utility, and that's not good news. And that's unfortunately what we're looking at. Andrew, final thoughts? There are obviously other pressing, from a US perspective, more pressing issues like Ukraine and so on. So it's easy to overlook or not pay adequate attention to the issue we've been talking about today. But I think, considering, this is Southern Asia is really ground zero for the stability and stability paradox. And so you can't ignore it, you've got to keep an eye on it while you're responding, putting out fires elsewhere in the world. Thank you for that. What he said. Indeed, what he said. Look, I want to thank all of you, first and foremost, for the report, but secondly, for your helping us to tease out the critical key elements of that report. I have a funny feeling that our audience is going to be rushing to the website right now in order to get a hold of it and read it, which you should, because it certainly is worth reading. So thank you all very much and congratulations on a terrific report. Thank you.