# Galwan Revisited: The Night India's China Problem Became Real | In Our Defence | S3 | Ep 54

An episode of [In Our Defence](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1617244439), 19 Jun 2026, 1 h 13 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/72596323/19_jun_26_iod_19_june_128.mp3

Six years after the Galwan Valley clash, we revisit the night that fundamentally changed India's relationship with China. What exactly happened on June 15, 2020? How did the Indian Army respond after losing soldiers, including a commanding officer? Why didn't the crisis spiral into a shooting war? And with the benefit of hindsight, what can we now infer about China's objectives and Xi Jinping's motivations? In this episode, we explore: * The events of the Galwan clash * The command and emotional shock inside the Indian Army * Whether Galwan permanently shifted India's military focus toward China * China's long-term strategy along the Line of Actual Control * Why trust between India and China remains difficult six years later Galwan was more than a border clash. It was the moment India's China challenge stopped being theoretical. Tune In! Produced by Taniya Dutta Sound mixed by Rohan Bharti

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: This is India Today Podcasts. Welcome to season three of
[0:06] Speaker 1: Another Defense, the podcast that takes you inside the world
[0:10] Speaker 1: of conflict. I'm your host, Deve Goswami, and every week
[0:14] Speaker 1: I sit down with experts and retired officers from the Army, Navy,
[0:18] Speaker 1: and Air Force to decode all things to do with
[0:21] Speaker 1: India security and explore what it truly means to serve.
[0:26] Speaker 1: Get ready for stories of strategy, sacrifice and strength. This
[0:33] Speaker 1: is in Our Defense. Hello, and welcome to Another Defense.
[0:38] Speaker 1: The one in the Middle East is finally ending. At
[0:40] Speaker 1: least that's what has happened this week, considering how this
[0:44] Speaker 1: war has seen ups and downs and twists and turns
[0:47] Speaker 1: over the last couple of weeks. So I'm pretty sure
[0:49] Speaker 1: you must have thought, alysis of viewers that that's something
[0:51] Speaker 1: will discuss on this episode of In Other Defense. But
[0:54] Speaker 1: actually I want to sort of, you know, pause on
[0:56] Speaker 1: that for a while. We'll probably come back to the
[0:59] Speaker 1: US around war, Israel, etcetera, maybe next week, because this
[1:02] Speaker 1: week I want to focus on a war that nearly
[1:04] Speaker 1: happened almost six years ago between India and China. This
[1:09] Speaker 1: is the week the well, this is the week that
[1:12] Speaker 1: when we mark the Anverts city of the Galvan Valley clash,
[1:15] Speaker 1: a very unfortunate incident in which we lost to twenty
[1:19] Speaker 1: Indian soldiers, including one commanding officer. Chinese also lost a
[1:23] Speaker 1: lot of soldiers and officers because we don't know the
[1:25] Speaker 1: exact number. China has never officially admitted to how many
[1:29] Speaker 1: of its personal well kill except once when they sat around.
[1:33] Speaker 1: They didn't admit it, but they set around four people
[1:35] Speaker 1: had been given honors for being in in that fight.
[1:41] Speaker 1: It was a very unnatural fight, I do say, unusual
[1:43] Speaker 1: flight fight to nuclear neighbors and their soldiers fighting with
[1:48] Speaker 1: sticks with hands. It was a milli It was almost
[1:51] Speaker 1: a road set brawl. What I want to discuss this
[1:54] Speaker 1: week is look back at that night of June fifteenth
[1:59] Speaker 1: when this crash happened, and what's happened since and where
[2:02] Speaker 1: India and China stand, because that is something that will
[2:08] Speaker 1: define the years forward when it comes to India's military posture.
[2:12] Speaker 1: And for that I have with me my expert as always.
[2:16] Speaker 2: Hey, they've got to be back, yep.
[2:18] Speaker 1: So grand agreement has been signed in a grand hall
[2:23] Speaker 1: in the city of Versa, where a similar grand agreement
[2:28] Speaker 1: had been signed long time ago.
[2:29] Speaker 2: Nineteen nineteen.
[2:30] Speaker 1: Yes, that ended World War One but actually led to
[2:33] Speaker 1: World War War War exactly. I wonder if Trump knows
[2:36] Speaker 1: about that, or maybe Macro convinced him. You know, President,
[2:39] Speaker 1: this is that hall where great things happen.
[2:42] Speaker 2: You didn't great things happened.
[2:46] Speaker 1: So, like I said, I think we'll discuss us Ran
[2:49] Speaker 1: Israel maybe at least maybe next week. We'll just see
[2:52] Speaker 1: how things pan out. They've just literally signed this this morning.
[2:55] Speaker 1: As we record this, the ink is still yeah fresh.
[2:59] Speaker 2: Yeah uh.
[3:00] Speaker 1: And we'll have to see who's going to end up
[3:02] Speaker 1: being reparations this time.
[3:04] Speaker 2: It's just uh.
[3:06] Speaker 1: But you know, speaking of agreements and India and China, Uh,
[3:10] Speaker 1: India and China a very weird sort of relationship, you know,
[3:13] Speaker 1: if you go by some of the agreements, also very
[3:15] Speaker 1: grand sounding, almost like you know, Communist literature. Agreement on
[3:19] Speaker 1: the Maintenance of Peace and Tranquility along the End Offactual Control,
[3:23] Speaker 1: Declaration of Principles for Relations and Comprehssive Cooperation, Special Representatives,
[3:28] Speaker 1: Mechanism on the Inter China Boundary Question, Agreement on the
[3:31] Speaker 1: establishment of a Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination on
[3:35] Speaker 1: India China BIR. Stuff like that you almost think that
[3:38] Speaker 1: these are two countries that are in solidly, solidly going
[3:42] Speaker 1: towards peace, except then you see what happens on the
[3:45] Speaker 1: ground along the border.
[3:46] Speaker 2: Yeah, and the ground is is an very important part. Uh.
[3:52] Speaker 1: There's a fun experiment just before this, uh this recording.
[3:55] Speaker 1: I asked Chad Gpt to suggest some titles for this episode.
[3:59] Speaker 1: Fantastic ones by the way, Analysis of the Agreement on Peace,
[4:03] Speaker 1: Tranquility and hitting each other with sticks, political parameters and
[4:07] Speaker 1: guiding principles for getting punched in the face. The Framework
[4:11] Speaker 1: for the Harmonious management of mutual strategic disappointment, confidence building
[4:16] Speaker 1: measures for people who clearly don't trust each other. The
[4:19] Speaker 1: Comprehensive Strategic cooperative partnership, Partnership for peace, prosperity and mild
[4:24] Speaker 1: water violence O nicenesses.
[4:27] Speaker 2: Yeah, but you know, you have to look at the
[4:29] Speaker 2: bright side of this. It's terrible what happened in Galvan,
[4:32] Speaker 2: I mean, you know, six years back. I mean it
[4:36] Speaker 2: just tells you that the Indian Army, the kind of
[4:37] Speaker 2: circumstances they operate, and of course they're always ready to
[4:40] Speaker 2: protect our frontiers. Now, the thing is that there was
[4:45] Speaker 2: a good side to that, which was the fact that
[4:49] Speaker 2: we didn't open fire right because that would have been
[4:52] Speaker 2: catastrophic If that had happened. You were looking at a
[4:54] Speaker 2: full scale India China border war of the kind that
[4:57] Speaker 2: we saw in nineteen sixty two, and it was clearly
[4:59] Speaker 2: not in either country's interests, certainly not in our interests
[5:03] Speaker 2: to have a full scale water at that point. But
[5:05] Speaker 2: I think what Galvan, the standoff in lad Dakh taught
[5:11] Speaker 2: the Chinese is that India was no pushover. And I'm
[5:15] Speaker 2: not saying this based on statements. I mean I was
[5:17] Speaker 2: on the ground a few weeks after Galwan, right in August,
[5:22] Speaker 2: the Indian Army took the first journalist there. Of course,
[5:25] Speaker 2: we didn't have access to all of those regions because
[5:27] Speaker 2: those were militarily very sensitive. But the sense that I
[5:31] Speaker 2: got from the time that we were there for almost,
[5:34] Speaker 2: you know, three four days, was that this was a
[5:36] Speaker 2: very different Indian military from nineteen sixty two. And what
[5:41] Speaker 2: I saw there was massive air force presence, you know,
[5:44] Speaker 2: fighter jets, transport aircraft, gunships, troop transporters. The Indian Army
[5:50] Speaker 2: had surged so many troops over there that they were
[5:53] Speaker 2: very keen on preventing any kind of nineteen sixty two
[5:57] Speaker 2: kind of repeat, but forget nineteen sixty two. They wanted
[6:00] Speaker 2: to stand up to the Chinese and you know, face
[6:02] Speaker 2: them off on the border. And if you look at it,
[6:05] Speaker 2: there are very few countries that have done this, at
[6:07] Speaker 2: least in the twenty first century, who stood up to China,
[6:10] Speaker 2: particularly a China that's led by Hi Jinping. And I
[6:14] Speaker 2: think the Chinese kind of were taken aback by India's posture.
[6:19] Speaker 2: They didn't expect us to react this way. And you know,
[6:23] Speaker 2: you hear those voices from China. Oh, you know, India
[6:25] Speaker 2: has overreacted. And it was just a border thing. It
[6:28] Speaker 2: was not a normal border incident or even a series
[6:31] Speaker 2: of incidents. This was calculated military coercion or the Chinese
[6:35] Speaker 2: that attempted in twenty twenty. And there's a history to this.
[6:39] Speaker 2: And you know, I've visited Ladak exactly twice. The first
[6:43] Speaker 2: was in twenty ten when I visited for India Today magazine.
[6:47] Speaker 2: I wrote a story on how declined the fact that
[6:49] Speaker 2: we didn't have any border infrastructure. Right. There were entire
[6:55] Speaker 2: stretches where roads were not built. They were all on
[6:58] Speaker 2: you know, the military was telling me, look, we need
[7:01] Speaker 2: a road over here. We need a road there. We
[7:03] Speaker 2: need a Pangong, so kind of we need access to Pangong,
[7:06] Speaker 2: so we need access to Ladakh itself. So as you know,
[7:09] Speaker 2: you know, the passes get stored under Ladakh is cut
[7:11] Speaker 2: off and you have what is called AWS advanced winter stocking.
[7:16] Speaker 2: All of those problems within in ten Now, when I
[7:18] Speaker 2: went in twenty to twenty a decade later, things that
[7:22] Speaker 2: completely changed. The posture had changed, of course, but more
[7:26] Speaker 2: than that, it was the Border Roads Organization that was
[7:29] Speaker 2: building round the clock literally, So the infrastructure surge that
[7:33] Speaker 2: we've seen in Ladakh in the last decade plus, I
[7:38] Speaker 2: don't think we've seen this kind of burst of infrastructure
[7:41] Speaker 2: construction anywhere in India in that limited geography of Ladak
[7:45] Speaker 2: is about what fifty fifty eight thousand square kilometers in
[7:48] Speaker 2: such a limited geography, If if you were to look
[7:51] Speaker 2: at the number of bridges, tunnels, airfields, you know, troop
[7:58] Speaker 2: fortifications that we have built up, it's incredible, and that
[8:01] Speaker 2: that is the biggest story here actually, not just the
[8:06] Speaker 2: you know, the Indian military posture, but also how we've
[8:09] Speaker 2: put cement where our mouth is. Literally, you know, we've
[8:13] Speaker 2: rolled out a lot of infrastructure, and today, six years
[8:17] Speaker 2: after Galvan, you're able to simultaneously move. You've literally done
[8:21] Speaker 2: away with advanced winter stalking in a lot of places
[8:25] Speaker 2: because you have round the year access to those regions.
[8:28] Speaker 2: You have three axises. Earlier you had two which were
[8:31] Speaker 2: snowed down. Today you have three. The third one was open.
[8:34] Speaker 2: In fact, while we were there, we reported it for
[8:36] Speaker 2: India today that Dharchu Access Manali. Sorry, the second, the
[8:44] Speaker 2: middle one, the Padam Dharchu access was opened up. Then
[8:48] Speaker 2: it's now fully opened. So you have three options to
[8:51] Speaker 2: get to Ladak. So no nineteen sixty two happening in
[8:55] Speaker 2: any near future. So that is a very big thing.
[8:59] Speaker 2: I think we've shown with a combination of political will, infrastructure,
[9:05] Speaker 2: spens and a military posture, it is possible to hold
[9:09] Speaker 2: China off.
[9:11] Speaker 1: Yeah, you reminded me of this very good visual that
[9:14] Speaker 1: you know, I've seen in the last few years of
[9:16] Speaker 1: the Indian Air Forces Globe Master landing at Dollar Big Old,
[9:19] Speaker 1: if I'm not right, of one of the highest airfields
[9:21] Speaker 1: in the in the world. It's a giant of a plane,
[9:24] Speaker 1: but to imagine it flying in such thin air and
[9:26] Speaker 1: being able to land with such smooth precision. That's quite
[9:30] Speaker 1: quite the side. And also a good point about the
[9:32] Speaker 1: border roads organized because I think in the last maybe
[9:35] Speaker 1: decade two decades, that this is one maybe arm of
[9:39] Speaker 1: the Indian government or in military that's been very underappreciated,
[9:43] Speaker 1: been under the radar, but has quietly been doing its
[9:45] Speaker 1: work day in and day out and building what you've
[9:48] Speaker 1: you've just described. So Sibia, on this episode, what we'll
[9:52] Speaker 1: do is we'll sort of take a look back at
[9:54] Speaker 1: just the class very briefly, the tactical fight that happened,
[9:57] Speaker 1: and then move on to, like you said, the posture,
[10:00] Speaker 1: how it's changed. I want to I'm very much interested
[10:02] Speaker 1: in knowing whether all of this was already wargameed or
[10:06] Speaker 1: whether this was something that you know, you sort of
[10:08] Speaker 1: learned through the as you were deploying there over the
[10:11] Speaker 1: last last to six years. Going back to the clash,
[10:14] Speaker 1: so it's known now what happened is that the standard
[10:18] Speaker 1: actually had begun a few weeks prior to June fifteenth
[10:22] Speaker 1: clash of Galvan Valley. There was Chinese build up. They
[10:25] Speaker 1: actually sent a couple of brigades I think, to that,
[10:30] Speaker 1: to the individualized division, to that to that area, saying
[10:34] Speaker 1: it was part of an exercise, but then those divisions
[10:36] Speaker 1: were dispatched towards the line of actual control. That sent
[10:39] Speaker 1: alarm belts in the Indian Army, and they also started
[10:41] Speaker 1: building up communication was already happening among local commanders to
[10:46] Speaker 1: sort of, you know, disengage and stay away from friction
[10:48] Speaker 1: points and avoid any any clash. And Colonel sands Babu
[10:53] Speaker 1: was one of the officers in charge of ensuring the
[10:56] Speaker 1: Chinese did not do what they promised. They did not do,
[11:00] Speaker 1: which is setting up tents and stuff like that, but
[11:01] Speaker 1: they did exactly that at the gal Wan Bary fight
[11:05] Speaker 1: where the fight happened. So I think on the evening
[11:08] Speaker 1: of June fifteenth, he along with some of his troops
[11:11] Speaker 1: went to sort of convince the Chinese key boss, this
[11:14] Speaker 1: is not what you had promised, so please take this
[11:16] Speaker 1: stent away and go back to you where you were
[11:17] Speaker 1: supposed to be. But disagreements happened. Very interestingly. This is
[11:21] Speaker 1: something also a comb I'll circle back to a bit later.
[11:23] Speaker 1: Very interestingly, the unit that Colonel's team was dealing with
[11:28] Speaker 1: was a new unit. They had actually been there for
[11:30] Speaker 1: a while, so they were familiar with the older unit,
[11:32] Speaker 1: but they had been rotated out and a new unit
[11:35] Speaker 1: they did not know at all, did not have any familiarity,
[11:38] Speaker 1: with no friendliness. That was a new uniton That's when
[11:43] Speaker 1: the flash happened. I think the trigger for the most
[11:48] Speaker 1: bloodiest part of the battle was the fact that unfortunately died.
[11:53] Speaker 1: Initially during the flight, a stone apparently hit his head
[11:55] Speaker 1: and he fell into the river, and that sort of
[11:59] Speaker 1: embraged that and all out fighting happened through the night.
[12:03] Speaker 1: Some hostages were held on both sides, but then again
[12:07] Speaker 1: communication and discussions sort of got that done. I've always
[12:11] Speaker 1: wondered something and now perhaps with the benefit of the
[12:14] Speaker 1: six years you've had chats among different levels of officers
[12:17] Speaker 1: in the Indian Army and other forces, maybe you can
[12:21] Speaker 1: tell us the initial twelve hours. Because Delhi was far away,
[12:26] Speaker 1: the local Core command headquarters was far away, things were
[12:30] Speaker 1: happening on the ground. This was a commanding officer had
[12:33] Speaker 1: lost his life, and you know, for context to our
[12:36] Speaker 1: lessons and viewers. When the news first came to us,
[12:38] Speaker 1: I had somebody in my team who's from an army background,
[12:41] Speaker 1: and he said that the CEO of a unit is
[12:43] Speaker 1: like the father figure and if something happens to him
[12:47] Speaker 1: at help like, the troops are very, very, very angry.
[12:50] Speaker 1: So my question to you something the initial twelve hours,
[12:54] Speaker 1: at what level and at what kind of intervention was
[12:58] Speaker 1: required I'll only talk about the Indian side, not Chinese
[13:00] Speaker 1: for a moment, was required. The kind of intervention was
[13:03] Speaker 1: required to ensure that what you said at the beginning,
[13:06] Speaker 1: shots were not fired and this this not go to
[13:09] Speaker 1: the highest stage. Remember I remember Amarind Singh, who's a
[13:12] Speaker 1: retired army officer. He was on our show. He was
[13:14] Speaker 1: speaking to Gor Savant that very evening. He was furious
[13:18] Speaker 1: and he was shouting stuff like he was actually shouting
[13:20] Speaker 1: on there on the show, and he was shouting stuff
[13:22] Speaker 1: like why did the second command basically Santos left hand
[13:25] Speaker 1: did not order troops to open fire. In hindsight, I
[13:28] Speaker 1: think it's a good call that the order was not given.
[13:31] Speaker 1: But your take on and your what you know of
[13:34] Speaker 1: how calm prevailed even after that bloody fighting, well you.
[13:39] Speaker 2: Know it from what I I've been speaking to a
[13:42] Speaker 2: lot of people, you know since, and I think what
[13:46] Speaker 2: really happened there was a series of misunderstandings. Uh, there
[13:51] Speaker 2: was a breakdown of communication, as you mentioned, that there
[13:54] Speaker 2: was a new Chinese unit that had rotated in. They
[13:57] Speaker 2: weren't very familiar with the la of the land, and
[14:00] Speaker 2: they certainly didn't know what was going on across on
[14:03] Speaker 2: our side. And you know, when that fight broke out
[14:07] Speaker 2: over the tents, I think it should have been handled
[14:12] Speaker 2: a little better. We shouldn't have. What happened was terribly unfortunate.
[14:17] Speaker 2: I mean, but the minute the kernel was targeted attacked,
[14:23] Speaker 2: I think that is when a line had been crossing.
[14:27] Speaker 2: But even so, it's very interesting to note that both sides,
[14:31] Speaker 2: not just us but the Chinese as well, nobody fired
[14:35] Speaker 2: anything because they are very strict protocols, you know, all
[14:38] Speaker 2: of the protocols that you read out. The one thing
[14:40] Speaker 2: about that is they've been very clear to avoid any
[14:43] Speaker 2: kind of misunderstanding, to ensure that there's you know, the
[14:48] Speaker 2: LOC and the LAC are two completely different geographical entities. Literally,
[14:53] Speaker 2: I've been on both. I've spent time on both, and
[14:56] Speaker 2: I've seen the kind of violence that we've inflicted on
[15:00] Speaker 2: the Pakistanis on the LOC in response to, of course
[15:04] Speaker 2: what they've done. But on the LAC it's a completely
[15:08] Speaker 2: different you know, kettle of fish, so to speak. Now,
[15:12] Speaker 2: one reason for that is, of course, the India Pakistan
[15:15] Speaker 2: thing is far more hostile, yeah, than the India China relationship.
[15:23] Speaker 2: Now we've seen this kind of in nineteen sixty two
[15:26] Speaker 2: sixty seven in Sikkim and we stood up to China.
[15:30] Speaker 2: But ever since it's a you know, it's I think
[15:32] Speaker 2: it's a thing of two cultures which have been so
[15:35] Speaker 2: far apart. There is no historical baggage in that sense
[15:39] Speaker 2: between India and China the kind that we have with Pakistan.
[15:42] Speaker 2: Multiple wars have been fought, and you know, it's literally
[15:45] Speaker 2: like a cricket match kind of thing if you look
[15:47] Speaker 2: at it in certain aspects. But with China and India,
[15:51] Speaker 2: apart from nineteen sixty two sixty seven, there were very
[15:56] Speaker 2: large periods of peace and tranquility. Is simply because those
[16:00] Speaker 2: regions were so far away, they were remote, they were hostile. Right.
[16:04] Speaker 2: Ladak is the union territory the size of South Korea,
[16:10] Speaker 2: but it has barely three lack people. Right, It's that
[16:14] Speaker 2: sparsely populated. And the same is the case with Tibet.
[16:17] Speaker 2: Its gigantic Tibet is what two million, two and a
[16:20] Speaker 2: half million square kilometers, but it's so sparsely populated, barely inhabited.
[16:25] Speaker 2: But what is now happening in the last couple of
[16:27] Speaker 2: decades is, particularly in the late nineties, the Chinese began
[16:32] Speaker 2: this massive infrastructure build up, and we saw that with
[16:35] Speaker 2: a Tibet king Hi railroad coming in where you were
[16:39] Speaker 2: able to move people very quickly into Larsa and all
[16:43] Speaker 2: along the border. And they began building roads bridges again
[16:47] Speaker 2: of a kind that possibly this part of the world
[16:49] Speaker 2: had not seen, certainly Asia had not seen this. The
[16:52] Speaker 2: full might of China's infrastructure boom was deployed along the
[16:57] Speaker 2: borders with us, and that is when our planners started
[17:01] Speaker 2: to raise the red flags in the you know, DGMO.
[17:04] Speaker 2: They said, look, I was talking to a lot of
[17:07] Speaker 2: DMO thing. I mean, when I went in twenty ten,
[17:09] Speaker 2: I spoke to a number of generals who said, look,
[17:12] Speaker 2: this is really bad for us, because if the Chinese
[17:15] Speaker 2: continue building at this rate, there will be a point
[17:19] Speaker 2: in the not so distant future, less than a decade
[17:21] Speaker 2: where they will be able to simultaneously surge troops. Earlier,
[17:25] Speaker 2: the you know, the calculation was it would take them
[17:27] Speaker 2: several winters to build up troop levels and then attacked.
[17:31] Speaker 2: But now because of this infrastructure, you were able to
[17:34] Speaker 2: simultaneously come within days, you could come and overwhelm this thing.
[17:38] Speaker 2: And when you're looking at two countries with unsettled boundaries,
[17:42] Speaker 2: the tendency, the temptation is there on the bigger side,
[17:45] Speaker 2: with better infrastructure, more military thing to go and grab territory.
[17:50] Speaker 2: Which is why what you see from twenty ten nonwords
[17:54] Speaker 2: post twenty ten, the posture on our side slowly started changing.
[17:58] Speaker 2: We started building roads. You saw the same thing happening
[18:02] Speaker 2: on the you know, Chinese side as well. We were
[18:05] Speaker 2: responding to what the Chinese infrastructure build up was twenty
[18:09] Speaker 2: thirteen on. There was a massive increase in you know, infrastructure.
[18:14] Speaker 2: And then what you saw is that earlier when India
[18:16] Speaker 2: and China weren't really meeting, you know, the border troops
[18:19] Speaker 2: were so far away, you know, they would come. How
[18:23] Speaker 2: we would see the Chinese thing was very interesting that
[18:25] Speaker 2: you would have these patrols walking over there and you
[18:28] Speaker 2: would see a lot of Chinese trash. You know, you'd
[18:30] Speaker 2: see cigarette butts, you'd see cans, food wrappers, and those
[18:34] Speaker 2: whore deliberately put there so yeah, to mark their territory
[18:38] Speaker 2: in a sense, you know, so they would and I've
[18:40] Speaker 2: seen those pictures of that. I mean, these are exhibits
[18:42] Speaker 2: that we had shown, but we're never allowed to take pictures.
[18:45] Speaker 2: This is how the Chinese marked their territory. So this
[18:47] Speaker 2: was a kind of a very nineteenth twentieth century way
[18:51] Speaker 2: of doing it. But things changed post twenty thirteen when
[18:55] Speaker 2: we matched up with the infrastructure and we suddenly started
[18:59] Speaker 2: coming to places where only the Chinese were. So now
[19:02] Speaker 2: you started seeing patrols coming face to face. There's a
[19:05] Speaker 2: physical interaction. That physical interaction it would and this is
[19:10] Speaker 2: again dictated in the protocols, told exactly what to do
[19:14] Speaker 2: when you come across a thing. Don't try to confront
[19:17] Speaker 2: each other. You stepped back, walk back away from each other.
[19:20] Speaker 2: They were very conscious of the fact. So the peace
[19:22] Speaker 2: and Tranquility agreements as they're called, are very conscious of
[19:26] Speaker 2: the fact that India and China should not soldiers should
[19:29] Speaker 2: not be shooting at each other, engaging each other and
[19:32] Speaker 2: fisticuffs and all of that. But I think what the
[19:36] Speaker 2: Chinese realized post twenty thirteen, and you saw a number
[19:39] Speaker 2: of standoffs there in Chumar and Depsa and all that
[19:42] Speaker 2: they were clearly rattled by India's infrastructure build up. So
[19:46] Speaker 2: number of things happened there. Twenty thirteen, you saw the
[19:49] Speaker 2: infrastructure build the standoffs began. Twenty fourteen, you saw the
[19:54] Speaker 2: change in government. Prime Minister Morey comes there. Five years later,
[19:58] Speaker 2: you saw what they never imagined or expected. Article three
[20:03] Speaker 2: seventy is abolished, Ladakh is made a separate Union territory.
[20:09] Speaker 2: Germun Kashmia is separate Union territory. India puts out a
[20:12] Speaker 2: map of undivided Ladakh, which is our claim, which is
[20:16] Speaker 2: the entire oxide chain and Gilgate, Baltistan and Ladakh, which
[20:22] Speaker 2: then frightened the Chinese. They're worried about. And this is
[20:25] Speaker 2: not to you know, make excuses for what the Chinese did.
[20:29] Speaker 2: What the Chinese did was in twenty twenty, they literally
[20:33] Speaker 2: tore up all of these agreements which were all about
[20:37] Speaker 2: maintaining peace and tranquility on the boundary. On the boundary,
[20:41] Speaker 2: they moved up their divisions, those two divisions that you
[20:44] Speaker 2: spoke of. They conducted these incursions along multiple points along
[20:49] Speaker 2: the Lac, and it was it was aggression, it was
[20:53] Speaker 2: coersive aggression. They launched all their patrols over there. They
[20:57] Speaker 2: were basically trying to test us. So that's what they've
[21:00] Speaker 2: been doing. If you see from twenty thirteen, they would
[21:03] Speaker 2: send these patrols, probes, you know, they would say, how
[21:06] Speaker 2: did India react? And then twenty twenty was the biggest.
[21:10] Speaker 2: So what happened twenty twenty is a direct consequence of
[21:13] Speaker 2: what happened in Sikkim in Bhutan in twenty sixteens, the
[21:18] Speaker 2: Douklam stand up. When they saw that they were rattled again,
[21:22] Speaker 2: they said, you know, India's standing up this way and
[21:25] Speaker 2: that on Bhutanese territory. So then they started this entire
[21:29] Speaker 2: thing of sharad of high altitude summer exercises, which then
[21:33] Speaker 2: culminated in what we saw in Doklam in sixteenth of June,
[21:40] Speaker 2: in my missex, sorry Galwan in sixteenth of June. So
[21:45] Speaker 2: this was a pattern that they had started working on
[21:48] Speaker 2: looking at all of this. Is the Chinese look at
[21:50] Speaker 2: the big picture always right, So they were looking at this. Okay,
[21:53] Speaker 2: So India's building up infrastructure, They've got troops coming up here,
[21:57] Speaker 2: they stood up over here in you know, do k Lam.
[22:01] Speaker 2: They're all over the lac now, so now is the
[22:03] Speaker 2: time to move in, And that is when they decided
[22:05] Speaker 2: to strike in twenty twenty, during the COVID pandemic, right,
[22:09] Speaker 2: So we were distracted with COVID some of those exercises
[22:13] Speaker 2: that had been planned, so we would mirror their exercises
[22:15] Speaker 2: with our own to ensure that they didn't have the thing.
[22:17] Speaker 2: For some reason we didn't mirror their exercises or didn't
[22:20] Speaker 2: do it in adequate time. That is when this thing happened. Now,
[22:25] Speaker 2: when these patrols came in, they intruded, they put up
[22:28] Speaker 2: their tents. The battalion was literally sucked into this conflict.
[22:33] Speaker 2: I think better sense should have prevailed immediately at the
[22:36] Speaker 2: higher levels at the brigade headquarters, at the div headquarters,
[22:41] Speaker 2: certain calls were taken which shouldn't have been taken. You know,
[22:46] Speaker 2: a particular course of action was decided upon which may
[22:49] Speaker 2: not have been in the best interests of what followed.
[22:53] Speaker 2: And the Meli happened, and when the dust settled, you saw,
[22:58] Speaker 2: you know, dead Indian soldiers and that was very unfortunate.
[23:01] Speaker 2: Twenty Indian soldiers lost their lives in that a number
[23:05] Speaker 2: of Chinese soldiers died, as will be not sure of
[23:07] Speaker 2: the numbers. As you mentioned, the Chinese Evuly, you know,
[23:10] Speaker 2: acknowledged four deaths. But the possibilities. Far more Chinese soldiers
[23:15] Speaker 2: died in that. But then when we started making our assessments,
[23:20] Speaker 2: we realized that those two divisions were still in theater
[23:23] Speaker 2: and there was a possibility that China was going to
[23:26] Speaker 2: use this as a pretext to you know, accelerate their
[23:32] Speaker 2: deployment of things and to go up the escalation ladder.
[23:37] Speaker 2: That is when India decided to move in all of
[23:39] Speaker 2: their troops, the air force, they literally had at one point,
[23:44] Speaker 2: I think there were some three core commanders there, so
[23:46] Speaker 2: they had searched troops to an extent that there were
[23:49] Speaker 2: like fifty sixty thousand troops. And of course what I
[23:52] Speaker 2: didn't mention earlier on is that from twenty fourteen on,
[23:55] Speaker 2: to deal with the Chinese threat, we had started moving
[23:58] Speaker 2: armor there because they realized that if the Chinese come
[24:01] Speaker 2: in using their infrastructure, you need to have hard assets
[24:05] Speaker 2: to stop them, and one of the best way to
[24:07] Speaker 2: do it is through armored regiments. So they moved up
[24:11] Speaker 2: an armored brigade way back in I think twenty thirteen
[24:13] Speaker 2: the first armored brigade came in. And today you're looking
[24:17] Speaker 2: at a scenario where when you had just one armored brigade.
[24:20] Speaker 2: You today have four of them. So it's one of
[24:22] Speaker 2: the most heavily defended territories on our side of the thing.
[24:26] Speaker 2: And there's no way that the Chinese can even think
[24:29] Speaker 2: of doing what they had planned to do. Whatever they
[24:33] Speaker 2: might think, you know, with drones or robots or something,
[24:35] Speaker 2: it is still impossible because the kind of defenses that
[24:39] Speaker 2: we've put into place over six years after that very
[24:42] Speaker 2: unfortunate Gunwan incident is of an order that India does
[24:48] Speaker 2: very well. And if you've seen conflicts across the world
[24:51] Speaker 2: we were talking about Iran earlier, Russia Ukraine. Technology tactics
[24:59] Speaker 2: today favor the defenders more than the Offendia, you know,
[25:02] Speaker 2: the offensive side, the side that chooses to attack first.
[25:08] Speaker 2: And this is something that China would also be acutely
[25:10] Speaker 2: aware of looking at, not just India, but also Taiwan,
[25:14] Speaker 2: because now they're looking at Hey, listen, the Iranians, who
[25:18] Speaker 2: are under sanctions of forty five years could hold the
[25:20] Speaker 2: Americans of Americans. Yeah, the most powerful force the world
[25:24] Speaker 2: has ever known. The Ukrainians are you know, hitting at
[25:29] Speaker 2: the Russians now Russians are taking heavy losses. What are
[25:32] Speaker 2: our chances against Taiwan? You know, if we try doing that,
[25:35] Speaker 2: it'd be like severe loss of face. And I think
[25:38] Speaker 2: the similar thing would be working in our favor when
[25:43] Speaker 2: it comes to se La Da or Sikim or the
[25:45] Speaker 2: central sector Arenal Pradesh. They don't want to, you know,
[25:49] Speaker 2: try their luck on anything, so they will try and
[25:52] Speaker 2: keep things, you know, on a low boil. They're not
[25:55] Speaker 2: going to settle the LAC. That much is very clear.
[25:57] Speaker 2: I think all our planners have fully factored that in
[26:00] Speaker 2: that it is not in China's interests to settle the LAC.
[26:05] Speaker 2: They want to keep this as a more or less
[26:09] Speaker 2: near permanent features so that they can keep needling us.
[26:12] Speaker 2: So we focus our attention on the LAC because if
[26:16] Speaker 2: you settle the boundary right now, that takes up enormous
[26:20] Speaker 2: pressure off the Indian military. So while we are Pakistan
[26:24] Speaker 2: on one hand and you have China on the other,
[26:26] Speaker 2: we are literally deployed on two fronts. Now we have
[26:30] Speaker 2: the ability to deter conflicts on both fronts, but they
[26:34] Speaker 2: don't want us to come to a point where we
[26:38] Speaker 2: can focus all our attention on say either Pakistan or
[26:42] Speaker 2: maybe some other front because for them, you know, the
[26:46] Speaker 2: LAC is an instrument of persion. It's an instrument of acupressure,
[26:51] Speaker 2: Chinese acupressure, and occasionally, like we saw in Galvan, it
[26:56] Speaker 2: becomes a tool of acupuncture as well.
[27:01] Speaker 1: Yeah, very interesting. No, you've described how since twenty ten
[27:07] Speaker 1: you had this slow sort of India building up stuff
[27:11] Speaker 1: along the and along the LLC. Before twenty ten is
[27:14] Speaker 1: also the time when I was just you know, finishing
[27:16] Speaker 1: my schooling and I was just about to enter college.
[27:18] Speaker 1: And I remember that this was a time, these few
[27:20] Speaker 1: years was a time when there was a lot of
[27:23] Speaker 1: literature in the media, written some by RETAD officers, some
[27:28] Speaker 1: by people like you journalist who have been covering this
[27:31] Speaker 1: field and this topic for a while, that the real
[27:34] Speaker 1: because back then people I mean may not remember it.
[27:37] Speaker 1: Back then, it was all over Pakistan. It was all
[27:39] Speaker 1: over Pakistani, you know, India Pakistan cricket matches with the thing,
[27:43] Speaker 1: the rivalry was all Pakistan. Anything happening on the LC
[27:46] Speaker 1: was a big deal because this was just a few
[27:47] Speaker 1: years after Kargil, right, yeah, a decade so after our Kargil.
[27:50] Speaker 1: But there was a lot of literature back then warning
[27:54] Speaker 1: silently that the real threat is China, the tread is China.
[27:57] Speaker 1: A lot of officers, a lot of journeys, like you
[27:59] Speaker 1: wrote about it. My questions and deep is, yeah, the
[28:02] Speaker 1: build up did happen, But or do you think it's
[28:05] Speaker 1: perfectly natural that? What does it say about human psychology
[28:09] Speaker 1: or a nation psychology that you need something like a
[28:11] Speaker 1: galvan where you lose soldiers, where you lose your commanding officer,
[28:17] Speaker 1: something like that to happen for your army to decisively
[28:21] Speaker 1: change his posture to China. Because I'll tell you something,
[28:23] Speaker 1: even though you said we had been building up in frustrated,
[28:25] Speaker 1: what also happened after the guln very flash. You had
[28:28] Speaker 1: to buy rifles on an emergency basis because you ran
[28:32] Speaker 1: out or rifles. You had to buy winter clothing and
[28:35] Speaker 1: boots for your soldiers on an emergency basis because you
[28:37] Speaker 1: did not have them in adequate stock. Now, you know,
[28:40] Speaker 1: you can look at it in hindsight and say, key, okay,
[28:43] Speaker 1: so what's the big deal. It was an emergency after all. Great,
[28:46] Speaker 1: But my point is the posture had to be sort
[28:49] Speaker 1: of you know, it was sort of some some of
[28:52] Speaker 1: it was like in a knee jerk reaction. So yeah,
[28:57] Speaker 1: my question to you, or do you think it's perfectly fine,
[29:00] Speaker 1: this is how you nations work, you react to things.
[29:02] Speaker 2: Yes, you know, I completely agree with you. You know,
[29:06] Speaker 2: the fact is that India since nineteen forty seven had
[29:12] Speaker 2: the option. We've always faced with two threats on our border.
[29:17] Speaker 2: Like while the Nehru Chowan Li dialogs were on, there
[29:20] Speaker 2: was Mao Zedong in the backdrop, and today we have
[29:24] Speaker 2: Hijin Ping in the backdrop. Right, he's the most powerful
[29:28] Speaker 2: Chinese leader since Mao. We had the option of looking
[29:35] Speaker 2: at the greater threat. We had a lesser threat, which
[29:38] Speaker 2: was Pakistan. There was a greater threat, which was China,
[29:41] Speaker 2: which is much bigger than Pakistan, nuclear armed by nineteen
[29:45] Speaker 2: sixty four, giganteg army, communist dictatorship, Pakistan is a lesser threat.
[29:53] Speaker 2: What we've done actually since nineteen forty seven, and particularly
[29:57] Speaker 2: after nineteen sixty two, is that while we responded to
[30:00] Speaker 2: that wake up call that sixty two was, we all
[30:03] Speaker 2: along focused on the lesser threat, which is Pakistan. Whereas
[30:06] Speaker 2: what we should have done from nineteen sixty two on
[30:09] Speaker 2: is to focus entirely on the greater threat, which was China,
[30:13] Speaker 2: which would have left a lot of residual forces for
[30:16] Speaker 2: us to tackle the lesser threat. Where so after nineteen
[30:20] Speaker 2: sixty two, it's that wake up call thing right for us,
[30:22] Speaker 2: and I call it the sleeping elephants phenomena that we
[30:25] Speaker 2: see in India is like we have to be woken
[30:28] Speaker 2: up from time to time. We had to be woken
[30:31] Speaker 2: up after nineteen sixty two, and we saw the effect
[30:34] Speaker 2: of that nine years later in nineteen seventy one, where
[30:37] Speaker 2: the Indian military went in without literally without any clothing
[30:41] Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty two, and in nineteen seventy one they
[30:43] Speaker 2: were fully armed, equipped stock, they had all the weaponry,
[30:46] Speaker 2: and Pakistan board the brunt of it, and it became,
[30:49] Speaker 2: you know, two countries. We didn't continue with that policy
[30:53] Speaker 2: with regards to China. We did raise massive mountainous you
[30:58] Speaker 2: know soldiers operating high altreadies. We have today as on date,
[31:02] Speaker 2: we have one of the largest number of mountain equipped
[31:05] Speaker 2: troops for mountain warfare. You know, a number of divisions
[31:07] Speaker 2: that we have, you know, mountain strike coores and all
[31:11] Speaker 2: of that. No other country in the world has this
[31:13] Speaker 2: kind of We've built up on that, but we did
[31:15] Speaker 2: not focus extensively on China and the reason for that
[31:20] Speaker 2: is very tragically captured by one of our former defense ministers,
[31:26] Speaker 2: mister ak Anthony, in parliament. He stood up and he said,
[31:29] Speaker 2: my heart sank when I heard that. He says, you know,
[31:32] Speaker 2: why do you blame us? The policy until now this
[31:34] Speaker 2: was I think he said it in mid two thousand
[31:37] Speaker 2: and six or eight or something. He says, the policy
[31:40] Speaker 2: until now was to don't build infrastructure on the border
[31:43] Speaker 2: because if you build infrastructure on the border, the Chinese
[31:45] Speaker 2: will use it and you know, come and capture your
[31:48] Speaker 2: you know, territory. So this is the kind of a
[31:51] Speaker 2: reverse scorched Tarth policy that we employed since nineteen sixty two,
[31:55] Speaker 2: that while we built up our forces, we never built
[31:58] Speaker 2: any infrastructure. Why oh, you don't want to the Chinese
[32:00] Speaker 2: and b if you build it, the Chinese will use
[32:02] Speaker 2: it too. It was a kind of a defeatist mentality
[32:05] Speaker 2: I think that we followed. And I think in the
[32:08] Speaker 2: last couple of years, especially, you know, since that statement
[32:11] Speaker 2: was made, I think things have moved on. We've you know, searched,
[32:15] Speaker 2: as I mentioned, our infrastructure has gone up, our forces
[32:18] Speaker 2: in the theater have gone up. There is a far
[32:21] Speaker 2: bigger appreciation of the Chinese military threat today than was
[32:25] Speaker 2: there in the past. And I think after Do Klam,
[32:30] Speaker 2: after Galwan, certainly you know the sacrifices of our soldiers
[32:33] Speaker 2: having gone in vain. So there is a far more
[32:37] Speaker 2: clear eyed appreciation of the Chinese threat today than was
[32:41] Speaker 2: possibly there in twenty twenty, because we were looking at
[32:45] Speaker 2: a you know, peace and tranquility kind of thing with China,
[32:48] Speaker 2: but the Chinese had other things in mind. And this
[32:50] Speaker 2: came to me from none other than our first Chief
[32:53] Speaker 2: of Defense Staff, General Bippin Rabat, when I used to
[32:56] Speaker 2: have these long, ask me anything kind of conversations with him,
[33:00] Speaker 2: and I asked him that first your two things. I said,
[33:04] Speaker 2: you know, you're in the middle of a crisis. Now,
[33:06] Speaker 2: who do you think is going to come to your help?
[33:07] Speaker 2: He says, nobody is going to come to our health.
[33:10] Speaker 2: So you know, this is the reason we have nuclear weapons.
[33:13] Speaker 2: We are design our entire system is designed to fight
[33:16] Speaker 2: by ourselves. So that's why when I heard what Trump
[33:19] Speaker 2: said yesterday to Prime Minister Modive, I'm going to come
[33:21] Speaker 2: to your help if anyone attacks you or something, I
[33:24] Speaker 2: was just laughing. No, we don't need anyone's sistance because
[33:27] Speaker 2: our entire you know, our military posture is is predicated
[33:33] Speaker 2: on the fact that no one will come to our assistance,
[33:35] Speaker 2: and which is why we had to go for nuclear weapons.
[33:38] Speaker 2: We had no other course. If you run an independent
[33:40] Speaker 2: foreign policy, you're not aligned with any block, you're not
[33:43] Speaker 2: a treaty Ali, you don't have anyone's nuclear umbrella. Then
[33:46] Speaker 2: you have to build your own nuclear weapons. And this
[33:50] Speaker 2: scholarship has been on from the nineteen sixty sixty four onwards,
[33:53] Speaker 2: where a lot of scholars in both the Indian military
[33:59] Speaker 2: and in the me said that we need to get
[34:01] Speaker 2: nuclear weapons fast. And interesting point is how did the
[34:05] Speaker 2: Americans realize that we were getting a nuclear bomb? Because
[34:09] Speaker 2: beginning in the late nineteen sixties or early seventies on,
[34:13] Speaker 2: suddenly there was no literature or Indian nuclear weapons programs.
[34:17] Speaker 2: So that was I picked that up in a CIA
[34:20] Speaker 2: an analyssis of India. They said that, you know, suddenly
[34:22] Speaker 2: there was until the late sixties, there was a lot
[34:25] Speaker 2: of scholars who were writing in Colonel palso Cerfence. So
[34:27] Speaker 2: the very far sighted paper that he wrote in the
[34:30] Speaker 2: USI United Services Institution way back in nineteen sixties. I've
[34:34] Speaker 2: asked for a copy. I want to read that paper.
[34:36] Speaker 2: I got so an excerpt of that where he's talking
[34:38] Speaker 2: about using atomic demolition munitions, which is basically tactical nukes
[34:43] Speaker 2: toward of the Chinese and stuff. This is the kind
[34:46] Speaker 2: of scholarship that was on and then suddenly you see,
[34:48] Speaker 2: you know, everything is done. There's a zip lip, no
[34:51] Speaker 2: discussion on nuclear weapons. Then that to the Americans say
[34:54] Speaker 2: they can check up pomp, you know. But so our
[34:57] Speaker 2: posture has been like that, we should have focused on
[35:00] Speaker 2: the Chinese threat, which is to winter stocking, getting our
[35:05] Speaker 2: clothes equipment, because if you're going to fight the Chinese
[35:07] Speaker 2: in those kind of altitudes, you need to have search capacity,
[35:11] Speaker 2: you need to have the ability to you know, not
[35:14] Speaker 2: only physically move troops into theater very quickly, but also
[35:18] Speaker 2: to get them, to equip them, to give them their weapons,
[35:21] Speaker 2: all of that. So this is something we might have
[35:24] Speaker 2: been deficient in doing in the last couple of years.
[35:26] Speaker 2: But now in twenty twenty six, all that is history.
[35:31] Speaker 2: I think we are far more equipped today than we
[35:34] Speaker 2: were ever in the past, and that would make it
[35:38] Speaker 2: so much more difficult for the Chinese to you know,
[35:41] Speaker 2: try and take by force what they claim through you know,
[35:44] Speaker 2: law fare and through all of these treaties and claims
[35:46] Speaker 2: and all of that. But the flip side to that
[35:50] Speaker 2: is that warfare also has changed. You know, the kind
[35:53] Speaker 2: of changes that we've seen in warfare in the last
[35:55] Speaker 2: couple of months, I think is unprecedented at least not
[35:59] Speaker 2: since the end of the First World War Treaty o
[36:02] Speaker 2: Versa that you mentioned. Not since the First World War
[36:05] Speaker 2: have you seen this kind of you know, change in
[36:09] Speaker 2: war fighting tactics, techniques where you know, missile the rise
[36:15] Speaker 2: of dram as they call it, you know, drones, rockets,
[36:17] Speaker 2: utllery and missiles has you know, completely changed the way
[36:23] Speaker 2: what wars are fought. We saw that. We saw a
[36:25] Speaker 2: sample of that in Absindur, where you saw the Indian
[36:28] Speaker 2: military inflicting such losses on Pakistan without crossing the border.
[36:32] Speaker 2: You saw the Iranians holding off the most powerful military
[36:37] Speaker 2: in the world, where you had blue water assets that
[36:40] Speaker 2: were pretty much useless in brown waters. You know that
[36:43] Speaker 2: kind of scenario. So with China, I think it's our
[36:49] Speaker 2: focus right now as it should be, to make it
[36:53] Speaker 2: make the military option almost impossible for China to ever consider.
[36:58] Speaker 1: Yeah, right, we'll talk more about this, but after a
[37:01] Speaker 1: quick break.
[37:02] Speaker 3: The new framework that the Modi government and the entire
[37:07] Speaker 3: task forces have evolved. Is or just let's say, says
[37:11] Speaker 3: the opposite. It says self, certify, use third parties. You
[37:16] Speaker 3: don't need to go to government and do it. Have
[37:18] Speaker 3: third party experts that audit your various applications and reports
[37:23] Speaker 3: that you give monitored digitally. We are now in an
[37:26] Speaker 3: ai world. There's so much it can be done without
[37:29] Speaker 3: having to interface with government or go personally to any
[37:31] Speaker 3: of these places and intervene when something actually goes wrong.
[37:36] Speaker 3: The state stops being a gatekeeper and starts being a regulator.
[37:42] Speaker 2: It is enforcement that is key.
[37:45] Speaker 3: So it stops being an inspector and starts being an auditor,
[37:49] Speaker 3: stops being the institution that must say yes before anything
[37:52] Speaker 3: hat began, and becomes the institution. The state becomes the
[37:56] Speaker 3: institution that steps in only when something goes wrong. Now,
[38:01] Speaker 3: Raji Goaba, heading the Reform committee, called it a change
[38:04] Speaker 3: not just in laws and rules, but in the very
[38:08] Speaker 3: grammar of governance itself.
[38:15] Speaker 1: Welcome back something I was going to move in the
[38:18] Speaker 1: second half of this episode to a couple of controversial
[38:21] Speaker 1: points about the about what's happened in the last six years.
[38:26] Speaker 1: But what you said just before the break actually just
[38:28] Speaker 1: put a thought in me which I want to sort
[38:30] Speaker 1: of prediscuss. You talked about rocket raw rockets, rocket forces,
[38:36] Speaker 1: how that's been on the rise, and that's what we've seen,
[38:39] Speaker 1: whether it's the Russia Ukraine War or around US War.
[38:43] Speaker 1: When I look at the map and geography of India
[38:46] Speaker 1: and China, something is very stark. A lot of China,
[38:50] Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of Western China is sparse,
[38:53] Speaker 1: sparsely populard, it's just blank China's population, China's hub of
[38:59] Speaker 1: economic activity is East. Yes, very far away from us.
[39:05] Speaker 1: Our cities, some of our big cities are looked at
[39:07] Speaker 1: quite close to the l S. Comparatively speaking, even the
[39:10] Speaker 1: La Dark and the areas along the l S also
[39:13] Speaker 1: sparssbord for India. But comparatively speaking, when you look at
[39:16] Speaker 1: the maps of Indian and China, it's pretty close to
[39:20] Speaker 1: the l S. So the question I'm trying to sort of,
[39:23] Speaker 1: what I'm trying to figure out is, if I put
[39:26] Speaker 1: it very simply, it would be very it would be
[39:28] Speaker 1: easier for China to be able to target Indian hubs
[39:32] Speaker 1: of activities, whether it's cities or economic activities, versus us
[39:37] Speaker 1: being able to target their economic centers and cities. What
[39:42] Speaker 1: are your.
[39:42] Speaker 2: Thoughts on that. Yeah, absolutely no, that's a fact. They
[39:45] Speaker 2: What you mentioned is that you're looking at geography, and
[39:49] Speaker 2: you know, China sits behind the wall of the Tibetan Plateau.
[39:53] Speaker 2: The Tibetan Plateau is like two millions square long. It's
[39:56] Speaker 2: almost the size of India. You know, it's the size
[39:59] Speaker 2: of pain in France, Germany all put together. It's a
[40:02] Speaker 2: massive geographical feature. And that is actually the great Wall
[40:06] Speaker 2: of China today if you look at it, it's not
[40:08] Speaker 2: the silly wall that they tried to build hundreds of
[40:12] Speaker 2: years back. This is the great Wall of China when
[40:14] Speaker 2: it comes to us. And of course the Himalayas. Yes,
[40:17] Speaker 2: so look at the Himalayas, and then beyond the Himalayas
[40:20] Speaker 2: you have the Tibetan plant. This is a formidable geographical obstructions. Now,
[40:24] Speaker 2: the point that you mentioned about our cities being in
[40:27] Speaker 2: range of Chinese assets, military assets, is absolutely on point.
[40:32] Speaker 2: And that was one of the reasons that led to
[40:36] Speaker 2: Prime Minister N. Aarrow in nineteen sixty two not to
[40:38] Speaker 2: deploy the Indian Air Force because he had been poorly
[40:43] Speaker 2: advised by not just the US ambassador, but also within
[40:49] Speaker 2: his own military people are advising him that if you
[40:52] Speaker 2: deploy the Indian Air Force, the Chinese will start bombing
[40:55] Speaker 2: Kolkata and they will bomb other Indian cities along the
[40:59] Speaker 2: Indo Gangetic plane. But did What they didn't factor in
[41:04] Speaker 2: was the intelligence that was already there, which Chinese pilots
[41:08] Speaker 2: were defected to Taiwan, were telling them that look, Mao's
[41:11] Speaker 2: planes aren't flying. The rift to the Soviet Union was
[41:16] Speaker 2: so deep by then, they didn't have spare parts, they
[41:18] Speaker 2: didn't have equipment to service their air force and their bombers,
[41:22] Speaker 2: so they were in a very poor material state. And
[41:24] Speaker 2: this was one of those you know, when I went
[41:27] Speaker 2: to Ladak in twenty twenty and when I saw the
[41:29] Speaker 2: Air Force coming in literally in waves of transports and
[41:33] Speaker 2: fighter jets, and all I said, look, clearly, this is
[41:36] Speaker 2: not going to be nineteen sixty two again. We didn't
[41:39] Speaker 2: deploy the Indian Air Force. Then catastrophic error of judgment,
[41:43] Speaker 2: because while our troops were being beaten by the Chinese
[41:47] Speaker 2: on the ground along the LAC, the Indian Air Force
[41:52] Speaker 2: could have gone in, could have saved the day. And
[41:54] Speaker 2: this is something that airpower experts on our side. It's that,
[41:58] Speaker 2: you know, it's a it's a wound till date that
[42:02] Speaker 2: exists on our side. That look, if we had deployed
[42:04] Speaker 2: the air force, we could have won the day in
[42:05] Speaker 2: nineteen sixty two. We didn't. So the Tibetan Plateau it's there.
[42:10] Speaker 2: The Himalayas are still there. We have to figure out
[42:13] Speaker 2: with this proposed conventional rocket force to bring Chinese assets
[42:18] Speaker 2: within range because as you mentioned, many of our cities
[42:22] Speaker 2: are within the range of Chinese missiles. I hope they
[42:25] Speaker 2: don't target civilian infrastructure and they keep the fighting only
[42:29] Speaker 2: if in the you know, unlikely scenario I'm saying unlikely
[42:33] Speaker 2: scenario of a India China war. If there is a
[42:36] Speaker 2: targeting of Indian cities, that would be terribly unfortunate. But
[42:41] Speaker 2: then we will also have to create ways of striking
[42:45] Speaker 2: back at China over across the Tibetan Plateau, over the Himalayas,
[42:49] Speaker 2: look at other ways of doing that, because you know,
[42:53] Speaker 2: as we've seen in warfare, if you don't raise the
[42:56] Speaker 2: cost of a conflict on the aggressor, then he is
[42:58] Speaker 2: going to force you to you know, submit to his
[43:02] Speaker 2: will and to agree to his terms and conditions. So
[43:05] Speaker 2: today we have the ability to inflict enormous damage on
[43:09] Speaker 2: Chinese military infrastructure on the Tibetan Plateau. So all of
[43:13] Speaker 2: the airfields, roads, highways, bridges, everything that He's created over
[43:17] Speaker 2: the last two decades or so, you can do an
[43:20] Speaker 2: opsindur on them. Right, you can hit all of these
[43:24] Speaker 2: bases precisely with the kind of war fighting equipment like
[43:29] Speaker 2: the BrahMos missiles that you used against Pakistan, those can
[43:32] Speaker 2: be used against Chinese bases in the event of a conflict.
[43:35] Speaker 2: I'm not suggesting that India is going to go out
[43:37] Speaker 2: and start shooting at China on the first day of
[43:40] Speaker 2: the conflict, but if it was to build up to this,
[43:43] Speaker 2: then every single Chinese airfield, bridge, highway base, rocket force
[43:49] Speaker 2: unit all along the LAC is fair game for Indian forces.
[43:54] Speaker 2: So I think the Chinese also understand that now if
[43:56] Speaker 2: they try to escalate the conflict by hitting our cities,
[44:00] Speaker 2: you know, bringing our populations under pressure, because that is
[44:03] Speaker 2: what is being done. And if you see the way
[44:05] Speaker 2: warfare is playing out in the last couple of I'm
[44:09] Speaker 2: not saying months, you've seen Iranian cities being targeted. Iran
[44:13] Speaker 2: has struck back at GCC City, Russia, Ukraine. It's all
[44:18] Speaker 2: city warfare there. Their targeting economic infrastructure, airports, all of that.
[44:22] Speaker 2: If China does that, then we will have no option
[44:24] Speaker 2: but to you know, position our missile assets in a
[44:28] Speaker 2: way that the Chinese mainland, which is to the east,
[44:33] Speaker 2: then comes under our firing range, because there has to
[44:36] Speaker 2: be a kind of parity in this conflict. You cannot,
[44:39] Speaker 2: you know, go into this conflict with just one hand
[44:42] Speaker 2: and you know, tie the other one behind your back.
[44:45] Speaker 1: I think this is where something that's very close to
[44:48] Speaker 1: your heart, something that probably causes you a lot of heartburn,
[44:51] Speaker 1: comes in nuclear powered attack submarines because you have your
[44:56] Speaker 1: nuclear powered ballistic submarinescause those are not weapons of war,
[45:00] Speaker 1: those are political weapons, strategic weapons. So with your nuclear
[45:04] Speaker 1: power bulistic missile submarines, you can probably target most of
[45:08] Speaker 1: eastern China while sitting in the way of Bengal. But
[45:10] Speaker 1: yet I think we need to develop what I was
[45:13] Speaker 1: talking about, nuclear power attack submarines which could hypothetically have
[45:17] Speaker 1: the range, the endurance, the speed to be able to
[45:20] Speaker 1: go closer to Chinese eastern coast.
[45:23] Speaker 2: Attack subm You're looking at nuclear power attack submarines armed
[45:27] Speaker 2: with conventional originals missiles that would be of course, an
[45:30] Speaker 2: attack submarine is the only way that you can go
[45:33] Speaker 2: into contested waters which are heavily defended. That, of course
[45:38] Speaker 2: is there that's required. But we also need that conventional
[45:41] Speaker 2: missile force, right because attack submarines take years to build.
[45:45] Speaker 2: Our first attack subs are starting starting now construction. They're
[45:49] Speaker 2: under construction. They will join the Indian Naval Fleet in
[45:54] Speaker 2: the mid twenty thirties or so, eight or nine years
[45:56] Speaker 2: from now. These are long gestation projects. If you want
[46:00] Speaker 2: to do this in a very short period of time,
[46:02] Speaker 2: again for deterrence, not for to be the aggressor or anything,
[46:06] Speaker 2: but to deter conflict. If you have to quickly build
[46:09] Speaker 2: up your capabilities, you have to build a conventional missile force.
[46:15] Speaker 2: You have to build a conventional rocket face. You can
[46:17] Speaker 2: call it whatever you want. My friend lefferin general Pr
[46:21] Speaker 2: prashangru I do a weekly podcast with, has suggested that
[46:26] Speaker 2: you use the Indian Army's existing artillery divisions. The army
[46:31] Speaker 2: has three artillery divisions. They're armed with everything. They have
[46:34] Speaker 2: the BrahMos, they have the Pinaka, they have long range artillery.
[46:37] Speaker 2: You know tube, how it serves everything. Use that as
[46:43] Speaker 2: the bedrock for creating an even more potent rocket force
[46:47] Speaker 2: rather than creating a new structure. You know in India
[46:50] Speaker 2: creating new structures. How problematic it is, How long these
[46:53] Speaker 2: projects are. They're like building nuclear submarines. They take ten
[46:57] Speaker 2: to fifteen years to build. I mean theater commands. Prime
[47:00] Speaker 2: Minister announces it in twenty nineteen, it's what year seven
[47:04] Speaker 2: and we're still debating, right, So we are wonderful debating societies.
[47:09] Speaker 2: Everybody's everybody has an opinion. When it's one point four
[47:13] Speaker 2: billion people with social media and smartphones, then can you
[47:17] Speaker 2: imagine the cacophony in the hall? Right? So these kind
[47:21] Speaker 2: of projects need to be expedited because, like I said,
[47:24] Speaker 2: we're entering a very new and a very dangerous ping
[47:27] Speaker 2: of conflict which is more than just the military. I'm
[47:32] Speaker 2: just listening to what former Foreign Secretary Vijagokley said that
[47:36] Speaker 2: what we're looking at right now in the world is
[47:38] Speaker 2: that you're looking at a kind of a G two
[47:41] Speaker 2: and that is to me the most worrying aspect of
[47:45] Speaker 2: what Trump is doing, where he's treating China as an equal,
[47:49] Speaker 2: he's sort of, you know, bending to their will, says okay,
[47:54] Speaker 2: Shijin Ping g Chaa, Indoor, pacom Oka, Indo, Nkaldia, Pakombadiah.
[48:03] Speaker 2: And if you see the way his body language she's
[48:06] Speaker 2: look at She's body language versus Trump's body language India,
[48:09] Speaker 2: and you know it was, it's dark and gloomy for
[48:13] Speaker 2: the rest of the world, which.
[48:14] Speaker 1: Remember a greeting the subject absolutely something like that.
[48:18] Speaker 2: And China doesn't believe in a G two. They only
[48:21] Speaker 2: believe in G one, right, and they are the G
[48:23] Speaker 2: one of the world, right. And this is something that
[48:27] Speaker 2: would worry everybody who has depended on an American umbrella
[48:32] Speaker 2: until now, which is South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, the entire Ran, Yes, India, Well,
[48:39] Speaker 2: we know what the Chinese are. We've known them for
[48:41] Speaker 2: a while, the entire GCC world. Because you look at
[48:46] Speaker 2: the agreement, it's literally he's saying, okay, fine, Iran has
[48:48] Speaker 2: the right to get you started this war on the
[48:52] Speaker 2: twentieth of February, saying I want to make sure Iran
[48:55] Speaker 2: never has nuclear missiles. And he's literally surrendered, he's given them,
[49:00] Speaker 2: has them, good Lord. Can you imagine what's going on
[49:03] Speaker 2: through the GCC country is they said, boss, we need
[49:05] Speaker 2: to get our nukes right now. These guys are not
[49:07] Speaker 2: going to protect us. Europe is feeling defenseless right now
[49:11] Speaker 2: because of the fracture between NATO and the United States.
[49:13] Speaker 2: And then you look at the power of one person,
[49:19] Speaker 2: the ability he has to change history. And I'm going
[49:22] Speaker 2: back to what started the second First World War, which
[49:26] Speaker 2: led to the Second World War. It was that assassin's bullet.
[49:29] Speaker 2: The Archduke Franz for dinner and his wife Sophia were
[49:32] Speaker 2: killed by Gabriel princep. He fired two or three shots,
[49:35] Speaker 2: killed both of them. So that changed history in a sense.
[49:40] Speaker 2: I'm now thinking in twenty twenty six Trump's actions. Trump
[49:45] Speaker 2: is not an assassin. He's been on the receiving end
[49:47] Speaker 2: of many assassination plots, none have succeeded. But is Trump then,
[49:54] Speaker 2: to the twenty first century what Gavriel Princehip was to
[49:57] Speaker 2: the early twentieth Is he the assassin's bullet that's going
[50:01] Speaker 2: to change the course of history and result in so
[50:05] Speaker 2: many people doing their own thing, charting their own independent courses,
[50:09] Speaker 2: saying that we can't rely on the United States because
[50:12] Speaker 2: the United States is the dominant superparer. It's been so
[50:16] Speaker 2: it proved itself first in the First World War, it
[50:19] Speaker 2: proved itself again in the Second World War, and for
[50:22] Speaker 2: eighty years, eighty one years, it's been the unchallenged human
[50:26] Speaker 2: literally and today by the words, deeds, actions of one
[50:31] Speaker 2: man who's accommodating Iran, who's unable to force a military
[50:40] Speaker 2: defeat upon Iran, gets kind of, you know, in a
[50:46] Speaker 2: summer calling it a strategic defeat. This is literally like
[50:50] Speaker 2: what happened in Vietnam or Afghanistan in that time. What
[50:55] Speaker 2: happens to the rest of the world. Guys who depend
[50:57] Speaker 2: on the American umbrella, the smaller countries, the Vietnam for instance,
[51:03] Speaker 2: what if China decides that, hey, listen, you know all
[51:06] Speaker 2: of Vietnam, Taiwan. It's not just Taiwan. I want Vietnam
[51:09] Speaker 2: as well. So how are they going to depend on
[51:12] Speaker 2: the United States? So I think what you're seeing is
[51:14] Speaker 2: a fundamental reordering of the global you know, geopolitics in
[51:19] Speaker 2: a way that we've not seen. Possibly ninety one was
[51:22] Speaker 2: the big fracture, because I mean, no one can match
[51:25] Speaker 2: what happened to the US. USS are collapsed, right. I
[51:29] Speaker 2: think after ninety one, thirty five years later, you're seeing
[51:31] Speaker 2: a major reordering restructuring of global relations geopolitics. And that
[51:38] Speaker 2: is where this entire thing between concert between India, China
[51:43] Speaker 2: and the United States become so important, because these are
[51:47] Speaker 2: going to be the three dominant economies of the twenty
[51:49] Speaker 2: first century. Middle of the century, it's going to be
[51:53] Speaker 2: China is going to be number one, the United States
[51:55] Speaker 2: is going to be number two, and we are going
[51:56] Speaker 2: to be number three. And beyond that twenty sixties, looking
[52:02] Speaker 2: at you know, demographics, populations and all that, it possibly
[52:06] Speaker 2: could be even India's turn. So how these three countries,
[52:10] Speaker 2: the relationship between them is extremely important, and which is
[52:14] Speaker 2: why I was saying that on TV on India Today yesterday.
[52:18] Speaker 2: I said, look, Modi and Trump, it's not just about
[52:22] Speaker 2: two individuals, It's about two countries who've taken a decision
[52:27] Speaker 2: to come together. They've built their bridges. They were called.
[52:30] Speaker 2: You know this, US ambassador Dennis Cooks wrote this beautiful book.
[52:35] Speaker 2: I recommend this mandatory reading for anyone who wants to
[52:38] Speaker 2: understand the trajectory of India US ties before ninety one.
[52:42] Speaker 2: It's called Estrange Democracies. It's a beautiful book. It's one
[52:46] Speaker 2: of a kind where he actually charts out this entire
[52:49] Speaker 2: thing of how did these two democracies suddenly, you know,
[52:52] Speaker 2: fall out in seventy one, and what are the reasons
[52:55] Speaker 2: for that? And there were a lot of cooperation, there's
[52:57] Speaker 2: a lot of competition, and of course they become adversarial
[53:00] Speaker 2: literally during the Cold War, particularly after nineteen seventy one.
[53:05] Speaker 2: We are the United States is our largest trading partner,
[53:07] Speaker 2: two hundred billion dollars of trade. We run a surplus
[53:11] Speaker 2: with them. The two systems are deeply entrenched. They have
[53:15] Speaker 2: You've got massive populations there. We meet the United States
[53:20] Speaker 2: as much as the US needs us. And if the US,
[53:23] Speaker 2: you know, looks at these kind of you know, one
[53:26] Speaker 2: president things trying to you know, chart out independent courses,
[53:31] Speaker 2: dispensing with allies and all that, that's going to cause
[53:33] Speaker 2: us a great deal of harm. But I think our
[53:37] Speaker 2: leadership has decided, our government has decided to look beyond
[53:41] Speaker 2: just from Trump is here to copy another two years.
[53:45] Speaker 2: God knows what's going to happen after the third of
[53:47] Speaker 2: November midterms is going to be brutal. It seems looking
[53:50] Speaker 2: at his approval ratings, Trump is playing to his domestic audience, right.
[53:54] Speaker 2: He's got like one of the lowest approval ratings of
[53:57] Speaker 2: a second term president. This is low thirties or forties,
[54:01] Speaker 2: depending on which pole you look at. He's really desperate,
[54:04] Speaker 2: he wants a win, he wants to spin it out,
[54:07] Speaker 2: and you know, he's running his own narrative warfare what
[54:10] Speaker 2: Pakistan was running after rops Indoor or we brought down
[54:13] Speaker 2: some Indian aircraft. He's been repeating the same thing, you know,
[54:16] Speaker 2: parroting that line about no, I destroyed their FOS, I
[54:18] Speaker 2: destroyed the navy, I I hit so many targets. He
[54:21] Speaker 2: says that every time to reinforce that narrative. But the
[54:24] Speaker 2: fact is that the US is not in a good
[54:27] Speaker 2: place right now, especially after this agreement.
[54:31] Speaker 1: Right you know, on some closing thoughts, before I go
[54:36] Speaker 1: to that controversial part, I want to discuss with you.
[54:39] Speaker 1: It's sort of pointless to ask, do you foresee another
[54:43] Speaker 1: Gulan valley or another sort of cash happening? Because I
[54:45] Speaker 1: think you said it keep China wants to keep the
[54:47] Speaker 1: las an issue not hot perhaps an issue it can
[54:52] Speaker 1: heat up whenever it wants to, basically whenever it feels
[54:55] Speaker 1: the need to needle in for whatever reason. Yeah, back then,
[54:58] Speaker 1: there was speculation that with the world's focus on blaming
[55:02] Speaker 1: China for COVID, for accusations that China deliberately let out
[55:09] Speaker 1: COVID or was you know, not not careful enough to
[55:13] Speaker 1: sort of keep the virus in Wuhan where the epicenter
[55:16] Speaker 1: of the outbreak was.
[55:18] Speaker 3: Uh.
[55:18] Speaker 1: There's also, like you said, the it was just like
[55:21] Speaker 1: you know, India building and frustion of China was trying
[55:23] Speaker 1: to do its old policym but was faced against something
[55:27] Speaker 1: you did not expect. Would you say that regardless of
[55:32] Speaker 1: whether or not another such friction point for such clash happens,
[55:35] Speaker 1: because like you said, there were there were several instances
[55:38] Speaker 1: that happened over the lad that have happened over the
[55:40] Speaker 1: last one episodema. There was also a small stand up
[55:43] Speaker 1: in a place called Bertus in twenty fifteen. Do Klamb
[55:47] Speaker 1: was the biggest one that and then of course Kalaban happened.
[55:49] Speaker 1: So regardless of whether or not something like that happens
[55:52] Speaker 1: a physical clash or enable table confrontation, just a basic
[55:56] Speaker 1: standard with flags and all that, UH, India has raised
[56:01] Speaker 1: the cost for China to do something like this, and
[56:03] Speaker 1: that will always play at the back of the planner's mind.
[56:06] Speaker 2: Absolutely, and I think the way we responded, we already
[56:10] Speaker 2: discussed that militarily, you know, by climping down on Chinese
[56:15] Speaker 2: investments into India. You know, we told the Chinese, look,
[56:19] Speaker 2: India is going to be one of the largest consuming
[56:22] Speaker 2: market in the middle of this twenty first century, right,
[56:26] Speaker 2: and that's the Chinese are looking at over capacity. They
[56:29] Speaker 2: literally no place for them. They need that market access.
[56:33] Speaker 2: But now I think six years later, there's been a
[56:36] Speaker 2: kind of a reassessment on both sides because when the
[56:42] Speaker 2: Prime Minister went into this meeting with President Trum the
[56:44] Speaker 2: day prior to that, you know, very interesting phrase that
[56:47] Speaker 2: he used was trust but verify. Yeah, that's actually a
[56:50] Speaker 2: Russian proverb which President Reagan used to use with Gorbachev, right, So,
[56:56] Speaker 2: and they used to laugh about it because it's like
[56:58] Speaker 2: a Russian thing, and he's use it so often. It's
[57:01] Speaker 2: interesting that Prime Minister Movie used it for the United
[57:06] Speaker 2: States and not China. We used to say this about
[57:09] Speaker 2: China's five six years back. But looking at President Trump's
[57:13] Speaker 2: actions in the last couple of months, it's been sixteen
[57:17] Speaker 2: months since yesterday's meeting between President Trump and Prime Minister Movie,
[57:22] Speaker 2: I can't recall the last time an Indian Prime minister
[57:25] Speaker 2: didn't meet a US president face to face or even
[57:29] Speaker 2: on the phone or I think they've had some phone conversation,
[57:32] Speaker 2: but not face to face. It's one of the longest
[57:34] Speaker 2: such things, and that reveals the kind of distress on
[57:37] Speaker 2: both sides. At the same time, there's been a thawing
[57:40] Speaker 2: with China. And I'm just looking at Bollywood again. There's
[57:44] Speaker 2: that movie Galwan, which.
[57:46] Speaker 1: Was you know, yes, very very important, very good part
[57:49] Speaker 1: Salman Khan.
[57:50] Speaker 2: That isn't getting a clearance. It's not probably going to
[57:54] Speaker 2: get a sense of certificate. Yeah, I would have.
[57:55] Speaker 1: Thought that because I'm pretty sure that movie is all
[57:57] Speaker 1: going to be about glorifying the me and you know,
[58:00] Speaker 1: yes soldiers. So you would not think that the government
[58:03] Speaker 1: have an issue with that, but you want to I.
[58:07] Speaker 2: Think they they want to keep it on the low boil,
[58:11] Speaker 2: at least for the next couple of months because you've
[58:13] Speaker 2: got a very important summit. President is coming to September.
[58:16] Speaker 2: September when is eleven to thirteen, Yes, in Delhi, So
[58:19] Speaker 2: India is the chairperson of the Bricks Summit. Eleven all
[58:23] Speaker 2: eleven countries are very important. So you have the original Brazil, Russia, India, China,
[58:29] Speaker 2: of course South Africa and all the other new members
[58:32] Speaker 2: as well, Ue, Saudi Arabia, Egypt. All of these countries
[58:36] Speaker 2: are coming. So it's a very very important thing. I
[58:38] Speaker 2: don't think the government wants a movie that's as you know,
[58:42] Speaker 2: well not exactly anti China, but that would be seen
[58:46] Speaker 2: as by the Chinese like it basically, Yeah, they say look,
[58:49] Speaker 2: you know, look what is there? Yeah, so it will
[58:51] Speaker 2: become one of those kind of things. So I have
[58:53] Speaker 2: a feeling that that movie will be released only after
[58:56] Speaker 2: the Bricks Summit, so it's possibly going to be looking
[58:59] Speaker 2: at a post September or a post the Vali release
[59:03] Speaker 2: or a post release. But I think Salman's movies all
[59:06] Speaker 2: always release on E So this is the thing that
[59:12] Speaker 2: we are looking at now that we don't trust the
[59:15] Speaker 2: United States, we're trying to build trust with China.
[59:18] Speaker 1: I mean, who can forget that photo. I forget forgot
[59:21] Speaker 1: which summit or World Live in it was, but it
[59:23] Speaker 1: was pm O, the Vladimir Putin and ging Pin. Yeah,
[59:26] Speaker 1: some event, and that photod on massively viral. People saying
[59:30] Speaker 1: that Trump would not be liking this.
[59:31] Speaker 2: Yeah, I actually and you know, the thing is that
[59:34] Speaker 2: you have to give it to these three leaders. I'm
[59:36] Speaker 2: not a huge fan of Shei Jan Pains, but the
[59:39] Speaker 2: thing is that these three leaders are serious politicians. Yes,
[59:43] Speaker 2: and they're they're you know, as they say Lumba, you
[59:47] Speaker 2: know in Hindi, as you said, they're they're long term players.
[59:50] Speaker 2: They're serious politicians. They have no time for this kind
[59:53] Speaker 2: of you know item number you know politicians, because I mean,
[59:58] Speaker 2: look at Prime Minism Modi. He was sworn in twenty fourteen.
[1:00:03] Speaker 2: He's the longest tenured Indian Prime minister since Prime Minister
[1:00:08] Speaker 2: Ai or whichever way you look at it, elect it
[1:00:10] Speaker 2: would be the longest he's seen for American presidents. He's
[1:00:15] Speaker 2: going to see a fifth American president on the twentieth
[1:00:18] Speaker 2: of January twenty twenty nine before he goes into the
[1:00:21] Speaker 2: Logsa Bay in May twenty twenty nine. Right, that is
[1:00:24] Speaker 2: the number of prime presidents that he has seen. I mean,
[1:00:28] Speaker 2: he can't be responding to every you know president. He
[1:00:31] Speaker 2: obviously he has a longer view. He's a longer version
[1:00:34] Speaker 2: of things that look fine, this guy's setting the house
[1:00:37] Speaker 2: on fire, can I you know, you know, put out
[1:00:39] Speaker 2: some fires. Make sure that this relationship goes forward, because
[1:00:43] Speaker 2: we've got a thing with the United States going at
[1:00:46] Speaker 2: least the next couple of decades.
[1:00:48] Speaker 1: Actually, you know, I think this might be sort of
[1:00:50] Speaker 1: a blessing in disguise, because what you can do now is,
[1:00:54] Speaker 1: you know, like you know, keep us on the back
[1:00:56] Speaker 1: burner and your sort of fences with China.
[1:00:59] Speaker 2: Yeah, and then.
[1:00:59] Speaker 1: Perhaps later when you have a more rational US president
[1:01:03] Speaker 1: in office, use that as leverage too.
[1:01:05] Speaker 2: Yeah, possibly twenty nine. And you know, like I was
[1:01:09] Speaker 2: saying that all the American businesses when they were heavily
[1:01:12] Speaker 2: invested in China and the Chinese started then turning the
[1:01:15] Speaker 2: tap on them, turning the screws on them. They had
[1:01:18] Speaker 2: this China plus one model. Yeah, right, So which is
[1:01:21] Speaker 2: you go to Vietnam, you go to India. So Apple
[1:01:23] Speaker 2: came to India this China plus one model. So what
[1:01:26] Speaker 2: India started doing is the United States plus one model,
[1:01:30] Speaker 2: which is like, yeah, this guy is crazy, Let's go
[1:01:33] Speaker 2: to some other place. And where we've gone our US
[1:01:37] Speaker 2: plus one is UK and EU. Yes, so that's where
[1:01:41] Speaker 2: we've done our trade deals. We've got a trade deal
[1:01:43] Speaker 2: with the UK, We've got a trade deal with the
[1:01:45] Speaker 2: European Union, we've got some very big arms deals going
[1:01:49] Speaker 2: on with both countries, which I mean, to my mind
[1:01:52] Speaker 2: is terribly you know, lopsided. The kind of money that
[1:01:56] Speaker 2: we're going to be spending there. You know, you're not
[1:01:58] Speaker 2: going to have much of indigenous capacity if you're going
[1:02:01] Speaker 2: to buy such enormous quantities of you know, equipment. But
[1:02:06] Speaker 2: that's something we can discuss on another podcast. But the
[1:02:10] Speaker 2: fact is that we have chosen the EU as our
[1:02:13] Speaker 2: you know, halfway house while we kind of wait for
[1:02:17] Speaker 2: you know, some kind of predictability I wouldn't say sanity,
[1:02:21] Speaker 2: but at least predictability in the United States to you know,
[1:02:25] Speaker 2: come in.
[1:02:26] Speaker 1: Yeah. A couple of last quick points. The one is
[1:02:31] Speaker 1: about again the gal maniculash and what happened in the
[1:02:34] Speaker 1: day is after and the controversy that had been generated
[1:02:38] Speaker 1: by former Army Chief General Army's unpublished book, a couple
[1:02:44] Speaker 1: of chapters of which were published by the News agency
[1:02:47] Speaker 1: Press Trust of India.
[1:02:48] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[1:02:49] Speaker 1: Uh, And it was something that was raised in Parliament
[1:02:51] Speaker 1: by the leader of Opposition to hul Gandhi. Uh. This
[1:02:54] Speaker 1: is one particular instance that I want to focus on.
[1:02:57] Speaker 1: One sentence is basically this is this was not about
[1:03:00] Speaker 1: the Valley clash. This was I think a few days
[1:03:02] Speaker 1: after when there was some tank sort of stand up
[1:03:05] Speaker 1: movement happening between that China and where General Narmney writes
[1:03:08] Speaker 1: in his book that he had gone to the to
[1:03:10] Speaker 1: the to the political establishment to defence Miss Rajas thing
[1:03:14] Speaker 1: saying what to do and long story short, the answer
[1:03:17] Speaker 1: he was given, after a lot of deliberation within the
[1:03:19] Speaker 1: political establishment was Joe, there are two strands to this.
[1:03:25] Speaker 1: One which I think this is a bit like you know,
[1:03:28] Speaker 1: me going to my boss, my boss thinking about it
[1:03:32] Speaker 1: and seeing this guy is capable enough, he'll know what
[1:03:34] Speaker 1: to do. And the other strand is what the critics say, hey,
[1:03:40] Speaker 1: this was abdigation by the political establishment.
[1:03:43] Speaker 2: Uh.
[1:03:45] Speaker 1: To be fair, there is one I think there is
[1:03:46] Speaker 1: a logical strand to it if you take away the
[1:03:49] Speaker 1: politics affair, which is that going to war in India
[1:03:52] Speaker 1: is a political call, right, it's not a military call.
[1:03:54] Speaker 1: Absolutely So in this case, what if there was some
[1:03:57] Speaker 1: dramatic escalation and you are letting this general decide and
[1:04:01] Speaker 1: what if his decision led to award which I think
[1:04:04] Speaker 1: is a bit of a stretch, But I don't know
[1:04:06] Speaker 1: your thoughts on this.
[1:04:07] Speaker 2: No absolutely, and it's this kind of a scenario should
[1:04:10] Speaker 2: be taught in all higher command classes and all. This
[1:04:14] Speaker 2: is the classic case of what to do in a
[1:04:16] Speaker 2: situation like this where one action by your side or
[1:04:22] Speaker 2: you know, by the other side, could result in conflict
[1:04:25] Speaker 2: where you're looking at both sides shooting. And to be fair,
[1:04:28] Speaker 2: what General Narravni's point was that we could have actually
[1:04:33] Speaker 2: seen both sides opening up with heavy artillery, you know,
[1:04:36] Speaker 2: tig guns and stuff like that in a way that
[1:04:40] Speaker 2: we've possibly not even seen in sixty two because in
[1:04:43] Speaker 2: sixty two armor was used, but not as the numbers
[1:04:46] Speaker 2: were limited. You had more tanks in theater this time
[1:04:50] Speaker 2: around than you ever had in the past. So he
[1:04:52] Speaker 2: was looking at political directives and you know, and to
[1:04:57] Speaker 2: his good fortune, I think the political class trusted his judgments.
[1:05:01] Speaker 2: They uh, they said, do what you think is right,
[1:05:04] Speaker 2: because I don't think the Defense minister, whoever, the NSA,
[1:05:10] Speaker 2: they didn't want to get into the trenches right then
[1:05:12] Speaker 2: and start fighting conflicts. I mean, that is the worst
[1:05:15] Speaker 2: thing that you can do. So while the decision, the
[1:05:18] Speaker 2: overarching decision, is political, the tactical level operations will always
[1:05:23] Speaker 2: be military, and I think they took the right They
[1:05:25] Speaker 2: did the right thing. On the grounder, Yoshi was in command,
[1:05:29] Speaker 2: the Northern Army commander, and he's he and his troops
[1:05:33] Speaker 2: did the right thing, which is to stand up to
[1:05:34] Speaker 2: the Chinese and not be uh, you know, deterred by
[1:05:38] Speaker 2: their show force. So what the Chinese were doing was
[1:05:41] Speaker 2: it was basically a vaga border kind of parade, but
[1:05:45] Speaker 2: you know, not goose stepping things, but with tanks. Right,
[1:05:49] Speaker 2: So you just have to have the judgment to decide
[1:05:53] Speaker 2: that this guy who's marching towards me with great ferocity,
[1:05:57] Speaker 2: that big you know, Pakistani guy, he's not coming here
[1:06:00] Speaker 2: to attack me. He's just doing it. He's it's a
[1:06:02] Speaker 2: show of force kind of you know. Yeah, so you
[1:06:05] Speaker 2: just had to do the same thing. And that's what
[1:06:06] Speaker 2: they did, and it was unfortunately that it was blown
[1:06:09] Speaker 2: out of your portion, and you know, but I think
[1:06:12] Speaker 2: everybody did the right thing, and I think the decisions,
[1:06:16] Speaker 2: the right, correct decisions were taken because I mean, why
[1:06:21] Speaker 2: this was spoken about was the fact is that on
[1:06:24] Speaker 2: the ground in Galvan, there was you know, an unfortunate misunderstanding.
[1:06:28] Speaker 2: There was a fear that this could happen, but with tanks.
[1:06:31] Speaker 2: But the tanks and artillery. So the thing is that
[1:06:34] Speaker 2: if you see tanks coming to you, then you'll have
[1:06:37] Speaker 2: to start opening fire because beyond a point then they
[1:06:40] Speaker 2: start crossing your lines and they overwhelmed your positions, and
[1:06:43] Speaker 2: that's what armored warfare is. But I think the right
[1:06:46] Speaker 2: decisions were taken, and I think those SOPs have now
[1:06:50] Speaker 2: been reinforced on the ground.
[1:06:52] Speaker 1: Also, I think what didn't help in the in this
[1:06:54] Speaker 1: particular controversy was that it was being read out of context.
[1:06:57] Speaker 1: You don't have the full book, you don't have a
[1:06:58] Speaker 1: full chapter, don't have all the pages, all the words,
[1:07:01] Speaker 1: and the general being the professional he is, he chose
[1:07:04] Speaker 1: to stay about this and did not comment on this,
[1:07:06] Speaker 1: so you don't know what certain ten paces before to
[1:07:11] Speaker 1: make you understand this one particular comment. Right, the book
[1:07:15] Speaker 1: is not published because the Defense Ministry has not given
[1:07:18] Speaker 1: the go ahead, which, now that you talked about the
[1:07:21] Speaker 1: Salman Khan film, makes you wonder if it's sort of
[1:07:23] Speaker 1: linked to that as well. But I don't know right
[1:07:26] Speaker 1: last points and this is not about India China, but
[1:07:28] Speaker 1: this is linked to what happened over the last six years,
[1:07:32] Speaker 1: a topic that's very close to in our defense the
[1:07:35] Speaker 1: Zora hour light tank. Why am I talking about this?
[1:07:38] Speaker 1: So the tank came in the headlines because of the
[1:07:42] Speaker 1: China stand up, because this is actually meant for China.
[1:07:45] Speaker 1: This is a light tank. It can be picked up
[1:07:47] Speaker 1: by a helicopters, transported, yeah, transported to the line of
[1:07:52] Speaker 1: actual control. It's been developed by the d r d O.
[1:07:56] Speaker 1: The Army, I think loves it. Tests have happened, trials
[1:07:59] Speaker 1: have happened. Everything is hunky doory, everything is fine, it's ready.
[1:08:03] Speaker 1: But reports now say the army is like, we want
[1:08:08] Speaker 1: to change or armorg. I know, I think fair ass
[1:08:11] Speaker 1: by dangerous territory fighting might happen, China might thro rockets,
[1:08:16] Speaker 1: so you want the tank to be more protected. Fair ass. However,
[1:08:20] Speaker 1: for more protection you just trap on things, which unfortunately
[1:08:24] Speaker 1: makes the tank heavier. So what's happened now You've sort
[1:08:27] Speaker 1: of had to go back to the drawing board makes
[1:08:29] Speaker 1: some redesigns so that the tank remains light and is
[1:08:32] Speaker 1: also as protected as it.
[1:08:35] Speaker 2: So the danger in that DAVE is that your light
[1:08:37] Speaker 2: tank might end up becoming a medium tank. And if
[1:08:40] Speaker 2: it's a medium tank, then you've already got a ten ninety,
[1:08:42] Speaker 2: which is a good medium tank or whatever else that
[1:08:46] Speaker 2: the audio has got. So this thing of shifting goalposts,
[1:08:49] Speaker 2: if that's what you're in, you've got to get your
[1:08:53] Speaker 2: gs q R is right, yes, so you have to
[1:08:56] Speaker 2: you know, and here is again the thing. We've discussed
[1:08:58] Speaker 2: this in the past as well. They've talking without the
[1:09:00] Speaker 2: AMCUP program. Right, you have to have services driving these programs.
[1:09:05] Speaker 2: You have to have services in the driver's seat. Otherwise
[1:09:07] Speaker 2: this is this kind of thing will keep happening that
[1:09:09] Speaker 2: you come up with a fighter jet that nobody asks for,
[1:09:13] Speaker 2: or the Air Force is unhappy with no because you know,
[1:09:17] Speaker 2: he didn't allow me to you know, dictate these pecs
[1:09:19] Speaker 2: or I was in part of his organization. Those kind
[1:09:22] Speaker 2: of things will start coming in. So I think this
[1:09:24] Speaker 2: is a case, this Araba tank. What's happened with the tank?
[1:09:27] Speaker 2: I think software what two years? That's what the Army
[1:09:29] Speaker 2: chief has said. It's going to take two years. You've
[1:09:31] Speaker 2: got to have the armed forces driving all of these projects.
[1:09:34] Speaker 2: Now it's you cannot have that old model of you
[1:09:39] Speaker 2: know what I call the Ashoka Lion syndrome, where you
[1:09:41] Speaker 2: have all the Ashoka Lions, the symbols of the state,
[1:09:44] Speaker 2: but they're all looking in different directions and at some
[1:09:46] Speaker 2: point they converge and say, hey, listen, this guy did this.
[1:09:49] Speaker 2: I didn't you know, he will listen to me that
[1:09:51] Speaker 2: that guy said, you can't order me. I've got a
[1:09:53] Speaker 2: different line of command. So you have the you know,
[1:09:56] Speaker 2: you have the DRD over here that's involved. You have
[1:09:59] Speaker 2: the private sector that's involved, which is lent t, you
[1:10:02] Speaker 2: have the Indian Army that's involved, you have the mood.
[1:10:04] Speaker 2: Everybody is there, but they're not you know, on the
[1:10:06] Speaker 2: same page. So these kind of things again you have
[1:10:09] Speaker 2: to have the armed forces driving it. Fantastic example what
[1:10:14] Speaker 2: me and they've discussed a few weeks back of was
[1:10:16] Speaker 2: the nuclear submarine programs driven by the Indian Navy, which
[1:10:21] Speaker 2: which could have you know, sat out of the whole program.
[1:10:24] Speaker 2: I don't think they were given that option by the way.
[1:10:26] Speaker 2: The political class said no, you have to drive this project. Similarly,
[1:10:30] Speaker 2: all programs, all jet fighters, tanks, whatever, future should be
[1:10:36] Speaker 2: driven by the arm force. You must have a general,
[1:10:40] Speaker 2: preferably from a you know, technical background, you're an engineer, designer.
[1:10:45] Speaker 2: He should be sitting and running these programs rather than
[1:10:48] Speaker 2: these kind of situations happening. You've seen it with the
[1:10:51] Speaker 2: LCA Mark one. It's a successful aircraft project, but their
[1:10:56] Speaker 2: force isn't happy with it, and they have reason to
[1:10:58] Speaker 2: be upset. They've not got their aircraft. It's twenty twenty
[1:11:01] Speaker 2: see yet, Yeah, so many years now, So till the
[1:11:04] Speaker 2: time you don't have services driving it, you will always
[1:11:07] Speaker 2: have these kind of situations. Yeah.
[1:11:09] Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's a good tank, I think, right, it's
[1:11:11] Speaker 1: a it's a great tank.
[1:11:12] Speaker 2: I haven't seen it though. I hope to travel down
[1:11:14] Speaker 2: to Hazira and you know see it. The Prime Minister
[1:11:17] Speaker 2: was there recently. It was there formerly called a heavy
[1:11:21] Speaker 2: engineering thing. It's I think it's called, I forget what
[1:11:24] Speaker 2: Lent now calls it. It's a precision engineering division. But
[1:11:29] Speaker 2: it's a very very it's a strategic asset. It's possibly
[1:11:32] Speaker 2: the only place in India where you're manufacturing submarine hulls. Right,
[1:11:37] Speaker 2: So the nuclear submarine hulls are cut there, the SSN
[1:11:41] Speaker 2: SSBNs they're built there, The tanks are built there. Zorabar
[1:11:45] Speaker 2: tank is built there. They've got a massive facility there
[1:11:49] Speaker 2: in Hazera outside of Surat. That's your state.
[1:11:52] Speaker 1: Yeah right, okay, so you have that's a lot coming
[1:11:55] Speaker 1: to Airbus Airbus.
[1:11:58] Speaker 2: Lent is already there. Then you're looking at what are
[1:12:01] Speaker 2: the projects are coming into. You have Lente Lentees facility. There,
[1:12:06] Speaker 2: you have the air bust thing. Yeah, so you have
[1:12:09] Speaker 2: land c air It's covered. All the dimensions are covered. Right.
[1:12:14] Speaker 1: Great, I think we learned that, sun Lip. I think
[1:12:16] Speaker 1: we've done recorded this a little bit longer than our
[1:12:19] Speaker 1: usual episodes, but I think it was sort of needed.
[1:12:23] Speaker 1: The topic was such so great. Thanks a lot on
[1:12:26] Speaker 1: the fantastic chats.
[1:12:27] Speaker 2: All, thanks for having me as always there.
[1:12:29] Speaker 1: And thanks to our listeners and viewers. That's it for
[1:12:31] Speaker 1: this FECE Defense does for more, tune in next week.
[1:12:33] Speaker 1: Till then, stay safe and do not cross any boundaries
[1:12:35] Speaker 1: without a passport.

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