Sarah Paine

You can start with the light items, diplomacy, public support and denial of public support.

You can move into more expensive things down the menu.

Okay, one of the things you could do is help negotiate a really useful treaty, which the United States did.

It brokered this Indus Water Treaty of 1960.

It's the only time that I know of, maybe you all know of something, where India and Pakistan have signed an agreement

to the massive benefit of both of them.

What does this agreement do?

You can see it's a really dense river system.

Both India and Pakistan need to irrigate.

To do that efficiently, you need dams, and both of them were poor and didn't have the dams.

They were gonna cost a billion dollars.

The United States was willing to kick in half that money if they would both sign the treaty, and no terrorist event or anything derailed it, so they signed it, and this treaty has been, it's been operating some of these dams ever since to enormous benefit of both countries.

Does the United States get any enduring gratitude from either one for doing this?

No.

Zip.

Okay.

Next one is the United States tried to exercise diplomacy to convince the Pakistanis and Indians to settle their differences, and it was a total flop.

Because if you're going to try to befriend both India and Pakistan, you wind up becoming the enemy of one or the other.

And the United States diplomacy was based on certain false assumptions, which are, one, that India and Pakistan could be cajoled into settling their differences.

And their idea is anyone who's so stupid as to think that is crazy.