Sarah Paine

And if you're going, well, what are the origins of these differences?

Partition was brutal.

So the British colonized the Indian subcontinent, and then they left in 1947, and they left really rapidly.

so that there was no time to set up any institutional framework.

And also you're talking millions of people.

And so Pakistan's gonna be one thing and then India's gonna be the other.

And so Hindus are just fleeing, and Sikhs are fleeing out of Pakistan, and Muslims are fleeing out of India, going back and forth, and millions are killed while this is going on.

So this is the origin, at least the modern origin, of why Pakistanis and Indians are so bitter.

In addition, the United States thought, well, surely the China threat is going to make the Indians come around and realize this non-aligned stuff's nonsense.

Not quite.

When India, what is it, aligns, it aligns with Russia, not the United States.

So that doesn't remotely work out the way the United States wanted.

And then the United States thought, well, hey, we in the West were rich.

We give Indians and Pakistanis all this aid.

This'll force them to be nice to us and be less nice to the communists.

Wrong.

India and Pakistan are really astute and they get lots of aid from everybody.

So when the great powers do align, Russia, China, us, or at least two of those align, then you can actually get stuff done.

So that's when you get the Tashkent Agreement for the 1965 war.

This is the United States and Russia both want India and Pakistan to cease and desist and stop blowing each other off the map.