I’m thrilled to launch a new trilogy of double episodes: a lecture series by Professor Sarah Paine of the Naval War College, each followed by a deep Q&A.In this first episode, Prof Paine talks about key decisions by Khrushchev, Mao, Nehru, Bhutto, & Lyndon Johnson that shaped the whole dynamic of South Asia today. This is followed by a Q&A.Come for the spy bases, shoestring nukes, and insight about how great power politics impacts every region.Huge thanks to Substack for hosting this!Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform.SponsorsToday’s episode is brought to you by Scale AI. Scale partners with the U.S. government to fuel America’s AI advantage through their data foundry. The Air Force, Army, Defense Innovation Unit, and Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office all trust Scale to equip their teams with AI-ready data and the technology to build powerful applications.Scale recently introduced Defense Llama, Scale's latest solution available for military personnel. With Defense Llama, military personnel can harness the power of AI to plan military or intelligence operations and understand adversary vulnerabilities.If you’re interested in learning more on how Scale powers frontier AI capabilities, go to scale.com/dwarkesh.Timestamps(00:00) - Intro(02:11) - Mao at war, 1949-51(05:40) - Pactomania and Sino-Soviet conflicts(14:42) - The Sino-Indian War(20:00) - Soviet peace in India-Pakistan(22:00) - US Aid and Alliances(26:14) - The difference with WWII(30:09) - The geopolitical map in 1904(35:10) - The US alienates Indira Gandhi(42:58) - Instruments of US power(53:41) - Carrier battle groups(1:02:41) - Q&A begins(1:04:31) - The appeal of the USSR(1:09:36) - The last communist premier(1:15:42) - India and China's lost opportunity(1:58:04) - Bismark's cunning(2:03:05) - Training US officers(2:07:03) - Cruelty in Russian history Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
Full Episode
I need to start with a disclaimer because I work for the U.S. government and they require you to do a disclaimer. So the ideas that you're about to hear are my ideas. They don't necessarily represent those of the U.S. government, the U.S. Navy Department, the U.S. Department of Defense, let alone the Naval War College where I work. Are we all good on this? All right.
So today I'm going to tell you a story of three protagonists. Russia, the United States, and China that all wanted to work their magic on India and Pakistan, which didn't exactly appreciate it. So two big topics. One is intervening in someone else's problems, a cottage industry for the United States. And also before you do that, you really ought to check out the alignments.
Who's the primary adversary of whom? How long has it been that way? And also ask these questions about all the neighbors and anyone who might want to crash the party along with you. It's also a story of a series of limited wars. What's a limited war? It means it's for something less than regime change. So however it turns out, the governments that started that war are still in place.
And two of them resulted in quick victories, the ideal in warfare. The first one was the Sino-Indian War of 1962, and the other one was the Bangladesh War of Independence in 1971. And these wars changed things in many short-term expected ways, and then in many long-term, highly unexpected ways. So here's my game plan, and it's literally a game plan.
I'm gonna start out with the pivotal decisions made by different players that then once they're made, certain things are foreclosed and certain things are possible. And this is the playing field that's delimited by these pivotal decisions. And then I'm gonna look at the teams. Some allies were prime allies, others were sub-prime, and they mixed and matched over time.
So then I'll do teams, and then I'll do the game, the interaction, and then at the end I'm gonna do the plays, some of the techniques and things that you can do to play this game. Pivotal decision number one. When Mao won the Chinese Civil War in 1949, it didn't end. He also spent the next two years not only eliminating nationalist remnants, but also conquering Xinjiang and Tibet.
Tibet had been autonomous since 1911 when the last dynasty had collapsed. And Mao decides that he is going to reconquer Tibet. Tibet's an interesting place. It contains, I think, about 40% of China's mineral resources. So there's a lot of money being made in Tibet for those with the capital to invest in big mines.
If you look at this map, the Han Chinese, the preponderant group of China, they inhabit, they dominate as far west as the Chongqing Basin and Sichuan. China has put large armies into Tibet exactly twice. Once under the Qianlong Emperor in the late 18th century, and they didn't stay for very long.
And then under Mao in 1950, and they have stayed forever and built roads so they could keep on sending more in. Between 1950 and 1957, China built a series of road systems through Tibet, and the western route there is the only one that provides year-round traffic. The problem with the other two is, well, check it out. They go through 14 or 15 mountain ranges.
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